We are living faster, but are we living better?

A. It is believed that being fast becomes more of a curse than a blessing. Youd expect that if you manage to achieve more with less, you wouldnt need to work so hard. But its a vicious lifestyle. Were impatient. We lose focus. We forget what is important. Productivity has increased exponentially in the past century. However, working time has also increased. Paradoxically, isnt it? We achieve more, want more, create more, then we need to work more. Its never ending. That is how we evolve. It is the law of the jungle. But we are getting faster than we were designed to be. B. In his book Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, American journalist James Gleick says that people who live in cities are suffering from hurry sickness we are always trying to do more things in less time. As a result, our lives are more stressful. We may be living
great lives but we arent there for them. We dont take the time t o linger over food, over friends, over our family etc. We are not savoring our life and are starving of the real connection. He says that

if we don't slow down, we won't live as long as our parents. For most people, faster doesn't mean better. C. No time for the news. Newspaper articles today are shorter and the headlines are bigger. Most people don't have enough time to read the articles, they only read the headlines. No time for stories. In the USA there is a book called One-Minute Bedtime Stories for children. These are shorter versions of traditional stories, specially written for busy parents' who want to save time. No time to listen. Some answering machines now have 'quick playback' buttons so that we can re-play people's messages faster-we can't waste time listening to people speaking at normal speed. No time to relax. Even when we relax we do everything more quickly.10 years ago when people went to art galleries they spent ten seconds looking at each picture. Today they spend just 3 seconds. No time for slow sports. In the USA the national sport, baseball is not as popular as before because it is a slow game and matches take a long time. Nowadays, many people prefer faster and more dynamic sports like basketball. The only thing that is slower than before is the way we drive. Our cars are faster but the traffic is worse so we drive more slowly. We spend more time sitting in our cars, feeling stressed because we are worried that we won't arrive on time. D. On the other hand, some people in the world have started to break the cycle. Many of the professionals and regular people, alike are feeling their lives are overly hectic or emotionally out of kilter, and are looking for ways to restore the balance. They are looking to leading a mindful life. Its called the SLOW Movement or Downshifting or Anti-consumerism. They have realized that actually, by slowing down, were focusing better, were creating value and we are living better. E. The benefits for slowing down our existence are that youll have more time to notice the details, and make fewer mistakes in your work. People who operate slower are the ones who tend to notice details. In a team, the slow thinker is the one whos going to question reasons, backup options, bells and whistles, and ultimately might help you do less work altogether. In addition, youll take the time to connect with people who might not matter to you at that particular moment, but who will make an impact later on in your life. You will build better

relationships. Furthermore, youll be happier, because youll take the time to laugh and take things less seriously. Slowing down actually starts with the mindset that the near future doesnt matter that much, the long term does, so put things in perspective. Youll forget less, because there will be less things on your to do list. By slowing down, you will not have time to do everything, and you will need to decide what truly matters and to those things, you will devote your best time. F. The solution is self-explanatory. We slow down and connect with our life. But often it is easier said than done. Each fast aspect of our life is necessary for other fast aspects to happen, and we have been fooled into thinking we need, or even must, be fast and have what the fast life gives us. To be simplistic, the solution is to pay attention, on purpose, in a systematic way, in the present moment. That is, we need to be mindful. We can develop a wise relationship with our sensory experience through mindful meditation. Mindful living is a way of life that urges people to find calm by connecting with the present moment. When we practice mindfulness in our everyday life we are less caught up in and at the mercy of our destructive emotions, and we are then predisposed to greater emotional intelligence and balance and therefore to greater happiness. Only then can we say that we are living better.

A.

What do you get for slowing down?

Here are some benefits for slowing down your existence: 1. Youll have more time to notice the details, and make less mistakes in your work. Im a very proficient multitasker, and I think this is one of my biggest flaws. People who operate slower freak me out Im losing patience very quickly and have the feeling Im out of tune with the ones who operate slower. But guess what? these are the ones who tend to notice details. In a team, the slow thinker is the one whos going to question reasons, backup options, bells and whistles, and ultimately might help you do less work altogether. 2. Youll take the time to connect with people who might not matter to you at that particu lar moment, but who will make an impact later on in your life. Do you start your conversations with Hi Bob. Ive got something to ask. Yeah, Im fine. Heres the deal:. Maybe Bob has some important project or idea going on, that you never took the time to find out. I was amazed at how many opportunities started piling up when I just took the time to ask people about themselves. But building relationships is going to help more than just in business. 3. You will build better relationships. When I call my mother from work, I surprise myself checking email during the call, and becoming less responsive. On

the other hand, really hearing her out, asking questions and being supportive yes, even in a 5 minutes call makes a difference in our relationship. 4. Youll eat slower, and will have a better digestion. Slow Food refers to more than just chewing properly and paying attention to how you eat. Its about creating a proper setting, eating healthy food and even making the food yourself. Now, if you spend one hour cooking something, youre not going to shove it down your throat in five minutes, are you? 5. Youll be happier, because youll take the time to laugh and take things less seriously. So youre 5 minutes late. So what? Taking yourself too seriously might do you more damage than good. If you make a mountain out of a molehill every time you miss a deadline or run a bit late, youre never going to slow down. Slowing down actually starts with the mindset that the near future doesnt matter that much. The l ong term does. Put things in perspective.

6. Youll forget less, because there will be less things on your to do list . By slowing down, you will not have time to do everything, and you will need to decide what truly matters. And to those things, you will devote your best time. 7. Youll have less heart and blood pressure problems, and less headaches . Its been scientifically proven that fast reactions are powered by adrenaline. The rush that we get when were stressed is a chemical reaction fueled by the instinct fight or run. But this drains the organism. Keeping it permanently on fast forward is going to make it rust faster. Cells will react. The immune system will become less responsive, and you will get sick much easier. Blood pressure will increase. And, yes, ironically enough, you might be on a faster way to your death. Slowing down, here, really becomes a better option. 8. Youll enjoy your own company more, because youll not feel compelled to DO something every free minute of the day. Youll be free to simplydo nothing. My theory is that the compulsion to do things fast comes from a perfectionist attitude and a need to please. I want to please everyone and be perfect, so I try to do everything. I dont have time to do everything, but I cant let people down, so I do things faster, even if it damages myself. If I have some free time, theres always a task for something or someone. Being alone with myself makes me feel guilty that Im wasting time. Many of us, professionals and regular people, alike are feeling their lives are overly hectic or emotionally out of kilter, and are looking for ways to restore the balance. We are looking to leading a mindful life. Living a mindful life seems more difficult now than it was in the past. The fast life is all around us fast food, fast cars, fast conversations, fast families, fast holidays. We may be living great lives but we arent there for them. We dont take the time to linger over food, over friends, over our family etc. We are not savouring our life and are starving of the real connection to our life. If we dont listen to our bodies and to that little voice in our head that is telling us to slow down we may succumb to the myriad of health conditions that are a result of leading fast, stressful lives. The biological costs of ignoring stress are staggering, manifesting in cardiovascular and other systemic diseases and even, new research shows, in accelerated aging. The psychological costs are equally

large with anxiety, depression, eating disorders and other emotional illnesses associated with unmanaged stress. To be simplistic, the solution is to pay attention, on purpose, in a systematic way, in the present moment. That is, we need to be mindful. This is the answer. We can develop a wise relationship with our sensory experience through mindful meditation. Mindful living is a way of life that urges people to find calm by connecting with the present moment. Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has spent much of his professional life bringing the medical worlds attention to the wisdom of the body and the healing that can happen when we get in touch with our senses and our mind. He has been a proponent of mindfulness a Buddhist concept that can be best described as awareness. Awareness of everything, awareness of our senses, our body, our mind. Jon believes in using that awareness to learn to open up new dimensions of well-being and integrity, of wisdom and compassion and kindness in ourself. He says: Mindfulness is a certain way of paying attention that is healing, that is restorative, that is reminding you of who you actually are so that you dont wind up getting entrained into being a human doing rather than a human being. When we practice mindfulness in our everyday life we are less caught up in and at the mercy of our destructive emotions, and we are then predisposed to greater emotional intelligence and balance and therefore to greater happiness because living mindfully gives us more satisfaction in our job, in our family and in our life in general.

