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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?

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rshow55 - 11:17am Aug 25, 2003 EST (# 13380 of 13402)
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.

There are some mechanical insights - at the level of logic - that stumped Bertrand Russell in key places - that are well along the way toward being solved and explained. They involve logical structure - the sequence with which issues are considered - and some technical matters about verbal, measurement, and logical description that have concerned people since Plato. They are involved with the question - how do you rationally, usefully, clearly, talk about disciplined beauty http://www.mrshowalter.net/DBeauty.html - in specific circumstances - and in useful detail.

These issues of structure and sequence are matters of life and death - and matters of prosperity and comfort, too.

Some of them, very pressing now, are involved with The War Over the War By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/opinion/03FRIE.html 13225 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.8IXabb4JBgY.5550808@.f28e622/14910

The following sentences from Friedman are logically interesting - and they are usefully considered as both true and false. There is no contradiction about considering them in that way - and doing so permits them to be used to sort out questions of structure and fact that are clear - or that are to be clarified.

Friedman: "Only future historians will be able to sort out the Iraq war's ultimate validity. It is too late or too early for the rest of us."

This also works:

It is not too late, and not too early for us to sort out very many things about the "validity" of the Iraq's war - in many senses that ought to be clearer than they are - and can be.

I made a comment about Cooper, and Gisterme , in 13326 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.8IXabb4JBgY.5550808@.f28e622/14911 that still seems reasonable. I was interested, and felt honored, that gisterme responded, politely though noncommitally, within four minutes.

Gisterme has posted on this thread about 740 times since September 11, 2001 . I posted this on September 10, 2000 - http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md01000s/DetailNGR.htm at a time when I was very concerned (perhaps for irrational reasons) about what would happen if some things weren't sorted out. That posting, like a lot of my posts, was concerned with details - and the ways they can matter. .

mazza9 - 06:10pm Aug 25, 2003 EST (# 13381 of 13402)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Fred:

The key to my experiments were circuitous. I alternated between direct observations and condensed yet coiled capacity measurements. My resistence to Robert are only surpassed by my broadcasted ambivalence to LChic.

I told this tale in Latin Class today.

Benjamin wanted to be rich and famous. He lived in classical Athens but didn't have anything going for him. He climbed Mount Olympus and sought the aid of the Gods. Zeus appeared to him and granted his wish with one proviso. Benjamin could never shave his beard.

Benjamin climed down and returned to Athens where he sought work on the docks. First he unloaded the ships. Then he saved his money, lived frugally and pretty soon he owned the ship. Then many ships and warehouses became his and soon he was the master merchant of Athens.

He decided to marry and sought out a wife. Arriana agreed to marry him but insisted that he shave his beard. He wanted Arriana so he called the barber who shaved his beard. POOF! Benjamin turned into a grecian urn.

The morale of the story? "A Benny Shaved is a Benny Urned!"

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