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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 - 09:59am Apr 20, 2002 EST (#1566 of 1584)
USA - Jenin - Transparency --- really?!!

|> ^{http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.scagell/planets.html}

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Journalists - kept out of Jenin, say they were kept out for a reason!

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Powell's mission failed - because geologist-he couldn't read the historical map - didn't understand the concept of 'International Law/boundary!' http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,686417,00.html

lchic - 01:14pm Apr 20, 2002 EST (#1567 of 1584)
USA - Jenin - Transparency --- really?!!

Bush foreign policy will hit HOME http://www.economist.com/images/GA/2002w16/cga001.gif http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1097250 "Everywhere else, the large demonstrations have been in favour of the Palestinians." Elsewhere people get the full information about what is really happening!

mazza9 - 01:34pm Apr 20, 2002 EST (#1568 of 1584)
Louis Mazza

lchic:

I was recently reading some of the history of Vichy France during World War II. Is this where your anti semitism comes from?

NYTimes April 20, 02 "The Return of an Ancient Hatred">

For me, I can see no other reason for your hatred. Maybe you can tell us why you are who you are.

LouMazza

rshow55 - 03:23pm Apr 20, 2002 EST (#1569 of 1584)

Mazza, for you to talk about lchic as a person full of hate is astounding.

Could it be that a lot of Europeans and other people are displeased with Sharon's Israel for good reasons?

Bill Keller's piece said some interesting things about "missile defense" today. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/20/opinion/20KELL.html The question Are you out of your minds? - - directed at people who support nuclear tipped MD devices, and other nuclear devices, is a good question.

Mazza, in an area where you've given me advice I've appreciated, I talked to a guy much connected with movies, drama, and effective action yesterday - not Tom Hanks, though that was a good suggestion that I might follow up. Exciting, and hopeful.

It seems to me that a LOT of the world is asking hard questions about world politics and inter-relations - that might have some more hopeful answers. We've gotten a good look at ugliness and risk, just lately.

I've been very interested in a lot of the things that lchic and almarst have posted on this board in the last few days. Me, I've been looking at some nuts and bolts of "missile defense" - - and at some math.

rshow55 - 04:07pm Apr 20, 2002 EST (#1570 of 1584)

Since undergraduate days, I've been concerned with the mathematics of coupled physical systems -- actually - working on building bridges from the measurable world to abstract math. For about the last ten years, it has been clear that that task is the task of getting modelling arithmetic that works in all cases. After working for a long time, much of it alongside Steve Kline of Stanford http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klinerec I found an error in the arithmetic of coupled physical models. The result (and paradigm conflict issue) I've devoted much of my life to, is described in S.J. Kline's letter http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klinerec and can be summarized as follows:

. The interaction together over space of simpler physical effects produces emergent effects. These emergent effects are often measured directly by an experiment, without any need to understand how they occur. But emergent effects can also be calculated from models. For this calculation to be possible, emergent effects have to be represented in a numerical form that can be set out in an equation. The representation must satisfy all conditions of physical, dimensional, and logical consistency that apply to the case. Representations of emergent effects that occur over space must be set out in an algebraically reduced and dimensionally consistent form, defined over space - at unit scale for the measurement system used. Emergent effects, represented in this dimensionally consistent way, are real effects that act like other effects in modeling equations.

Here's an experimental fact:

. A thin walled plastic tube, filled with a conductive ionic solution and immersed in an ionic solution, is a simple model of a neural line, with channels closed. Such a neural line model has an “effective inductance” (the ratio of di/dt to dv/dx) more than times greater than electromagnetic inductance now thought to be the only link between di/dt and dv/dx in nerve. This effective inductance is due to an emergent property, due to the combination or line resistance and capacitance over space.

A summary of that, from an analytical point of view, is in http://xxx.lanl.gov/html/math-ph/9807015

But the result can also be modelled on a computer -- and when it is, using SPICE - the standard electrial circuit modelling program the existence of the new terms is shown -- and a basic error in a standard computer algorithm is also shown.

A REDERIVATION OF THE ELECTRICAL TRANSMISSION LINE EQUATIONS USING NETWORK THEORY SHOWS NEW TERMS THAT MATTER IN NEURAL TRANSMISSION. http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/kirch1

The SPICE program uses the standard finite integration algorithms people are now assuming -- and in the "neuron" case in http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/kirch1 that algorithm produces "crosseffects" that are incorrectly modelled -- very often numerically too small to matter, but effects that cannot be physically right (wholes don't equal sums of parts) and that must involve explosive errors - dangerous errors -- grossly misleading errors -- in cases not now being checked for.

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