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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 - 02:17am Aug 17, 2002 EST (# 3757 of 3766)

The list of human wants and needs is endless.

It seems silly to have people caught up in a cul de sac of nothingness.

25% real unemployment is a nothingness.

People making 'bombs' is a nothingness.

People tending 'bombs' is a nothingness.

A nothingness in the sense there is neither achievement nor progress.

Showalter says - why not take the system (and a system is made up of people - the human intellectual resource ) and move the focus of the system from making bombs to engineering useful, that's useful to humanity, systems.

Is the 'today' problem war?

Or

Is the 'today' problem a global sustainable future?

The latter I think. So if the war resources moved to assist humanity - then the world would be more livable for everyone.

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lchic - 02:20am Aug 17, 2002 EST (# 3758 of 3766)

I've mentioned 'holistic accounting' - especially with regard to pollution - an example being cheap goods from Asia that have not included the cost of the pollution clean up from their manufacture.

If a 'global accounting' system were used that had concerns for the well being of all world citizens - then - the challenge would be how to make provision for all .... so that human intellect could flourish everywhere for the good, the then NOW, of humanity.

The world could be a great place - why isn't it??

lchic - 02:41am Aug 17, 2002 EST (# 3759 of 3766)

Globally it should on the Deming statistically scale to set a base line, and from that 'measure' quality improvement - for humanity.

Linking in to Maslow - then there are layers/wrungs/levels - at which improvements can happen and be measured.

Looking at individuals within the world there a checklist of questions can be devised to determine if people have the basics of clean water, sufficient food, necessary freedoms, opportunities for wage earning, can sustain themselves and family, have educational and intellectual stimulus, and can look forward to security in their old age .... Saudi King has now declared the latter to be 85+ years.

lchic - 03:41am Aug 17, 2002 EST (# 3760 of 3766)

Air 'conditioned' by Ocean

"" Porter said the idea of coarse sea salt initiating rainfall was proposed as early as the 1950s, but studies in the 1970s seemed to show it was not an important factor. Rosenfeld's work seems to support the earlier research, he said.

Porter, who was not on Rosenfeld's team, said his own research indicated salt helped to increase rainfall in relatively clean air but was less effective in more polluted conditions. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992682

lchic - 03:55am Aug 17, 2002 EST (# 3761 of 3766)

CHEAT DETECTION

"" Two studies published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have shown that cheat-detection is a universal feature of human nature and that it is performed quite separately from the other tasks of the brain. Anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists have long suspected that humans must be gifted in detecting cheats because of the importance of reciprocal cooperation in social behaviour.

"For social exchange to evolve in a species, individuals must be able to detect cheat-ers," say the researchers, led by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=323936

lchic - 03:58am Aug 17, 2002 EST (# 3762 of 3766)

FISK ^{http://www.independent.co.uk/search.jsp?keywords=robert%20Fisk&field=byline}

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