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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.

(1938 previous messages)

rshow55 - 04:28pm May 1, 2002 EST (#1939 of 1956)

I've also been concerned that the world might end if some screw-ups didn't get fixed - - where it seemed to me that I had some important solutions (that I'd been assigned to find) to offer.

(This thread's evidence makes me think I was right, that the solutions were real -- and the the value of working with lchic has been real. )

lchic - 04:47pm May 1, 2002 EST (#1940 of 1956)

It might indeed - maintenance crews so often let us down ... having little to no understanding of the outdated equipment they maintain.

lchic - 04:50pm May 1, 2002 EST (#1941 of 1956)

^{? Showalter - when you went into the Phuds Cornell program
prior to being lured into the channels above - what was your aim,
and what would you have done with/in your life - professionally
speaking ? How does the life you envisaged contrast with the current
paralysis in career ?}

rshow55 - 08:42pm May 1, 2002 EST (#1942 of 1956)

lchic 5/1/02 4:50pm

? Showalter - when you went into the Phuds Cornell program prior to being lured into the channels above - what was your aim, and what would you have done with/in your life - professionally speaking ?

The road not taken - - no way to tell. But I was conventionally ambitious - technically and academically, and wanted to work on the economics and logic of technical change - the econonomics, logic, and mathematics involved in the process of innovation, and the diffusion of innovation. I was interested in a lot of things - I was only 18 then . . . and I don't know what would have happened, what I would have done. I'd been very much in love with Marti Beck, courting her pretty strenuously - in ways that I'm not entirely proud of --but, I was hell bent on marrying her, and she seemed about as intent on snagging me -- and I was spending a whole lot of effort trying to find ways (bets, mostly) to get together enough money to hang a rock on her. If Marti had lived, I think I would have been "well in hand" in a lot of ways, and an entirely different person. Marti Beck died in the Cornell Res Club fire - and I was pretty rocked by that. Really badly. That's only the fault of the government insofar as the Phud program itself was. It is hard to tell what would have happened to me, if I hadn't been "rescued and given a job to do". My guess is that I would have been a pretty successful, pretty conventional academic - perhaps a good one -- but it didn't happen. Back then, I was wildly ambitious - a lot of the Phuds were then, and we were encouraged to be. And then I was given a chance to be ambitious beyond my wildest dreams. . . .

Lchic, you ask "How does the life you envisaged contrast with the current paralysis in career ?" . . . and that's a good question. And compared to almost any conventional career path, I'm in a low, low estate right now. All the same, the path I was recruited into was exciting beyond my dreams, and before 1983 or so, though there were some horrific parts of it, and though I worked VERY hard -- life was risky, but hopeful. Almost living a dream. As an animal, I don't think I could possibly have gotten a "more productive" education, if the objective had been social productivity, from a "rational gambler's" perspective. Then it became a nightmare. And yet a dream at the same time. The situation recounted in http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klinerec is terrible in some ways, but very hopeful in others. A very interesting mix of a good dream (solving a problem I wanted to solve badly) and a nightmare. The nightmare part seems much more soluble now than it was when Steve died, because of insights about paradigm conflict lchic and I have worked out. There's a lot more to say. There are some things to be angry about, and some things to regret terribly, for myself, and for people who I cared about, and who trusted me, and who I failed because people I trusted in the government failed me.

But a key thing, just now, is that I need to be free to work -- not tied up in a security problem so ambiguous that I cannot work. If that could be fixed, a lot would be hopeful. MD1923 rshow55 5/1/02 12:01pm

MD1900 rshow55 4/30/02 11:16am MD1901rshow55 4/30/02 11:21am

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee7a163/289

lchic - 09:52pm May 1, 2002 EST (#1943 of 1956)

Drifting in an open life-boat, catching rainwater and fish; avoiding the silent giant vessels that power through the night (so to speak) - it can't be much fun - reads like a nightmare you can't wake-up from!

lchic - 10:40pm May 1, 2002 EST (#1944 of 1956)

Arafat : A visibly furious Yasser Arafat has made his first public appearance since Israel lifted its siege of his office,
calling the Israeli Army terrorists. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2002/05/item20020502055620_1.htm

mazza9 - 11:14pm May 1, 2002 EST (#1945 of 1956)
Louis Mazza

Of course a 1700 year old Christian shrine is the perfect place to hide if you're a Palestinian/Muslim Terrorist.

Let's look at the toll:

1. Ancient Buddahs in Afghanistan.

2. Hindu Shrines in India.

3. Jewish Synagogues in France.

4. Plots to assasinate the Pope.

5. The WTC.

Yeah he has every right to be p*ssed off!

If you're gonna throw fat on the fire maybe it should be AraFAT!!

LouMazza

lchic - 03:15am May 2, 2002 EST (#1946 of 1956)