Jack the Ripper Case closed

Its incredible that people today are still fascinated by the identity of Jack the Ripper, more than a hundred years after the crimes were committed. But its not really surprising since people are always interested in unsolved murders- and Jack the Ripper has become a sort of cult horror figure. The unsolved murders have spawned innumerable theories over the identity of the 'real' Jack the Ripper. He was never caught, and for more than a century of historians, writers, policemen, and detectives have tried to discover and prove his identity. Hundreds of articles and books have been written and many movies made about the murder. There have been plenty of theories and suspects with candidates including artist Walter Sickert, Alice In Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, the Liverpool cotton merchant named James Maybrick and even Queen Victoria's grandson the Duke of Clarence. In the fall of 1888, a brutal murderer walked the dark, foggy streets of London, terrorizing the inhabitants of the city. The victims were all women, and the police seemed powerless to stop the murders. Panic and fear among the Londoners was increased by a letter sent by the murderer to Scotland Yard. In the letter, he made fun of the police attempts to catch him and promised to kill again. It finished, Yours truly, Jack the Ripper. This was the first of many letters sent to the police. The murders continued seven in total. But in November, they suddenly stopped, three months after they had first begun. Several years ago the American Crime writer Patrica Cornwell left aside her fictional detective, Kay Scarpetta, and tried to solve this real-life murder mystery. After spending considerable time and money on her investigation, and analyzing DNA samples, Cornwell thinks she has proved who Jack the Ripper really was. In her book Portrait

of a Killer: Jack the Ripper

Case Closed, she is convinced that Walter Sickert, the painter was the murderer. She mainly
used DNA analysis by buying a painting by Sickert at great expense and cut it up to get the DNA from it. People in the art world were furious. She then compared the DNA from the painting with the DNA taken from the letters that Jack the Ripper sent to the police. Patricia Cornwell claims that she is 99% certain that the artist was Jack the Ripper.

Although, Inspector Morton, a retired detective for the Scotland Yard believe that

Patrica Cornwell scientific evidence is not completely reliable and there was a lot of evidence which says that Sickert was in France not London when some of the women were killed. He also mentioned that he didnt believe James Maybrick is the murderer even though there was a diary found where he admits to being Jack the Ripper since nobody has been able to prove the diary is genuine. Furthermore, Prince Albert being the murderer is a ridiculous theory. He cant seriously believe that a member of the royal family could be a serial killer and that in any case, the queens grandson was in Scotland when at least two of the murders where committed.

But now historian Dr Andrew Cook claims to have blown all these theories out of the water by dismissing the notion of a brutal, murderous spree by one 'serial killer' altogether. He has uncovered the identity of the "Dear Boss" letter writer. In his 2009 book Jack the Ripper: Case Closed Dr. Cook says the letter was written by Frederick Best a reporter for The Star newspaper. He says the reason Jack was never caught was because he never existed; he was an invention of Londons newspapers to boost circulation. Dr. Cook found the transcript of an interview given by Percy Clark an assistant police surgeon at the time of the murders. In the interview given 18 years after the events of 1888 Clark said I think perhaps one man was responsible for three of them. I would not like to say he did the others. Dr Cook shows that the newly-launched Star newspaper was the first to claim that one man was behind three of the 1888 killings. Even though most experts today agree that two of these - Emma Smith and Martha Tabram - were not carried out by the same man, the Star's prurient accounts of the on-going murders massively boosted its circulation. The Star only unveiled the notorious letter from 'Jack the Ripper' in the midst of a drastic fall in sales after the exoneration of a bootmaker it had identified as a key suspect. Handwriting expert Elaine Quigley, recruited by Dr Cook to examine the letter, has identified it as the work of Star journalist Frederick Best. But the public was convinced, Dr Cook says - and the concept of a lone rogue killer on the loose in the East End backstreets may have helped the real culprits literally get away with murder.

In his book Jack The Ripper: Case Closed, he argues that the famous letter bragging about the killings - signed 'Jack the Ripper' in the firstever use of that name - was actually forged by journalists desperate to sell their newspaper. Dr Cook says streetwalkers Mary Nichols, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Kelly, Elizabeth Stride and Annie Chapman were killed by different men,

as were the six other Whitechapel victims often added to the Ripper's toll. He takes his evidence from police and medical experts at the time who expressed doubts about the single killer theory even as it began to take hold on the public imagination. The senior Whitechapel policeman at the time of the killings admitted in his retirement speech that he did not believe Mary Kelly was killed by 'Jack the Ripper', Dr Cook points out. The assistant police surgeon who examined all five victims, Percy Clark, told the East London Observer in 1910: 'I think perhaps one man was responsible for three of them. I would not like to say he did the others.' However, comments like this were a drop in an ocean as the myth of the lone rogue killer took hold of the Victorian imagination. Dr Cook shows that the newly-launched Star newspaper was the first to claim that one man was behind three of the 1888 killings. Even though most experts today agree that two of these - Emma Smith and Martha Tabram - were not carried out by the same man, the Star's prurient accounts of the on-going murders massively boosted its circulation. The Star only unveiled the notorious letter from 'Jack the Ripper' in the midst of a drastic fall in sales after the exoneration of a bootmaker it had identified as a key suspect. Handwriting expert Elaine Quigley, recruited by Dr Cook to examine the letter, has identified it as the work of Star journalist Frederick Best. But the public was convinced, Dr Cook says - and the concept of a lone rogue killer on the loose in the East End backstreets may have helped the real culprits literally get away with murder.

Jack the Ripper 'was invented to win newspaper war'

A lot of what people know about Jack the Ripper is actually opinion generated by scores of writers and investigators who have tried to unravel the mystery over the years. However, there are several generally accepted facts.
Dr Cook has given us food for thought, however morbid, but also raises questions about journalistic integrity. Recently, the Editors Weblog looked at the unbalanced reporting of the G20 London summit by the UK press, as well as hyped media coverage of the Mexican swine flu which - despite having spread beyond the Central American country's borders - is, so far, largely contained. Coincidentally, Eric Burns has just launched his book "All the News Unfit to Print," which is an in-depth study of misleading and invented newspaper stories, who "reintroduces us to a number of prominent journalists who, finding the news lacking, simply made it up." In an audio interview with On the Media, Burns says that contrary to popular belief, journalists were once more responsible at reporting than they are today, there has never been a "golden period" in newspaper journalism and cites examples of misleading comments and articles from various periods in print news history to support his argument. Cook draws on the evidence and accounts offered by police and medical experts at the time to argue that there were too many differences in the style of the killings to suggest that all the victims died at the hands of the one same man. Among the testimonies supporting this view include one from assistant police surgeon Percy Clark, based at the Whitechapel Division. Clark, who had unparalleled access to all the victims, told the East London Observer in 1910: "I think perhaps one man was responsible for three of them. I would not like to say he did the others." Cook says that such accounts, however, were not favoured by news editors looking to get a good story and so it was that Jack the Ripper was born. The first time the name appeared was in a letter addressed to the Star, a paper which launched just before the murders began, in which the supposed murderer brags about the killings before signing himself off as "Jack the Ripper." Cook even has the backing of a handwriting expert who confirms that aStar journalist was behind the letter.

Nevertheless, the idea that one "evil" man could be capable of such brutality, soon took hold of the public's imagination and as the newspaper wars kicked off, balanced reporting was ditched in favour of sensational news stories guaranteed to shift papers off shelves. The space of time that has passed since the killings, as well as the fact that the media spotlight on this subject is no longer as intense as it once was, means that we are able to look at the evidence from a more detached viewpoint. Although, given the number of newspapers that have reported this latest theory, there is as yet no sign of our appetite for Jack the Ripper abating.

ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO MORNINGS?

Are you someboby who cant wake up in the morning? Do you need two cups of coffee before you can start a new day? Do you feel awful when you first wake up? Scientists say its all because of our genes. How did they find this out? Researchers from the University of Surrey interviewed 500 people. They asked them questions about their lifestyle, for example what time of day they preferred to do exercise and how difficult they found it to wake up in the morning. Scientists then compared their answers to the peoples DNA.

They discovered that we all have a clock gene, also called a Period 3 gene. This gene can be long or short. People who have the long gene are usually people who are very good in the morning, but who get tired quite early at night. People who have the short gene are ususally people who are more active at night but who have problems waking up early in the morning. How does it help us to know if we have the long or short gene? Scientists say that, if possible, we should try to change our working hours to fit our body clock. If you are a morning person then you could start work early and finish early. But if you are bad in the mornings, then it might be better to start work in the afternoon and work

until late at night. So maybe, instead of nine to five it should be seven to three or twelve to eight. 1. Are the following statements true (T) or false (F). Correct the false ones. (2 points)

1.People who have the long gene prefer to work in the morning.

2.People who have the short gene like to get up early in the morning.

3. Researchers asked people questions about their sex life.

4. Everybody should work according to their body clock.

1GRADUATE IN SECONDARY EDUCATION - OPEN TEST - COMUNICATION SKILLS ENGLISH NOVEMBERM 2012 2. Choose a, b or c. ( 2 points )

1. Scientists say that if we are bad at getting up in the morning, this is because

a. we are born like that.

b. we go to bed too late.

c. we drink too much coffee.

2. Researchers asked people questions about

a. the way they lived.

b. science.

c. sport and exercise.

3. They discovered that people who have a short clockgene

a. are better in the morning than in the evening.

b. get tired bery early.

c. are better in the evening than in the morning.

4. they recommend that people who have a long clock gene

a. should only work in the afternoon and evening.

b. should start work early and finish early.

c. should start work late and finish late.

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.- Ben Franklin The early bird gets the worm- Unkown. Everyone has heard these well known adages, and everyone knows how true these adages are. In face, I have read book after book, and web site after web site that suggests getting up early is the only way to go if you want to be successful in life. The Flylady system suggests waking up 30 minutes earlier than the rest of the household in order to get a head start. The Side Tracked Home Executive system suggests the very same thing in their books. Even one of my favorite bloggers, atmoneysavingmom.com, swears by grabbing the day by the horns and getting up at the crack of dawn. I am ashamed to admit that I am one of those severely allergic people, and I have been all my life. As a teenager I would tell my parents I was going to bed, but instead spend hours surfing the internet or reading books into the wee hours of the morning. Making the struggle to wake up that much harder. In fact my Dad and battled about this on a regular basis.( Sorry, Dad!) Then, when I moved out, I made sure I took college classes or worked in jobs that didnt require me to get up earlier than 9am. However, having kids made things change a little due to the kids fervent demands to be changed or fed around 7 or 8 in the morning. Yet, if the kids didnt wake up with these demands I would happily sleep in until 9 or 10 every morning. Still, every week I promise myself that I am going to get a head start and wake up an hour earlier than the kids every day. Does it happen? NO WAY. Whiney Andrea always chirps up as soon as the alarm goes off with some excuse or another. The bed is too warm and cozy to get out right now! She whines. You had a rough night last night, you need to sleep in. She demands, or Just 10 more minutes and then youll get up. She lies. I feel like Ive tried everything to get shut her up. Including special alarm clocks and asking my husband to force me up when he leaves for work. The methods always work for a few days until whiney Andrea gets her way again. So in an effort to shut her up once and for all I am turning to my blog. Because this blog is all about bettering myself and turning myself into the organized person I always dreamed of becoming.So here I am putting this out there and announcing my goal to start getting up earlier. Of course, starting with a plan is a must.

Make my daily agenda the night before rather than first thing in the morning. This way, sleeping in will mess up my plans for the day.

I am officially banishing the Snooze Button. Too often I hit snooze until the kids are actually awake, therefore defeating the purpose of having an alarm in the first place. As soon as my feet hit the ground I am doing 20 jumping jacks. Because, who could go back to sleep after that? Tea and/or coffee will be the first order of business. Because Caffeine. Enough Said. Lastly I am going to try and find something enjoyable to do first thing in the morning. Maybe I will sit on the porch with my tea, or catch up on some of my favorite blogs. Either way it has to be something 100% for me, that I can look forward to each day.

It may be simple but Im hoping that by actually putting a plan in place and announcing my plans on my blog will make a difference in actually accomplishing this goal. So far so good too. Since this post was written yesterday, but I manged to get up early in order to get the picture at the top of the post.

Performing Under Sleep Deprivation: Its In Your Genes

Mar. 12, 2007 People are known to differ markedly in their response to sleep deprivation, but the biological underpinnings of these differences have remained difficult to identify.
Researchers have now found that a genetic difference in a so-called clock gene, PERIOD3, makes some people particularly sensitive to the effects of sleep deprivation. The findings, reported by Antoine Viola, Derk-Jan Dijk, and colleagues at the University of Surrey's Sleep Research Center, appear in the journal Current Biology, published by Cell Press. There are two variants of the PERIOD3 gene found in the human population, encoding either long or short versions of the corresponding protein. Each individual will possess two copies of the gene, either of which might be the long or short form. Previous work had indicated that the different forms of the gene appear to influence characteristic morning and evening activity levels--for example, "owl" versus "lark" tendencies. In the new work, a multidisciplinary research team consisting of biological scientists and psychologists compared how individuals possessing only the longer gene variant and those possessing only the shorter one coped with being kept awake for two days, including the intervening night. The researchers found that although some participants struggled to stay awake, others experienced no problems with the task. The results were most pronounced during the early hours of the morning (between 4 and 8 a.m.), during which individuals with the longer variant of the gene performed very poorly on tests for attention and working memory. The authors point out that this early-morning period corresponds to stretches of time when shift workers struggle to stay awake, during which many accidents related to sleepiness occur. But the scientists also emphasize that the new research was conducted in the laboratory, and whether forms of the PERIOD3 gene also predict individual differences in the tolerance to night-shift work remains to be demonstrated. An additional finding was that the effects of this gene on performance may be mediated by its effects on sleep. When the volunteers were allowed to sleep normally, those possessing only the longer form of the

gene spent about 50% more of their time in slow-wave sleep, the deepest form of sleep. Slow-wave sleep is a marker of sleep need, and it is known that carrying a sleep debt makes it very difficult to stay awake and perform at night. The findings highlight a possible role for clock genes in human sleep physiology and structure, and the influence these genes might have on performance by unrested individuals.
You're up at the crack of dawn, raring to go, while your other half is dead to the world. Then, while youre re ady for lights out at 10pm, theyre happy to burn the midnight oil... and some. Sounds familiar? Its the difference between a lark and a night owl. And it wont just affect your social life, for researchers are discovering these characteristics have implications for health, too. This preference for morning or evening is known as your sleep chronotype, and it affects our waistline, fertility, pain levels and even cancer risk. It also affects personality a study published last month found night owls are more likely to demonstrate dark personality traits including narcissism and deceitfulness. Researchers from Sydney and Liverpool interviewed more than 200 people about their personalities and sleeping habits. They suggested the selfishness of night owls might be an evolutionary hangover, because such people are more likely to scheme and steal sexual partners from others, which is best done under cover of darkness. Whether you have a morning or evening chronotype is dictated by your biological 24-hour clock, explains Dr Tim Quinnell, from the Sleep Laboratory at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge. This, in turn, is heavily influenced by genes. Everything in the body every reaction, hormone, gene switching on and off is governed by the internal clock, he says. And its this clock that makes early types wake when they do, and late types able to carry on into the night. Here, the experts reveal the latest research on owls or larks, and the effect on health.

LARKS FEEL MORE TIRED

Being a night owl or lark may be largely dictated by a gene known as Period-3. Scientists at the University of Surrey discovered there are two versions of this gene a long version and a short version. Those with the long version are larks; the short version, owls. The gene is thought to affect sleep pressure. As well as our biological clock controlling when we sleep and wake, we also have a system that builds up feelings of sleepiness throughout the day the peak is when we are at our most tired and need to go to bed. The Period-3 gene causes sleep pressure to affect larks and owls differently, explains Dr Simon Archer, reader in chronobiology at the University of Surrey. The larks have a sleep pressure that builds up much more quickly. So as they go through a normal day, they get more tired more quickly. We each carry two versions of the Period-3 gene one from each parent. If you get two versions of the long or short version, you will be an extreme lark or owl. Many of us have one version of both, meaning we have tendencies for characteristics of both, says Dr Archer. I tested myself and found that I have one short gene and one long gene. This makes sense, as I work best in the morning, but I have the physiology of an owl and so I cant eat breakfast first thing.

OWLS ARE HUNGRIER - AND FATTER

Larks always eat breakfast within half an hour of waking, says Professor Jim Horne from the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University. Weve found this is a very good indicator of whether a person is a morning or an evening type, he says. This might be because our body clock influences metabolism. But owls are more partial to a midnight feast. In a recent study on 119 obese volunteers, half who were morning types, the others evening types, the latter consumed twice as many calories after 8pm on average 677 calories, compared with 299 for larks. Furthermore, the morning types had their breakfast around 7.17am the evening types ate at 8.38am. The problem for owls is that evening meals may not be as filling as day-time meals leading to over-eating and weight gain. This may be due to low levels of leptin, a hormone responsible for telling our brain when we are full. According to sleep expert Professor Russell Foster from Oxford University, research has shown levels of this hormone can go out of kilter when were sleep deprived. Owls tend to be more sleep deprived than larks as they go to bed late yet have to wake early for work. One study revealed that even short-term sleep deprivation seven days of four hours sleep a night resulted in carbohydrate consumption, particularly sugar, up by 35-40 per cent. The ability to clear glucose from the blood was bordering on diabetic, and levels of the hormone leptin were down by 17 per cent. Late-night snacking means owls tend to be larger than larks. A recent study published in the journal Chronobiology International found owls had greater weight gain than morning types.

OWLS ARE MORE LIKELY TO SNORE

All this night eating may affect the owls overall health. In a small stu dy of 11 people, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, evening types had lower levels of good HDL cholesterol (the other types of cholesterol were not monitored). Owl types were also more likely to snore and suffer from sleep apnoea, where breathing stops for periods of at least ten seconds at a time. The researchers said that the fact evening types were overweight may contribute to this the condition is linked to fat around the neck. The study also showed that evening types had higher levels of stress hormones, which may exacerbate the condition.

LARKS MAY BE MORE AT RISK OF CANCER

Some studies suggest that larks are at greater risk of some cancers, particularly breast and colorectal cancer. This seems to be connected to the longer version of the Period-3 gene and many larks carry two copies of these. Another theory is its linked to melatonin, the hormone crucial for sleep high levels are released when were in the dark, and low levels in light. Dr Archer suggests morning types may have more exposure to more light, so may have less melatonin. Some studies have suggested that melatonin has antioxidant properties and may even protect against cancer. However, Dr Archer says staying up at night under artificial light can also stop the melatonin, so more work is needed to understand exactly what is going on.

OWLS MAY HAVE POORER MEMORY

Studies suggest that because owls tend to go to bed later, their sleep ends prematurely, says Dr Quinnell. Sleep has a number of distinct phases, including around four REM (or dreaming) phases. But because owls go to bed late and wake up early for work, they often dont have their last phase of dreaming sleep, which may affect memory. This phase of sleep helps the brain lay down memories and runs through the experiences of the day, says Dr Quinnell. It de-briefs the brain and helps us to learn from experiences. Its more healthy for the body and the mind to have all the stages of sleep.

THEY MAY ALSO SUFFER MORE PAIN

Their lack of deep sleep could leave owls in pain a small U.S. study found people deprived of REM sleep are more sensitive to pain the following day. Furthermore, while many over-40s wake up with joint pain and stiffness, being an owl could make this worse, suggests Dr Chris Edwards, a consultant rheumatologist at Southampton General Hospital. At around 4am our body releases a burst of natural anti-inflammatory molecules, which can ease inflammation in the joints, reducing pain and stiffness. However, while larks may wake in time to feel the effects of this burst, it may have worn off by the time owls rise.

OWLS ARE FUN BUT RISK DEPRESSION...

On the whole, owls seem to have more fun. Research suggests evening types tend to be sensation-seeking, risktaking and more outgoing. One study of more than 800 people published in the journal Chronobiology International found larks were better at controlling impulse. Another study of more than 1,000 people found they were also more likely to be agreeable and conscientious. They tend to be more analytical, while evening types think more laterally, says Professor Horne. Being an owl may also raise the risk of depression, says sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley possibly because of lack of sleep. It could also make symptoms of depression worse a recent study of 100 people with depression in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that evening types experienced more severe symptoms, including anxiety. Dr Quinnell adds that long-term REM sleep deprivation can lead to hallucinations, as the brain starts to have dreaming episodes when it is awake.

... YET THEY HAVE A LIVELIER LOVE LIFE

Several studies have shown night owls tend to have more partners. One Durham University study of 106 men aged 18-30 suggested that male morning types have an average of 3.6 partners, while evening types have an average 16.3 partners. Aside from the obvious advantage of having a more active social life, biology may also be at play. A study last year by German scientists of more than 100 men between the ages of 19 and 37 found that night-owl men tend to have high testosterone levels, possibly because levels of this hormone are linked to our sleep-wake cycle. Other studies have shown that evening types tend to have more children. But when it comes to women, one Finnish study published last month of more than 2,000 females suggests that morning types could be the most fertile, which may be linked to the hormones that govern the menstrual cycle and ovulation.

WE ALL GROW MORE LARK-LIKE WITH AGE

Although our pattern is largely set by genes, it alters depending on age, says Professor Foster. After the age of ten, we go to bed later and get up later. This owlness peaks at the ages of 20 -21 for men, and around 19 for women. Teens are natural owls, which is why parents should let them sleep in at the weekends, says Till Roenneberg, professor of chronobiology at the University of Munich. Ideally 16 to 18-year-olds should not start school before 10am. But they do, and so are sleep deprived come Saturday. Let them lie in, but make sure there is some light in their bedroom in the morning as they sleep, otherwise their body clock could shift even later. After the teen years, men are generally more owl-like than women, going to bed and rising later. This difference is down to the sex hormones oestrogen and testosterone. But as these hormones start to decline, we all become more like larks than owls, says Professor Foster. This change can be particularly acute in women around the time of the menopause with the dramatic drop in oestrogen.

IT'S HELL WAKING UP AT 4 AM

Unfortunately, this transformation to a lark can lead to some elderly people being wrongly diagnosed with depression, says Professor Horne. As people get older, they can find themselves waking earlier and earlier especially if they were already larks. People can start to be wide awake as early as 4am, and they start to fret about this. They go to the doctor, and because early waking is also a sign of depression, they may be prescribed antidepressants. But these can make people tired in the day, and more awake at night, which just exacerbates the problem. To counteract early morning waking in old age, Professor Horne recommends having a cup of coffee at 9pm and then napping for 15 minutes before the effect of the caffeine kicks in. You should then be able to stay awake until midnight. This will delay your sleep after a week, you should be waking at 6am rather than 4am.

WHY OWLS SHOULD MARRY LARKS

There is some evidence that the longest surviving marriages are between morning people and evening people, says Professor Foster. One explanation is that if you can accommodate your partners sleeping habits, it shows true give -and-take in a relationship. He added: My wife is a morning person, but I am a definite owl I go to bed with a torch to read. We worked that out early on and its worked ever since. Professor Roenneberg adds that partners should be more tolerant of each others sleep habits. He says that trying to work against your chronotype getting up early if you are an owl or staying up late if you are a lark can lead to social jet lag, where you are constantly fighting against your natural body clock. This can increase inflammation in the body and heighten risk of a range of illnesses, including diabetes, obesity and depression. He adds: Never criticise your partners sleep pattern. Let them lie in or go to bed early they are not being lazy or boring.

"I think I'm allergic to mornings"

I have come to the conclusion that no matter how hard you try you can't make someone a morning person. If it is possible to be allergic to morning then I think I am. I notice that when I have to get up early that I show the signs of an allergy: puff eyes, watery eyes, dark circle under my eyes, headachy, sometimes stuffy nose, a bit of a sore throat, and a foggy mind. I have had to get up most every morning the last couple of weeks by 8:00 a.m. Not only have I had to be up but I have had to look as if I am ready to do the day. Up until this time I have had very few times where on an ongoing bases I have had to start my day in this fashion. When the kids were in school we we're up by 7:00 - 7:30 each day but at least I didn't have to be out of my pj's and housecoat, hair looking half way presentable. And after they left I could either climb back into bed for another hour or slump down on the couch and let the early morning run off me. (Yes, I did feel a little guilty that my kids had to have it together so early and I expected them to do it no complaining.) All the years I worked I started work and between 9:00 - 10:00. I used to tell people at work that I didn't wake up til 10:00 and that is why I was so quiet in the morning. I simply can't think before 10. My presence was in body not mind. Now with contractors arriving by 8:00 a.m. this has been my schedule. I don't want them to think that I'm

pathetic or something so I watch the clock and try to time myself to get everything done before they arrive. I find myself longing for the weekend to arrive when its only Tues. By the time Fri. gets here I am giving myself pep talks on how I can do this, "its only one more morning before sleep-in day". "Tomorrow I won't have to watch the clock", trying to sneak in just that last minute of dozing. I rejoice in Sat. morning and the feeling of my bed as I lay there thinking about how great it feels to not have to get up. (Isn't that pathetic?) As a matter of fact, by the time Fri evening comes I am looking forward to going to bed due to exhaustion. I have wondered if there is something wrong with me. Why I couldn't get it changed around. Yet, in all my acquaintances over the years I have found that when you're a morning person, you're a morning person and when you're a night person, you're a night person. The way I see it is I've been created by God so why try to change what he had planned. It helps me feel better when I think this way. I'm sure that my hubby may disagree with me seeings that he's a morning person. To him morning is the best time of the day. Ugg! But, he loves me anyway and doesn't resent my sleeping in because he is just as happy getting up. On the topic of mornings all I can say is: "I think I'm allergic to mornings!"

Who Invented Text Messaging?

Text messaging is now a way of life for the century we live in. Businesses and families use it to stay in touch with each other. Messages are usually short and are sent through electronic devices, such as on a laptop or on our cell phones. In some parts of the world, text messaging is also called SMS or short messages services. This is a form of communication that has become vital to our nation. It remains the main data app in the world. Over two thirds of cell phone owners text on a regular daily basis. Originally a text was just a few words. Now, it involves pictures and also videos that we can send through our devices. Audio files can also be sent through text messages. Consumers use the keypad on their devices to type in the information they want to electronically send to the receiver. Friedhelm Hillebrand, along with his colleague Bernard Ghillebaert, invented the technology, protocol and rules that allowed text messaging. Neil Papworth was the first person in the world to sent a SMS or text messaging.

How it got started?

This invention began to take place in the early 1980s. Many different companies worked on the idea, trying to come up with the best product that was capable of sending texts. However, the original invention was developed in 1984 by the GSM Corporation by an inventor named Friedhelm Hillebrand and by his coworker Bernard Ghillebaert. They created a way to

send a short message (about 128 byte) using existing cellular signals. As new towers were built, they were made to allow this sort of service available to anyone.

GSM approved the idea

In 1985, GSM approved using SMS texting and began to create a market for this product. GSM had different departments that were responsible for each individual aspect of the SMS. These included the specifications department, implementation department and the integration department of protocols. The departments work hard on their individual researches.

The worlds first text message

Finally in December 12, 1992 in the UK the first text message was successfully sent and received. The sender used a computer and the receiver was using a hand held Vodaphone network system, called the Orbitel 901. Mr. Neil Papworth, who was employed with the SEMA group, sent a message that said Merry Christmas, to the Vodaphone user, Richard Jarvis. Originally, this system was used only for business purposes. It was first used by Aldiseon a member of the Logica Corporation, this is now Acision, and Telia of Sweden in the year of 1993.

It reached the general public

Later in that year, it became available for personal use. It was marketed to be used for person to person texting. The company that provided the service was Radiolinja in the country of Finland. However, most handsets at that time didnt even support text messaging. By the time that 2000 got here, texting was and continues to be something viral that millions use on a daily basis now. Cell phones now automatically come with SMS abilities. This is not only a viable way, but a needed device to stay in touch with the world. Cell phones are now basically a mini computer, not only can we text to anyone, anytime, but we can update social statuses and stay in touch with people all

Pros & Cons of Texting

In: Social Issues. No comment. Add one?
In this modern day and age, people arent always in one place, at one time. On top of that, it is not always easy to keep up with your friends, unless you

keep up with the times. The simplest way for people to keep in touch in this day and age is the use of cell phones and texting. It is common knowledge that cell phones are mobile phones, and texting is sending a worded message from phone to phone. Texting people have various pros as well as some downsides as well.

Pros of texting
A major benefit that cellular phones have is the convenience it brings to users. During a busy day, you may not be able to hold a true conversation, or you may not even feel like talking voice to voice. Conversations on the phone require full attention and consume your time, which you may not have much of. By texting a simple message to someone, you can save time instead of having to call them.

Quick and easy way to communicate

Texting allows short thoughts to be sent without getting into larger conversations. Another benefit is how it can help one develop friends. You see, its less intimidating texting someone than being on the phone because you can put more time into whatever you say. It allows you to be better acquainted to people, but it should be used as a building block rather than the foundation of a friendship.

Cons of texting
Of course, there is a major flaw in the use of text messaging, which it can be distracting in various ways. When someone is texting, they block out everything around them and their attention is directed towards their phone. When someone is talking to them, while in class, a movie, or even driving, people who are texting dont care about their surroundings. This is especially true with driving, as it can cause accidents all over the place.

Grabs your whole attention and youre distracted

The thing that is key, is that texting has to be prioritized, and not a major part of your life. It not only distracts you, it keeps you from enjoying the

highlights in life. If you are in the movies and texting your buddy, you are not paying attention to the movie, and missing something possibly fun.

Use in moderation, not excessively

Cell phones are a very fun and convenient way to keep in touch with your friends and family through texting. However, it is dangerous to consistently text people and ignoring everything around you, especially when you are doing something you need to focus on anyway. When it comes to texting, make use of them in a safe and simple manner. You can make new friends and catch up with your old ones, but you have to do so in a safe and nondistracting manner.
Where would we be without text messaging? The feature has grown from being favored by the tech-savvy to a universal staple. It's allowed us to be more efficient, independent and direct. When you're running late, you text someone to let them know. When you're in class or a meeting and there's an emergency, you know immediately. When you need a quick "yes" or "no," you ask via text. How did such a seemingly simple method of communication lead us to the trillions of texts sent today? Texting, or SMS (short message service) is a method of communication that sends text between cellphones or from a PC or handheld to a cell phone. The "short" part comes from the maximum size of the text messages: 160 characters (letters, numbers or symbols in the Latin alphabet). The SMS concept was developed in the Franco-German GSM cooperation in 1984 by Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert. The first text message was sent in 1992 from Neil Papworth, a former developer at Sema Group Telecoms. Mobile phones didn't have keyboards at the time, so Papworth had to type the message on a PC. Papworth's text "Merry Christmas" was successfully sent to Richard Jarvis at Vodafone.

Most early GSM mobile phone handsets did not support the ability to send text messages. The first SMS gateways for cellphones were network notifications, usually to inform of voice mail messages. Nokia was the first handset manufacturer whose total GSM phone line in 1993 supported user-sending of SMS text messages. In 1997, it became the first manufacturer to produce a mobile phone with a full keyboard: the Nokia 9000i Communicator. Like any new technology, initial growth for SMS was slow. The average American user sent 0.4 texts per month in 1995. Gradually, phones and networks adapted to better accommodate SMS. In 1999, texts could finally be exchanged between different networks, which increased its usefulness. By 2000, the average number of text messages sent in the U.S. increased to 35 a month per person.

Types of Texting
The first, most common method of commercial texting is referred to as "multi-tap." Each number on the phone is connected to three or four letters. For example, the "3" key displays "D," "E" and "F." Multi-tap is easy to understand, but not very efficient. In the 1990s, Tegic co-founder Cliff Kushler invented T9, short for "Text on 9 keys." Instead of multi-tapping, predictive text technology displays words from a single keypress. As T9 becomes familiar with the words and phrases commonly used by the texter, they become correspondent in order of frequency. In 2011, Kushler invented Swype, a texting feature for touchscreens that enables users to drag their fingers to connect the dots between letters in a word. Full keyboards on mobile phones was first introduced in 1997 with the Nokia 9000i Communicator. It became a popular feature in the late '90s to early '00s. Most models adopted the QWERTY keyboard, a layout we've grown accustomed to in computers. The IBM Simon had the first touchscreen in 1992 it's also referred as the first "smartphone," though the term was not yet coined. The phone was 15 years ahead of its time. Smartphones advanced, and in 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, notable for its multi-touch interface and virtual keyboard. Virtual keyboards had automatic spell check and correction, predictive text technology, and the ability to learn new words. The keys were larger and keyboard adapts to the phone's

width based on landscape or vertical orientation. Today, virtual keyboards have become a standard feature for smartphones. SEE ALSO: Top 10 Tips for Using Your Feature Phone as a Smartphone That year, 2007, also happened to mark the first year that Americans sent and received more text messages per month than phone calls. Social media sites like Twitter adopted the short character format, which has likely helped the text message phenomenon we've learned to be more concise and character-conscious. Social media, chat, email, Skype and other forms of online communication have broadened options outside of just text messaging. But most of these options require data. Text messaging became a universal feature for phones, making it more affordable in an unlimited package. Today, SMS is the most widely-used data application in the world, with 81% of mobile phone subscribers using it. And SMS has become more than just a way to text with friends it also lets us receive updates and alerts, keep track of our finances, send email, and much more. How often do you text? Do you just use it to communicate with friends? Tell us in the comments.

Text messages turns 20 but are their best years behind them?
Short message service born on 3 December 1992 has made phone firms billions, but there are signs it is losing popularity
It has saved lives and ruined marriages, created a whole new dialect and made billions in profits for phone companies. But as the humble text message celebrates its 20th birthday, some wonder how much longer it will survive in a world of smartphones and all-you-can-eat data. The number of SMS short message service messages being sent has rocketed year after year but there are signs it has peaked in a number of countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, Finland, Hong Kong and Australia. A new generation of users who might once have used texts now use data services such as WhatsApp and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for free. "There's a lot of these services out there I've counted 25 which have a total of 2.5bn reported accounts, though many of those will be duplicates," said Benedict Evans, telecoms analyst at Enders

Analysis. "There are probably 10 which have more than 100 million users and BBM isn't among them; that's only got 60 million." The first text message was sent on 3 December 1992, when the 22-year-old British engineer Neil Papworth used his computer to wish a "Merry Christmas" to Richard Jarvis, of Vodafone, on his Orbitel 901 mobile phone. Papworth didn't get a reply because there was no way to send a text from a phone in those days. That had to wait for Nokia's first mobile phone in 1993. The first text messages were free and could only be sent between people on the same network, but in 1994 Vodafone then one of only two mobile networks in the UK launched a share price alert system. The arrival in 1995 of the Tegic (aka T9) system, which created "predictive" texting based on the letters you had typed, meant texting could take off. Commercial services soon followed, and though they started life as a free service because operators hadn't figured out how to charge for them it was quickly realised there was money to be made from texting as the number rose dramatically. By February 2001 the UK was sending one billion texts a month, which at the standard 10p-a-text charge meant the business was raking in about 100m a month. The amount of data in a text message is tiny, at just 128 bytes. Charged at the same price per byte, a 650MB music CD would cost more than 60,000. In the same year texting became key to people's lives literally, for 14 British tourists stranded in the Lombok Strait off Bali who were saved after one sent a message to her boyfriend in England, and for a climber who was rescued with the help of a text from a mountain rescue team. "Text language" emerged quickly because of the 160-character constraint of the keypad and because to begin with it was time-consuming to enter words on a numerical keypad. Abbreviations such as "l8r", "gr8" and "b4" soon had befuddled adults complaining that kids had lost the ability to spell correctly. By 2003 exam markers had grown concerned about text language being used in answers; a 13year-old girl wrote an essay in text shorthand, which said in part: "My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc." (Or in longhand: "My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three (!) kids face to face. I love New York, it's a great place.") Now, though, it's texting rather than the English language that is under threat. The rise of smartphones and data services means the price of sending data has collapsed, and that has led to free services that can send data even when you can't get a phone signal to send a text. In January the Finnish mobile network Sonera reported that the number of texts sent on Christmas Eve 2011 was 8.5m, down from 10.9m the previous year. In Hong Kong, Christmas messaging dropped by 14%. But that doesn't mean messaging will go away, or that mobile operators are suddenly going to go bust. Texting has brought in more than $500bn and is still forecast to coin them $1tn over the next seven years as people use it for mobile banking in Africa and India, for charitable giving and for political donations.

Evans said operators would adjust their pricing models even as texting declined. "They're going to start charging more money for more data. Transmitting 500 megabytes of data costs them more than transmitting 500 minutes of voice. So they'll readjust their prices." But equally, he said, the idea of the short message between devices was here to stay. "Twitter was imagined as a text message service, that's why each tweet has to be so short. The mechanism by which it's delivered will change, but people will still find it convenient to send short messages to each other."

Europe, Asia find text messaging key to communication

Text messaging, a relatively new arrival in the U.S. but well established in Europe and Asia, allows people to send short e-mail-like messages from cell phone to cell phone. It is alternately hailed as technology's most efficient form of communication--cheaper than a cell phone call and more convenient than computer e-mail--and denigrated as simply a teenage fad. Either way, the medium has penetrated cultural and political life in the parts of the world where the technology is ubiquitous. In Britain, 75 percent of the population owns a cell phone, compared with about 35 percent in the United States. About 18 percent of British cell phone owners use text messaging, compared with less than 1 percent of Americans who use the service, according to the GSM Association, a wireless industry group. New ways to do same things Flirting, selling and political organizing are popular uses of text messaging. Perhaps the best-known use of the medium came in January, when Filipinos used it to spread word of political demonstrations that toppled President Joseph Estrada. In London recently, organizers of a rally against racism and police brutality used text messaging to gather a crowd. The GSM Association says about 16 billion text messages are sent each month around the world. In May, 943 million text messages were sent in Britain alone. Here, the technology is most popular with 16- to 24-year-olds, who have devised a system of shortening words so that their messages fit the 160-character limit of most cell phone screens. The communication method is so popular, it has spawned books on text messaging and the new use of a word: "Text" is now a verb, as in "He's texting me the address of the party." In Britain, the new language of text messaging has been recognized as an art form. The Guardian newspaper sponsored a text-message poetry contest in May. Nearly 7,500 poems were submitted, and the winner, 22-year-old Hetty Hughes, brought home $1,500. Her poem shows why some people aren't so happy about the language of text: "txtin iz messin/mi headn'me englis/try2rite essays/they all come out txtis. gran not plsed w/letters/shes getn/swears i wrote better b4 comin2uni. & she's african." ("Texting is messing with my head and my English. Try to write essays and they come out text-ish. Gran

is not pleased with the letters she's getting, swears I wrote better before coming to university. And she's African.") The medium has crept into many aspects of life. British television shows hype their "interactive" qualities, allowing viewers to send text messages to hosts or participants and get updates via text message on shows such as "Survivor" and "Big Brother." Inspired by the success of a similar program in Amsterdam, London police are considering sending text messages to stolen cell phones so that anyone who buys the phone from a thief knows it's hot. Two schools in London and two in Leicester in central England are participating in a pilot program that sends automatic text messages to parents with announcements of field trips and alerts them if their children are truant.
Chicago tribune

