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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 (13147 previous messages)

fredmoore - 07:51am Jul 26, 2003 EST (# 13148 of 13267)

Gisterme ....

"What's the practical application of knowing how much energy a particular process required and why is it all that people really want?"

This question summarises most of your other, mostly rhetorical ones. It is a good question because this lack of understanding will be a hinderance to a KAEP protocol that can diffuse a lot of the anxiety that all of us (from Robert and GWB to little Gupta in India, or Wu in China or Mbeka in Africa ) feel about our future. I do not think your 'untropy' is the answer however. Maybe this forum could in fact arrive at an immediately understandable terminology ... I just don't know at this stage.

The answer is in the fisrt law of thermodynamics (FLT) as opposed to the second law (SLT) which was used to arrive at EMERGY.

FLT:

Human + food(fuel) = Ui + Q = Uf + W

Where Ui/Uf are the initial and final energies and Q is the quantity of energy absorbed and W is the work done.

ALL human activities can be expressed by this law as we seek in our observable emperical effect to swim against the entropy stream as you put it. The way we perform these (low) entropy enriching activities is to mix our open system with that of another subsystem with lower entropy (food or other low entropy inputs).

Now both we and the introduced system (typically closed in the case of fuel or food) have EMERGY ( a historical record of useable emjoules). What we and all people want is the highest emergy possible from all our input FLT interactions. We of course will accept anything, fossil fuels for example but they are lower in emergy (due to embedded pollutants or equivalent disorder) than direct sources such as solar or geothermal or living in range of engineered wetlands or using thermoelectric fabrics to generate electricity. KAEP gives all of us the option of introducing modern technology to get to the most direct energy sources and therefore the ones that have highest EMERGY.

So seeking EMERGY is in fact life's mission directive. It doesn't matter who directs the mission because it is empirically observable as you so eloquently put it.

  • ****

    """...and it is apparent we are capable of the severest means (including the development of sophisticated missile systems) of ensuring our ability to fulfil that mission..."

    Now there's a connection of dots who's logic entirely escapes me.""

    Saddam found that too many people not agreeing with him inhibited his mission directive of creating an ancient idealist regime of order (low entropy). He killed or enslaved innocent people to achieve this. A bit severe don't you think? The US is worried about terrorism affecting its mission directive similarly. If you think Tom Ridge is not seriously severe in his approach to eliminating potential terrorists then I assure you GWB and the American people will replace him with someone who is. Do I need to go on with more examples?

    Cheers

    rshow55 - 10:57am Jul 26, 2003 EST (# 13149 of 13267)
    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'm on the road, visiting relatives, including a very sick one, and finding it hard to attend to posting as I sometimes do. But the reference to the movie makes me want to repost this:

    rshow55 - 05:44pm May 21, 2003 EST (# 11848 <a href="/webin/WebX?14@13.Z9exbJU7wf8.2132480@.f28e622/13463">rshow55 5/21/03 5:44pm</a>

    In an artificial but entertaining movie, Blast From the Past (1999) http://www.newline.com/sites/blastpast/ there's an interesting scene.

    The leading man might be called a "Komodo Dragon" - out of his time. He's been raised in rich isolation in a fallout shelter where he was born in 1962 - and he emerges in 1999 Los Angeles. He has all sorts of physical evidence for his story - and the female romantic lead knows that. But when he tells his story to her - (or tries to) - she throws him out of the house and tries to get him committed as insane.

    There are certain stories, true or not, that one can only tell face to face, and then carefully - after building both rapport and a body of checkable evidence. Even then, it is dangerous.

    When Casey told me to "come in through the New York Times" - he thought that that might be my only chance.

    When I went to DC in September, 2000 - I thought I'd be able to tell my story - to people with an ability to judge it (and check it) - and that I'd be permitted to do my duty - in ways absolutely consistent with the function and honor of The New York Times - and the federal government. There's been a lot of effort and difficulty since.

    http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.Z9exbJU7wf8.2132480@.f28e622/13446 makes a point that has come to be central if I'm to have any reasonable chance of decent professional survival.

    I had some pretty good reasons to think I was dealing with Clinton, or somebody close to him, on Sept 25, 2000. I didn't say I was certain, but that I had "pretty good reasons." By Sep 25, 2000 I had been to the NYT DC newsroom, been asked to come back in about two hours, and when I returned had been (semipolitely) ejected by an Assistant Secretary of State plainly called to that newroom for the purpose of dealing with me. I had met with Natalie Angier (who I had expected to meet) and Gina Kolata (who I had not) at the National Museum of Art in DC, in a terribly awkwardl aborted, yet interesting meeting.

    I had had two conference calls involving Dawn Riley and people who seemed to be reporters (in one of those calls, also including a voice with a Russian accent - who was "playing the role" of a Russian diplomat) - and I had reason, based on correspondence that I had seen, to think that Dawn Riley had some connection to, and some influence on, Howell Raines, then editor of the NYT Editorial page.

    By September 25, I has also been on the recieving end of voluminous email correspondence in the form of direct feeds from wire services - and in such volume that I thought I was being tested. The traffic was so voluminous that I thought perhaps I was being tested by someone who had read Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 .

    - - - - - -

    Given my situation, I've been playing very straight. I'm devoting most of my energy to visiting right now - but will respond to questions in a while.

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