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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 - 04:41pm May 22, 2002 EST (#2352 of 2359)

Beautiful references on human thinking, and machine thinking - with tools, gathered by lchic http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/681

Note search keys. Much of the searching (in the internal logic of the search engines) uses latent semantic analysis. But the more condensed logic forms and database forms - also involve the need for openness -- MANY possibilities - - so very many that no one can reasonably restrict "need to know" in a large system without making the system MUCH stupider - - - as many disasters at CIA and FBI over the years illustrate.

On the other hand, for fraud - - hiding things, and restricting the "collection of the dots" so that people "connect the dots" in ways that give wrong answers - - restrictions are tailor made.

We've built a "culture of lying."

To "clean up" something important enough, and specific, in public - would do great service to the country -- both with respect to the thing cleaned up - and because the procedures demonstrated could clean up much else.

The idea of an "engineer's court" - much discussed on this thread - - could be used to clean up very many things that concerned President Eisenhower - that ought to concern all patriotic Americans, and that people all over the world ought to care about. It is one thing to say - - "the cold war is over" -- but to actually make the cold war over, and get past its distortions some facts need to be faced - clearly --- so that everybody can see. This can be done, and should be done, in the open literature.

MD1076 rshow55 4/4/02 1:20pm

A significant number of issues, arguments, and answers are on this thread already - though they need to be organized, supplemented, and disputed - to a level where they could be "presented before a jury." By jury standards -- "beyond a reasonable doubt" an enormous fraction of what is now touted and heavily funded as "missile defense" is not worth doing. That can be shown. Shown in public. It should be.

I should be free to do that -- or there should be clear reasons why I'm prohibited from doing so. There was a good deal of discourse on the security issues involved on this thread before March, and that discourse is on the record.

rshow55 - 04:46pm May 22, 2002 EST (#2353 of 2359)

lchic 5/22/02 4:39pm . . I have a feeling, sometimes, that after all this work - - there could be a lot of good coming. . . . . Sometimes it has been a nightmare -- but just a few times, I've felt

Wow! This is just the sort of thing Casey hoped might be accomplished -- with things coming into focus, and things getting sorted out.

Some days, lately, I've felt that way.

lchic - 04:50pm May 22, 2002 EST (#2354 of 2359)

human capital

'The set of skills which an employee acquires on the job, through training and experience, and which increase that employee's value in the marketplace.' http://www.investorwords.com/h1.htm#humancapital

Innate abilities enable some to soar higher than others, and as leaders, they contribute to human advancement.

lchic - 04:59pm May 22, 2002 EST (#2355 of 2359)

Here's looking at you babe!
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/graphic/0,10292,719998,00.html

lchic - 05:02pm May 22, 2002 EST (#2356 of 2359)

IT UK Parliament - Evidence Gathering

The public is to get a formal say in the legislative process for the first time tomorrow when a parliamentary committee takes evidence over the internet.

The experiment is being carried out as part of the pre-legislative scrutiny of the communications bill, with the intention of ironing out flaws in the draft legislation before its formal passage through parliament.

^{http://politics.guardian.co.uk/openup/story/0,11872,720255,00.html}

lchic - 05:06pm May 22, 2002 EST (#2357 of 2359)

Bush in Europe

When he signs the three-page Treaty of Moscow at the Kremlin on May 24th, it will be his fifth get-together with Vladimir Putin in less than 12 months. Mr Bush will spend three days in Russia, but less than a day each in mainland Europe’s two largest economies, Germany and France, whose leaders he will be meeting for the first time on home soil. With Mr Putin, Mr Bush has “looked into the man’s soul”; by contrast, he has difficulty even looking Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac in the eye.

^{http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1142749}

rshow55 - 05:10pm May 22, 2002 EST (#2358 of 2359)

An important step! http://politics.guardian.co.uk/openup/story/0,11872,720255,00.html Sensible procedures and mediation to start with -- and patterns that can grow with experience.

. . .

lchic 5/22/02 4:50pm . . . I've got a problem with title to my human capital.

If the government can't, or won't, acknowledge the past, and make an arrangement that permits me to function -- I ought to own myself and what I know - own my own human capital - - free of encumberances of a national security law that hasn't been able to decently fit my case.

So I might have a chance to make a living -- and a chance to make a contribution.

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