We never talk any more: The problem with text messaging

(CNN) -- You do not want to talk to me on the phone. How do I know? Because I don't want to talk to you on the phone. Nothing personal, I just can't stand the thing. I find it intrusive and somehow presumptuous. It sounds off insolently whenever it chooses and expects me to drop whatever I'm doing and, well, engage. With others! When I absolutely must, I take the call, but I don't do a very good job of concealing my displeasure. A close family member once offered his opinion that I exhibit the phone manners of a goat, then promptly withdrew the charge out of fairness to goats. So it was with profound relief that I embraced the arrival of e-mail and, later, texting. They meant a conversation I could control utterly. I get to say exactly what I want exactly when I want to say it. It consumes no more time than I want it to and, to a much greater degree than is possible with a phone call, I get to decide if it takes place at all. That might make me misanthropic. It surely makes me a crank. But it doesn't make me unusual. (Read about the TIME Mobility Poll here.) The telephone call is a dying institution. The number of text messages sent monthly in the U.S. exploded from 14 billion in 2000 to 188 billion in 2010, according to a Pew Institute survey, and the trend shows no signs of abating. Not all of that growth has come out of the hide of old-fashioned phoning, but it is clearly taking a bite particularly among the young. Americans ages 18-29 send and receive an average of nearly 88 text messages per day, compared to 17 phone calls. The numbers change as we get older, with the overall frequency of all communication declining, but even in the 65 and over group, daily texting still edges calling 4.7 to 3.8. In the TIME mobility poll, 32% of all respondents said they'd rather communicate by text than phone, even with people they know very well. This is truer still in the workplace, where communication is between colleagues who are often not friends at all. "No more trying to find time to call and chit-chat," is how one poll respondent described the business appeal of texting over talking. The problem, of course, is what's lost when that chit-chat goes. Developmental psychologists studying the impact of texting worry especially about young people, not just because kids are such promiscuous users of the technology, but because their interpersonal skills such as they are

have not yet fully formed. Most adults were fixed social quantities when they first got their hands on a text-capable mobile device, and while their ability to have a face-to-face conversation may have eroded in recent years, it's pretty well locked in. Not so with teens. As TIME has reported previously, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle is one of the leading researchers looking into the effects of texting on interpersonal development. Turkle believes that having a conversation with another person teaches kids to, in effect, have a conversation with themselves to think and reason and self-reflect. "That particular skill is a bedrock of development," she told me. Turkle cites the texted apology or what she calls "saying 'I'm sorry' and hitting send" as a vivid example of what's lost when we type instead of speak. "A full-scale apology means I know I've hurt you, I get to see that in your eyes," she says. "You get to see that I'm uncomfortable, and with that, the compassion response kicks in. There are many steps and they're all bypassed when we text." When the apology takes place over the phone rather than in person, the visual cues are lost, of course, but the voice and the sense of hurt and contrition it can convey is preserved. Part of the appeal of texting in these situations is that it's less painful but the pain is the point. "The complexity and messiness of human communication gets shortchanged," Turkle says. "Those things are what lead to better relationships." Habitual texters may not only cheat their existing relationships, they can also limit their ability to form future ones since they don't get to practice the art of interpreting nonverbal visual cues. There's a reason it's so easy to lie to small kids ("Santa really, truly did bring those presents") and that's because they're functional illiterates when it comes to reading inflection and facial expressions. As with real reading, the ability to comprehend subtlety and complexity comes only with time and a lot of experience. If you don't adequately acquire those skills, moving out into the real world of real people can actually become quite scary. "I talk to kids and they describe their fear of conversation," says Turkle. "An 18-year-old I interviewed recently said, 'Someday, but certainly not now, I want to learn to have a conversation.'" Adults are much less likely to be so conversation-phobic, but they do become conversation-avoidant mostly because it's easier. Texting an obligatory birthday greeting means you don't have to fake an enthusiasm you're not really feeling. Texting a friend to see what time a party starts means you don't also have to ask "How are you?" and, worse, get an answer. The text message is clearly here to stay and even the most zealous phone partisans don't recommend avoiding it entirely. But mix it up some maybe even throw in a little Skyping or Facetime so that when you finally do make a call you're actually seeing and interacting with another person. Too much texting, Turkle warns, amounts to a life of "hiding in plain sight." And the thing about hiding is, it keeps you entirely alone.
Jeffrey Kluger

Texting has long been bemoaned as the downfall of the written word, penmanship for illiterates, as one critic called it. To which the proper response is LOL. Texting properly isnt writing at all its actually more akin to spoken language. And its a spoken language that is getting richer and more complex by the year. First, some historical perspective. Writing was only invented 5,500 years ago, whereas language probably traces back at least 80,000 years. Thus talking came first; writing is just an artifice that

came along later. As such, the first writing was based on the way people talk, with short sentences think of the Old Testament. However, while talk is largely subconscious and rapid, writing is deliberate and slow. Over time, writers took advantage of this and started crafting tapeworm sentences such as this one, from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: The whole engagement lasted above 12 hours, till the gradual retreat of the Persians was changed into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example was given by the principal leaders and the Surenas himself. (MORE: Why Americans Need Spelling Bees and Vocabulary Tests) No one talks like that casually or should. But it is natural to desire to do so for special occasions, and thats what oratory is, like the grand-old kinds of speeches that William Jennings Bryan delivered. In the old days, we didnt much write like talking because there was no mechanism to reproduce the speed of conversation. But texting and instant messaging do and a revolution has begun. It involves the brute mechanics of writing, but in its economy, spontaneity and even vulgarity, texting is actually a new kind of talking. There is a virtual cult of concision and little interest in capitalization or punctuation. The argument that texting is poor writing is analogous, then, to one that the Rolling Stones is bad music because it doesnt use violas. Texting is developing its own kind of grammar and conventions. (MORE: Banning the Term Illegal Immigrant Wont Change the Stigma) Texting is developing its own kind of grammar. Take LOL. It doesnt actually mean laughing out loud in a literal sense anymore. LOL has evolved into something much subtler and sophisticated and is used even when nothing is remotely amusing. Jocelyn texts Where have you been? and Annabelle texts back LOL at the library studying for two hours. LOL signals basic empathy between texters, easing tension and creating a sense of equality. Instead of having a literal meaning, it does something conveying an attitude just like the -ed ending conveys past tense rather than meaning anything. LOL, of all things, is grammar. Of course no one thinks about that consciously. But then most of communication operates below the radar. Over time, the meaning of a word or an expression drifts meat used to mean any kind of food, silly used to mean, believe it or not, blessed. Civilization, then, is fine people banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, and there is no evidence that texting is ruining composition skills. Worldwide people speak differently from the way they write, and texting quick, casual and only intended to be read once is actually a way of talking with your fingers.

All indications are that Americas youth are doing it quite well. Texting, far from being a scourge, is a work in progress. This essay is adapted from McWhorters talk at TED 2013.

