Word: useless
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...idea is certainly appealing. All of the murderous megatonnage of those fearsome intercontinental ballistic missiles would be rendered useless. The Soviet Union launches a surprise nuclear attack? Zap! U.S. laser beams from outer space blast the enemy booster rockets out of Soviet skies before they can dispatch their multiple warheads on long lethal flights...
Alfred North Whitehead, a prominent 20th century philosopher who spoke extensively on education, once remarked. "A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth." Although Whitehead may have overstated his case, the point is well-taken. Technological advances are generally not the product of a well-informed population, but of exceptional individual talent and expertise. The insight of one gifted man propels a whole society forward. A back-to-basics program will create a well-informed society, but the focus on minimum standards will not cultivate greater ability. Only by striving to promote exceptional achievement...
...site, some 250 miles short of its target in the capital city. And for the world's most technologically sophisticated nation, the reason for aborting the rescue effort was particularly painful: three of the eight helicopters assigned to the mission developed electrical or hydraulic malfunctions that rendered them useless...
...that fuels our nuclear dilemma. Nukes only destroy; they don't conquer territory, achieve revolution or political reform, or even apply total pressure. Nuclear weapons' only use, as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has recently written, is for deterrence; as a practical component of Western defense strategy, they are useless. Not so with convention forces. The MBFR talks offer a chance for the West to start redressing what some have estimated as a 3-1 Wasrsaw Pact advantage in conventional strength--where inequality could really prove fatal...
...Talks), Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, dropped a bombshell of his own. In the fall issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, published last week, McNamara urged NATO to renounce its current reliance on the threat to use nuclear weapons, which he said are "totally useless" and "serve no military purpose...