The FDA has issued a warning letter to food companies about the importance of accurate nutrition labeling and reprimanded their false or misleading claims.
I’ve shared before how technology, media and politics can be (and often are) hijacked by the passionate extremes. In a recent article, Tyler Cowen argues that the “median voter theorem” posits that politicians can’t ultimately stray too far from the mainstream where citizens live.
We’d do well to listen to former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker on the structural reforms the U.S. economy and financial sector need. I only hope politicians will rise above special interests and do what the nation needs to build a solid future.
Michelle Obama is poised to highlight the need for society to tackle and overcome the childhood obesity epidemic. Many forces are arrayed at her, including socio-cultural, as well as economic. She will need all the help she can get.
The following article lists a lot of ideas for how to fight childhood obesity. But one of the most effective ways is for responsible food companies to craft and market truly healthful products that taste good and are good for you, and that are attractive to kids. It is not easy. But it can be done.
To those who wonder if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will ever end and who think it is truly “intractable”, I thought I’d share a note from my colleague John Lyndon, Executive Director of OneVoice Europe:
I know that this is off-topic, but just thought I’d draw people’s attention to a not-entirely-unrelated news story: The ‘final piece in the jigsaw’ was put into place in Belfast, Ireland last night, with the finalising of twenty year long process of negotiations, for a seven hundred year long conflict. The DUP and Sinn Féin (the two most extremist political parties in modern Irish history) have agreed the last details of a power sharing agreement.
Strong, patriotic and at one time violent leaders of both communities sat down and thrashed out a deal that looks like putting to bed most of the grievances that resulted in decades of violence and thousands of deaths. Conflicts do end, the wishes of the moderate majority bear fruit, and extremists eventually come into the political mainstream.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
-Harriet Green
CEO, Premier Farnell (and member of the OneVoice/PeaceWorks Foundation Board of Directors)
In a remarkable sermon, Syria’s highest Sunni religious authority spoke courageously and powerfully about religions requiring humanity and respect, including these statements:
“If the Prophet Mohammed had asked me to deem Christians or Jews heretics, I would have deemed Mohammed himself a heretic."
Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun also “said Islam was a religion of peace, adding: ‘If Mohammed had commanded us to kill people, I would have told him he was not a prophet.’”
If you can imagine it, you can create it.
If you can dream it, you can become it.
–William Arthur Ward
Leadership is the process of bringing a new and generally unwelcome reality to an individual, organization or setting, and helping them successfully adapt to it.
-Rony Heifetz (as quoted in a Harvard Kennedy School study (by Dutch Leonard) on Leadership in High Uncertainty Environments, as part of Young Global Leaders executive program.
Other interesting insights from that course with important applications for movements like OneVoice as well as to fast-growing companies like KIND:
When you are holding a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
Cognitive Biases to watch against: giving too much weight to personal experience/illusion of experience; overconfidence of influence/power, or ability to predict future, and of ability to control future; ignoring disconfirming evidence; inability to perceive radical change; escalation of commitment in the face of "evidence"; tendency to turn issues into personal convictions;
I was really touched by Maureen Dowd’s eulogy column about Abe Pollin.
He follows the tradition of frugal leaders like David Ben-Gurion, and characters from Isaac Bashevis-Singer’s shtetl stories, whose Judaism was about helping those in need.