New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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?

rshowalter - 02:47pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4753 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Some background to the feature on Dark Side of U.S. Quest for Security: Squalor on an Atoll by HOWARD W. FRENCH http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/11/world/11ISLA.html If the US has been merciless with the natives, as it has -- it was also ruthless with its own soldiers.

MD1823 rshowalter 3/31/01 8:12am : 235,000 U.S. servicemen were exposed to nuclear weapons testing during military duty. The people who gave the orders knew there were risks, but wanted numbers.

The US record of denying responsiblility for the damage done to American lives is one example, among many, of how brutalizing the Cold War was, and continues to be. We need to put the Cold War behind us.

THE LONG DEATH by Marge Percy from Circles in the Water , A.A.Knopf. Inc http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee79f4e/758

The brutality of people involved with nuclear weapons, and the self selection among them, ought to be remembered.

We ought, in the future, to find ways of being more decent than in the past.

dirac_10 - 03:15pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4754 of 4771)

lunarchick - 03:44am Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4736 of 4753) lunarchick@www.com

How can you say Business-Men are born not made ...

It's been my experience. It's a special knack. Part of it is being cheap. Part of it is working hard. Part of it is not worring too much about other folks (when doing the business.) But there's a special element, a way of knowing when someone is lying. Of not following goofy ideas.

isn't business a process, and don't people have to learn processes, understand them, and know how to move through a process sucessfully?

Well, you can function in a corporation that way, but you can't start and run a business. It's a real knack, and Russia not having it yet, is their main problem. These rich folks that know how to do it are America's greatest asset next to the climate. If they could just keep the greed down to a dull roar....

How do you define business, is it more than commerce ?

I'm talking about someone that makes something out of nothing. A good corporate top executive too I suppose. But I'm really talking about Rockefeller or Carnegie or the guy running his tire shop or hardware store. Surviving at it.

Winning processes may offer competitive advantage to give a 'born' businessman ... the process may have been started by the family prior to his birth.

Well, yeah, having some cash to start with makes it easier and therfore is well represented. And there is a tricks of the trade that is handed down. But those that really add to the money got the knack. The drive. And can often, start with very little money.

rshowalter - 03:20pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4755 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Something that can't be taught ?

People without "the knack" are to be left to die?

rshowalter - 03:21pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4756 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD1127-1128 rshowalter 3/17/01 5:06pm ... When we apply SIMPLE models of structure to circumstances that have a more complicated structure than we are thinking of, we can get into trouble.

We can fail to see how thing work.

And we can be misled by thinking we see "contradictions" where there are no logical contradictions -- though there may be aesthetic or moral tensions.

A complex system can be two "contradictory" things at the same time -- in different places within the larger structure -- without contradiction.

MD1129 rshowalter 3/17/01 5:38pm . . . People can be guilty and victims at ONCE.

People can be monsters and good people at ONCE - in different aspects of their lives, or at different times.

. . . There is no contradiction. Only the compexities of the human condition.

The Japanese have been in economic trouble (and political trouble, and in trouble as salesmen) in part, I believe, because they've allowed themselves to be paralyzed by lies. The Japanese somehow feel that the horrors that they perpertrated in WWII - among them atrocious crimes against women, can't be remembered, because somehow that would make the good things in Japanese culture unthinkable. Japan may be having problems now, because, here and in a lot of other ways, they are telling lies. Lies that keep them from facing more complex realities.

I'd like to cite Dawn Riley's Rape Camp http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee79f4e/1512

here, because it illustrates something about the moral degradation that occurred, and in significant ways came to be tolerated on all sides, in the first half of the 20th century. The history of nuclear weapons, in many details, including traditions now well entrenched, would have been unthinkable without that degradation.

We have to do better than that, now.

MD1130: rshowalter 3/17/01 5:38pm . . . The problems of Russia, and the problems of dealing with the horrors of the Cold War, and the miserable way it is continued, are morally hard enough. Because much of the truth is ugly. But the ugliness is not unthinkable, if one recognizes that one is not dealing with contradiction, but complexity, then one is dealing with situations where there is some hope of better action in the future. The ugliness of the past should not be forgotten, and it must be dealt with -- but it need not paralyze us. We can fix things that are fixable.

(15 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense