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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  /

    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.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (11200 previous messages)

rshow55 - 08:56am Apr 8, 2003 EST (# 11201 of 11213) Delete Message
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.

Just for emphasis - I think people ought to really think about this:

. Our most basic problems have to do with the stability of our descriptions of what we are talking about and what we are feeling about.

If we work for consistency - which is hard to get for anybody at all - and keep at it - checking not only what we think we said - but what people understand - and try for stability - not patterns that jump around whenever anyone tries to "pin anything down" - we can avoid misunderstandings serious enough to produce really ugly consequences - almost always.

Not always. When there are conflicts - there may have to be fights. But if we're clear - they can be small, relatively stable fights - mostly about ideas, with no need for rending of flesh.

With stable consequences.

Requirements of order, symmettry, and fit to purpose are primordial - they apply, in many, many ways - to every species that has ever lived - and to every situation that people have ever been able to handle decently.

When discourse patterns are so unstable - so full of deception, evasion, and disorder - that these basic requirements aren't possible - progress isn't possible.

We ought to have sense enough to do better than that.

If we did just this well - horrors like Saddam's Iraq simply couldn't come to exist - or continue for very long. There's a lot to fix. When people keep at it - and get descriptive focuses that fit cases - they can do that things the need to do .

We've got problems today with insanity - and need to find ways to be less crazy when it matters.

Some things are going better than they have a lot of times in the past.

almarst2003 - 11:46am Apr 8, 2003 EST (# 11202 of 11213)

An al-Jazeera cameraman has died and another of the Arabic-language news channel's journalists is missing after a coalition bombing raid hit its Baghdad office this morning.

The office of another Arabic news network, Abu Dhabi TV, was also hit, according to reports on the BBC and al-Jazeera.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,932169,00.html

robkettenburg03 - 02:06pm Apr 8, 2003 EST (# 11203 of 11213)

Here are some pictures of our war to LIBERATE Iraq - http://www.faktinfo.de/irakkrieg-bilder/

My Home Page - http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/robkettenburg

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