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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 - 04:45pm May 24, 2003 EST (# 11914 of 11966)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Truth and Aussie Media:

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s852834.htm

lchic - 04:47pm May 24, 2003 EST (# 11915 of 11966)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Showalter BigBrotherB has made so little impression on you - you didn't quite get the moniker_name correct :)

lchic - 06:15pm May 24, 2003 EST (# 11916 of 11966)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

RU - NERVE GAS - 10 years work in taking down

at current levels of USA funding

Stepping up funding might aid 'home' security ?

rshow55 - 06:18pm May 24, 2003 EST (# 11917 of 11966)
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.

That's "simple" arithmetic!

rshow55 - 06:22pm May 24, 2003 EST (# 11918 of 11966)
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.

This piece is wonderful:

The Wisdom of 'The Compleat Angler' at 350 By VERLYN KLINKENBORG http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/24/opinion/24SAT4.html

" . . . Walton knew that the love of his sport meant, first of all, a care for nature, which we believe too often, at our peril, can take care of itself. "I remember," he wrote, "that a wise friend of mine did usually say, `That which is everybody's business is nobody's business.' " Our business, after all this time has passed, is still to learn from Walton.

President Eisenhower didn't go fishing. He went golfing.

People who followed his career from the time he worked under MacArthur - to the years when he went from light colonel in 1941 to FIVE star general in 1944 -jumping over 385 other officers to do so - and through his years as commander of NATO - picked by Truman - would have been astonished to think of Eisenhower as an "easy going" or "casual" man.

As an administrator and technocrat, Eisenhower knew that - when he was stumped - the thing to do was to wait on inspiration, or new information. Eisenhower did absolutely the best he could on things he understood - pushing himself as hard as he safely could - but waited on events when he was stumped.

Eisenhower played a lot of golf as president.

A big thing that stumped him was handling "external effects" - where "everybody's business is nobody's business."

Though he thought he might be handling such problems as well as anybody - knowing what he knew.

In running very large organizations or systems of organizations - this problem of "everybody's business being nobody's business" was a key problem - maybe the key problem.

It may still be the biggest, toughtest problem, from a technocratic, administrative, and moral point of view that the world faces.

- - - - -

In the summer of 1967, I did the first job I I was told people cared about - working on the economics of external effects - from a perspective of "social engineering" - and working on problems of optimization in an area where existing optimization procedures (essentially, linear programming) didn't work. I did an internship in DC about it. I was to express an interest in the economics of external effects, go into the accounting firm of Ernst and Ernst - and "ask for Joe." - it worked. The summer after my first undergraduate year - I was given a desk, support, and pay to sit and think. I was told, later, that people were pleased with my work - and that led to other things.

There are a lot of opportunities that would open up for adminstrators and technocrats - if the social problems of "external effects" could be better handled. I was dazzled by how many there were.

So far as I could tell - some other folks were, too. Looking back, that got me into a lot of trouble.

lchic - 09:36pm May 24, 2003 EST (# 11919 of 11966)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

ME - looking for 'truth' Friedman

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/opinion/25FRIE.html

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