http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/03/29/50-ways-to-nurture-your-happiness/

50 Ways to Nurture Your Happiness

Decide to be happy.  It's good for your health.

The happiest people I know appreciate what they have, keep an open mind to new ideas and ventures, use their leisure time as a means of self development, and love good music, good books, good pictures, good company and good conversation.  In other words, they do small things every day to nurture their happiness.

It's a lot easier than it sounds.  Anything that helps you feel more positive and joyful is self-nurturing.  The result?  A happier, healthier you.  Here are 50 simple ideas to get you started with nurturing your happiness.

1. Act like today is already an awesome day. – Do so, and it will be.  Research shows that although we think that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way we act.  A great attitude always leads to great experiences.  Read The How of Happiness.
2. Make yourself smile first thing in the morning. – It's difficult to feel down when your face is happy.  Fill your bathroom or bedroom mirror with post-it notes of your favorite quotes, goals, mantras, photos, etc., and then reflect on them for a minute or two when you first wake up.
3. Spend time with people who make you smile. – Who nourishes and supports you?  Surround yourself with these people.  Spend time with those who reflect the person you want to be – people who do good things and make your life a little brighter simply by being in it.
4. Try something totally new. – Go somewhere you've never been.  Do something you've never done.  It will shake up your vision of what the world is like and give you a fresh new perspective on things.  Variety truly is the spice of life.  You can see or do something a million times, but you can only see or do it for the first time once.  As a result, first time experiences usually leave a reflective mark in our minds for the rest of our lives.  So spice it up!  The more experiences you have, the richer your life will be.
5. Work on something that's meaningful to you. – Engage yourself in a meaningful personal project, or pull the trigger on doing something you've wanted to do for a long time, but haven't yet had the resolve to do.  Life is short.  Today is the day to take action.
6. Keep track of the things you're grateful for. – You can't help but feel good when you literally count your blessings.  Start a gratitude journal and express your thanks on a daily basis.
7. Dream big. – You can do anything you set your mind to.  Visualize your dreams coming true and work at making them a reality.
8. Listen to your inner voice. – Your instincts are good.  It's important to listen to your own head and heart.  Don't always listen to others.  Do what you know in your heart is right, for you.
9. Trust yourself. – You are kind.  You are smart.  You are important.  Your choices are just as valid as anyone else's.
10. Truly appreciate those around you. – Tell your friends you adore them, say thank you and mean it, flash your biggest and most sincere smile at strangers on the street, hug people for longer than normal.  The more love you give out, the more it builds inside of you and the more you'll get back.
11. Give out compliments. – Give sincere praise every chance you get.  Compliment and cheer for those who deserve it.  You'll be hitting two birds with one stone, because when the person you compliment smiles, you'll smile too.
12. Call an old friend and reminisce. – There are few things more satisfying than recounting some of the greatest moments of your life with your closest friends who lived these moments alongside you.
13. Be vibrant and colorful. – Express yourself.  Inject energetic colors into the atmosphere at work and at home.  If not in dress, then in words and deeds.  The world has enough grey!  Be the antidote!  Read The Happiness Project.
14. Be silly. – Sometimes we take ourselves entirely too seriously.  Let go.  Be spontaneous and outrageous.  Sometimes you just need a good laugh to lift your spirits.
15. Slow down. – When you're living your life at top speed, you're missing most of it.  Stop and take a breath.  Look for ways to adopt a more humane pace.  Pay close attention to what you're doing.  Don't waste time juggling forgettable tasks.  Instead, concentrate on a few things that really matter.  Engage fully in each day.  Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
16. Be present. – Life is happening right now.  Instead of dwelling on the past, or worrying about the future, just practice being and living in the 'now.'  You can't learn something new or uncover a new opportunity that's happening now if your mind is stuck in another time.  Remember, right now is the only moment guaranteed to you.  Right now is life.  Don't miss it.
17. Disconnect from the world for a little while. – Shut off your electronics, phone, computer and television.  So many of us use technology to distract ourselves and keep our minds busy when we would be far better served by just sitting still and learning to relax.  It's not healthy to be plugged in and accessible 24/7.
18. Take a deep breathing break every hour. – Take a deep breath, and another, and another.  It's like a mini-break to reset yourself during the day.
19. Move your body. – Run, jump, climb a tree, take a dancing class, power walk – anything that feels good that gets your blood moving.  The only limitation:  it has to be fun.  Don't get on a treadmill if you hate the treadmill.
20. Stretch. – Take a few minutes for a good muscle stretch.  It gets the blood moving, fires up your brain and it gives you a few moments to unwind and get grounded before you start the next task.  Plus, it just feels good too.
21. Take a walk without a destination. – A brisk walk is a great way to get some exercise and clear your mind.  Enjoy the breeze, breathe the fresh air, and be mindful of what you see, hear and feel.
22. At least once a week, do something that's only for you. – Remember that hobby that you used to have time for, or that food that no one else in your house likes?  Indulge in it.  Reclaim it for yourself.
23. Dress up and do something fun. – Get all dressed up and go out dancing, or to an event.  It's a good way to inject a little excitement into your routine and let loose.
24. Listen to good music. – Listen to music that motivates you.  Put on your favorite song, turn it up loud and sing.
25. Do, watch, or listen to something that makes you laugh. – Laughter is the best medicine.  And some of the most memorable moments in your life will be moments spent in laughter.
26. Buy or pick fresh flowers every now and then. – Brighten up your place.  The aroma and sight of flowers is comforting.
27. Get more sunshine. – Go to the beach or park.  Bask in the warming rays of the sun.
28. Take a hot bath. – Add some bubbles.  Sink into your tub for a long, luxurious soak at the end of the day.
29. Get enough sleep. – Everything is harder when you're tired.  An exhausted mind is rarely happy and productive.
30. Stand tall. – Your spirit can't soar when you slouch.  You will feel much more powerful and capable when you stand up straight and look the world in the eye.
31. Declutter your space. – Purge everything in your life, both physical and mental, that you don't honestly need, use or love.  The excess distracts you from your true intentions and bogs you down.  Read The Joy of Less.
32. Purge bad habits and negative influences. – Anything that doesn't nourish or support you – unhealthy foods, cigarettes, a miserable work environment, toxic people – get these things under control and do what you have to do to set boundaries and demand the highest quality of life.  You deserve it.
33. Plan ahead. – With a few minutes of organizing your time and to-do's, you will be better prepared to take on the day.
34. Stop procrastinating. – Start taking action to tie loose ends.  Putting something off instantly makes it harder and scarier.
35. Allow yourself some private time each day. – Even if it's only for a half hour, go on a fun excursion by yourself, read a book or spend time with your pet.
36. Get things off your chest. – Bottling everything up indefinitely will end badly.  Say what you need to say.  Do what you need to do.  Also, write in a journal.  Write down anything that calls to you, ideas, experiences, dreams, frustrations – get them out of your head and down on paper.
37. Be kind. – Be nice to someone else.  Help them.  Trust me, it will help you smile, and you will have made the world a better place.
38. Tell someone you love them. – We often forget to say it out loud.  It matters.
39. Make a new friend. – People are interesting creatures, and no two people are exactly alike.  So meet someone new today.  Find out what makes them tick.  They'll likely open your eyes to fascinating ideas and perspectives.  And you never know, they just might change your life.
40. Spend quality time with children. – Children live by their instincts openly and without hesitation.  They are enthusiastic about life, eager to learn, and curious about everything.  Watch how they play, how they live, how they create, how they ask questions, how they daydream, etc.  Play with them and admire their innocence.
41. Cut yourself some slack. – We sometimes hold ourselves to impossible standards and then beat ourselves up when we don't meet them.
42. Take pride in the hard times that you have overcome. – What didn't kill you made you stronger.  It wasn't easy, but you got through it.
43. Keep your words positive. – Happiness and negativity cannot coexist.
44. Make your home a haven. – Your home should be a place where you can take a breath and really relax.  If it isn't, you may have some work to do.
45. Get your finances in order. – Manage your money wisely so your money does not manage you.  Always live well below your means.
46. Volunteer or make a donation. – Can you offer time, money, your voice or influence?  In life, you get what you put in.  Being reminded that the world is bigger than your bubble can inspire and uplift you.  When you make a positive impact in someone else's life, you also make a positive impact in your own life.  Do something that's greater than you, something that helps someone else to be happy or to suffer less.  I promise, it will be an extremely rewarding experience – one you'll likely remember forever.  If you want to make a big difference in someone's life without leaving your computer chair, check out GoFundMe.
47. Say "yes" to a spontaneous opportunity. – Everything in life can't be planned.  Some of the greatest opportunities will knock on your door when you least expect them to.  Be flexible, be spontaneous, and just say "yes."
48. Forgive someone and reconnect with them. – Grudges are a waste of perfect happiness.  If there's someone in your life who deserves another chance, give it to them.  If you need to apologize, do it.  Give your story together a happy ending.
49. Read something that inspires and motivates you. – Would I be out of line if I recommended this blog. 
50. Smile and notice what's right, right now. – Everything that happens in life is neither good or bad.  It just depends on your perspective.  And no matter how it turns out, it always ends up just the way it should.  Either you succeed or you learn something.  So stay positive, appreciate the pleasant outcomes, and learn from the rest.

And remember, happiness is often found by enjoying the small things in life all while chasing after the big ones.  Take life one step at a time, breathe, and enjoy the journey.

Photo by: Scarleth White

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1 Big Chart: There Is No Social Security Crisis

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1 Big Chart: There Is No Social Security Crisis

Here's a question for the under-30 crowd: Do you think Social Security will still be around when you retire? Half of you don't. Here's why you should.

The below chart, courtesy of Peter Diamond and Peter Orszag, compares what we spend on Social Security and Medicare today (blue) as a percent of GDP versus what the CBO projects we will spend on them in 2050 (red). It's a tale of two very different entitlements.

What a difference 40 years makes. While Social Security and Medicare make up roughly equal portions of the budget today, the CBO expects Medicare spending to be exactly double Social Security spending by 2050. There is no "entitlements" crisis. There is a Social Security problem, and a Medicare crisis. And the Medicare crisis is really a general healthcare spending crisis -- indeed, Medicare actually spends less than private insurance does.

That doesn't mean that Social Security doesn't need to be tweaked. A bump from five to six percent of GDP, as the CBO projects, isn't trivial. But checks to retirees won't bankrupt us. Fee for service for those retirees might.

So why do politicians prefer to talk about fixing Social Security? It's precisely because it's so easy to fix. Social Security is an accounting problem. Money goes in. Money comes out. If you increase the income, or decrease the outlays, you're finished. The challenge is raising revenue or slowing benefit growth in a way that is savvy enough to pass Congress and fair enough to keep benefits for those who really need them.

But we're pretty much clueless when it comes to reining in health care spending. The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) does contain a good number of ideas about how to "bend the curve" of healthcare spending down, but we can't say with much certainty how well they'...

Watching Hens Eat « The Contrary Farmer

http://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/watching-hens-eat/

The Contrary Farmer

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From GENE LOGSDON

I've learned more about the economies of small scale food production from watching chickens than from any library or university.  The hens reveal a world almost foreign to our human experience. Ever since farming became a capitalistic enterprise, husbandry has been organized around the idea of making money, not making food.  When the farmer is freed from the yoke of money-making, wonderful alternatives become possible in food production. More people can do it, for one thing. It doesn't take a quarter million bucks to get started.  If more people do it, eventually the gardeners will become the farmers and the economics of food production will be turned upside down.

It amazes me how, as a farm boy, I learned to raise chickens the money way and thought that was the only way. We lived on a farm that was close to nature, but we were already evolving factory farming. The factory way meant that farmers had to raise lots more chickens in one place than nature ever intended, and the more they raised, the more they had to raise to try to squeeze out a profit. The chickens were penned up, which meant that they had to be provided all their food and water. They developed various diseases in unnatural captivity, started pecking bloody holes in each other, got lice, and suffered from various disorders and diseases that were related to unnatural diets. The ultimate absurdity came when the utility companies instructed us to leave the lights on all night in the coop to make the hens sleep less and lay more eggs.

Now, with only eight hens that are free to roam several acres of woodland, meadow and yard, I never cease to be amazed at how simple nature's way to good fried eggs for breakfast can be. Chickens are amazing omnivores. They will eat anything except citrus rinds. No bug or worm or weed seed is safe from their daily patrol. I follow my little flock around, sometimes on all fours, trying to figure out just what they are pecking at all the time.

First of all, they eat a lot of dirt. Muddy, icy clots of dirt in winter, loamy pinches of humusy soil in the summer. I get right down there beak to beak with them, and I am sure they are eating dirt sometimes, not insects or worm eggs. Or if the latter, they take in a lot of dirt too. Yet over the years, I have never detected any signs that they have internal parasites. How can that be?   And they like manure. When I let them out of the coop in the morning, they rush around the barn to where the sheep are gathered and peck in their manure. If I were feeding grain to the sheep, that would be easy to explain because chickens love half-digested grain. But my sheep get no grain. So what are the hens eating? Perhaps the half digested grass, clover and weed seeds that are in the hay?

And oh my, do they love weed seeds. Here is a whole world of unexplored natural food for fowl. Having learned that the seeds of giant ragweed, the scourge of grain farms but a staple food for wild quail, have a 47% crude protein content, higher than any grain we cultivate, I started feeding the golden little seeds to the hens. They gobbled readily. Having learned to open my eyes to the real world, I noticed that the hens also strip the seeds off regular ragweed growing around the coop. They like the fruit of pokeberries which also grow around the coop. The seeds are supposed to be poisonous but no one told the hens. How many myriad other seeds are they eating that I don't know about in my ignorance?

Hens like to graze grass and clover.  In winter, during thaws, they will seek out patches of greenish bluegrass and devour it. In the aging livestock manure in the barn they scratch incessantly for fly eggs, which is why we don't have a bad fly problem. They march through the woods like a little army, uncovering worms and bugs out of the leaf litter. They love to raid the compost pile. Their favorite food, if I can judge by their enthusiasm, is table scraps. The older hens know the garbage bucket by sight and when we carry it up to their coop, they are right there at our heels. (Needless to say, natural hens stay healthy into their sixth year, a tremendous savings over having to replace them every year as so often is the case in hen factories.)

I occasionally toss the hens a handful of whole corn or wheat just because I can't quite let go completely from the factory farm mentality I was brought up in.  It is good to have grain (but it does not have to be milled grain) when there is snow on the ground. And that's another thing. You don't really have to worry about waterers freezing up if the hens have access to snow. They like snow, sometimes eating it even if water is available. They like to peck on ice crystals too. Nature has been dealing with the real world for eons and eons. Will we ever catch on?
~~

Have You Ever Tried to Eliminate a State-Run Commission? - Jeb Bush - Politics - The Atlantic

Have You Ever Tried to Eliminate a State-Run Commission? - Jeb Bush - Politics - The Atlantic

The accretion of old law is a problem across the spectrum of American government. Once laws are passed, they just don't go away. In 2000, we attempted to eliminate 141 Florida boards and commissions out of the more than 800 that existed at that time. Only 10 were eliminated and the legislature created another 31. Clearly, we put the effort in the loss column!

It's hard to describe how much pressure was brought to bear to defeat this effort. The people with a special interest in defending the status quo put all of their energy into blocking reform, while those with a general interest in better government and free competition had less incentive to commit the time or resources to the fight.

Somehow, we need to change the structure of government to require the systematic review of rules and laws. Requiring regulations and statutes to "sunset" is one way to force legislatures and agencies to review whether they're still a public priority. Another productive approach is Senator Mark Warner's proposal requiring an agency to eliminate an old regulation as a condition to each new regulation.

A third suggestion would be to ban so-called "omnibus bills," legislation that sometimes run in to the hundreds and thousands of pages, and where appended items have nothing to do with the main subject of the law. Laws that throw in the kitchen sink are not comprehensible to anyone, including the unwitting legislators who vote for them. It's hard to make sense of a law that never made any sense in the first place. It's also hard to hold political leaders accountable if the laws they pass are so big that a vote for or against could mean many different things. Laws must be targeted so their effectiveness can be evaluated.

The job of political leaders is not only to pass new laws that make sense, but to make sure that old laws meet the current needs of our society. Getting political leaders to do this job, however, will require a major shift in our public priorities.

A postscript on the accretion of old law. A year after our failed boards and commission effort, I signed into law a bill allowing beer to be sold in any size under 32 ounces. For 36 years, the law required beer to be sold in 8,12, 16 and 32 ounces. Of the more than 4300 beer brands available in the US in 2000, only 772 brands could be sold in Florida. Now, Floridians can drink beer in almost any shape or size container. Let freedom ring!

Krugman from 1991 on the Rules of Research

web.mit.edu/krugman/www/howiwork.html

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RULES FOR RESEARCH
In the course of describing my formative moment in 1978, I have already implicitly given my four basic rules for research. Let me now state them explicitly, then explain. Here are the rules:
1. Listen to the Gentiles
2. Question the question
3. Dare to be silly
4. Simplify, simplify
Listen to the Gentiles
What I mean by this rule is "Pay attention to what intelligent people are saying, even if they do not have your customs or speak your analytical language." The point may perhaps best be explained by example. When I began my rethinking of international trade, there was already a sizeable literature criticizing conventional trade theory. Empiricists pointed out that trade took place largely between countries with seemingly similar factor endowments, and that much of this trade involved intra-industry exchanges of seemingly similar products. Acute observers pointed to the importance of economies of scale and imperfect competition in actual international markets. Yet all of this intelligent commentary was ignored by mainstream trade theorists -- after all, their critics often seemed to have an imperfect understanding of comparative advantage, and had no coherent models of their own to offer; so why pay attention to them? The result was that the profession overlooked evidence and stories that were right under its nose.
The same story is repeated in geography. Geographers and regional scientists have amassed a great deal of evidence on the nature and importance of localized external economies, and organized that evidence intelligently if not rigorously. Yet economists have ignored what they had to say, because it comes from people speaking the wrong language.
I do not mean to say that formal economic analysis is worthless, and that anybody's opinion on economic matters is as good as anyone else's. On the contrary! I am a strong believer in the importance of models, which are to our minds what spear-throwers were to stone age arms: they greatly extend the power and range of our insight. In particular, I have no sympathy for those people who criticize the unrealistic simplifications of model-builders, and imagine that they achieve greater sophistication by avoiding stating their assumptions clearly. The point is to realize that economic models are metaphors, not truth. By all means express your thoughts in models, as pretty as possible (more on that below). But always remember that you may have gotten the metaphor wrong, and that someone else with a different metaphor may be seeing something that you are missing.
Question the question
There was a limited literature on external economies and international trade before 1978. It was never, however, very influential, because it seemed terminally messy; even the simplest models became bogged down in a taxonomy of possible outcomes. What has since become clear is that this messiness arose in large part because the modelers were asking their models to do what traditional trade models do, which is to predict a precise pattern of specialization and trade. Yet why ask that particular question? Even in the Heckscher-Ohlin model, the point you want to make is something like "A country tends to export goods whose production is intensive in the factors in which that country is abundant"; if your specific model tells you that capital-abundant country Home exports capital-intensive good X, this is valuable because it sharpens your understanding of that insight, not because you really care about these particular details of a patently oversimplified model.
It turns out that if you don't ask for the kind of detail that you get in the two-sector, two-good classical model, an external economy model needn't be at all messy. As long as you ask "system" questions like how welfare and world income are distributed, it is possible to make very simple and neat models. And it's really these system questions that we are interested in. The focus on excessive detail was, to put it bluntly, a matter of carrying over ingrained prejudices from an overworked model into a domain where they only made life harder.
The same is true in a number of areas in which I have worked. In general, if people in a field have bogged down on questions that seem very hard, it is a good idea to ask whether they are really working on the right questions. Often some other question is not only easier to answer but actually more interesting! (One drawback of this trick is that it often gets people angry. An academic who has spent years on a hard problem is rarely grateful when you suggest that his field can be revived by bypassing it).
Dare to be silly
If you want to publish a paper in economic theory, there is a safe approach: make a conceptually minor but mathematically difficult extension to some familiar model. Because the basic assumptions of the model are already familiar, people will not regard them as strange; because you have done something technically difficult, you will be respected for your demonstration of firepower. Unfortunately, you will not have added much to human knowledge.
What I found myself doing in the new trade theory was pretty much the opposite. I found myself using assumptions that were unfamiliar, and doing very simple things with them. Doing this requires a lot of self-confidence, because initially people (especially referees) are almost certain not simply to criticize your work but to ridicule it. After all, your assumptions will surely look peculiar: a continuum of goods all with identical production functions, entering symmetrically into utility? Countries of identical economic size, with mirror-image factor endowments? Why, people will ask, should they be interested in a model with such silly assumptions -- especially when there are evidently much smarter young people who demonstrate their quality by solving hard problems?
What seems terribly hard for many economists to accept is that all our models involve silly assumptions. Given what we know about cognitive psychology, utility maximization is a ludicrous concept; equilibrium pretty foolish outside of financial markets; perfect competition a howler for most industries. The reason for making these assumptions is not that they are reasonable but that they seem to help us produce models that are helpful metaphors for things that we think happen in the real world.
Consider the example which some economists seem to think is not simply a useful model but revealed divine truth: the Arrow-Debreu model of perfect competition with utility maximization and complete markets. This is indeed a wonderful model -- not because its assumptions are remotely plausible but because it helps us think more clearly about both the nature of economic efficiency and the prospects for achieving efficiency under a market system. It is actually a piece of inspired, marvellous silliness.
What I believe is that the age of creative silliness is not past. Virtue, as an economic theorist, does not consist in squeezing the last drop of blood out of assumptions that have come to seem natural because they have been used in a few hundred earlier papers. If a new set of assumptions seems to yield a valuable set of insights, then never mind if they seem strange.
Simplify, simplify
The injunction to dare to be silly is not a license to be undisciplined. In fact, doing really innovative theory requires much more intellectual discipline than working in a well-established literature. What is really hard is to stay on course: since the terrain is unfamilar, it is all too easy to find yourself going around in circles. Somewhere or other Keynes wrote that "it is astonishing what foolish things a man thinking alone can come temporarily to believe". And it is also crucial to express your ideas in a way that other people, who have not spent the last few years wrestling with your problems and are not eager to spend the next few years wrestling with your answers, can understand without too much effort.
Fortunately, there is a strategy that does double duty: it both helps you keep control of your own insights, and makes those insights accessible to others. The strategy is: always try to express your ideas in the simplest possible model. The act of stripping down to this minimalist model will force you to get to the essence of what you are trying to say (and will also make obvious to you those situations in which you actually have nothing to say). And this minimalist model will then be easy to explain to other economists as well.
I have used the "minimum necessary model" approach over and over again: using a one-factor, one-industry model to explain the basic role of monopolistic competition in trade; assuming sector-specific labor rather than full Heckscher-Ohlin factor substitution to explain the effects of intraindustry trade; working with symmetric countries to assess the role of reciprocal dumping; and so on. In each case the effect has been to allow me to tackle a subject widely viewed as formidably difficult with what appears, at first sight, to be ridiculous simplicity.
The downside of this strategy is, of course, that many of your colleagues will tend to assume that an insight that can be expressed in a cute little model must be trivial and obvious -- it takes some sophistication to realize that simplicity may be the result of years of hard thinking. I have heard the story that when Joseph Stiglitz was being considered for tenure at Yale, one of his senior colleagues belittled his work, saying that it consisted mostly of little models rather than deep theorems. Another colleague then asked, "But couldn't you say the same about Paul Samuelson"? "Yes, I could", replied Joe's opponent. I have heard the same reaction to my own work. Luckily, there are enough sophisticated economists around that in the end intellectual justice is usually served. And there is a special delight in managing not only to boldly go where no economist has gone before, but to do so in a way that seems after the fact to be almost childs' play.Kr

A Festival of Lies - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/opinion/sunday/friedman-a-festival-of-lies.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

A Festival of Lies

THE historian Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote a brutally clear-eyed piece in The National Review, looking back at America's different approaches to Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan and how, sadly, none of them could be said to have worked yet.

"Let us review the various American policy options for the Middle East over the last few decades," Hanson wrote. "Military assistance or punitive intervention without follow-up mostly failed. The verdict on far more costly nation-building is still out. Trying to help popular insurgents topple unpopular dictators does not guarantee anything better. Propping up dictators with military aid is both odious and counterproductive. Keeping clear of maniacal regimes leads to either nuclear acquisition or genocide — or 16 acres of rubble in Manhattan. What have we learned? Tribalism, oil, and Islamic fundamentalism are a bad mix that leaves Americans sick and tired of the Middle East — both when they get in it and when they try to stay out of it."

And that is why it's time to rethink everything we're doing out there. What the Middle East needs most from America today are modern schools and hard truths, and we haven't found a way to offer either. Because Hanson is right: What ails the Middle East today truly is a toxic mix of tribalism, Shiite-Sunni sectarianism, fundamentalism and oil — oil that constantly tempts us to intervene or to prop up dictators.

This cocktail erodes all the requirements of a forward-looking society — which are institutions that deliver decent government, consensual politics that provide for rotations in power, women's rights and an ethic of pluralism that protects minorities and allows for modern education. The United Nations Arab Human Development Report published in 2002 by some brave Arab social scientists also said something similar: What ails the Arab world is a deficit of freedom, a deficit of modern education and a deficit of women's empowerment.

So helping to overcome those deficits should be what U.S. policy is about, yet we seem unable to sustain that. Look at Egypt: More than half of its women and a quarter of its men can't read. The young Egyptians who drove the revolution are desperate for the educational tools and freedom to succeed in the modern world. Our response should have been to shift our aid money from military equipment to building science-and-technology high schools and community colleges across Egypt.

Yet, instead, a year later, we're in the crazy situation of paying $5 million in bail to an Egyptian junta to get U.S. democracy workers out of jail there, while likely certifying that this junta is liberalizing and merits another $1.3 billion in arms aid. We're going to give $1.3 billion more in guns to a country whose only predators are illiteracy and poverty.

In Afghanistan, I laugh out loud whenever I hear Obama administration officials explaining that we just need to train more Afghan soldiers to fight and then we can leave. Is there anything funnier? Afghan men need to be trained to fight? They defeated the British and the Soviets!

The problem is that we turned a blind eye as President Hamid Karzai stole the election and operated a corrupt regime. Then President Obama declared that our policy was to surge U.S. troops to clear out the Taliban so "good" Afghan government could come in and take our place. There is no such government. Our problem is not that Afghans don't know the way to fight. It is that not enough have the will to fight for the government they have. How many would fight for Karzai if we didn't pay them?

And so it goes. In Pakistan, we pay the Pakistani Army to be two-faced, otherwise it would be only one-faced and totally against us. In Bahrain, we looked the other way while ruling Sunni hard-liners crushed a Shiite-led movement for more power-sharing, and we silently watch our ally Israel build more settlements in the West Bank that we know are a disaster for its Jewish democracy.

But we don't tell Pakistan the truth because it has nukes. We don't tell the Saudis the truth because we're addicted to their oil. We don't tell Bahrain the truth because we need its naval base. We don't tell Egypt the truth because we're afraid it will walk from Camp David. We don't tell Israel the truth because it has votes. And we don't tell Karzai the truth because Obama is afraid John McCain will call him a wimp.

Sorry, but nothing good can be built on a soil so rich with lies on our side and so rich with sectarianism, tribalism and oil-fueled fundamentalism on their side. Don't get me wrong. I believe change is possible and am ready to invest in it. But it has got to start with them wanting it. I'll support anyone in that region who truly shares our values — and the agenda of the Arab Human Development Report — and is ready to fight for them. But I am fed up with supporting people just because they look less awful than the other guys and eventually turn out to be just as bad.

Where people don't share our values, we should insulate ourselves by reducing our dependence on oil. But we must stop wanting good government more than they do, looking the other way at bad behavior, telling ourselves that next year will be different, sticking with a bad war for fear of being called wimps and selling more tanks to people who can't read.

A Festival of Lies - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/opinion/sunday/friedman-a-festival-of-lies.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

3 tips for TED speakers (and other talkers) | Daniel Pink

http://www.danpink.com/archives/2012/03/3-tips-for-ted-speakers

3 tips for TED speakers (and other talkers)

March 22nd, 2012

Okay, so yeah. TED is amazing. It's a culture-shaping, era-defining, not entirely uncontroversial extravapalooza that has earned the mind share, eyeballs, and admiration of tens of millions of global citizens. I had a chance to do a TED Talk a few years ago. And last year, my pal Bruno Giussani, one of TED's impresarios, asked me to write up some advice for future speakers.

I stumbled across that advice the other day — and decided to repurpose it on the Pink Blog in the hopes it will help the legions of TEDx speakers and anyone else trying to move others by standing and delivering.

Here are my three key tips.

1. Prepare . . . but not too much.

These days, very few TED speakers arrive unprepared and just try to wing their presentations. That's great. Preparing is a sign of respect for your audience — and the only way to wrangle your ideas inside an18- or 9-minute fence. But lately I've seen a handful of people who were too prepared and too rehearsed. Their presentations were so heavily shellacked that they seemed inauthentic; their ideas suffocated under all that varnish. Remember: Human beings, despite their imperfections (and sometimes because of their imperfections), are far more persuasive than expertly-tuned presentation robots.

2. Say something important.

There's a big difference between saying some important things and saying something important. Your goal isn't to demonstrate how much you know or to catalog your many insights, but to leave the audience with one idea to ponder — or better, one step to take.  When people hear some important things, their heads nod. When they hear something important, their souls stir, their brains engage, and their bodies prepare to act.

3. Say it like yourself.

Don't mimic someone else's style or conform to what you think is a particular "TED way" of presenting. That's boring, banal, and backward. Don't try to be the next Ken Robinson or the next Jill Bolte Taylor. Be the first you.

Connectome: A New Way To Think About What Makes You You | Brain Pickings

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/22/connectome-sebastian-seung/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+brainpickings%2Frss+%28Brain+Pickings%29

Connectome: A New Way To Think About What Makes You You

22 MARCH, 2012 by Maria Popova

"You are more than your genes. You are your connectome."

The nature vs. nurture debate pitted the hard and social sciences against each other for decades, if not centuries, stirred by a central concern with consciousness, what it means to be human, what makes a person, and, perhaps most interestingly to us egocentric beings, what constitutes character and personality. In Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, MIT Professor of Computational Neuroscience Sebastian Seung proposes a new model for understanding the totality of selfhood, one based the emerging science of connectomics — a kind of neuroscience of the future that seeks to map and understand the brain much like genomics has mapped the genome.

A "connectome" denotes the sum total of connections between the neurons in a nervous system and, like "genome," implies completeness. It's a complex fingerprint of identity, revealing the differences between brains and, inversely, the specificity of our own uniqueness. Seung proposes a simple theory: We are different because our connectomes differ from one another. With that lens, he argues, any kind of personality change — from educating yourself to developing better habits — is a matter of rewiring your connectome.

That capacity is precisely what makes the connectome intriguing and infinitely promising — unlike the genome, which is fixed from the moment of conception, the connetome changes throughout life. Seung explains:

Neuroscientists have already identified the basic kinds of change. NEurons adjust, or "reweight," their connections by strengthening or weakening them. Neurons reconnect by creating and eliminating synapses, and they rewire by growing and retracting branches. Finally, entirely new neurons are created and existing ones eliminated through regeneration.

We don't know exactly how life events — your parents' divorce, your fabulous year abroad — change your connectome. But there is good evidence that all four R's — reweighting, reconnection, rewiring, and regeneration — are affected by your experiences. At the same time, the four R's are also guided by genes. Minds are indeed influenced by genes, especially when the brain is 'wiring' itself up during infancy and childhood.*

[…]

The connectome theory of mental differences is compatible with the genetic theory, but it is far richer and more complex because it includes the effects of living in the world. The connectome theory is also less deterministic. There is reason to believe that we shape our own connectomes by the actions we take, even by the things we think. Brain wiring may make us who we are, but we play an important role in wiring up our brains."

Harnessing the power of those four R's, Seung believes, is the most important goal of neuroscience — but, given your connectome is 100 billion times larger than your genome and has a million times more connections than your genome has letters, it's a daunting task. Still, new technologies and new directions of scientific curiosity are bringing us closer to understanding this microcosm of meticulously structured chaos.

Map of the C. elegans nervous system, or 'connectome,' borrowing from the language of genomics

DNA is a long chain-like molecule composed of nucleotides connoted by the letters A, C, G, and T, and your genome is the entire sequence of nucleotides in your DNA. Similarly, your connectome is the totality of connections between the neurons in your nervous system.

At the heart of Seung's vision is a new way of thinking about human personality, a fascinating and controversial subject we've previously explored. He proposes an apt metaphor, underpinning which is a desire not only to find and understand our connectomes, but also to develop methods for changing and optimizing them:

In the nineteenth century, the American psychologist William James wrote eloquently of the stream of consciousness, the continuous flow of thoughts through the mind. But James failed to note that every stream has a bed. Without this groove in the earth, the water would not know in which direction of the flow. Since the connectome defines the pathways along which neural activity can flow, we might regard it as the streambed of consciousness.

The metaphor is a powerful one. Over a long period of time, in the same way that the water of the stream slowly shapes the bed, neural activity changes the connectome. The two notions of the self — as both the fast-moving, ever-changing stream, and the more stable but slowly transforming streambed** — are thus inextricably linked. This book is about the self as the streambed, the self in the connectome — the self that has been neglected for too long."

In elaborating on this dichotomy of the self, Seung echoes Daniel Kahneman's notion of the experiencing self vs. the remembering self:

One self changes rapidly from moment to moment, becoming angry and then cheering up, thinking about the meaning of life and then the household chores, watching the leaves fall outside and then the football game on television. This self is the one intertwined with consciousness. Its protean nature derives from the rapidly changing patterns of neural activity in the brain.

The other self is much more stable. It retains memories from childhood over an entire lifetime. Its nature — what we think of as personality — is largely constant, a fact that comforts family and friends. The properties of this self are expressed while you are conscious, but they continue to exist during unconscious states like sleep. This self, like the connectome, changes only slowly over time. This is the self invoked by the idea that you are your connectome."

Sample Seung's insights with his 2010 TEDGlobal talk:

Scientific American has an excellent Q&A with Seung about Connectome.

* For more on this fascinating early wiring, especially as it applies to our emotional lives, see the excellent A General Theory of Love.

** For a different metaphor articulating an analogous concept, see Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis, where he describes the self as the interplay between the conscious "rider" and the unconscious "elephant" he struggles to command.

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How to Quickly Overcome Inexperience « Leadership Freak

http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/how-to-quickly-overcome-inexperience/

How to Quickly Overcome Inexperience

10 dangers of inexperienced leaders:

1. Needing to be liked.
2. Blaming.
3. Emotional decisions.
4. Impulsiveness.
5. Trying too hard.
6. Neglecting the long term.
7. Focusing on symptoms rather than causes.
8. Aiming without pulling the trigger.
9. Meddling.
10. Forget to say thank you. (Speaking of thanks, many of these points were inspired by contributors on the Leadership Freak Facebook Page. Thank you!)

10 questions every inexperienced leader must keep asking:

1. What type of world are my behaviors building around me?
2. How many questions did I ask today?
3. What am I learning?
4. Am I acting or reacting?
5. When was the last time I spent an hour in self-reflection?
6. What's the most fun?
7. Am I soliciting input from experienced leaders and staff?
8. Do I welcome ideas from everyone?
9. How are we leveraging everyone's strengths?
10. Who do I feel threatened by? Why?

12 powerful suggestions for inexperienced leaders:

1. You matter in ways you can't imagine. Watch your tone, body language, and attitude, everyone else is.
2. Be optimistic about the future and realistic about the present. Optimism frustrates others if you don't acknowledge present realities and problems, first.
3. Challenges aren't your biggest opportunity, people are.
4. Be tender when you're being tough.
5. Remove manipulators and backstabbers. They may quickly deliver results but everyone around them slows down.
6. Courageously ask dumb questions. (From the Chief Security Officer of Microsoft)
7. Protect your team from political fallout and organizational interference.
8. Believe your perspective matters. Listen to yourself as well as others.
9. Avoid extreme reactions.
10. Recruit mentors, advisors, and, coaches. Get support.
11. Take responsibility.
12. Make the best interests of your organization and others your priority, always.

Bonus: Stick with it. The reason it's called experience is it takes time.

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What can you add to these lists?

What can you modify or amplify?

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Tags: Growth, Leadership, Leadership Development, Organizational Development

This entry was posted on March 22, 2012 at 7:56 am and is filed under Fear, Humility, Influence, Insecurity, Leading, Listening, Marks of leaders, Optimism, Personal Growth, Strengths, Taking others higher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.