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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.

gisterme - 07:18pm Sep 3, 2003 EST (# 13490 of 13498)

Robert -

"...Gisterme , Will - sometimes "be back to you" is a good answer..."

Wellll, only if you "get back to us", Robert.

It would seem you have a lot of stuff pending. Years of it. More than I can even remember. So when I see "be back to you" coming from you, I just assume you'll not be answering.

Surely you can see that you're not the only one who can recognize patterns of behavior.

fredmoore - 08:35pm Sep 3, 2003 EST (# 13491 of 13498)

Robert,

"I'm trying to say some things about normal human sociotechnical behavior that make it easier to think about abnormal, perverse, evil patterns that sometimes happen"

Behold the flashmob craze and how it grows! Robert, get involved with a local flashmob ... 'feel' how human sociotechnical behaviour (SB)works. One thing is certain, SB doesn't work on individuals in isolation ... more likely against them.

Flashmob === Human Laser!

Mind you we don't want you writing your own "Mien Kampf" ... "Mien Dots" ... and broadcasting your posts to stir the souls of the masses. So ... take it easy.

Also:

" If George W. Bush found a way to clean up the messes left by the Cold War, get rid of the terror of nuclear weapons, and use American leadership, in cooperation with other countries, in a way that made the United States safer, more prosperous, and more respected, and all legitimate nation states more secure, he'd go down in history as one of the greatest presidents of the United States. " == KAEP

" If he blows it, the reaction could be just the opposite." == KAOS

Take a good look at KAEP ... it can create a limited Human Laser experiment that spans the world's entire population and work in a planned constructive way to the benefit of all. Prior instances of invocation of the Human Laser (with the exception of the Egyptians perhaps) have been driven by overpopulation and resource and technology shortages and have occured in negative, destructive and haphazard ways. This clearly does not have to be the case ... we be the masters ... all of us across the globe.

It also raises the point that there is no such thing as normal human sociotechnical behaviour. There is ONLY that behaviour modality that befits the current mood of the Gestalt.

mazza9 - 10:21pm Sep 3, 2003 EST (# 13492 of 13498)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

I hate to go off topic, (The RShow Forum!) but this week Aviation Week's cover article is about the Air Borne Laser. It appears that all the hardware is reaching the real life test arena and not a moment too soon if you hear what North Korea is trumpeting!

Gee, I wish there was a missile defense forum at the NYTimes web page.

gisterme - 12:29am Sep 4, 2003 EST (# 13493 of 13498)

Hey, Lou...

Since I don't get AW&ST why not give us a little summary of some details from the ABL article? Robert has argued that it is impossible and I have argued that it isn't. So what's the scoop?

gisterme - 12:47am Sep 4, 2003 EST (# 13494 of 13498)

Fred -

The "human laser" idea is interesting. It's a little hard to grasp at first; but I can see what you're talking about. Getting the excitiation stimulating the masses (mob) to be at a self-resonant point might well describe what Herr Hitler accomplished in Germany. It could explain the apparant mass delusion. Islamic Jihadists seem to be trying (with some success) to accomplish the same thing.

Is that your own idea of how to describe such phenomena? Wheter it is or not the concept is very good. Kudos to you if it is your idea. It's a truly different way of thinking about the topic than has ever occured to me or that I've heard of before.

Although I admire your optimism, I'm not sure that Islamic Jihadists would care much about KAEP. I think it will take a bit more than that to damp the resonance that they're trying to stimulate. To use your teminology, those folks seem to be trying to increase entropy.

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