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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 - 10:36am Jun 14, 2003 EST (# 12524 of 12537)
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.

rshow55 - 04:11pm Apr 20, 2002 EST (# 1567 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.rL3rbgbgfnm.603585@.f28e622/1971.

Computational difficulties have been extreme in modelling -- and people have pushed computer capacities far beyond what anybody imagined could be done a few decades ago.

Many "invisible colleges" and large teams, all over the world, have deep committements to existing procedures - - enough that finding a mistake that is 350 years old in arithmetical modeling procedure is difficult -- and convincing people to acknowledge and look at the error is also difficult.

It has to be done step by step - and there are difficulties at many steps. Some of the steps have to be done "at once."

I was very interested in

Japanese Computer Is World's Fastest, as U.S. Falls Back By JOHN MARKOFF http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/20/technology/20COMP.html

" A Japanese laboratory has built the world's fastest computer, a machine that matches the raw processing power of the 20 fastest American computers combined." That computer will be perfect for some things - - and is likely to produce gross errors in other calculations -- unless algorithms are corrected.

The difficultes in explaining what needs to be explained, and getting the persuasive force to actually get changes made, are much less than they were before, mostly because of the guidance I've gotten from lchic about persuasion and paradigm conflict.

But those difficulties are still challenging.

Part of the problem is logic -- and part of the problem involves force, as well.

The key human and organizational problems involved are similar to problems involved in dealing with the missile defense boondoggle. When a big group of people have made a deeply embedded mistake - for whatever reason -- how do you change it?

To figure out the complexity of the job, you'd almost have to do the things it takes to make a movie about getting the job done.

For many of the problems that stump people now -- for many of the things where we say "if only we could do the obvious" - and then do much worse -- there are problems of simultenaity, complexity, and human nature of similar forms. MD1231 rshow55 4/10/02 11:28am

- - -

A step-by-step PowerPoint explanation of the math is set out in http://www.mrshowalter.net/nterface/

I'm proud of http://www.mrshowalter.net/klinerec

3897-98 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.rL3rbgbgfnm.603585@.f28e622/4906 includes this:

At Cornell University - with that patent and math background -- I got involved with classified military research -- and started doing serious military work in my first full year at college. Got an extensive but unconventional education, and have had some difficulties, many discussed on this thread, since that time.

For other context on my math background "dealt with before" Search math and equation

12520 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.rL3rbgbgfnm.603585@.f28e622/14175 may make more sense with this context.

Kline, S.J. Similitude and Approximation Theory McGraw-Hill, NY 1965 influenced me a great deal from 1968 - and I'd like to do what Steve and I hoped to do together - and that I promised Steve and myself I'd try to do.

Write another edition of Similitude and Approximation Theory by S.J. Kline, M.R. Showalter, and lchic - using lchic's real name, with her real credentials - and with all her skills brought to bear.

I think that book, written in a way that is now possible, could be as useful in the applied sciences - and some "pure" sciences - as

Molecular Biology of The Gene

rshow55 - 10:42am Jun 14, 2003 EST (# 12525 of 12537)
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.

I think that book, written in a way that is now possible, could be as useful in the applied sciences - and some "pure" sciences - as

Molecular Biology of The Gene

and

Molecular Biology of The Cell

are in the biological sciences.

I need, for very practical reasons - to get my security problems sorted out. I have no choice but to do so - and a duty to do so.

The New York Times was the place to come for help - I'd discussed the matter with Casey.

I'd be prepared to explain, to Sulzberger or anyone below him in the TIMES organization, why I've done what I've done. I've felt that, with reasonable exception handling - everything sensible could be done in a way that was in the national interest, and the interest of the TIMES. I have some apologies to make. But on balance, I feel well justified for working here - and I've had no operational choice.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense