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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

lchic - 07:53pm Mar 17, 2002 EST (#652 of 668)

Posted re decision making - list lost in the ether ... until board okays it :)

lchic - 07:57pm Mar 17, 2002 EST (#653 of 668)

Questions of proportion ...

10 red socks out of 13 total socks (10/13) is a proportion

lchic - 08:02pm Mar 17, 2002 EST (#654 of 668)

Proportions can be solved by the means-extreme property.

http://www.trinp.org/MNI/BoF/3/2/3.HTM http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2000/09/092600_hurricanes.jhtml

rshow55 - 08:17pm Mar 17, 2002 EST (#655 of 668)

http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2000/09/092600_hurricanes.jhtml

"Just as earthquakes have the Richter scale that rates their magnitude, hurricanes have the Saffir-Simpson scale, which gives an estimate of a hurricane's potential property damage and expected coastal flooding."

People set up "scales" -- conventional patterns -- sometimes color coded -- to let matters of proportion fit in people's heads.

On any reasonable human scale, weapons of mass destruction are to be avoided.

So are many other horrors and costs of war. We need to learn to do better.

Giving up, and simply preparing, as Hobbes might suggest, for war without limit and without end, is no solution.

rshow55 - 08:24pm Mar 17, 2002 EST (#656 of 668)

MD635 almarst-2001 3/17/02 10:11am ..... MD636 rshow55 3/17/02 10:52am

Dangerous times. But sometimes, patterns of lies , deceptions , half truths , and muddles that are dangerous and unstable , get clarified -- and people get closer to the truth - and are safer for being so.

The old system, which worked well in many ways, very poorly in others, is in disarray. An american administration is pulling it apart -- and gives as a reason for doing so a "missile defense" fiction that makes no sense at all -- something the administration itself must know.

A "web of facts" need to be substituted for a "web of lies."

Facts, established solidly enough, can be powerful. Enron was dominant - deferred to -- respected -- on the basis of a pattern of ornate but blatant deceptions. But the lies were unstable - - and once some key facts solidified - with clarity - and with many of the facts presented together in space and time, so people could see -- the fraud collapsed. An admirable collection of facts and circumstances, contributing to that instability is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/business/_ENRON-PRIMER.html

Some key aspects of the US military-industrial-complex deserve analogous scrutiny. For it to happen, for it to be news, world leaders are going to have to ask for checking.

Technical issues about missile defense would be a good start, because they are so technically clear, and lend themselves to umpired discussion to closure.

out.

almarst-2001 - 10:59pm Mar 17, 2002 EST (#657 of 668)

"We are animals, dispite all our virtues"

Unfortunatly, we are not.

Animals would never submit the kind to the level of crualty and senseless crimes as human could.

almarst-2001 - 11:06pm Mar 17, 2002 EST (#658 of 668)

"This was ugly."

The ugliness breeds more ugliness. The crime breeds more crimes. The cycle has to be breaked. Only the strongest side of the conflict can afford to say sorry first.

lchic - 12:58am Mar 18, 2002 EST (#659 of 668)

The world is interlinked and travels together more closely than is appreciated - I've put it this way:

Invention Innovation Application Defusion

Think of language
Think of culture
Think of time

Three broad strands
through which the
shuttle intertwines

Add invention with
application
innovation traded
by each nation

The upright strands
of cuture's loom
are blended softly
with the handicraft
that time and people
place with care
and weave and weave
and leave in there

Until a texture
subtle
strong
gives us
those things
defused
that people like
to use and use

lchic - 01:07am Mar 18, 2002 EST (#660 of 668)

can't 'use' nuclear missiles - they aren't woven into the fabric of real culture.

almarst-2001 - 07:31am Mar 18, 2002 EST (#661 of 668)

"This was ugly."

"Can somebody know about us, can you tell the world about us?" - http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1875000/1875116.stm

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