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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 - 05:04pm Mar 24, 2002 EST (#810 of 835)

Time for an Arab-PowWow where there's an honest look at where the Arab people are as against others in the world.

I was suprised looking at the stats posted here this past week, as to how low in the stakes the Arab populations are wrt health live births indicators that said out loud - PROBLEMS to be solved.

Rather than the Arab world being Anti-American (negative), they should be setting themselves growth targets, perhaps looking to Advanced economies for help and assistance.

The processes, frameworks, and means of developing human capital (via education and training) should be the focus - how to improve living standards via developing and growing their economies - not purchasing bullets of death.

America - the world's richest economy - has the capacity to 'coach' and 'lead' and assist.

mazza9 - 07:32pm Mar 24, 2002 EST (#811 of 835)
Louis Mazza

lchic:

I agree with your assessment of the needs of the Arab world. There is one issue that might be difficult to overcome. Some of the Emirates have the highest per capital income in the world. They drive Mercedes and have all the health and educational benefits of the developed world. However, their government is still 8th Century which means that power is still concentrated in a ruling class which buys their power with oil revenues. there is no wealth creation either industrial, (only oil) or human, (except to service the oil industry). JFK's Peace Corp was an attempt but its successes were spotty at best. Maybe President Bush's reitieration of this idea might focus our energies in the right direction.

LouMazza

lchic - 11:05pm Mar 24, 2002 EST (#812 of 835)

A report by Landmine Action revealed unexploded ordnance pose as big a threat as landmines in war-torn countries.

lchic - 01:06am Mar 25, 2002 EST (#813 of 835)

His special patient is no less than science itself. Dr. Kass, who has taught philosophy and ethics at the University of Chicago since 1976, has long believed that science could threaten the human condition, both by undermining human self-esteem and by generating tools that might be misused, particularly by genetically reshaping the human mind or body.

Science has become so dangerous, in his view, because it is a powerful force, yet one that has been deliberately stripped of moral values by scientists who are trained to pursue the truth objectively http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/science/19KASS.html

The surprise foreign film award winner was Bosnia's "No Man's Land," writer-director Danis Tanovic's satiric story of a Bosnian soldier and a Serbian soldier stuck together in a trench. France's "Amelie," which had five nominations, was expected to win. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/movies/AP-Oscars.html

lchic - 01:30am Mar 25, 2002 EST (#814 of 835)

Science - ethics

_{The research program is based on the scholarly interests of individual faculty members. Work is ongoing and has included gene therapy, nursing ethics, patient autonomy and physician beneficence, religious pluralism in medical ethics, informed consent, death and dying, and nuclear warfare. The disciplines of this research include philosophy, religion, medicine, law, journalism, international affairs, and business, as well as health issues providing faculty expertise in the many fields encompassed in bioethics. http://www.georgetown.edu/research/kie/}

http://www.chem.vt.edu/ethics/vinny/ethxbibl.html

lchic - 04:46am Mar 25, 2002 EST (#815 of 835)

Talking again NK/SK http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/25/international/asia/25KORE.html

lchic - 05:16am Mar 25, 2002 EST (#816 of 835)

Abraham 101 - Jewish religion
Abraham 102 - Christian religion
Abraham 103 - Muslim religion

So related, so interwoven, sometimes in need of an update.

Begs the question
Why the hostility ?

lchic - 05:33am Mar 25, 2002 EST (#817 of 835)

In 1926 Bronislav Malinowski observed that

lchic - 09:47am Mar 25, 2002 EST (#818 of 835)

Abraham 103 : interesting how Oscars/Best Actor award winners came from a category most closely associated here. How a conspiracy was used, together with a game theory (?), to cut down the actor of 'a beautiful mind'. The strategic logic of placing the 11% sector in the main stream is obvious ... the US has now determined to let the group which may include disaffected muslims to enter 'The Homeland Fold'.

~~~~~~~

Nash : In 1950 Nash received his doctorate from Princeton with a thesis entitled Non-cooperative Games. In the summer of that year he worked for the RAND Corporation where his work on game theory made him a leading expert on the Cold War conflict which dominated RAND's work. He worked there from time to time over the next few years as the Corporation tried to apply game theory to military and diplomatic strategy. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Nash.html

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