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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 - 04:43pm Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9389 of 9408)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In A Brain Too Young for Good Judgment by DANIEL R. WEINBERGER OpEd, The New York Times March 10, 2001 . . . . Daniel R. Weinberger, director of the Clinical Brain Disorders Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health speaks of 15 year old murderers, and discusses limitations of their brains.

This brief lesson in brain development is not meant to absolve criminal behavior or make the horrors any less unconscionable. But the shooter at Santana High, like other adolescents, needed people or institutions to prevent him from being in a potentially deadly situation where his immature brain was left to its own devices. No matter what the town or the school, if a gun is put in the control of the prefrontal cortex of a hurt and vengeful 15-year-old, and it is pointed at a human target, it will very likely go off.

. . .

When we consider the horrors of war, one can wonder how far advanced "grown up" brains are. Perhaps, as a species, we have some growing up to do, and have to do it on the basis of understanding and culture, because we cannot evolve our brains nearly as fast as we have changed our circumstances.

rshowalter - 04:50pm Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9390 of 9408)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Whether one is religious or not, it seems clear to many people, by now, that people are animals. Very special ones, but animals still.

" A little lower than the angels."

We're not perfect, abstract logical beings. We're something much juicier and more interesting. Animals with characteristics, that can be very ornate, and very surprising, but that can be studied, and understood.

Characteristics that can sometimes go very wrong, with ugly consequences.

I've been looking at some NYT articles I happen to have saved and read, that show some things that make an interesting counterpoint to Angier's article.

rshowalter - 05:08pm Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9391 of 9408)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

April 8, 2001 Hitler's Willing Executioners by STEVEN ERLANGER http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/08/reviews/010408.08erlangt.html

A review of NEIGHBORS: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. By Jan T. Gross. Illustrated. 261 pp. Princeton, N.J.: An account of the wartime massacre of Polish Jews by their neighbors.

First Chapter: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/g/gross-neighbors.html

There is, or course, a famous book with the same title as Erlanger's article. That book refers to the Germans themselves.

rshowalter - 05:09pm Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9392 of 9408)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Poles and the Jews: How Deep the Guilt? by ADAM MICHNIK March 17, 2001 The Associated Press On July 10, 1941, 1,600 Jews, nearly the entire Jewish population of the Polish village of Jedwabne, were murdered by their Polish neighbors. Some were hunted down and killed with clubs, axes and knives; most were herded into a barn and then burned alive.

Poland Tries to Atone for Wartime Slaughter of Jews by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS July 10, 2001

At Site of Massacre, Polish Leader Asks Jews for Forgiveness by IAN FISHER July 11, 2001 WARSAW, July 10 — Sixty years after as many as 1,600 Jews were killed in eight hours in a village in northeast Poland, the nation's president offered a strong apology today: it was not Nazi soldiers, he affirmed, but ordinary Poles who beat, stabbed and, finally, burned their fellow villagers alive in a barn.

Only the Guilty Are Guilty, Not Their Sons (May 5, 2001) by ELIE WIESEL http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/05/opinion/05WIES.html

rshowalter - 05:13pm Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9393 of 9408)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Bombingham Revisited By DAVID K. SHIPLER http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/18/reviews/010318.18shiplet.html A daughter of Birmingham's white elite explores the causes of the city's civil rights violence in the summer of 1963

A review of CARRY ME HOME ..Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. By Diane McWhorter. Illustrated. 701 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Related Link Other Side of the Mountain: An Interview With Diane McWhorter http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/18/reviews/010318.18applet.html

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