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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 - 05:30pm May 27, 2002 EST (#2398 of 2432)

Paris http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=299301 ____

Saudi - "Rasputin-like" minister detains Brits

Colleagues believe Mr Isa has ordered the detention of the Britons and nine other people because they have become ensnared in feuding over the disappearance of £10bn of Brunei's state funds.

They say Mr Isa refused to let them leave after they asked him about money he received from the Sultan's younger brother, Prince Jefri Bolkiah, who spent billions of pounds when he was Brunei's Finance Minister and head of the state investment agency. ... http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=299274

Fences, trenches and travel restrictions are growing across the occupied West Bank as Israel tightens its lock-down of the Palestinians ....
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=299065

Straw | the "funeral of the Cold War", a "profound, historical change" and the moment that Russia came "out of the cold
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=295182

lchic - 05:38pm May 27, 2002 EST (#2399 of 2432)

The Future of Mind Control

... when it comes to neuroscience, no government or treaty stops anything ... genes exert their effects through the brain. If you want to predict and control a person's behaviour, the brain is the place to start. Over the course of the next decade, scientists may be able to predict, by examining a scan of a person's brain, not only whether he will tend to mental sickness or health, but also whether he will tend to depression or violence. Neural implants may within a few years be able to increase intelligence or to speed up reflexes ... America's National Institutes of Health has a hefty budget for studying the ethical, legal and social implications of genetics, but it earmarks nothing for the specific study of the ethics of neuroscience ...

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1143583

lchic - 05:48pm May 27, 2002 EST (#2400 of 2432)

Guardian Talk Issues
Should Britain suspend arms sales to Pakistan and India?

The "ethical foreign policy" was first mentioned in Labour's pre-1997 election manifesto, but was dropped from the manifesto for the 2001 election. So I guess that means we have an officially unethical foreign policy That's assuming, of course, that the government has any sort of foreign *policy* at all - sometimes it looks more like a series of ad-hoc press releases responding to whetever intersted party is making the most noise http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.eecc358/6
GU International Threads http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.464

lchic - 08:28pm May 27, 2002 EST (#2401 of 2432)

"" Connect the Dots

Choosing the right model and learning laws can drastically improve your decisions

You can never step into the same river twice, said Heraclitus; no two events are ever exactly the same. Even Einstein thought it a miracle that we perceive order in the universe. But to survive, we must find order and make predictions. Otherwise, we would be unable to tell friend from foe, food from poison, and cheap from dear.

But how do we generalize from our unique and finite experiences? Somehow we have the capacity to connect the dots, induce from the scattered data we gather daily a general pattern from which we can extrapolate and forecast.

Connecting the dots is a complex undertaking. There can be infinite ways to do it, and it requires you to make assumptions either explicitly or implicitly. And if the assumptions don’t match the reality you are trying to model, your decisions can fall way off the mark. ...
^{http://www.intelligententerprise.com/000301/decision.shtml}

lchic - 09:36pm May 27, 2002 EST (#2402 of 2432)

unilateralism

n : the doctrine that nations should conduct their foreign affairs individualistically without the advice or involvement of other nations
^{http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=unilateralism}

... Bush and

http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,643484,00.html http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/views/op-ed/lindsay/20010803.htm http://www.consortiumnews.com/2002/021802a.html

.... Germany and

.... France and

.... the US think what's good for the US is good for all ..

lchic - 01:55am May 28, 2002 EST (#2403 of 2432)

Pakistan test firing
^{http://www.dawn.com/2002/05/28/}

mazza9 - 12:30pm May 28, 2002 EST (#2404 of 2432)
Louis Mazza

"... the US think what's good for the US is good for all .."EXACTLY

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