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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 - 12:02pm Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3891 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.

It seems to me that, with Lcic's help and support, I'm making progress sorting something out - and I'm trying to be careful.

Just now, I have a " Eureka" feeling - a feeling that something I've been worrying about for a long time is coming to fruition.

Something that I can brag about - that the NYT can brag about - something very broadly useful.

Can I be connecting the dots rightly? What are the odds of that?

Look pretty good to me.

It seems to me that something's focusing that would have interested Bertrand Russell - and Plato - and mainstream philosophers over the past 2500 years - and also kindergarten kids, teachers, housewives, and all sorts of other people.

Something basic. Something simple. Something obvious. Something that is a biggish step toward uniting the "two cultures" a way that C.P. Snow and "the average reader of the New York Times" would appreciate - and be exited about.

rshow55 - 12:04pm Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3892 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.

Any inventor, in such a state - ought to move slowly and carefully. Fearfully. But hopefully, too.

This thread has accomplished a lot MD1999 rshow55 5/4/02 10:39am . . . and I think there are good things coming into focus right now.

This thread has been about more than missile defense -- though there has been plenty of that MD84 rshow55 3/2/02 11:52am .

This thread has also been about finding TRUTH - in ways that matter for people - in ways that make LARGE advances possible.

What are the odds of finding such advances? I think people have been much too pessimistic (in some ways) and not nearly cautious enough, in some others.

Maybe I've got some key things wrong - but it doesn't look that way. I think Bill Casey would be proud.

I'm hoping that a lot of elected officials will be, too.

MD3361 rshowalt 7/31/02 7:45am

Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee into the collapse of the Enron Corporation . . . . 21 U. S. Senators spoke, and very interesting excerpts are set out in http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/13/business/13TEXT.htm

After a point, we have common values. And common concerns for right and wrong. We have to find better ways of finding right and wrong - in both the factual and the moral sense. The senses are related. We can do so.

rshow55 - 01:29pm Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3893 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.

On May 24th 2001, I wrote this, in response to some very friendly questions, on a Guardian thread, now expired, titled

" does anyone have the faintest idea what rshowalter is going on about??

"I've had a dream -- and it seems to be coming true, in some ways.

"All my life, since I've been a year old, maybe, I've been trying to figure things out, and make myself understood -- just like everybody else.

"That's a dream, for all of us, that somehow comes true, often enough -- always seems like magic, to me -- how IS it that things pop into your head, and how IS it that, if you keep talking about those things, and thinking about those things, they get clearer?

"I really got bit with that question - at a very impressionable age. When I was 14, I invented something (an exercise device, it was, and useful in its way) but it doesn't matter so much what it was -- what really set me off, and changed my life, is I went to the United States Patent Office -- spent nearly a whole summer there -- immersed in human creativity.

"After that, the questions

" how do people invent things? "

and

" how do they figure out things? "

"really took hold of me. Because it is a miracle how creative people can be - and how fast they can put things together -- and learn language, and sort out their world --

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