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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?

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rshow55 - 04:36pm May 5, 2002 EST (#2042 of 2052)

lchic 5/5/02 4:30pm . . . truth also focuses. A LOT converges. I think there is a lot of progress to hope for.

People see things differently. But not that differently. Very, very often, when people share facts, and "connect the dots" in situations where facts, relationships, and proportions can be examined, and are, they draw similar conclusions.

Condemnation Without Absolutes by Stanley Fish http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/15/opinion/15FISH.html

MD721 rshow55 3/20/02 1:56pm

rshow55 - 04:56pm May 5, 2002 EST (#2043 of 2052)

I've asked

" When large news organizations such as The New York Times cannot solve problems by covering the facts about them -- why don't the solutions happen, when they often seem very clear?

A lot of the time, the problems can't be solved because the "dots" are not collected so that people, as they are, can actually connect them. People have to "connect the dots" that they see together, or closely connected, in space and time. A problem with the newspaper format, wonderful as it is, is just there. It is a sequential format - and presents torrents of information -- over days, weeks, months. People can't "connect the dots" - almost nobody except specific beat reporters has the facts together.

For example, it would be hard to find a story that better deserves to be remembered -- and connected to details, than Requiem for an Honorable Profession By GRETCHEN MORGENSON http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/business/yourmoney/05CULT.html

and a key point it makes, that is concerned with most of the times when newspapers are less influential than they ought to be, involves money.

Morgenson writes:

"Meanwhile, Wall Street watches and waits as Merrill Lynch and Mr. Spitzer wrestle over solutions to the problem of tainted research. All the former analysts interviewed for this article said they were not surprised that brokerage firms had been less than eager to reform their firms and eliminate the potential for conflicts. Research, after all, does not generate income; it drains it.

Checking is a cost. Presentation and collection of information have costs. Analysis has costs. For most newpaper articles, it seems to me that we have every reason to be thankful, and presentation may be just sufficient. But suppose it happens (and I bet this happens often) that the journalistic teams involved in coverage feel that some issues deserve MORE coverage, or better collection than just the streaming flow of a newspaper can provide? How is it to be done? Who can pay?

In the case of Enron, the NYT did a great service by setting up a web digest - http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/business/_ENRON-PRIMER.html - as well as a separate thread. But to do that very often, with the economics of the business as it is, there would need to be support

MD1986 rshow55 5/3/02 5:02pm . . . there is a great deal of foundation money out in the world - looking for good things to do - and often spent in ways that the people involved find marginal. If the NYT wanted foundation support for web digests, and other extensions of the medium - it would only have to ask. Would there be problems, operational and ethical, to deal with? Sure. But they could be worked out.

Some of the problems that newspapers fail to solve can be solved - and solutions could be found fairly soon - but there would be work required at the level of technique (and the engineers court format of this thread could be a test bed for resolving most of these) --- but in addition, for particular purposes -- journalistic powers will have to ask for help to supplement their work for valid pubic purposes. They could get that support -- and should.

mazza9 - 11:20pm May 5, 2002 EST (#2044 of 2052)
Louis Mazza

Howardpearlman9:

Yes. And Barbara Olson is being held incognito on that same mysterious island where JFK, Martin Luther King, and Batboy lives!

Loumazza

rshow55 - 11:45pm May 5, 2002 EST (#2045 of 2052)

Lchic and I just had a two hour, 70 post session on negotiation in the middle east in the Guardian thread Anything on Anything from http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.eea14e1/1253 to http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.eea14e1/1318 that includes many links to this thread.

We considered the question -- if Thomas Friedman wanted to use web resources (with a staff) to facilitate the search for peace in the Middle East, what could he do?

lchic - 07:10am May 6, 2002 EST (#2046 of 2052)

B O ^{http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter091301.shtml}

rshow55 - 08:03am May 6, 2002 EST (#2047 of 2052)

http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter091301.shtml bears reading - - - right down to the end.

Search "coulter", this thread.

MD1674 rshow55 4/22/02 7:32pm .. includes

"I suspected that kangdawei , who posted extensively (48 times) on this thread in August and September, had some "connections" - though I didn't suspect a name until Ann Coulter's web site was put under kangdawei , and I noticed that kangdawei wrote like Ann Coulter

MD2000 rshow55 5/4/02 10:39am

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