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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.

mazza9 - 05:35pm Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11099 of 11100)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Five alum's one show off and another alum. How erudite. How telegraphic. How unintelligible!

"No More On!" Heh! Heh! Heh! Heh! It's Fat Albert!!

rshow55 - 05:51pm Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11100 of 11100)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.ZxUVaJ9l6EU.520309@.f28e622/12511

There are some terribly basic things about order - and what it is - and what we can agree about - and what not - that we need to get clear about. We need a clarity that everybody concerned can understand - and accept at least at a certain abstract level, even though their preferences differ.

The issue is "abstract" at some levels - but it couldn't possibly be more basic, more practical, and more emotionally charged at others.

The Islamic world and we have some basic disagreements about order - and different preferences about it. But we have the same basic human needs - and the same basic human difficulties and shortcomings.

10830 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.ZxUVaJ9l6EU.520309@.f28e622/12380 includes this:

"If we're to keep our tempers, and sort things out - it makes sense to think about them in fairly neutral terms - the same intellectual problems are harder in the more important cases where our emotions are involved."

And the basic math of description - so easy - so well understood at some levels - yet so complicated - offers some useful examples.

We need disciplined minds. And we need something more.

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.ZxUVaJ9l6EU.520309@.f28e622/4608

In David Copperfield , Charles Dickens had an eloquent phrase - linked to a story where the human consequences of facts and deceptions were grippingly clear. He spoke of the need for a disciplined heart.

We need disciplined hearts. As life becomes more complicated, as we see ugliness and agony coexist with beauty, and great unused resources - in the presence of great danger - much of which should be unnecessary - we need, for practical and emotional reasons - a higher level of emotional intelligence than we're showing, and a higher level of logical intelligence .

For better emotional results - quite often - we need our logic to be more careful, more respectful of fact - including technical facts, and facts about people.

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