New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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 - 08:55pm Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3908 of 3920)

Cooperation EU ~ USA RAIN

Alluding to the European penchant for reflexively condemning everything America does, I recently remarked to someone that they'd be blaming the US for the weather next. I thought I was being facetious, but it seems that in addition to all the other ills of the world, we Americans are in fact responsible for Europe's rain: http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020815-80822361.htm

Thread from 'The Independent' Ldn

lchic - 09:00pm Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3909 of 3920)

The program on Australia's push for 'the bomb' was screened last night.

Washington was sending classified information to Australia .... which became swiftly available in Moscow. Canberra 'was leaking like a seive'.

Britain seeing an Aussie post-war desire to be 'in' on matters atomic got Australia to test missile carriers (Oz never got the missiles), and did tests on an Aussie Island in the Indian Ocean and around Woomera.

Australia never got 'the bomb' ... it bombed out ... and got the still ongoing clean-up ...

Any buyers for thousands of square miles of plutonium clean-up!

rshow55 - 09:18pm Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3910 of 3920)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

294-296 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/348 :

"About six months before Steve Kline died, Steve and I set out some . . difficulties in a letter to the New York Times http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/whytimes2

"Once the limitations of the academy are recognized, resolutions to paradigm conflict impasses become possible.

"I believe that the core insight necessary is this. When the stakes get high enough, right answers need to become morally forcing or institutionally forcing in some workable sense.

" That is not the way things are, typically, today.

300 --301 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/354

306_308 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/360

I’m quoting here from THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS 2nd Ed. by Thomas S. Kuhn, , at the end of Chapter 6 “Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries” 313-314 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/367

315 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/369

317 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/371 included this::

" My own view, now, is that we may be in the middle of the cleanest, neatest, fairest, most beautiful, most bloodless resolution of a paradigm conflict in the history of science. That would be something we could all be proud of ....."

That was quite a while ago.

Was I grossly optimistic, and wishy-washy? Or was the job just hard?

In David Copperfield, Charles Dickens had an eloquent phrase - linked to a story where the human consequences of facts and deceptions were grippingly clear. He spoke of the need for a disciplined heart. 3658 rshow55 8/12/02 9:06am

A point comes where, for decency and sensible mercy - and for efficiency, too, we have to deal with some numbers -- some matters of "how much?" It is just too expensive for us to refuse to face some simple arithmetical tasks. ( Tasks that science journalists could well explain.)

3586 rshow55 8/9/02 12:47pm

2861 rshow55 7/4/02 12:06pm

(10 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense