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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.

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rshow55 - 09:27am May 19, 2002 EST (#2297 of 2318)

lchic 5/18/02 9:56pm . . . a few pieces - - - about language and logical structure. Was asked to do some work in that area, before I was 20, and have retained an interest. "Connecting the dots" in crypto, and connected areas such as "engineering crypto" has been a big issue for a long time. Eisenhower was really PISSED to discover that nobody had predicted Sputnik - even though we had warehouses full of transmissions from the Russians. Some folks had sense enough to know they had some analytical problems -- Casey and Edward Teller among them. ... Machine translation was an obvious problem - and a BIG motivation for government support of computer development. - And folks had pretty fair (tolerably short) lists of "showstoppers" ... that I got told about. . . . .. So I've thought some about language - and social inventions - such as patent formats. Also, some thoughts about connections between words, pictures, math. (And gestures and facial expressions, too -- remember how much navigation you can get out of a rat - with only simple signals delivered? Expressions and gestures COUNT -- especially when they convey SIGN information not carried in any other signal -- a reason why, for some purposes -- people HAVE to talk face to face - and there has to be enough redundancy for confidence.)

A big problem, I think, is that people have a grossly insufficient sense of wonder at what they can do. And routinely do. People out with so many "miraculous" performances, in so many areas - that they come to expect flawless performance even when it is not merely difficult - but classified out of existence by conventions and barriers. A big thing, more places than anyone can count - is that to do complex things adequately -- you have to be dealing with correct information - and people, as they are, have to tell enough of the truth when it matters. So people have to learn to doubt and check.

The NYT is beautiful today -- some really hopeful things!

lchic - 01:00pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2298 of 2318)

|> NYT
^{http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/business/yourmoney/19PAYY.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/national/19THRE.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/politics/19ASSE.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/politics/19ASSE.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/weekinreview/19BOHL.html?8hpist
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html}

lchic - 01:23pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2299 of 2318)

Cheney

also urged restraint by lawmakers, including leading congressional Democrats, who are suggesting an expansion of inquiries into what the White House and federal law enforcement knew about possible terror attacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Hijackings.html

A Senate Review
Would not
reach the same conclusion !?

lchic - 01:31pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2300 of 2318)

The matter re Terrorism will have a few aspects ..

Madness
Inequality Inequity
Need to revise changed 'mindsets'
Religious revision-revival-renewal of ideology
Economic development - job opportunities for ME

Turn Terrorists into LEADERS who have new purpose to upgrade and improve chances for their constituency ... which is ...

lchic - 01:59pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2301 of 2318)

East Timor - need for continued support for World's newest nation

what does it mean to become a country? What do you get? What can you do? And once you have sovereignty, exactly what do you do to maintain it?

Ralf Dahrendorf, a sociologist and the former director of the London School of Economics, has thought quite a bit about state-building and has written about it as a three-stage process. The first, which he calls the "hour of the lawyers," is when new constitutions are written, including basic rights and the rule of law. There has been a lot of this going around — not only with new states, like East Timor, but with some old ones that needed to come up with new charters after Communism collapsed. The second stage, which Lord Dahrendorf identified in an article, involves the creation of a market economy, with the adoption of measures to protect and promote competition and adopt a social safety net. The third phase centers on the establishment of civil society, the building of "substantial sources of power outside the state and, more often than not, against the state."

How long will all this take? According to Lord Dahrendorf, the first stage might last some six months, the second, six years and the third, 60 years. By this reckoning, most countries are not currently mature.

^{http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/weekinreview/19KAUF.html}

lchic - 02:03pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2302 of 2318)

Darendorf, Ralf
^{http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=Ralf+Dahrendorf&btnG=Google+Search}

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