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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.

rshow55 - 09:16pm Sep 30, 2003 EST (# 14182 of 14184)
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 Level of Discourse Continues to Slide By JOHN SCHWARTZ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/weekinreview/28SCHW.html

Edward Tufte, a Yale professor who is an influential expert on the presentation of visual information, published a critique of that presentation on the World Wide Web last March. A key slide, he said, was "a PowerPoint festival of bureaucratic hyper-rationalism." Among other problems, Mr. Tufte said, a crucial piece of information — that the chunk of foam was hundreds of times larger than anything that had ever been tested — was relegated to the last point on the slide, squeezed into insignificance on a frame that suggested damage to the wing was minor.

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md8000s/md8211.htm

From Envisioning Information by Eward R. Tufte , p. 50

" We thrive in information-thick worlds because of our marvelous and everyday capacities to select, edit, single out, structure, highlight, group, pair, merge, harmonize, synthesize, focus, organize, condense, reduce, boil down, choose, categorize, classify, list, abstract, scan, look into, idealize, isolate, discriminate, distinguish, screen, pidgeonhole, pick over, sort, integrate, blend, inspect, filter, lump, skip, smooth, chunk, average, approximate, cluster, aggregate, outline, summarize, itemize, review, dip into, flip through, browse, glance into, leaf through, skim, refine, enumerate, glean, synopsize, winnow the wheat from the chaff, and separate the sheep from the goats."

"Since so many ways of seeing and connecting to information are possible, how are people to agree?

"Especially when people have different basic beliefs, different interests, and come from different backgrounds and assumptions, both intellectual and emotional?

. . .

"At the same time, different people, with different views, have to cooperate in ways that fit human and practical realities, and it often works. It happens because, in areas where accomodation occurs, there are common bodies of fact , that people may feel differently about, but about which they agree in operational terms. So that people can be "reading from the same page" -- and with the pages objectively right.

- - -

To get to that closure, procedures are needed. 12878 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.0bqDbINhK9g.2855156@.f28e622/14554

rshow55 - 09:24pm Sep 30, 2003 EST (# 14183 of 14184)
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've posted A.S.J. Tessimond's Attack On the Ad-Man , taken from http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.ee74d94/5493 many times - and it bears reading.

The poem's cited in these places - each time with interesting cites connected to it.

3688 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.0bqDbINhK9g.2855156@.f28e622/4646

4135 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.0bqDbINhK9g.2855156@.f28e622/5217

5068 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.0bqDbINhK9g.2855156@.f28e622/6380

5657 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.0bqDbINhK9g.2855156@.f28e622/7061

7259 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.0bqDbINhK9g.2855156@.f28e622/8784

Attack On The Ad-Man starts

This trumpeter of nothingness, employed . . . To keep our reason dull and null and void.

The ad man has been "attacking" so long, in so many ways - that everything that matters enough bears some thought about checking - for reasons of safety, and honor, too.

The essence of the ad-man's attack is persuasive manipulation of logical structure and facts and weights - in ways where closure - and perspective are not possible - almost always making a status ( team identifications ) argument. When it matters enough, it is good to do better.

cantabb - 09:32pm Sep 30, 2003 EST (# 14184 of 14184)

rshow55 - 09:16pm Sep 30, 2003 EST (# 14182 of 14183)

The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide By JOHN SCHWARTZ . When it matters enough, it is good to do better. ....... To get to that closure, procedures are needed. 12878

rshow55 - 09:24pm Sep 30, 2003 EST (# 14183 of 14183)

I've posted A.S.J. Tessimond's Attack On the Ad-Man , taken from ....... The essence of the ad-man's attack is persuasive manipulation of logical structure and facts and weights ...... When it matters enough, it is good to do better.

Absolutely NOTHING to do with the Forum Topic.

Same obsessive self references, meaningless !

Anything yet on what you're doing, how and why ?

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