Taste for Makers February 2002 I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot now and every year he is inundated by applications from would-be graduate students. "A lot of them seem smart," he said. "What I can't tell is whether they have any kind of taste." Taste. Mathematicians call good work "beautiful," and so, either now or in the past, have scientists, engineers, musicians, architects, designers, writers, and painters. For those of us who design things, these are not just theoretical questions. If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell you that "taste is subjective." Most of us are encouraged, as children, to leave this tangle unexamined. Your mother at this point is not trying to teach you important truths about aesthetics. Like many of the half-truths adults tell us, this one contradicts other things they tell us. What goes through the kid's head at this point? Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes.
Pakistan drone statistics visualised These graphs accurately reflect the Bureau’s data on CIA drone strikes in Pakistan to the most recent strike. They are designed to illustrate in the simplest possible way key statistical data from our investigation. Click on a graph to enlarge. You are free to download and to reproduce them, provided the Bureau is credited. Pakistan drone strikes: illustrating minimum reported total casualties, minimum reported civilian casualties and minimum casualties aged under 18. This graph illustrates the minimum reported civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan year by year. This graph shows the total number of people reportedly killed in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. This graph shows the tally of total drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 – 2013.
Der neue Krieg der Drohnen von Hermannus Pfeiffer Fragt man nach dem militärischen Vermächtnis der ersten Amtszeit Barack Obamas, stößt man vor allem auf eines – die massive Ausweitung des Drohnenkriegs. Zwar wurden die ersten Toten dieses Krieges schon am 4. Februar 2002 notiert – als eine US-amerikanische Predator-Drohne mit einer Rakete einen Autokonvoi in Afghanistan traf, unter dessen Insassen ein Al-Qaida-Anführer vermutet worden war. In der Folge kam es sporadisch zu Tötungsaktionen durch amerikanische und israelische Militäreinheiten im Libanon, Jemen, Pakistan und in verschiedenen anderen Ländern. Mittlerweile hat sich jedoch aus gelegentlichen Hinterhalten ein industrialisierter Krieg entwickelt: „Im Verlauf einer Dekade sind aus der Handvoll Drohnen, mit denen die USA in die Kriege in Afghanistan und im Irak zogen, weit über 10 000 Roboter im ständigen Einsatz geworden“, so der Hamburger Soziologe und Robotikexperte Hans-Arthur Marsiske in seinem richtungweisenden Buch „Kriegsmaschinen“.[1] [1] Vgl.
11 Profiles in Bad Leadership Behavior CIO — Most of us have worked for a bad supervisor at one point in our lives. (If you haven't, consider yourself very lucky.) Perhaps they yelled a lot and kept everyone walking on egg shells, or maybe they couldn't or wouldn't articulate what they expected. However it manifests itself, bad leadership can kill your company's productivity and can spread like a cancer. Just because you hold a leadership position doesn't mean you are a good leader. According to Brush, many people in leadership positions don't understand that employees don't come self-motivated. The effects of bad leadership can range from mundane to catastrophic. To make sure you keep your career on an upward trajectory, it's important to determine where your strengths and shortcomings lie. The 11 profiles listed here fall into the demotivating behavior category, so If you find yourself fitting some of these descriptions, it's time for some self-examination and perhaps time to make some changes. The Lousy Listener
Yemen strikes visualised These are visualisations from the databases compiled during the Bureau’s extensive investigation into the US covert war in Yemen. They are conservative representations of the Bureau’s data which is made up of ranges not absolute figures. These graphs are drawn from the lower end of each range. They are accurate up to the latest strike. See the full data for 2014 The minimum confirmed and possible additional US strikes in Yemen each year since the first in 2002. The minimum number of people killed in confirmed and possible additional US drone strikes in Yemen. The minimum number of civilians reportedly killed in confirmed and possible additional US drone strikes in Yemen. The minimum confirmed US operations in Yemen from 2002 to the present, sorted by type.
Iran wieder einmal im Fadenkreuz, 17.03.2012 Von Phyllis Bennis * Nun denn, auf ein Neues mit der Iran-Hysterie ! Es ist verlockend zu glauben, dass auch dieses Mal das Säbelrasseln gegen den Iran sich nicht unterscheidet von den vorangegangenen Fällen. Wir haben das alles ja schon mal erlebt. 2004 prangerte Israels Premierminister die internationale Gemeinschaft an, dass sie nicht genug unternehme, um den Iran vom Bau einer Atombombe abzuhalten. 2005 wurde berichtet, dass die israelische Armee bis Ende März bereit sei für mögliche Schläge gegen geheime Urananreicherungsanlagen im Iran. 2006 veröffentlichte das US House Armed Services Committee einen Bericht, entworfen von einem Mitarbeiter des Kongresses (einem Assistenten des kompromisslosen Kriegsbefürworters, und damaligen US-Botschafters bei der UNO, John Bolton), in dem behauptet wurde, dass der Iran dabei sei, waffenfähiges Uran auf 90 Prozent anzureichern. Damals und heute All dies klingt doch gerade jetzt sehr vertraut. Israel im Zentrum Syriens zwei Konflikte in einem
How to Worry Less About Money by Maria Popova What Goethe can teach us about cultivating a healthy relationship with our finances. The question of how people spend and earn money has been a cultural obsession since the dawn of economic history, but the psychology behind it is sometimes surprising and often riddled with various anxieties. In How to Worry Less about Money (public library) — another great installment in The School of Life’s heartening series reclaiming the traditional self-help genre as intelligent, non-self-helpy, yet immensely helpful guides to modern living, which previously gave us Philippa Perry’s How to Stay Sane, Alain de Botton’s How to Think More About Sex, and Roman Krznaric’s How to Find Fulfilling Work — Melbourne Business School philosopher-in-residence John Armstrong guides us to arriving at our own “big views about money and its role in life,” transcending the narrow and often oppressive conceptions of our monoculture. This book is about worries. The U.S. Market scene, 1922 Share on Tumblr
Who’s making the case for — and against — military drones? A BQM-74E aerial drone launches from the guided-missile frigate USS Thach (FFG 43) during a live-fire exercise in 2011. (Photograph by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class, Stuart Phillips/US Navy.) Unmanned aerial vehicles — that is, drones — have a lot of people (and entire countries) hot under the collar. Every few days it seems a new report comes out about the death of another group of “faceless” people, whether it’s suspected terrorist leaders or civilians. With little transparency from the governments launching drone strikes, that leaves speculation and debate to the watchdog organizations, foreign policy analysts, legal experts, media outlets and, of course, us opinionated regular folks. The first known drone strike was on November 4, 2002, when a CIA missile launched from a drone killed six suspected al Qaeda members in Yemen. Why use drones? For many critics, the problem is actually one of governmental transparency. Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to hummingbird drone P.W.