Recommended Reads for a Summer day

Crossroads, What path to take?

" Image Crossroads (C) by www.martin-liebermann.de"

http://www.martin-liebermann.de/

I have not posted a recommended reading list in quite a while and realized that this is one of the best ways to share ideas in the best traditions of the Medici Effect of convergent ideas meeting at an intersection to be discussed and pondered. The lead off post hails from the desk of Thomas PM Barnett, Chief Analysis for Wikistrat. Tom's post is in response to an inquiry he received from a reader asking for career advice.

As I read "The Pentagon's New Map", I see the book's content as a balanced amalgamation of data, research and insights. You are exactly what I want to be what I grow up.I would love to be that analyst who makes a difference in the way business and political decisions are made.

How do you recommend I get to that point in my career?

Dr. Barnett's response was concise regarding this specific inquiry, but has lessons for everyone contemplating their future.

Never turn down a chance to do public speaking. In fact, seek them out at every opportunity. Even if you do a lot of public speaking, it will take the usual 10,000 hours before you get really good.

Study as many foreign languages as you can fit in. Studying several languages is more important than mastering one. Good storytelling is ultimately translation, and the best-communicating experts are experts at talking to other experts from fields other than their own.

Write every day. If you don't get enough opportunities, then start you own blog or join a group blog.

Prepare to view good writing as a lifetime pursuit. It will take nonstop writing for about a decade before you really get good.

Whenever possible, seek out and work with professional editors on everything you write.

Read authors whose style you admire and work their tendencies into your own material.

Listen to what people say you do best and then do that as much as possible, getting others to do things for you that you do poorly. So if mentors you trust tell you're not a good writer and not a good speaker, then spending your life trying to overcome your weaknesses is probably not a great idea. You'd be better off sticking to what you're best at and trying to make those skills world class.

Nobody is good at everything. Life involves choices.

Read the whole post here

Innovators

Co-billing this week is shared by this post from Enterra Insights that zero's in on innovation and how the US can remain the nation of innovators. Steve DeAngelis begins with this opening paragraph.

I don't believe that any particular group of people or type of person has a stranglehold on innovation. Innovators can come from all races, genders, religions, countries, economic circumstances, and cultures. Even so, that doesn't stop people from trying to detect hot spots of innovation to determine why those hot spots exist. One thing that most analysts agree upon is that education helps create such spots. Specifically, more young people need to be educated in science, technology, engineering and math, the so-called STEM fields. In the search for future innovators, one group that has received a lot of attention is immigrants

The post is filled with insights and links that deserve reading and consideration of how we can ensure the future is one we all dream of for our children.
Read the whole post Innovators of the Future

This next post highlights the changing focus of our national defense and security back to the sea and our maritime heritage. Rimpac 2012 is wrapping up this week in Hawaii, where 22 nations naval forces came together to train and learn with the goal of preserving the free access to the worlds oceans. Here is the list from Information Dissemination, of the nations and vessels participating.

RIMPAC 2012

Rimpac 2012 Order of Battle

The focus on naval issues is most apparent when one considers these next recommended reads.

Iran Gearing up for naval fight in the PG versus US, ThomasPM Barnett

A Busy Week in the South China Sea, Center for International Maritime Security

And this trio of posts from a cracking new naval centric strategy blog, Flashpoints: Diplomacy by other means.

Military Strategy for an Unthinkable Conflict

The Land, the Sea, and History

Taiwan's South China Sea Plan

And finally, this on the latest growing boondoggle over whether the LCS can ever assume it's intended role.

Maintinance problems mount for the LCS

The coming war on obesity and consumption

Obesity in America

Obesity in world

Daily food consumption

This week, Thomas Barnett penned a column for the World Politics Review that predicted the coming clash over food, as the Western style diet comes under fire for obesity and it's byproduct of major health issues becomes the target of both the nanny state, and nations where food is a matter of survival. Barnett called it this way.

The real clash of civilizations in the 21st century will be not over religion, but over food. As the emerging East and surging South achieve appreciable amounts of disposable income, they're increasingly taking on a Western-style diet. This bodes poorly for the world on multiple levels, with the most-alarmist Cassandras warning about imminent resource wars. But the more immediate and realistic concern is the resulting health costs, which will inevitably trigger a rule-set clash between nanny-state types hell-bent on "reining in" a number of globalized industries -- agriculture, food and beverages, restaurants, health care and pharmaceuticals -- and those preferring a more free-market/libertarian stance.

This clash won't necessarily pit East versus West or North versus South, or even democracies versus authoritarian regimes. The core of this struggle will be about sustainability versus individual freedom of choice, because, as a recent Financial Times editorial put it, "Individuals have a right to indulge in excesses, but they also have responsibility for costs."

Read more:
The New Rules: Time to Worry About Over-Eating, not Over-Population

Barnett penned his column, just a few hours before Denmark became the first country in the world to pass what has been dubbed the "Fat Tax" to combat the growing obesity in Denmark, as they confront rising health care costs in a country with state provided cradle to the grave health care costs are predicted to rise faster than the kilos on millions of personal scales.

Denmark on Saturday became the first country in the world to impose a fat tax after a week in which consumers hoarded butter, pizza, meat and milk to avoid the immediate effects.

"We have had to stock up with tonnes of butter and margarine in order to be able to supply outlets," Soeren Joergensen of Arla Distribution told AFP.

The new tax, designed by Denmark’s outgoing government as a health issue to limit the population’s intake of fatty foods, will add 16 kroner ($2.87, 2.15 euros) per kilo (2.2 pounds) of saturated fats in a product.

Read more:
Denmark levies worlds first fat tax

It now appears other nations with state sponsored healthcare programs are considering similar taxes. Can the US be far behind? Personally, in an age where we all end up sharing the cost of programs like Medicare, and in in the future, some form a national health care system, as well as swelling personal health insurance rates, taxes on things that contribute to obesity and in turn health issues might make sense. The common sense solution would be to charge obese people more, but that would be considered discrimenatory so we all get to pay. The bigger question as raised by Thomas Barnett is how to feed a swelling population of 7 billion and growing without being labeled a pariah for consuming geometrically more than the majority of the planet.

Too Important Not to Read

Selling women in ancient Babylon

Long Pross, Trafficking Victim

Actress Maggie Grace (L) and jounalist Nicholas Kristof present Somaly Mam of Cambodia with the Human Rights Award at the Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 19, 2009 in Washington, DC.

This week I have posted a few reads that delve into the nature of culture, women at risk and how we all can make the world safe for women.

Leading off is this post from Steve DeAngelis who blogs about the power of culture to either hinder or advance the human experience.

The Victorian Scottish historian and essayist, Thomas Carlyle, once wrote: "Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being." In past posts, I've noted that culture can either be used as a platform for progress or it becomes an anchor that keeps people mired in the past. According to a recent study, culture has played a more important role in humanity's evolution than once thought ["Human Culture, an Evolutionary Force," by Nicholas Wade, New York Times, 1 March 2010]. Wade explains:

Read the rest:
The Power of Culture

Related to culture is how women are treated in this world. For those of us living in a society that protects and values women, it is vital to read these next two posts to see how we can contribute to making the world safe for women.

Steve DeAngelis continues in this post to introduce Nichlos Kristof whom I have written about here and here.

One of the oldest objects of worship known to man is small figurine carved out of oolitic limestone that has been labeled the Venus of Willendorf. Displayed at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, the Venus of Willendorf was created sometime between 24,000-22,000 BCE. The figurine was probably carved by a man. Although it is not a particularly flattering depiction of a woman, it reminds us that men have always been in awe of the power of creation. Unfortunately, the awe that mankind has demonstrated for the process of procreation has not extended to the women who carry it out. When it comes to history, might makes right and the gentler sex has felt the brunt of that might for far too long.

Facts don't lie. Only one percent of the landowners around the globe are women. Widespread participation by women in politics is a modern development. Often in the past the only way that women could influence politics was between the sheets. The Greek comic playwright Aristophanes knew this and penned his famous play Lysistrata to demonstrate that although they were under-appreciated in the male-dominated Athenian society, women were nonetheless well-informed and capable of pursuing political agendas. The play was performed in classical Athens in 411 BC. The play is a comic tale of Lysistrata's mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Her strategy is to convince the women of Greece to withhold sexual favors from their husbands and lovers until they agree to negotiate peace. At the beginning of the play, Lysistrata says to her friend Calonice, "There are a lot of things about us women that sadden me, considering how men see us as rascals." To which Calonice replies: "As indeed we are!" Even back then, women were more appreciated for their beauty than their brains and more for their sexual prowess than their other life skills. Twenty-five hundred years later the world's women are still suffering at the hands of men.

The husband and wife team, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, remind us that women continue to be ill-treated in many places around the world ["The Women’s Crusade," New York Times, 23 August 2009].

Read the whole post:

Making the World Safe for Women



Finally comes this post from the outstanding blog and online magazine devoted to military matters Small Wars Journal who turned their attention to spotlighting an organization that is making a difference.

Innocents at Risk is a 501©(3) nonprofit founded to fight child exploitation and human trafficking. Our mission is to educate citizens about the horrific global and local problem of human trafficking and work to prevent it. In order to increase the visibility of the severity of the issue, Innocents at Risk established partnerships with the Department of State, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Custom Border Patrol and the D.C. Task Force. We work with a vast number of non-government organizations and service providers.

Human Trafficking is 21st century slavery. It is happening throughout the world in every country and across the United States in every major city and small town. According to the Department of State, every year over 2,000,000 men, women and children are taken, trafficked and thrown into this cruel world of slavery. Traffickers use force, fraud or coercion to obtain their victims.

Read the whole post.
Very Good People Doing Great Things

If any one is serious about stopping this scourge, please visit the links under Honoring our Commitments links on the right of this blog. As Steve DeAngelis noted in the end of his post on culture, none of us will live to see the results of how the information age will influence future cultures, but properly used it can be a powerful tool for doing good and making the world safe for women.

The Art of Manliness, Has it Become a Lost Art?

posters from artofmanliness.com

I came across these finds while checking my blog links for things that caught my interest. A feature at 1776 online history magazine led me to discover these motivational posters featuring Theodore Roosevelt and George Patton.

They are the brain child of The Art of Manliness a site dedicated to what for some is the fading art of manliness in our culture. I urge anyone reading this to take a break from the pressing issues of the day and syphon off a little motivation from Theodore Roosevelt and George Patton.

After purusing the posters take the time to visit the sites home page and check out some of the features, ranging from Manly Skills like Brewing the Perfect Cup of Coffee and Money & Career with Money and Career Advice from Benjamin Franklin’s Way to Wealth to lists of the 100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library.

So guys, pull up a chair, grab an adult beverage, The Art of Manliness Guide to Scotch Whisky, light up a churchill, and take a little journey into the world of the art of manliness. And ladies, check out this site and see if you find any traits that are now missing from your man's life, if so, send them the link and see if any of it rubs off.