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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.

lunarchick - 01:44pm Jan 10, 2003 EST (# 7568 of 7588)

Hamilton-Jacobi equation Hamilton

lunarchick - 01:46pm Jan 10, 2003 EST (# 7569 of 7588)

CAUSA BELLI by Andrew Motion

They read good books, and quote, but never learn

a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.

Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:

elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

lunarchick - 02:20pm Jan 10, 2003 EST (# 7570 of 7588)

"Al Bayan" newspaper wrote in its editorial today that US "has again revealed that it applies a double standard approach" in regard to international issues. " Washington seems to be tolerating fiery statements by Pyongyang, but at the same time threatens to launch military offensive against Iraq and wages a psychological and media war on it despite the fact that Baghdad has acquiesced in all conditions dictated on it," the paper added. " No body wants the Americans to treat the North Koreans as repugnantly as they do with our Iraqi brethren. But we call on the Americans to treat the Iraqis the way they treat the North Koreans. This is the least form of justice and equity in international relations,"

http://www.wam.org.ae/2003/Jan/08/799643.htm

lunarchick - 03:07pm Jan 10, 2003 EST (# 7571 of 7588)

Fossil Fossilised

Fossil fuels - as their name implies - come from the fossilised remains of ancient organisms. In other words, modern human culture is plugged into the past http://www.island.org/prescience/p5/bush.html

Monoculturalism is a fossilised remnant of the past and yet racism still abounds on the streets, in the schoolyard, and media. What it means to be a citizen in the new millennium cannot be based on ethnocentric paternalism, systematic racial exclusions, and cultural elitism. Counter-pedagogies of anti-racism can begin with deconstruction (comprehension) of representational systems of oppression, and the reconstruction (composition) of positive and constructive imageries and texts. http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/ed270/Luke/LITLEX1.html

A thriving, creative culture is much more viable internationally than a preserved, fossilised one http://www.einst.ee/historic/einst/cultimage/Kristmundsdottir.htm

... inaugurated, here today, the new premises of the Sultan Al Owais Cultural Foundation. Sheikh Mohammed unveiled the ten-story building of Sultan Al Owais Cultural Foundation. http://www.wam.org.ae/2003/Jan/08/799828.htm

A theme on the knowledge of HISTORY will be specific in restoring the image of the Arab world by revealing the grandeur of Arab civilisation in the past. It will demonstrate the spirit behind the greatness that once influenced the development of the Western world http://www.islamicparty.com/textonly/textmadrasah.htm

Snapshots on culture (above), the last begs the question

??? " If Arabs once had, what they consider to be, a GREAT Civilisation CULTURE ... then what went wrong, why did they fall behind the rest of the world"

Is there a tendancy to 'hold on to' a defunct past .... preventing a move towards modernity?

Palestinian poverty factor in their news this day:

http://www.gulf-news.com/

lunarchick - 03:14pm Jan 10, 2003 EST (# 7572 of 7588)

Beckett fossilised artistic culture

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