Potential catalyst causing people to leave the military

Testimony to Congress by the US Army's Chief of Staff seemed pretty contentious: “Candidly, failure to pass a budget, in my view both as an American citizen and chief of staff of the United States Army, constitutes professional malpractice. I don't think we should accept it as the new normal. I think we should pass it and pass the supplemental with it. And get on with it.”

Points:

• ”…by early summer training will stop across much of the military”
• “Routine maintenance of equipment will be halted, and thousands of military families will see transfer orders put on hold.”

Counterpoint by Representative Adam Smith (D-WA): “can't agree ‘that we can somehow pull defense out of the entire rest of the federal government … as if all the other money we spend on government doesn't matter.’”

The power of calling

The threat at home

For US workers, does Amazon really pose a threat to their livelihoods? One columnist had a grim projection: "Amazon is going to destroy more American jobs than China ever did."

Points:

• Lower prices
• Convenience
• Efficiency
• Automation

Retail workers (12 million strong overall; 6.2 million strong in general retail) and warehousing/delivery workers (2 million strong) are the part of the workforce the writer focused on. If they are indeed displaced, many will not be able to work for online retailers because that's a much more efficient sector.

What to do?

One approach might be to take a heightened skills mindset.

• Try thinking beyond the job at hand and start to think of the job as part of the system comprised of different functions. 
• Think about the skills you indeed to integrate the different parts of the system (business functions in your organization like operations, HR, technology, and marketing, for example) to achieve a common goal.
• If you can demonstrate that you can reach across silos to accomplish the mission, you may find yourself highly valued member of your organization.

Wellness during the workday

I came across an article that listed eight ways to integrate wellness activities during the workday. Number four doesn't have to be expensive. We've been buying elevating surfaces for our employees that sit on top of the desks and elevate the computers.

Community development in Alabama

Rural communities have a chance.  This profile of the mayor of Thomasville, Alabama points out some things that are helping this rural community thrive.

Context: "Census data shows Thomasville with 4,209 residents and a low family poverty rate of 13 percent compared with 25 percent for the whole of Clarke County and 19 percent for Alabama."

Points:

• "…broad cooperative spirit."
• "…focus on developing the local workforce."
• "…copying Tupelo’s health-care model."

This isn't an overnight success. Notice in the article he has been mayor for 20 years. Great things come over time.

Some wishes for Kindle books

I love reading Kindle books but wish it would support these things:

• An app for book signings. A strength of print books is the ability to get the author's autograph, turning the book into a keepsake. How can Kindle readers, for example, be used at book signings to attract people to meet the author?
• Marginalia. Notes and highlights are powerful, but it would be nice to be able to do marginalia as well. I use OneNote for marginalia, but I'm sure readers would want to have the marginalia in the book itself.
• Highlight continuation automatically. My Paperwhite flips to the next page to let me continue a highlight. The PC and Cloud readers don't. I have to fiddle with font size to get the section I want highlighted on the same page.
• View multiple pages. My particular quirk is I like to stretch a word processing document across a wide monitor so I can view 4 or more pages at a time. I feel like it makes it easier to jump back and forth between pages to follow a narrative or argument. I find it very useful when I'm grading papers. I'd love for my ebook reader to do the same because I like to be able to quickly jump back to a previous page to refresh my memory or jump forward to pick up on the book's organization. 

OneNote has been a great productivity tool, but...

I thoroughly enjoy OneNote for personal productivity. It's amazingly powerful. For example, if you paste the URL of a YouTube video to a OneNote page, it will automatically insert the video on that page so you can watch it on that page.

However, one feature I'd like to see on OneNote is the ability to assign a page to multiple sections at the same time and, when I update that page, its copy is updated in all those sections. Someone might say I can tag the page, but tagging in OneNote seems more suited to specific items within a page so you don't lose track of them.