Faith & Prosperity Nexus Blog
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Are Simple Ideas the Best Ones?
I think sometimes they are! Check out this really cool video about how places that do not yet have electricity are using a simple solution of water and bleach to illuminate their homes and work places. Some ideas for common problems in developing countries are as simple as could be and just need to be communicated in order to catch on. An extremely simple method for disinfecting water is using solar rays – it’s called SODIS. Filling a plastic PET bottle with water and leaving it in direct sunlight for several hours will remove most pathogens and bacteria that cause the deaths of millions of people each year from water-borne diseases.
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Leading Through Virtue
I just finished reading Alexandre Havard’s book, Virtuous Leadership: An Agenda for Personal Excellence. Havard’s main point in writing the book is that leadership is character: There are talents and qualities and resources leaders can use to advantage, but none of them constitutes the essence of leadership. Leadership is about character. No, leadership is character. Character, according to Havard, is composed of the set of classical human virtues, and it is these that he uses to sketch out his theory of effective leadership. His chapters deal with magnanimity and humility – two virtues that I think are rarely understood. Havard does a fantastic job of not only explaining what these virtues are, but also showing how they are not mutually exclusive, as many people with a limited understanding might imagine. He then goes on to discuss the four cardinal virtues – prudence, courage, temperance, and justice, again expertly leading the reader to a deeper understanding of the virtue in question and its connection to effective leadership. Next, he discusses how virtue is built. You are not born with virtue, you grow into a virtuous person by habitually living out the virtues. This leads Havard to oppose the oft-quoted maxim that… Read more
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Do You Have a Time-Saving Idea?
We’ve blogged on the site IdeasWatch before, where people can list their ideas and vote on their favorite ideas. They recently published a report on the most popular ideas of the first part of this year, and there seemed to be a common thread running throughout all of the top ideas – saving time. If someone had an idea that was able to save a few minutes here or a few minutes there, it received many more votes. Most of us feel as though we often need more than 24 hours in a day, so this really should come as no surprise. And this provides us with a little insight when coming up with our own ideas – they probably will go a little farther if we’re able to save people some time. Check out the whole report!