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.

gisterme - 01:11am Jun 27, 2003 EST (# 12707 of 12715)

"...You have to think like a CEO..."

How's that, Fred? And how would we know how a CEO thinks unless we've been one?

"...They are the best paid people on the planet..."

With the possible exception of professional athletes.

"...Why? Because the can sniff OPPORTUNITIES from all directions at once..."

The ones that don't fail may.

"...and despite any contradictions or morality make profits on all of them concurrently..."

Because a person is a CEO that doesn't mean the person has abandoned their principles. I don't think the second part of your statement follows from the first. The CEOs who place profit ahead of principle are the ones that inevetably fail. That often leads to some time in the pokey.

"....through administrative prowess and political affiliations..."

Administrative prowess for sure; but political affiliations? Sometimes no doubt, but for most businesses there's little need for that.

"...Ever seen 'The Distinguished Gentleman' with Eddie Murphy?..."

No.

"...So it is possible to 'encourage' a weak education system...."

You've drawn that conclusion from the Eddie Murphy movie?

"...Relevant corporations can then provide 'status' and 'feel good' products to a huge 'unfocused' young market and still skim the cream of the crop as a source of employees..."

That doesn't sound like any sort of endictment of corporations to me. They've always done that. There has always been a young market. Wheter focused or unfocused that young market has always wanted and bought "feel good" products. Practically every product we have today is a "feel good" product compared to what our ancestors of only a few generations ago had. I say that because they got along just fine without most of the products we have today. They just didn't feel as good doing it...or did they? :-)

"...Nothing is impossible for them ... only failure..."

Huh? Real world? Fred, CEOs and corporations fail all the time. Puhleeez.

"...Good teacher, bad teacher ... they don't really hate or care about them as long as teachers are underpaid the system works to their advantage..."

I think they do care about teachers because most of their own kids and employees' kids get educated in public schools. Smart kids and dumb kids all buy things. As you know, I do think that good teachers are underpaid; but no matter how much you paid them I doubt that there would be much impact on the amount of money kids have to spend. After all most of that comes from their parents anyway.

'Just can't buy into your premise on that point, Frank. Certainly not to the idea that corporations in general want teachers to be underpaid for corporate benefit.

If that's you're real world, Frank, then you must have found something better than rockets to power your spacecraft. If you really want to help the world, share that with the rest of us. :-)

gisterme - 01:42am Jun 27, 2003 EST (# 12708 of 12715)

rshow55 - 08:49am Jun 26, 2003 EST (# 12691 of ...) http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.wEZ0b1YKkab.711178@.f28e622/14359

"...Maybe I can respond a bit about "wholistic" aspects of energy production (and global warming control). We ought to solve these problems - and in a real sense, that's possible now..."

I agree that we could do something fairly quickly about energy supplies but not that we know what to do about global warming. That's because I don't think we're focused on the real cause yet. Sure greenhouse gasses may have some impact; but on scale I think the impact caused by them is about equal to the impact of adding a few buckets of water to the oncoming tide. The earth has warmed and cooled radically since long before we even existed.

(7 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense