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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 05:02pm May 3, 2002 EST (#1986 of 1998)

lchic 5/3/02 4:11pm There is a gap -- a number of gaps - - and Moore adresses some of them very well.

For summarization, and for careful research -- I think Moore meets very high standards -- I was impressed with some of the research in "stupid white men" -- some from the NYT. But he is intensely partisan - in a way that the NYT isn't supposed to be, and can't be.

In the case of Enron, the NYT did a great service by setting up a web digest - http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/business/_ENRON-PRIMER.html - as well as a separate thread. But to do that very often, with the economics of the business as it is, there would need to be support -- support permitting indexing, summarization, collection of articles - things that take work, and "inviting in" of sources with different views. That would be something that could easily be, and should be, supplemented by foundation support. To get that support, the TIMES would have to do little more than ask for it. A few million dollars of such support, from foundations that would be happy to give the money, might make an big advance in effective journalism.

I believe that it would be a major public service -- that would be used by politicians and decision makers -- that it could be done to the highest ethical standards - and that on balance, though it would mean giving away some articles, it would increase prestige and revenue.

MD1907 rshow55 4/30/02 4:02pm ... MD1908 rshow55 4/30/02 4:06pm

There ARE gaps in what even the NYT can do, accoding to its current format, with its revenue base -- and with usages as they are. But there are new opportunities. With the internet, "collecting the dots" and "connecting the dots" can be done in new ways, at different levels of detail - including very condensed ones, and also very complete ones.

And that can help answer a key question:

" When large news organizations such as The New York Times cannot solve problems by covering the facts about them -- why don't the solutions happen, when they often seem very clear?

We need formats that are set up for "collecting the dots" and "connecting the dots" at the level human beings really need. We can do better now - with new tools that are now possible, and need to be developed (and funded.)

rshow55 - 05:08pm May 3, 2002 EST (#1987 of 1998)

U.S. and Russia Fall Short on Nuclear Deal by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html

rshow55 - 05:13pm May 3, 2002 EST (#1988 of 1998)

It is a sad thing if the Russians, who have been attempting to negotiate near-total nuclear disarmament for a decade, feel that they have to maintain their arsenals, because of the way the United States acts.

mazza9 - 06:48pm May 3, 2002 EST (#1989 of 1998)
Louis Mazza

lchic:

You should know about torture. Wasn't the Algerian incursion of the 50s one of those fine French moments, (excluding the burning of synagogues), when battery electrodes attached to testicles was raised to a high art form? You throw around the term NAZI with applomb. As I recall, Vichy France was the handmaiden of the Final Solution schemers.

Go to your room!

LouMazza

lchic - 11:43pm May 3, 2002 EST (#1990 of 1998)

Hasn't the USA backed right-wing regimes in South America for decades - some of which have behaved as above with respect to their people.

Death and the Maiden (film) covers the senario generically.

lchic - 12:05am May 4, 2002 EST (#1991 of 1998)

DOTS cantabb "Science in the News" 5/3/02 5:31pm

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