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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 - 09:12pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9723 of 9749)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Judgement matters, and judgement can only be as good as the inputs on which it is based.

Assumptions , assumed to be right, that happen to be false, are dangerous.

Though I'm a backslider, I happen to like this sermon. Especially the last 11 minutes. And most especially the last 25 seconds.

http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/sermon.html

almarst-2001 - 09:44pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9724 of 9749)

"The Reagan administration rallied the world to its side in 1983 when it laid out evidence before the United Nations proving that it was Soviet warplanes that destroyed a South Korean passenger airliner that had strayed over Russian territory. "

One should know better.

The Korean plane "strayed" from its cource right from the beginning. And "incidently" entered the super-secret area of a Soviet strategic air-defence. For some reason it did not answer the request of soviet fighters to change a cource or land. It did not respond at all.

But the most interesting was a fact that it was followed by an American spy plane, busily collecting the radar and comunication info.

Mr. Reagan was a master of falcifications and provocations.

Sorry for the old story.

rshowalter - 09:47pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9725 of 9749)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

That's an important story.

For the safety of Russia, and the whole world, it is important that you make your case.

Not as it would need to be made before philosophers (though it needs to be good enough for that.)

But good enough for people, within the US, and elsewhere, as they are.

rshowalter - 09:48pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9726 of 9749)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Speaking as a loyal American, who has worked very hard to do what he was told to do, and what he has regarded as his duty.

We need to be WORTHY of the GOOD THINGS people associate with this flag - - not just wave it.

lunarchick - 04:11am Sep 23, 2001 EST (#9727 of 9749)
lunarchick@www.com

everything old is new again almarst-2001 9/22/01 9:44pm New to the new, and renewal for the not so new.

Newspaper sales are seemingly down today - piles of them unsold - 'war' on the front cover has already lost it's charm.

Showalter i'll take a bye re the flag ... not my fetish! On flags we had 'Last Night of the Proms 2000 today - it must have come by boat - lots of flags in the Albert Hall. This conductor of the bbc symphony orchestra had his last gig before heading off to Chicago - Sir Alexandra Davis - leaving a vacancy for another.

The 2001 Proms changed their program wrt the WTC event.

Music people are a dedicated decent crowd.

Would the world have improved harmony if 'Conductors' became Presidents?

Music people seem to hold 'patterns' of harmony
- just a thought!

lunarchick - 04:34am Sep 23, 2001 EST (#9728 of 9749)
lunarchick@www.com

$50m US for OBL. Wonder where he is .. might be in South America by now, on the Champs Elysee, or living it up in MonteCarlo. Doubt if he's in Afghanistan. The $50m certainly has peoples' attention.

rshowalter - 06:43am Sep 23, 2001 EST (#9729 of 9749)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A very nice thing about music (and resonance, something I find interesting in a lot of ways) is that it provides a very natural way to group or connect things that fit together in some systematic relation.

With a trained ear, we know instantly what isn't "musical" -- what sound don't fit together.

And we know when sounds almost fit together - - when things are "off key" -- and can tune them up. With beautiful precision.

I wish we had such a sharp, useful kind of "aesthetic sense" about more logical kinds of human interaction -- a clear sense for "what didn't fit" -- and what was "ugly" and "beautiful." It seems to me that people really do have something of this sense, but they don't pay attention to it, or trust it, or cultivate it -- and so things that are ugly, that could be cleaned up, are tolerated.

If people paid more attention to their sense of harmony and proportion, I think a lot could sort out.

And we'd have a better sense of how you make transitions, too.

rshowalter - 06:46am Sep 23, 2001 EST (#9730 of 9749)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In music, you can get from any key, to any other, and any melody line, to any other, by a transition involving notes and rhythms.

People need to be able to craft transitions between each other as individuals, and between groups, that are as workable.

A big thing that needs to be there for this is a sense of aesthetics.

"Is this beautiful, does it fit for me?

That's a question too seldom asked.

If people asked it, a lot would become more focused, problems that needed to be solved would stand out more, and many times, they could be solved.

Things that seem ugly need attention. Things that seem beautiful in some way, but not quite right, need attention.

People, when they let themselves know it, sometimes know this very well.

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