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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 - 10:15am Apr 6, 2002 EST (#1144 of 1149)

...

– perhaps for the last time - real peace and normal relations, and the public is listening to the silly ranting of politicians and commentators, who ridicule the offer and cheer Sharon on, at the start of a bloody campaign worse than any one before?

History remembers the few, who warned the people of the disaster that is bound to follow if they listen to the Zealots. History will remember us, the few who are warning the people now of the disaster that will befall all of us, if we follow Sharon and his gang.

Let's hope that our voices will be heard in time, so that we can start on a new road.

If Arafat is murdered, it will be the moment of no return.

Uri Avnery has closely followed the career of Ariel Sharon for four decades. Over the years, he has written three extensive essays about him, two (in 1973 and 1981) with his cooperation.

rshow55 - 10:15am Apr 6, 2002 EST (#1145 of 1149)

almarst-2001 4/6/02 9:32am - - - working on an answer! I think it is pretty hopeful.

manjumicha2001 4/5/02 10:54pm . . . working on an answer -- an early investor, much involved, was the Johns Hopkins University -- and if the NYT wanted to get details - the Mayor of NY is well connected. Back in a while.

lchic - 10:35am Apr 6, 2002 EST (#1146 of 1149)

^{Bush has committed America to ending it. Is he too late? http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1075866}

Bridges and doormats :
Mr Blair may find bridge-building awkward
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1075351

lchic - 10:44am Apr 6, 2002 EST (#1147 of 1149)

_{Henry Clay Wilson, who died in 1990, led a group of three conspirators in the shooting death of King.}

"It wasn't a racist thing. He thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way," Wilson said of his father.

"He kept saying it was the patriotic thing to do. He said he had to save the country," http://www.dawn.com/2002/04/06/int9.htm

Psychology - associative :-
Question - how could a connection between King and communism have got into Clay's mind?
Instant - but not necessarily 'right' solutions :-
Question - if investigators looked for 'truth' then why set up Ray?

lchic - 10:52am Apr 6, 2002 EST (#1148 of 1149)

Warriors and EU-nuchs ^{http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=1021330}

rshow55 - 11:33am Apr 6, 2002 EST (#1149 of 1149)

While I'm working, I feel like posting these references.

MD669 lchic 3/18/02 11:51am :

Decision making/tree, expert systems ... often a decision is common sense .. when a framework is required then:

. . . . (references):

MD671 rshow55 3/18/02 12:01pm

We are special animals -- and capable, often enough, of unbelievable brutality, duplicity, and ugliness.

We'd be safer if we were clearer about that.

Still, just now, I feel like posting some beautiful things from museums and artistic sites, mostly Russian, collected by lunarchic last year.

We need to remember both the ugliness, the danger, and the good -- and do

. . . . . (many beautiful links).

MD1067 rshow55 4/4/02 8:21am

"MD1040 almarst-2001 4/3/02 9:16pm is a very important posting. If what almarst says is correct, the US is doing some things exactly wrong.

. . . . . .

We need to make peace. Real peace, that is stable. . .

MD1027 rshow55 4/3/02 11:01am :

At the beginning of the 20th century, people made "good" arguments that war was becoming obsolete -- for what seemed "good reasons" - that have proven grotesquely wrong. Are those same "good reasons" -- along with a relatively few new insights, and new technical capacities, more reasonable now? Yes, they are more reasonable.

Maybe, from where we are, not even all that hard. The problems do involve, more than anything else, problems of communication and decision making when emotions run high, ideas differ, and circumstances are complex. We all know something about situations like that. There are some points, that are technical and logical, that need to be understood better than they are.

Responding to recent questions by almarst and manjumicha can be done, to a large extent, on the web. But one can go only so far in that format - and there are times where there is no substitute for conversation, and other times no substitute for conversation face to face.

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