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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.

lchic - 09:10am Nov 12, 2003 EST (# 17380 of 17395)
ultimately TRUTH outs : TRUTH has to be morally forcing : build on TRUTH it's a strong foundation

confirmation number - as in 'pope' or 'travel'?

lchic - 09:15am Nov 12, 2003 EST (# 17381 of 17395)
ultimately TRUTH outs : TRUTH has to be morally forcing : build on TRUTH it's a strong foundation

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/business/12hydrogen.html?pagewanted=print&position=

cantabb - 09:17am Nov 12, 2003 EST (# 17382 of 17395)

World Asset, lchic, always has to interpret in telegraphic terms what Showalter says in SO MANY words.

A 'Peace' team separated by a common language !

lchic - 09:21am Nov 12, 2003 EST (# 17383 of 17395)
ultimately TRUTH outs : TRUTH has to be morally forcing : build on TRUTH it's a strong foundation

I reckon J is gonna miss both R.Showalter and 'World Asset' when this thread closes .... it won't exactly be curtains ..... more Wangkzhonk0

lchic - 09:23am Nov 12, 2003 EST (# 17384 of 17395)
ultimately TRUTH outs : TRUTH has to be morally forcing : build on TRUTH it's a strong foundation

Don Watson on the use of jargon

The World Today abc au

Friday, 7 November , 2003 12:40:06

Reporter: Hamish Fitzsimmons

DAVID HARDAKER: If you sometimes find it hard to understand jargon like "moving forward together" or in "regards to", it's not you; it's the language we're using. Former political speechwriter, Doctor Don Watson, says jargon is making it increasingly hard to understand what a public figure is actually trying to say.

Don Watson told Hamish Fitzsimmons, the decay of public language is more acute now, than ever.

DON WATSON: I mean, in politics, particularly, it's one of the reasons, I think, the language is sort of falling apart is that really politicians don't feel obliged to say anything very profound, original anymore.

I mean, really, it's the gesture on television, which matters as much. At the moment, I can see George Bush processing information through a microphone for the rest of the world to follow. Really, the use of language in politics, I think, is beginning to fade.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: When did this… in your book, Death Sentence, you speak about the language of management creeping into the public and political speech and that it's even creeping into people's conservations with each other.

When did this happen? And why is it so unintelligible?

DON WATSON: That's a very good question. I think, it's happened… been happening since the 80s. In fact, it's probably been happening gradually long before that. I mean, George Orwell, as much as being onto the language of totalitarianism was onto the language of managerialism, and managerialism has taken over the world, in a sense.

So, you now have to principles of managerialism enunciated in language at Doha during the Iraqi war when the military speak in managerial language, when the American administration speaks in managerial language and when people start talking about the enhanced oversight of their children's homework, you sort of know that it's creeping in everywhere. I mean, it will turn up in funerals and weddings, I'm sure, soon.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The most, I guess, stunning example of that language is Donald Rumsfeld's "knowns" and "unknowns".

DONALD RUMSFELD: The message is that there are no knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say that there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns; there are things we do not know we don't know. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.

DON WATSON: He's a classic. He is a real language processor, you can tell. You can feel the managerial principles flowing straight through Rumsfeld's political operations and… you know, look, in some ways, it's hard to find who to blame in this because it's a matter of really a different kind of economy – an information economy – where instead of goods being processed, it's words being processed, so, you get… the language becomes a kind of machinery for processing words.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: But English is said to be the language that's growing the fastest out of all the languages. But in your book, you quote that fact itself, by some 20,000 words per year.

DON WATSON: So, they say. There must be some shocking words in there… I'm not for containing the language at all. I'm not for tying it down.

The beauty and strength of English – the robustness, as they now say – is its adaptability, and with the postcolonial age we live in, it's been fed by all sorts of influences and of course, new technology, new economic systems mean new words.

But it doesn't mean you have to throw out simple words. It doesn't mean you have to lose all sense of sentence structure. It doesn't mean you need a language in which you can't tell a joke or sing a song.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: So, Don Watson, to bring closure to this "interrocative" [Watson chuckles], what are the possible outcomes do you

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