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.

lchic - 09:59pm Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12386 of 12393)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

A reptilian devil ... the horned toad?

lchic - 10:00pm Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12387 of 12393)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Did he get mail? --- Have I Got Mail By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/opinion/08FRIE.html

lchic - 10:08pm Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12388 of 12393)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

.. one protester was killed in the crush at a "Liberez les Rosenbergs" rally in the Place de la Concorde, Paris ..

... Greenglass, whose testimony played a major role in sending her to the chair, has since admitted that he lied. He said that he gave false testimony because he feared that his own ...

... "What I knew was that they were innocent, they were facing death and they had two children. I wondered who was taking care of Michael and Robby." ....

"Every story is complicated by the fact that it is both a story about a left culture and completely personal,"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,970822,00.html

Baxandall believes that, while the threats to civil rights are analogous, the political landscape is different in ways that are both more and less promising. "We had a name for it back then. We called it McCarthyism. We had an analysis of it and a much more political voice. Now there's no organisation and no political voice, and that's a big problem. But back then, our numbers were so puny; now, it's not as left, but it's more mass. A lot of people feel that there's something wrong all over the United States. It's just that, so far, it hasn't come together."

If it does come together and the administration continues on its present path (two big, but not unlikely, ifs), Meeropol believes that history could well be on course to repeat itself: "This administration has put in place the mechanism to create a whole new generation of red diaper babies."

lchic - 10:21pm Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12389 of 12393)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

AU Trains : On a slow train to Mars

The Indian Pacific inches across the Nullarbor, a fastener on a very long zipper. And the fabric to which the rails are stitched is as coarse as hessian: loose, open-weaved, decidedly unglamorous. Yet if you look out the window long enough (and you do on the longest stretch of straight railway line on Earth), it blurs into some sort of beauty. Nullarboring?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,6517023%5E12272,00.html

Eyre, air. I’ve lost count of my crossings, but they’ve been at 6000 metres, 9000 metres, and from high in the sky the Australian deserts are truly breathtaking. Splodge-shadowed by passing but ungenerous clouds, the landscape is an endless Aboriginal painting, every hectare providing a pattern, a rocky outcrop, a dry salt bed, a little Uluru, some geological tuck or gather. From the air, there’s not a part of Australia, no matter how relentless or remote, that isn’t worth framing ......

I’ll never fly to Mars, but in many ways crossing Australia in a train might be a comparable experience. Impossible distances made possible. They say the tracks have seen better days - the Indian Pacific is no Very Fast Train rocketing at 300km/h; it averages just 80km/h on its journey from one ocean to the other. But there’s no smoother way of getting from east to west; much less of a battering than driving or flying in a skyful of bumps. The smoothness adds to the feeling of hovering. .....

lchic - 11:10pm Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12390 of 12393)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

When will Union Carbide face up to its responsibilities. Guardian Talk International

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?50@@.4a91455d/0

(3 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense