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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 - 02:35pm Aug 13, 2002 EST (#3698 of 3705)

You might try them yourself. The drills aren't text - they test nothing but the transform between "seeing" and "saying" -- and I'm sure you can read them about as fast as you can talk. If you can't - you'd read better if you learned to.

Early on, I prepared drills where at the start there were just two or three words presented and drilled at random. But that seemed too easy and boring -- even for the four year olds. These four year olds would take these sheets, and with a little prompting - drill each other.

In my experience, if the drill by sixes was facile - the drill by 24's was only a little more than a formality - and after a very short time random "see-say" facility for hundreds of words was about as automatic as for the shorter lists.

Of course, these drills aren't reading. But they drill skills reading takes - in a much easier statistical context for learning than the child usually has to master.

rshow55 - 02:36pm Aug 13, 2002 EST (#3699 of 3705)

I first prepared these drills for myself. I needed to relearn the skills these drills taught - on two occasions -- as an adult. A fascinating experience I wouldn't wish on anybody. I read OK now.

rshow55 - 02:45pm Aug 13, 2002 EST (#3700 of 3705)

The neural process involved in learning a word taken from "the amorphous content" of a stream of language flow -- combining it with the context it is associated with - both verbal and physical - and somehow sorting it out in terms of meaning and grammer over weeks, along with hundreds of even a few thousand other words is much more complicated - and involves much more confusion - many more "false connections" -- than the stripped down statistical process involved in learning "see-say" correspondences in drills like those above. Though getting that "see-say" correspondence is complicated enough.

In some ways, anyway, people are very smart.

We can build on that.

lchic - 02:58pm Aug 13, 2002 EST (#3701 of 3705)

Dots are everywhere in nature ...

She danced
and dazzled
in full circle
skirt
of dot dot dot
and so alert!

_{http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/carr/images/mim_pud_1930.jpg}

Watching a growing baby this a-way it's interesting to see how integral language and interactive communication are to human development.

Looking at picture and story books for children of late - I haven't noticed any stories about Nuclear Missiles or the Cold War!

rshow55 - 03:39pm Aug 13, 2002 EST (#3702 of 3705)

I want to take a little time to be careful collecting stuff from this thread and elsewhere. The connection to missile defense, and other issues we've been discussing on this thread, seems to be clear. We need to learn to get things to reasonable closure - and avoid expensive, dangerous, often gruesome mistakes.

While I'm working, it seems to me that Attack On The Ad-Man might read a little differently, and have more significance, for some readers now. MD3689 rshow55 8/13/02 8:14am

And lchic's comments in MD3690 lchic 8/13/02 11:40am -- especially her question: : How does 'the reader' know if that put forth is true or skew?

For many purposes, facing the kind of lying and obfuscation that humans know how to do - the reader is helpless.

I think this is basic - - one of the facts that are "very high frequency" in human affairs - relevant very often - - as the most common words are used very often:

" People say and do things.

" What people say and do have consequences, for themselves and for other people.

" People need to deal with and understand these consequences, for all sorts of practical, down to earth reasons.

"Every individual, and every group, has a stake in right answers on questions of fact that they have to use as assumptions for what they say and do.

Checking is very important.

When you are trying to get a statistical correllation - it matters a lot how noisy or well selected your data is.

If the data is too noisy, or ill selected - - you may not be able to sort things out at all.

Much too often, these days, you have professionals in "public relations" and related fields involved in enronation -- making sure that things are not sorted out.

When it matters enough - ways have to be found to have consequential facts checked. And the mechanics of how checking can happen - and what focusing is -- has to be clear. We can do better than we've done.

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