It’s been a big couple of weeks for women in the military.

Last week, female soldiers began formally moving into jobs in previously all-male battalions, a program that will later go Army-wide. The move is a result of rule changes following a February report that opened some 14,000 new positions to women in critical jobs much closer to the front lines. However, some 250,000 combat jobs still remain officially closed to them.

I have spent the last couple of days reading commencement speeches, and I’ve come away inspired, laughing and, most of all, a little bored. Yes, there was the remarkable story Sanjay Gupta told at the University of Michigan’s commencement about how his mother met his father when, after having car trouble, she called one of the first Indian names in the phone book. And I listened to Ira Glass, host of the National Public Radio show “This American Life,” telling stories about losing his virginity at one of Goucher College’s dorms and his grandmother meeting Adolph Hitler.

Author: Kevin Sheridan

Publisher: Career Press, 2012

ISBN-13: 9781601631855, 224 pages

The good news? Companies are getting more flexible in how employees spend their hours. From 2005 to 2012, the percentage of companies that allowed at least some employees to periodically change starting and quitting times grew from 68 percent to 77 percent. Also encouraging: The percentage of employers allowing at least some staffers to work at home on an occasional basis grew from 34 percent to 63 percent over the same period.

“A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”

So goes the famous line from “The Social Network,” when Napster founder Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) begins to educate a young Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook’s potential. And by that measure, at least, Zuckerberg is about to be very, very cool. The Facebook CEO’s stake in the company is expected to be worth some $20.2 billion on paper, according to estimates by the Wall Street Journal, if the stock’s IPO value ends up at the high end of the expected range. That’s not just Internet start-up rich. That’s George Soros rich.

There are barely disguised smirks emanating from the canyons of Wall Street and the business press over the fact that Jamie Dimon has had to admit a mistake — and a whale of one, for that matter.

Well, sort of. Ron Paul being Ron Paul, his announcement Monday was not your typical campaign suspension. Rather, Paul said he would no longer be spending money on upcoming GOP primaries but still plans to continue seeking delegates at state-level party conventions. As he wrote in a message to supporters, Paul will “continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future.”

The news Sunday that Scott Thompson would be resigning as CEO of Yahoo is unlikely to stun anyone who has followed the “Resumegate” that has embroiled the Internet company in recent days. (The reports in the Wall Street Journal Monday that Thompson received a diagnosis of thyroid cancer, however, is surprising and sad, to say the least.) It was hard to see how he would stay in his job — from the moment activist investor Daniel Loeb revealed, and Yahoo confirmed, that Thompson did not have the computer science degree that previous bios had stated, up until the time executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles issued a stinging response to the reported claim  by Thompson that a junior recruiter had added it to his resume.

We’re trying something new here at On Leadership: We’re keeping our eyes open for interesting data points from newly published research around the Web that are worth sharing with leadership readers.

And these numbers from the Economic Policy Institute definitely caught our attention:

So President Obama has said he is in favor of same-sex marriage. The announcement may be, as the RNC is saying, evidence that the president is playing politics. Or, it may have been a historic moment that simply couldn’t wait. It could also be political suicide.

The chatter surrounding Facebook’s roadshow this week has reached a fever, er, pitch, right down to what CEO Mark Zuckerberg was wearing. Though he was absent on the second day of the company’s pitches to investors in advance of the company’s pending IPO, Zuckerberg was criticized on Tuesday for wearing a hoodie to meet with Wall Street bankers. “He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much; he’s going to be him,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who issued the first “buy” rating on Facebook, told Bloomberg. “I think that’s a mark of immaturity.”

The defeat of Richard Lugar in Indiana’s primary Tuesday is not just a defeat for moderation in the Republican party. It’s also a loss for that quality we at one time liked in our leaders — hard-earned expertise; and for that skill we all believe we need more of — leadership.

Somewhere, Carol Bartz must think this is rich. Less than a year after she was famously fired over the phone by the struggling Internet company Yahoo, the academic credentials of her successor are now being called into question by an activist investor. Yahoo acknowledged Friday that the CEO it hired in January, Scott Thompson, does not have a computer science degree after all, even though that information was included in an SEC filing and in several public bios about him. And on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the board member in charge of the company’s CEO search would not be standing for re-election.

François Hollande’s win in France — combined with the fractured Greek government following Sunday’s elections — sent jitters through global markets Monday morning as the world came to terms with voters’ anger over austerity measures. In France, the Socialist Hollande has promised to put more of the burden for fixing the country’s economic problems onto the wealthy and to soften planned austerity measures.