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 - 09:24am Oct 16, 2003 EST (# 15134 of 15136)
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 been asked to do a mission statement . For something that takes up a lot of life - there are many purposes - many missions - that have to be handled in turn. And balanced. Just as the defense needs, and domestic needs, of the US and the world have to be understood, worked out, and balanced.

. Ecclesiastes 3: 1-13 - was condensed and set to music by the Byrds as Turn, Turn, Turn http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~harel/cgi/page/htmlit?Turn_Turn_Turn.html

Here is an incomplete list of Mission STATEMENTS: . I haven't checked this list with Lchic - but feel confident that, though she'd phrase some of the statements better - she leads me toward these missions, and knows she does.

Mission STATEMENTS:

For things to go better - in a lot of areas that matter - standards of checking for facts and relations have to go up - and go up substantially. Lchic and I are trying to explain how checking can be effectively done - and raise these standards. 12160 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.7FggbbL8OeL.2789303@.f28e622/13797

. Lchic and I have intended for this thread to be, (or prototype) the largest bandwidth, clearest line of political-military communication that has ever existed between the US and Russia. 1999 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.7FggbbL8OeL.2789303@.f28e622/2484 Communication between Russia and the United States during the Cold War was astonishingly defective - and with little that was cross-checkable. We've thought it a reasonable mission to show patterns that if staffed could produce a much higher level of stable understanding and cooperation ( in the presence of understood disagreements ) than existed before.

Resortings take time - take resources -but they can make it possible to see things and do things that would be impossible without the sortings. To be sure you're right before going ahead - - can take some careful sorting. Resortings can permit reframings. We need to be both conservative, about what we have and have working - and open minded about possibilities for change. Lchic and I care about collecting and sorting and evaluating information - and consider it a mission to show how the technical jobs of "sorting things out" can be better done - by example and explicit teaching. http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.7FggbbL8OeL.2789303@.f28e622/15094

. Lchic and I have intended to show how problems that were previously too complicated to be tractable could be solved. There are some problems that must be defined, and focused, and negotiated in great, clear, and documented detail, if they are to get to workable, sane closure at all. For a number of things important to peace and prosperity, closure - and complex cooperation, was technically impossible until recent advances in communication. The technical constraints can rather easily be removed now , because of the capabilities of the internet - including some prototyped here. We've considered it a mission to work on the human and logical barriers that remain.

. Lchic and I are trying to explain something vital for peace and prosperity - something that has screwed up much too often. How to construct and trim stable oscillatory solutions - where nothing else can possibly work - and where these solutions can do well - if people take their time and fit them carefully. 7789-90 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.7FggbbL8OeL.2789303@.f28e622/9314

We've also been trying, since September 2000 - to find w

rshow55 - 09:26am Oct 16, 2003 EST (# 15135 of 15136)
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.

We've also been trying, since September 2000 - to find ways to get me out of "house arrest" and in a situation where I could work . Sometimes "It is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission . . If things are done gradually - it may slowly clarify that, in the ways that matter - you have permission - or something like permission - for an exceptional circumstance - bending but not breaking a more basic rule.

10437 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.7FggbbL8OeL.2789303@.f28e622/11986

12160 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.7FggbbL8OeL.2789303@.f28e622/13797 . . .

120170 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.7FggbbL8OeL.2789303@.f28e622/13695

To accomplish all these objectives - and as an objective in itself - we've worked to communicate - and sometimes challenge - people and institutions with power - including the people who influence the powerful institution that is The New York Times.

We both try to be entertaining , too.

(1 following message)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense