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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
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(2114 previous messages)
rshow55
- 08:34am May 9, 2002 EST (#
2115 of 17697) 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.
MD2105 manjumicha2001
5/8/02 11:15pm asks beautiful, much appreciated questions,
that I will try to answer clearly. I'm trying to do so both
carefully and concisely. That's taking thought and effort, and
is my highest priority today. Some preliminaries involve the
issue of "how do you check?"
Let me touch on checking the three issues manjumicha2001
5/8/02 11:15pm asks about.
AEA was an effort to make specific
breakthroughs in automotive design, which were made; to
greatly extend the culture's ability to apply and fit
mathematical analysis to complex engineering tasks; to
demonstrate a new engineering business structure
generalizing Lockheed's "skunk works"; and was a test bed
that the government and I hoped would let me find the
"hidden problem" in applied mathematics that seemed crucial
in missile guidance and much else. There's more to say, and
I'll be more explicit. A great deal about AEA can be
checked, in detail - and I'll open any and all records, and
explain the situation as best I can - according to patterns
set out in MD1152 rshow55
4/6/02 5:47pm .
My nervous breakdown. : I had been trained
to identify and solve differential equations, and sometimes
simple systems of them, using the power series method (as
described in Kreyzsig's Advanced Engineering Mathematics and
many other texts.) I did these computations in my head - and
spent much of my time doing so. This was arduous, and
involved a lot of concentration. I overdid it, at a time
when I believed the solution of the "hidden problem" above
was cracking "before my eyes" - when I'd been told that, on
delivery of that solution, AEA investors would be made
whole, and AEA would be funded for success by the
government. My head blew -- I collapsed, and there was
memory damage -- serious enough that I had a difficult time
relearning to read, and relearning much else. On this
matter, only so much can be checked. But a lot can be
checked. There are quite complete records on my psychiatric
condition since the early 1980's. Watergate was largely
about the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsburg's
psychiatrist. Nothing of the sort would be necessary here.
Any reputable reporter with a valid reason, or any
government or university representative with a valid reason,
or anyone else with a reasonable need to know that they can
explain to me, can talk to my psychiatrist, and examine any
and all of his records pertaining to me. I can't speak for
my shrink, but I believe that he would give me a clear bill
of health, so far as sanity or rationality goes, for the
time he's seen me (more than 10 years.) My first
psychiatrist is dead, but all his records can be made
available as well. I'll authorize release of any and all
hospital records on the same terms.
I was tortured, by the government - and for
discussion of how to check I'd have to be talking face to
face with a reporter. I'm not sure that checking on this
point is either possible or wise. The people who tortured me
felt they were doing their duty, and were justified by
circumstances. I did not disagree at the time. I may not
disagree now. I kept my word to the government in all
material respects, and so far as I know they kept their word
to me, for more than a decade after this torture occurred.
I'll have more to say to manjumicha2001's very good
and much appreciated questions. As stated above, some of the
things involved with his questions can be checked.
rshow55
- 11:29am May 9, 2002 EST (#
2116 of 17697) 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'm proud of this letter of recommendation by Professor
Stephen Jay Kline, NAE, who was voted by the JSME as the most
distinguished theoretical and experimental fluid mechanician
of the 20th century, and who worked as my partner for a long
time. The letter describes work after my injury and
recovery http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klinerec
.
Steve died in 1997, and I said this at his Memorial service
in Stanford Chapel. The last lines were quoted in a memorial
article about Steve in a professional journal. http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klineul
.
MD2064 rshow55
5/7/02 2:06pm includes questions I feel I have to ask, and
feel are fair:
" How, given the rules of security laws,
and my particular circumstances, am I to live my life? How
can I practice any ordinary profession, or talk extensively
to anyone - in the ordinary, day-to-day manner people
do?
" How can I do these ordinary things -
without putting both myself and others at risk?
MD2069 rshow55
5/7/02 9:12pm
There are some very serious things to be said against me,
and I know some of them. Some people who have special reason
to be angry are the AEA investors - and I have no doubt that
many of them are angry. I'd pay them back if I could. How, in
the situation I was in, was I to avoid the omission of
material facts? I saw no way to do so, and did omit material
facts that my investors should have known about, and I could
not tell them.
I've had some analogous difficulties in other as aspects of
my life.
I've been in intolerably awkward positions, and people
associated with me have been as well.
James Cameron's True Lies is a movie about a CIA
agent who cannot tell his wife what he does. He's as faithful
as he can be, but cannot tell "true lies" in all respects -
because when unforseen or complicated circumstances arise,
anything but the truth can do damage.
In Secrecy , (Yale U Press, 1998) Daniel Moynihan
speaks of the enormous damage secrecy has done our
society. The paralysis it produces. The conventions against
checking that it produces. I can testify to some of the ways
the damage happens.
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