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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 - 01:22pm Jan 15, 2003 EST (# 7664 of 7679)
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.

Commondata - suppose I agree with you - in a way that is coarse in one way - and fine scale in another. I'm having problems with my sense of timing - and knew I would have. To be very sensitive about some things - you have to be very insensitive about some others.

I'm going to tell a "parable" - - that is precisely true (and maybe exactly checkable) with some simple substitutions of names.

Commondata - we have disagreements about "what time it is" and "what reality is" that mean we share objectives - and are approaching a divergent - convergent or stability-instability point where the only hope is an oscillating solution - one that can be calibrated finely and meet all the needs we share.

I'm going to describe a divergent case, closely analogous to many episodes in bird courtship - that involves something primordial - sex. I'm trying terribly hard - and there are times when you don't and can't know what time it is - and all you can do is state your case, clearly - again and again and again and again .

Responses may be wrenching - or divergent - or unpredictable - but if you get it just right - and there are conditions where it is certain that you can get it right - the solution is perfect for you and the animal-person-organization-nation with which you are interacting.

Some of this is ugly stuff - and I'm scared, and ask for forgiveness in advance. It will be a long time before kids under ten can be taught to understand this sort of thing via anything but nursery rhymes and "bedtime stories."

Everything I'm going to talk about happened exactly as I say it happened - at some levels - to people I was involved with personally. I remain, in unchangeable ways, in love with Marti Beck, and the first story is uncheckable - but basic to some things that can be checked. If people actually understood the story - and could sympathize with everybody involved, at some level, but without any sentimentality that got in the way of analysis - we could all be much safer.

My wife is "handling me like a Ming vase" today - and being careful-rough about it. She thinks I have to be very careful - and is supporting what I'm doing 100% - with priorities that - so far as saving lives are concerned - line up with mine exactly - though we've had some differences in interpretations of detail.

rshow55 - 01:29pm Jan 15, 2003 EST (# 7665 of 7679)
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.

I will try hard to make the next posting before 2:00 EST . If I fail to do so - it will be for lack of something - perhaps courage. I ask to be forgiven for my transgressions and failures. I feel I'm taking a difficult, wrenching, important step - certain to be misinterpreted by some - ugly in some ways - but just as beautiful as I can make it. I'm not smart enough but to do anything else but try to tell the truth. It involves a "spectacle" that I made of myself at the Cornell 6-Year Ph.D. program Res Club - before the fire. I don't know if I believe in an afterlife - but if I do - I think that Marti Beck was a sympathetic enough person - and a good enough mathematician - to want me to play this one straight. I'm still in love with her as I remember her - and that won't change until I die.

I may then tell the truth, from my point of view - about two living people - neither, insofar as I know, related to the NYT. Can't be sure whether I will - but it seems right to do so now.

rshow55 - 01:33pm Jan 15, 2003 EST (# 7666 of 7679)
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.

I'll say this. Every which way I could see it - it seemed to me that Marti Beck was thinking seriously about the notion that - if she was to keep her promises - and achieve her hopes as an academic and as a woman - she had to do something different. She had to have her babies early rather than late.

She wasn't just musing. She was trying to get into a situation where she could do so. We had all sorts of disagreements. But I can't imagine that I got that one wrong.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense