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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 - 10:14am Jul 11, 2003 EST (# 12945 of 12950)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Burma

The Generals --- send envoys to meet with Asian Leaders .... to try to gain support and money ... Generals try to pin blame for Burma's abysmal situation

Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2003/July/OLATBurma_July03.htm

rshow55 - 10:15am Jul 11, 2003 EST (# 12946 of 12950)
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.

Disciplined Pluralism http://www.progressive-governance.net/php/article.php?aid=100&sid=8

needs clarity on things that matter - with good definition of the ways they matter - see Disciplined Beauty http://www.mrshowalter.net/DBeauty.html

Some postings to the Paradigm Shift .... whose getting there? thread refer to a wonderful piece by John Kay A LOST CAUSE PROSPECT December 2000 http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/highlights/essay_kay_lostcause/index.html Here's the opening blub:

" Can old institutions learn new tricks? Oxford University is sinking in a morass of committees, unable to take decisions that might enable it to compete with the world's best."

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee7726f/354 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee7726f/355 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee7726f/361 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee7726f/365 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee7726f/367 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee7726f/369 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee7726f/754

Kay has just published The Truth About Markets cited in http://www.progressive-governance.net/php/article.php?aid=100&sid=8

And many or Kay's recent articles are at http://www.johnkay.com/

rshow55 - 10:36am Jul 11, 2003 EST (# 12947 of 12950)
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.

lchic quotes Kettle summarizing Kay:

What works, Kay argues, is "regulated self-regulation", a culture of audited experimentation, which accepts that some experiments will fail. Kay favours a culture which recognises both that government is a key agent and that it cannot control the process - and should therefore not seek to. His big idea, to put it another way, is that there is no big idea. Kay makes an awful lot of sense about the limits of modern government. But he also paints a gloomy picture about the limits of modern politics.

I'd modify a sentence, as follows:

"His big idea, to put it another way, is that there is no one big idea."

For specific cases - well defined - there are optimal solutions. We can find them. And implement them.

That's a basic point - and Eisenhower insisted on it to me.

A problem is that all such solutions require some essential support from a nation state in two ways.

First of all, all such solutions involve such complex cooperation that they are fragile - they can be stopped with "a few well placed phone calls."

Secondly, all such solutions involve such complex cooperation that occasionally, the idea that the government wants the work done has to be conveyed.

12286 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.s0NMbPRBoAQ.0@.f28e622/13934

12300 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.s0NMbPRBoAQ.0@.f28e622/13948

12394 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.s0NMbPRBoAQ.0@.f28e622/14044

12743 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.s0NMbPRBoAQ.0@.f28e622/14414

12287 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.s0NMbPRBoAQ.0@.f28e622/13935

We can find truly optimal solutions - and actually implement them - if we keep at it and connect the dots again and again and again and again - until the solution converges.

Odds are overwhelming that, with work, convergence will happen.

Thomas Edison was clear about that. We ought to be.

There ought to be an obligation to insist on convergence - and do the work and have the discipline that takes - when consequences matter enough. On basics - including energy - consequences matter enough.

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