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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

possumdag - 02:09am Apr 25, 2001 EST (#2575 of 2578)
Possumdag@excite.com

Showalter: from another thread i noted author said "I had to send the first edition / shipment back to the printer because the printer accidentally had left the page-numbers out."

Seems that even the simpler things require a procedure checklist to ensure them.

rshowalter - 06:03am Apr 25, 2001 EST (#2576 of 2578)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst-2001 4/24/01 11:41pm makes important points, that seem to me to represent an important part of the truth, though of course (as I'm sure almarst-2001 would acknowledge) not all of it.

I find possumdag's comments constructive, and her definition of hopeful, constructive responses most welcome. Hope, and a sense of the good things we need to value and work for, is vital, and too easily forgotten.

I found William Broad's Who Built the H-Bomb? Debate Revives stimulated my thoughts - how ugly some of the doings he describes are -- and how logically as well as morally indefensible. I found myself thinking how much higher, how much more valuable, some other aspects of human existence, and some other human patterns, really are. The patterns of love, and reasonable, cheerful discipline, and life.

I find the ideals and examples of the movie Mary Poppins far more solid, far more important, far more worth nurturing, than the dark, stark, ugly-simple doings of Teller and the people the movie Dr. Strangelove describes, in many ways so fairly.

I've felt a need for a certain relief. A song from Mary Poppins , called in a NYT essay "the best waltz," is playing in my head.

It is "Let's go fly a kite."

We need to remember joy, in all this darkness -- it is a reason to do the work, and have the courage and wisdom, to sweep at least the worst of the darkness away. Lest all joy end.

Let me see if "Let's Go Fly A Kite" is still on the NYT web. . .

rshowalter - 06:09am Apr 25, 2001 EST (#2577 of 2578)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Nuts: But there's this: April 18, 1999, Sunday Best Love Song; Two Girls and a Guy By Lorrie Moore Richard Strauss knew that triangles make the best music. Source: The New York Times Section: Magazine Desk 794 words

Lead Paragraph: Opinions on music can be stubborn and lonely things. I believe, for instance, that the 20th century's most intoxicating waltz is ''Let's Go Fly a Kite'' from ''Mary Poppins.'' But don't ask me, with any strenuousness, to justify it, or I will gnaw my...

I feel that we could use a pause, from time to time, to give thought to beauty and joy -- things worth working for --- worth the effort it takes, for instance, to prevent the stupid destruction of the world.

rshowalter - 06:11am Apr 25, 2001 EST (#2578 of 2578)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I'll be back in a bit, with some much darker things to say. But in the service of the preservation of joy. It isn't easy, and one can't "wave a magic wand" to do it. But I believe that it is possible, step by step, to find new beauty, new solutions, for much of the ugliness of the world, including the ugliest part of all -- the current nuclear terror.

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