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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?

rshowalter - 03:26pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4757 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Complexity, and dealing with it:

MD1131 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?14@184.fvFca4OApMl^691177@.f0ce57b/1227... MD1132 rshowalter 3/17/01 6:10pm
MD1134 rshowalter 3/17/01 6:17pm ... MD1135 rshowalter 3/17/01 6:19pm
MD1136 rshowalter 3/17/01 6:24pm ... MD1143 rshowalter 3/17/01 8:03pm
MD1144 rshowalter 3/17/01 8:04pm

gisterme - 03:53pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4758 of 4771)

dirac wrote: "...I'm talking about someone that makes something out of nothing..."

I agree 100% with your point dirac. Different folks have different gifts. Has nothing to do with political equality or even process.

Nearly anybody can learn to play the piano by working through a process; but the vast majority of those who do that will never have the talent necessary to become professional musicians and even less will become great composers.

Likewise successful entrepeneurs use a similar talent to achieve the things they do. It has to do with good judgement in business decisions...an ability, some kind of instinct, to know what the truth is WRT their business effort. I couldn't agree more with the characteristics that you attribute to successful business people, dirac.

I would add that successful business poeple usually have very good leadership skills too. Those skills are seldom attributable to working through a process.

rshowalter - 03:59pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4759 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Those skills involve a tremendous amount of "working through ordinary processes" -- but to do really difficult things -- you have to go beyond that.

But the mass of recieved knowledge is very great.

Most readers of this thread know more than 100,000 words. And we all figured them out ourselves - we looked up only a tiny fraction of them - though we usually agree about word meanings. The corpus of recieved knowledge we all have, and have to have -- is very great -- something a fairly conservative, very clear english Professor -- E.D. Hirsch , is clear about.

People have to learn, by being in contact with a culture and, very often, they need to be taught things that they are not born knowing.

rshowalter - 04:00pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4760 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

As far as information flows go, to dismiss is to kill. And some conservatives seem very comfortable doing that.

rshowalter - 04:11pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4761 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

focusing on the notion of evil :
MD3727 gisterme 5/15/01 6:24pm ... MD3938 possumdag 5/15/01 6:50pm
MD3945 rshowalter 5/15/01 7:22pm

"evil" as "disciplined beauty" according to warped assumptions and lies:
MD3946 rshowalter 5/15/01 7:23pm

MD3946 rshowalter 5/15/01 7:40pm
Illustrative "cartoons of assumptions" applied to the people I think of when I think "evil" ---

. Alexander the Great -- Atilla the Hun ---Napolean --- Hitler --- Stalin

rshowalter - 04:13pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4762 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Here's the " Hitler" assumption -- the essential core of the NAZI viewpoint:

Hitler

" There is an "ideal Germany" to be advanced at all costs, I am the person to conceptualize it and impose it, and there will be NO value being placed on any nation, group, or individual who do not fit my elaborate, philosophically ornate, arbitrary conception."

rshowalter - 04:33pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4763 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

"Disciplined beauty" , from different points of view -- examples from movies:
MD3951 rshowalter 5/15/01 8:20pm

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