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.

rshow55 - 09:38am Aug 22, 2003 EST (# 13352 of 13357)
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 and I are trying to sort out and teach some simple lessons - many of them sharpenings of what everybody pretty well knows already. We think if they were learned, the incidence of agony and death can get to be less, and people can solve some problems better and more comfortably.

People have said that we're both crazily optimistic - but neither one of us is at all surprised by stories like these - and there are many stories like these.

Arms and the Man By PETER LANDESMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/magazine/17BOUT.html

Begins

"Victor Bout, by most accounts the world's largest arms trafficker . .

and ends

". . . . Bout seemed the personification not of the world community's inability to stop him but of its reluctance. Bout the trafficker seemed diminished in comparison to the larger hidden system. If he was indeed the public face of arms trafficking and if he couldn't be caught, or stopped, what, I wondered, does this say about the mammoth volume of amoral transport around the world, and the huge profits at stake for individuals and governments alike?

"I remembered something Richard Chichakli had said that morning: ''Victor is the most politically connected person you have ever seen, but he's not here to change the world.''

A Woman's Work By PETER LANDESMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/maga.htmine/15RWANDA.html

Rwanda's minister for women's affairs at the time of the 1994 war is accused of an incomprehensible evil — inciting Hutus to rape thousands of female Tutsis. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko is now the first woman ever on trial for genocide.

9760 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.PJs7brgMAru.4854231@.f28e622/11303 includes links on Rwanda

. . . .

Mary Poppins wouldn't have all the answers about dealing with these people.

But Mary Poppins is a symbol, a character in the role of a caretaker of children - and people who care for children have to know (and suffer) a lot. Sometimes with better results than at other times. Sometimes with more pleasure than at other times.

I don't know if I can prove my relationship with Eisenhower and Casey - but I can prove that I've spent a lot of time working on early childhood education.

Here's an idea that impressed me. Little kids need to learn to tie their shoes. Kids and caretakers agree on this, by and large. There are questions about that teaching and learning that skill - and different points of view. Here are key questions professionals, who have to deal with groups of children, argue about:

Should you teach kids to tie their shoes "early" - or later?

Should you expect them to tie their shoes early, or later?

A professor I respect felt clear about his answers.

You should teach kids the skill - in the sense of presenting the lesson - as early as seemed comfortable for teacher and child - and keep doing it from time to time. Only a good deal later should you expect kids to actually master the skill. Some kids pick up the skill earlier than others. All normal kids eventually learn the skill.

People who do jobs masterfully, logically, and well didn't start out so masterfully. They had to learn.

Often, they screw up, and have to go back and try things again and again. Sometimes, a skill or idea that didn't work for them they first thought of it, or first heard of it, works for them later.

And people are different. Toscanini and Fats Waller were both masters - but they were different masters of different things.

Both, earlier on, had to struggle some to learn to tie their shoes.

Moral indignation and frustration are useful (and unavoidable) if you have to deal with children for very long. Or adults, for that mattter. De

rshow55 - 09:40am Aug 22, 2003 EST (# 13353 of 13357)
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.

The president's real goal in Iraq - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2319.htm By JAY BOOKMAN includes this:

" It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were. "

That plan is in the process of coming apart - and we have messes to sort out - and yes, lies to confront.

(4 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense