Weekly Reading: Treating People Well, Happiness, Lent, Cleaning up Cereal, Partition and Confrontational, Loud Israelis

Playing a little catch up on my weekly readings.

A New Business Strategy: Treating Employees Well
Who would have thought right?  Great article on B-corporations and King Arthur flour in particular.

http://worldhappiness.report/
Yes, happiness is a difficult thing to quantify but this report is a great start.  Figuring out a country or a person's concept of happiness is one of the single most important thing you can do if you are a diplomat/foreign area officer working in a foreign country.

Ash Dykes Madagascar Journey
The man who traversed Madagascar on foot...and who wrote, filmed and blogged about it.

The baffling reason many millennials don’t eat cereal
Perfectly sums them up.  They don't cereal because they don't like to clean it up...seriously...they don't like to clean up the bowl...of empty cereal.

If my church does not practice Lent, should I?
Great post by an old friend from our church in DC.

Navy Medal of Honor Awardee Inducted into Pentagon's Hall of Heroes
Great video.

Goldwater Nichols 2.0
Mandatory reading for Foreign Area officers.  Great CSIS breakdown on the 2016 SASC hearings on defense reform and interagency changes.

It’s Time to Seriously Consider Partitioning Syria
Stavridis opines on partition.  Here's my own argument for partition, in general.

A helpful graphic that compares how EMOTIONALLY EXPRESSIVE and how CONFRONTATIONAL people of various cultural backgrounds generally are.

Weekly Reading: Decaying Dams, African Air Travel, CREAM, Happiness, Nirvana and the Rangers, and Work-Life Balance

One of Africa's Biggest Dams is Falling Apart
Fresh water stands to increasingly become the world's most valuable commodity.  It's easy to cluck one's tongue at the inability of third-world african nations to maintain their infrastructure but as the article points out, dams are notoriously difficult and expensive to maintain (the US itself has done a horrible job with its own dam infrastructure).  

What English Speaks Don't Get About the Meaning of Happiness
Understanding different cultural conceptions of what 'happiness' means is a powerful too for every FAO or foreign affairs professional.  One must constantly keep in mind that the American idea of happiness is VERY different from other nation's ideas of happiness.  This article unpacks these ideas as well as just baseline differences in what the word 'happy' means in different languages.

Malagasy Navy participates in CUTLASS EXPRESS 2016
Madagascar sends its first ship abroad since 1978.  Good article on the strides being made by the Navy here.

2015 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report

Turns out UPENN puts out a very thorough think tank ranking . You can download the 16MB report here.

Malagasy Think Tank: CREAM

Evidently Madagascar has a think tank.  And evidently it's a good one (top 60 in Africa) according to UPENN's recent report.  Best of all, the think tank shares it's name with the WU-TANG hit 'Cash Rules Everything Around Me' which I wrote about recently here.

African Air Travel: Why Are Airlines In Africa So Expensive, Unsafe And Impossible To Navigate

It is difficult to describe the dysfunction and dilapidation of some third-world airlines.  There are things, circumstances, smells and sights that you could never have imagined.  My quarterly flight to Comoros is always an exercise in restraint and self-meditation.  The sights and smells aboard said flight inspired me to pen a poem last year, entitled Ode to VapoRub.

Global Incident Map  
Cool little open source map that collates reports across a variety of issues.  Also pretty scary--go to their 'non-terror aviation incidents'.

What Ivy League students are reading that you aren’t
So many snarky fill-in-the-blank answers one could respond with here...but altogether an interesting look article--particularly for my fellow english majors.

The Rock ’n’ Roll Casualty Who Became a War Hero
The unlikely story of former Nirvana and Soundgarden guitarist Jason Everman's salvation that came by dropping his guitar and picking up an M4...kind of.  This is a throwback article from about three years ago that I came across again a few weeks back.  Mandatory reading for an punk-rocker or head stomper.

Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, or Friends: Pick 3
Such a great article.  These five things have to be things that every I suggest pairing this article with a great one from QZ.com that came out last year: How successful people work less—and get more done--the basic gist of is that productivity falls considerably when the workweek exceeds 50 hours.

Weekly Reading: the Fugees, ISIS, Happiness and the Death of a Diplomatic Legend

Killing the Islamic State Softly Military power will win battles in Syria and Iraq, but only soft power can win the war
The prolific Stavridis makes his argument for soft power against ISIS--bottom line--it won't be cheap.

What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness
A decent (albeit long-winded) TED-ish speech on an INCREDIBLE and fascinating 75 year study on happiness.  Short answer: the most valuable thing you can do is invest in close relationships with family and friends.  Loneliness kills...literally.

YOUR HOLIDAY READING LIST: 58 BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY TED SPEAKERS
It's a good and interesting list to consider.

The Arts and the Military
Great deep thoughts from a Naval Academy classmate on civil-military relations.  He's got a great website/blog that he writes at--check it out.

What Would Cool Jesus Do? Inside Hillsong Church NYC
I never expect GQ to be so even-handed in an article about a Protestant movement/church but the author was--a fascinating look into the leadership of the Hillsong church..and Justin Bieber.

The 20 Habits of Eventual Millionaires
Really this is just a depressing article...10 ideas a day?  Who has time for that?  Who even has 10 ideas a month or a year?  ...I guess millionaires?

Call to battle’: Catholic bishop challenges men to be ‘men’ in awesome new video
Great call for men to be leaders in loving their families.

The CNO Puts it to Paper
The Navy's top admiral makes his pitch for the United States to maintain maritime superiority.  It's a quick read worthy of some thought.

The U.S. diplomatic corps loses a legend just when it needs him the most
A fitting requiem for diplomatic great Ambassador Bosworth.  A worthwhile read and summary of his myriad accomplishments.