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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.

rshow55 - 10:26am Jun 30, 2002 EST (#2789 of 2812)

Sometimes, to get out of an impasse, you need to break a rule. Thoughtfully, carefully.

Sometimes, to try another approach that interfaces with what is already there, you have to break pairs of rules.

(To fit into a system and break rules, in my experience, and Casey's , you have to break even numbers of rules. To go outside the defenses of the system - or "violate" the system -- you need to break odd numbers of rules.

That is big reason why leaders need to count the lies they make, and that their subordinates make. Bush doesn't. That is dangerous.

I don't know how others feel, but it seems to me that if I was being graded, so far, by Bill Casey, I'd be given high marks, considering circumstances.

MD2770 rshow55 6/29/02 7:59am

A big achievement -- MD2000 rshow55 5/4/02 10:39am that ought to justify honoring the old deal, ragged edges notwithstanding. If I were paid, I could share some with lchic - who has more than earned it.

So far, I think I've been "doing it right" according to my agreement with Casey.

But he taught me that there have to be exceptions to all rules, and all agreements, for sufficient reasons, and now I'm thinking of doing something that the Casey I knew would definitely shoot me for.

The Week in Review is superb this week! So is much of the rest of the paper.

I like to remember a piece that ran last week, as well.

Debuting: One Spy, Unshaken http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/23/weekinreview/23CUST.html

I'm not the only person who could break an impasse by thoughtfully breaking a rule. Exception handling is important - and sometimes there's no alternative.

rshow55 - 11:45am Jun 30, 2002 EST (#2790 of 2812)

Antidepressants Lift Clouds, but Lose 'Miracle Drug' Label By ERICA GOODE (with reporting support by Melody Petersen and Andrew Pollack ) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/national/30DEPR.html is superb. If we knew more about how the logic of the brain worked, might we not be able to get many more "talking cures" that work --- rather than the more occasional, partial ones we get now?

Gestalt switches are important, and very common in language and "logic." But we lack a good language to talk about them - a good set of words that encapsulate a system of thought to help us think about them -- as "connecting the dots" is coming to do in a related area. Maureen Dowd did some wonderful wordsmithing in her column today (a good one in many ways.)

Makin' Us Dizzy By MAUREEN DOWD http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/opinion/30DOWD.html

Everywhere you look these days, you see situations that are absurdly contradictory and circular and self-defeating.

Dowd's piece speaks of how "Mr. Cheney created a Machiavellian Mobius strip: the F.B.I. is now investigating the committees that are investigating the F.B.I."

Such feedback loops may be absolutely appropriate, and necessary, for full service communication if they are well set up and well calibrated - people and organizations need to watch, and be accountable to each other. Feedback can, of course, be pernicious, too -- and can be set up to be.

I was enchanted with Dowd's image of a mobius strip - - a nice, physical analog of a logal inverter.

With one twist, a mobius strip turns you around. With two twists, a mobius strip turns you around, and then turns you aright.

For integer N

With 2N+1 twists, a mobius strip turns you around.

With 2N twists, a mobius strip turns you aright in the end.

For reasons that are only slightly more complicated, it is important to count switching steps, fictions, assumptions, and lies -- to keep things straight, or to mislead.

lchic - 04:34pm Jun 30, 2002 EST (#2791 of 2812)

Mobius stip has 3rd and even 4th dimension
^{http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~berglunb/Mobius.html}

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