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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?

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rshow55 - 08:00am May 15, 2003 EST (# 11671 of 11713)
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.

Lchic's postings are distinguished, as they so often are. The space shuttle matter has been discussed on this board before - maybe in influential ways - and I'm going to want to say some more again.

I'll be working to answer lchic's questions today -and some questions left hanging from commondata , lchic, and manj that I've been postponing, worrying about personal problems (and avoiding some of the difficulties referred to elliptically in jorian319's reference to SingSing prinson).

There need to be changes that are "radical" in some ways, but fitting in others. Changes that would have fit well, in my view, with the judgements and hopes of some people I think of as reasonably conservative, admirable, patriotic americans:

The Eisenhowers (both Dwight - general, president of Columbia University and President, and Milton, president of The Johns Hopkins University, an insitution with interesting connections to government.)

Edwin Land, and other people involved in classified research and development decisions with Land.

Most people who have ever been president.

Most people who have served on the US Supreme Court after 1890.

Most senior leaders of the UN, since its inception.

Most people who read the New York Times - and most people who have done so over the last half century.

I'm having to work from an awkward position. To say I have "some problems with credentials and status" is putting the matter mildly. I've not been asking for trust. For years now, I've been asking to be checked.

I'm conservative enough to think that American and European experience, since the beginning of industrialization, especially since the beginning of the rail roads, ought to be used.

Here's a basic issue for me. It was for Casey, too. In the world now - there are reasonably good mechanisms for accounting of money - when it matter enough, and when rules are followed. What about facts - including technical facts? What about arguments with many consequences, and many connections to facts and bodies of experience? Can these be evaluated with anything like the clarity applied to the accounting of money.

For some very practical reasons, such extensions of "accounting" and "accountability" need to become better than they now are.

When issues of trust and distrust are vital - people need to do better than they usually do now.

lchic - 08:19am May 15, 2003 EST (# 11672 of 11713)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Facts - Can these be evaluated with anything like the clarity applied to the accounting of money. (RS)

rshow55 - 08:36am May 15, 2003 EST (# 11673 of 11713)
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.

Casey really worried about that one. So did Eisenhower - especially after he became President of Columbia University.

There was a very good ad by PriceWaterHouseCoopers in the paper yesterday http://www.pwc.com/buildingtrust

Here's an "unexciting" "pedestrian" question.

If you wanted to get accounting of facts and relations, when it mattered enough, on a routine basis, and asked accountants, patent lawyers and Patent Office personnel, senior engineers and academics to deal with that question - and arrive at an consensus embodied in instututions - what would the institutions suggested be like? What would be the problems in the process - and problems embodied in the institutions suggested?

Suppose you added journalists to the mix?

Would workable institution be suggested? That could actually be implemented?

There would be conflicts of interest. There would be concerns about exception handling.

Still, I think we could do a lot better than we're doing now.

Doing so, imho, would make billions of lives better - make the whole world safer - make the whole world richer - and, in my view, make life more beautiful, more stable, and more fun.

lchic - 09:05am May 15, 2003 EST (# 11674 of 11713)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

No electric pump to supply water to the thousands potentially dying of cholera - thank a looter

No equipment in the hospital - thank a looter

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/15/opinion/15HERB.html

Looting is traditionally prohibited on death - for the greater good - in times of conflict and post war conflict.

Much looting is systematic -- instigated by greed.

The bullet is the swift message that gets through -- when reason doesn't!

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