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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.

wrcooper - 12:25pm Oct 23, 2003 EST (# 15472 of 15476)

In re: http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.CYQ4bkgNQ43.0@.f28e622/17156

bluestar:

You wrote:

It's too hard to tell, as my remarks were vague and allusive and all cooper did was reply as usual to use "ignore" function...which I don't want to do, showalter is not going to push me around ....it's him who's going to be on the receiving end....[EMPHASIS ADDED]

And you wrote in another post:

Of course, we could all just easily start a new thread on the GuardianTalk on Missile Defense, and move there...but then Showalter would have won , and there's no guarantee he won't follow around the Web...[EMPHASIS ADDED]

Why do you look upon your forum participation as a contest with Showalter? If you'll forgive me for saying so, that strikes me as odd. Showalter's endless off-topic maunderings--and his personal insults-- have bothered me as much as anybody, but I never viewed my participation in the forum as a personal contest with him, and I don't understand, I really don't, why you would. I have posted messages encouraging others to put him on their "Ignore Posts list," because I feel that would stimulate more discussion of the issue of missile defense by removing Showalter's interferences and digressions from the board. I also believe that it's highly likely that his paranoid, self-important rants discourage visiting forum browsers and lurkers from taking part in a debate about the important issue of missile defense; they dismiss this forum as a crazies venue. That is my motive for pressing people to "ignore" him.

To me, and this is just my opinion, the important thing for us is our discussion of missile defense, not trying to put down or conquer Showalter. If he's on your "Ignore Posts list," you've effectively removed him from your field of view--he may as well not even be posting. That's a sensible solution to the Showalter problem. You will never prevent him from posting; only the New York Times forum moderators can do that, and they're obviously choosing not to do it, probably because they feel it's more expedient to let him drone on in this forum than to ban him and then have to go through the entire process again in some other forum after he signs-up anew under another log-on name, as he's done several times in the past.

I can see you've become personally, enotionally involved in battling Showalter. Since I went through the same thing in the past, and it got me absolutely nowhere, I urge you to just forget Showalter. Ignore him. You won't be losing a fight that's worth fighting. He's an aging ex-grad student living in Madison, Wisconsin, who has some rather distorted, inflated ideas about himself. He's a sad case, actually. He's definitely not worth turning into Forum Enemy Number 1.

Cheers

bluestar23 - 01:31pm Oct 23, 2003 EST (# 15473 of 15476)

"You won't be losing a fight that's worth fighting"

Perhaps you are right....Showalter is boring too....he doesn't really have anything to say that's worth commenting on, does he...

bluestar23 - 01:56pm Oct 23, 2003 EST (# 15474 of 15476)

The subject of Missile Defense has some structural problems for maintaining an interesting dialogue. First, nothing much goes on. Progress is slow; tests are few. Therefore there is never any real news to talk about. This is a programme measured in many years, so it can be quite boring at times, which poses a major problem for a Forum. Also, since much of what is known can be, and has been, thoroughly discussed, there is little new even in on-topic discussion. Things are bound to languish in this very slow-paced atmosphere.

In a way, this is precisely what Showalter has taken advantage of...a quiet sort of backwater Forum where he can hide safely....

(2 following messages)

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