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 - 02:42pm Nov 13, 2003 EST (# 17558 of 17564)
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.

re bluestar23 17555

17393 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.WCzkbUuCXDS.80213@.f28e622/19108

Human logic works with a combination of internal consistency - and consistency with outside data - and in real cases there are always more internal connections than connections to the outside. That's the way anatomy is, too. People need to know this.

This passage is from Fundamental Neuroanatomy by Walle J. H. Nauta and Michael Feirtag ... the last paragraph of Nauta and Feirtag's Chapter 2 - The Neuron; Some Numbers reads:

"One last conclusion remains to be drawn from the numbers we have cited. With the exception of a mere few million motor neurons, the entire human brain and spinal chord are a great intermediate net. And when the great intermediate net (of interconnections) comes to include 99.9997 percent of all the neurons in the nervous system, the term loses much of its meaning: it comes to represent the very complexity one must face when one tries to comprehend the nervous system.

To understand workable human logic at all - to "connect the dots" - and do so well - and form workable judgements - we must face the need to "go around in loops" with a lot of different kinds of crosschecking.

Bluestar , if you really don't know this - in your role as an influential person at the New York Times - you need to learn it.

It is your duty to learn how these crucial relations work.

rshow55 - 02:46pm Nov 13, 2003 EST (# 17559 of 17564)
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.

Why can’t you tell all this to them, directly !

Because I'm fencing with you - having no choice but to do so - and building a record. If I was dealing with good faith from you - I'd have time.

Just now, I'm hoping that the board goes down at midnight tonight. If it does - I'll have free time and attention to talk to the NYT Office of the General Council - I've been given a good contact number for that Office, and am grateful for it. I've notified Apcar of that - and judging from your response bluestar and cantabb - I have an operational answer. If there has to be a fight to teach the NYT this crucial material - I owe it to myself - and to the promises I've made - to fight that fight.

The issue here is important.

Much better to work it out than fight - but that doesn't look possible, now does it.

I have to assume that cantabb and bluestar work for the New York Times.

rshow55 - 02:47pm Nov 13, 2003 EST (# 17560 of 17564)
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.

If those lawyers are as crazy as you guys - then I have a duty to fight - and I'll not be alone.

If the lawyers are sensible - then they have a teaching job to do inside the NYT organization. If they did it - this would be a very happy ending.

cantabb - 02:49pm Nov 13, 2003 EST (# 17561 of 17564)

bluestar23 - 02:28pm Nov 13, 2003 EST (# 17555 of 17557)

And "provide a sense" of how utterly meaningless Showalter's links are....they all just link to each other..

I doubt he'll include all the posts TILL Nov 14. That will be self-imploding !

But he has NOT said yet IF his "corpus" CD is a TRUE copy of everything on this thread till Nov 14. No pick-and-choose selectivity.

rshow and lchic don't seem ready or so "happy" to leave -- YET ! Still ranting, still demanding !

I expect their posting frenzy will continue till the end.

Am glad, in a way, kate-nyt gave NO time for the axe. To put them out of their misery, the sooner the better -- how about a minute past midnight tonight ? That'll be Nov 14, won't it ?

rshow55 - 02:50pm Nov 13, 2003 EST (# 17562 of 17564)
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.

If the New York Times is screwed up about something this basic - no wonder the United States is running so badly. The warnings Eisenhower gave in his Farewell Address have all turned out to be true - our society is full of lies and distortions that paralyze us and classify good action out of existence - and it needs to be cleaned up.

Not only that - I have to be able to function as an economic actor - and if that means I have to fight this fight - then it does.

And I will.

(2 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense