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 [F] 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.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (12936 previous messages)

rshow55 - 08:56am Jul 11, 2003 EST (# 12937 of 12942)
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.

Enough food for the basics - forever - enough energy so that it does not limit what human being need to meet their primal needs. The things ordinary people and societies need to live and raise children. And enough communication and understanding of true information, held in common when it matters enough, so that people, individually and in groups, can make decent decisions.

There may be "no room for magic" - but there's plenty of room left for huge steps forward on things that matter. People have to "sort things out" from the time their born - and some sorts work much better than others.

One key is this - problems that can't be sorted out decently "taking everything in account all at once" can be sorted out well - even "perfectly" in terms of specific assumptions - if they are sorted out taking criteria in order. - http://www.mrshowalter.net/DBeauty.html

Physical relations, and key logical relations - usually need to be handled first.

1130-1 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.gUjbbVp1oQK.529786@.f28e622/1437 includes these things:

" almarst has come up with reference after reference for a reason that "defense" can take "offense" according to a simple logic, that both Americans and Russians can find compelling

Here's an example:

MD3871 almarst-2001 5/14/01 10:32pm

gisterme 5/14/01 7:58pm ---- gisterme 5/14/01 7:58pm

" It is interesting you decided to dig back into the events of WWII. I never intended to go that far, but if you will, here what I believe.

" The WWII was all about one thing - the energy resources - the coal and oil. Remember, that was an age of the heavy industry and electricity - the source and the key to the prosperity of a nation.

** almarst cited more references than I was able to read - framing military conflicts as a struggle for energy resources.

A really strong argument that the American military uses - - and right as far as it goes -- is that the US, which vitally depends on oil supplies, has to fight for them -- no matter what.

You can still ask "when is enough enough?"

And now - we have to ask what are our alternatives?

We have some good ones. Close at hand. There's a catch. They take minimal honesty and decency - and ways to see that right action isn't blocked - as it can so easily be when lies and evasions are permitted.

We also need to face our own fallibility - and that of our organizations and leaders. NASA is just as bad as it appears to be. Our other bureacracies are all subject to similar problems - in the US and elsewhere. Bush is worse than he looks. Other leaders have problems, too.

lchic - 09:26am Jul 11, 2003 EST (# 12938 of 12942)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

""“If you (the ulamas) decide that you want to remove the shame of being looked down upon and trodden under by those who are against us, then you must tell us that you want us to do everything possible to restore our past glory and our great civilisation,” he said in his keynote address at the World Ulama Conference at the Marriott Hotel here yesterday.

The conference, the first ever of its kind, is being attended by about 900 Muslim scholars and opinion leaders from 33 countries.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2003/7/10/latest/12934Muslimsch&sec=latest

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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  / Missile Defense