Generation Txt? The sociolinguistics of young people's text-messaging

Crispin Thurlow Department of Communication, University of Washington, Box 353740, Seattle, WA 98195, USA Thurlow@u.washington.edu http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow with Alex Brown [note 1] Abstract: The so called 'net generation' is popularly assumed to be naturally media literate and to be necessarily reinventing conventional linguistic and communicative practices. With this in mind, this essay centres around discursive analyses of qualitative data arising from an investigation of 159 older teenagers' use of mobile telephone text-messaging - or SMS (i.e. short-messaging services). In particular, against a backdrop of media commentaries, we examine the linguistic forms and communicative functions in a corpus of 544 participants' actual text-messages. While young people are surely using their mobile phones as a novel, creative means of enhancing and supporting intimate relationships and existing social networks, popular discourses about the linguistic exclusivity and impenetrability of this particular technologically-mediated discourse appear greatly exaggerated. Serving the sociolinguistic 'maxims' of (a) brevity and speed, (b) paralinguistic restitution and (c) phonological approximation, young people's messages are both linguistically unremarkable and communicatively adept.

1. Introduction and background

1.1. Text-messaging: 'Everyone is jmping on the bndwgn'[note 2]

Mobile phone ownership is universal, and people use them constantly. If you don't have a mobile, you're effectively a non-person. (http://www.orange.com/). Nearly a billion text messages whizz around the UK every month. Whenever and however you like to send you text messages, it's a completely individual way to express yourself. (Orange Magazine, Spring 2001)

Figures and claims like these abound regarding the popularity, ubiquity and necessity of mobile phones in general and text-messages in particular (Teather, 2001). It seems that these technologies for communication have become an essential feature of both popular and commercial rhetoric about new media cultures and especially of so called 'global communications'. Which is not to say that this technology is properly global; worldwide patterns of mobile phone usership necessarily follow the socioeconomic contours of which distinguish the 'media rich' and 'media poor' more generally (Carvin, 2000). Nonetheless, from a more academic perspective, Katz & Aakhus (2002) cite figures estimating that the worldwide usership of mobile phones is approaching a billion. (This compares with an estimated 600 million people online <Nua.com>). Although not true for the USA, where the internet has tended to be the communication technology of preference, penetration rates in countries in Western Europe (e.g. Scandinavia, UK, Germany & France) and East Asia (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan) are believed to be as high as 70-80%. [note 3] For many commentators - lay and academic alike - mobile telephony has heralded important new cultures of communication (see, for example, Rheingold, 2002). According to cultural critic Umberto Eco (2002), we live in an age where the diminutive, the brief and the simple are highly prized in communication; if this is the case, then there's little doubt that text-messaging embodies this zeitgeist. Like many earlier communication technologies, however, the mobile phone has come to evoke and/or embody a range of projected fears and hopes (cf. Turkle, 1995). In fact, the history of the development of communication technologies is one marked by periods of excessive hype and hysteria about the kinds of cultural, social and psychological impacts each new technology is likely to have. Having said which, few people professional or lay - could have predicted the extraordinary rise in popularity of the mobile phone in many countries and its sister technology SMS 'short

messaging service'. (Also known as text-messaging or texting, for more explanation see Bernatchez's What is SMS Text Messages?) Initially intended for purely commercial purposes (Bellis, 2002), text-messaging is in fact yet another example of how the human need for social intercourse - a kind of 'communication imperative' - bends and ultimately co-opts technology to suit its own ends, regardless of any commercial (e.g. the telephone) or military (e.g. the internet) ambition for the technology. In fact, figures published by the Mobile Data Association show that 1.7 billion text-messages were exchanged in Britain in May 2003 - a cumulative annual total of some 8 billion messages.

1.2. Generation text: 'Young and free but tied to the mobile.'
Typical of media representations about the role of mobile phones in the lives of young people, Bryden-Brown's (2001) characterization in the The Australiannewspaper (heading above) presents yet another image of the media-savvy, technologically-enslaved young person [note 4]. Of course, it is not unusual for young people to be caught up in adults' anxious projections about the future (Griffin, 1993); in the case of mobile phones, however, there is a 'double-whammy' of adult mythology, with the coming together of popular discourses about young people and about new technologies. Nonetheless, it is partly in response to prejudicial characterisations of young people that scholars are starting to challenge the misleading hype inherent in popular notions like 'cyberkids' and the 'net generation' (see Thurlow & McKay, 2003). In fact, as Facer & Furlong (2001) note, there are many children and young people in supposedly technologically privileged countries like Britain who still face a kind of 'information inequality' - not only as a result of poor access at home and school, but also because of individual resistance to, and the perceived irrelevance of, some new technologies. It is precisely for this reason that homogenizing assumptions about the role of technology in the lives of young people and young adults need constantly to be challenged. While adult exaggerations about the significance of technology in the lives of young people may be questionable, the fact remains that, in many countries, the mobile phone is an altogether far more popular, pervasive communication technology than in others (Katz & Aakhus, 2002a). What is more, although by no means any longer the sole province of young people ( Cyberatlas, 2001a ), in a country like Britain, it is understood that half of all 7-16-year-olds have a mobile phone of their own ( NOP, 2001a ) and marginally more girls (52%) than boys (44%). In fact, the same NOP survey also shows that as many as 77% of 14-16-year-olds have mobile

phones. Ling (2002) also reports more recent figures from Norway, another mobile-saturated country, which specifically identify young adults/older teenagers as the heaviest users. Unquestionably, a core feature of almost all young people's mobile phone use is the text-message, with most sending upwards of three text-messages a day.

1.3. Technologically-mediated discourse: 'Hell is other people talking webspeak on mobile phones.'
Central to the hype and hysteria of popular, media representations about new communication technologies are concerns about the way that conventional linguistic and communicative practices are affected. A fairly typical example of this is the comment quoted in the heading above made by John Humphreys (2000), a British radio journalist notorious for his 'verbal hygienist' (Cameron, 1995) concerns about, amongst other things, the putative 'death' of the apostrophe in English. Much popular and public discourse nowadays attends to the perceived communicative paucity of young people ( Thurlow, 2001a ) and both 'teentalk' and 'netlingo' (or 'webspeak') are often blamed for supposedly negative impacts on standard or 'traditional' ways of communicating. The same is especially true of young people's use of mobile phones and text-messaging, where, as in the journalist's comment quoted below, they are often understood to be - or ratheraccused of - reinventing and/or damaging the (English) language.[note 5]. As a dialect, text ('textese'?) is thin and unimaginative. It is bleak, bald, sad shorthand. Drab shrinktalk. The dialect has a few hieroglyphs (codes comprehensible only to initiates) and a range of face symbols. Linguistically it's all pig's ear. Texting is penmanship for illiterates. (Sutherland, 2002). In this sense, therefore, added to popular discourses about young people and new technologies are the usual folklinguistic concerns (see Niedzielski and Preston, 1999; Cameron, 1995) about threats to standard varieties and conventional communication practices more generally - that young people and new technologies might be to blame merely compounds matters. And it is not only lay people and journalists who are responsible for this kind of exaggerated and often prejudicial rhetoric.
[Text-]messages often bear more resemblance to code than to standard language. A text filled with code language expressions is not necessarily accessible to an

outsider. The unique writing style provides opportunities for creativity. (Kasesniemi & Rautiainen, 2002: 183 - emphasis ours). Netspeak is a development of millennial significance. A new medium of linguistic communication does not arrive very often, in the history of the race. (Crystal, 2001:238-9)

As has been the case with language on the internet where, for example, the language used by young instant messagers is described as a 'new hieroglyphics' (Pew Internet and American Life Project 2000), lay and academic discussions about the language of text-messaging are invariably caught up in an exaggerated sense of its impenetrability and exclusivity hence references to 'code', 'unique' and inaccessibility in the Kasesniemi & Rautiainen quote above. In his popular book on language and the internet, Crystal (2001) dismisses SMS as simply giving young people something to do - a point of view which seems not only patronising but also underestimates the intricate and integral role text-messaging plays in their social lives. What is more, for all his millennial rhetoric about 'netspeak', new linguistic practices seldom spring from nowhere, neatly quashing preexisting forms and conventions. Just as technologies do not replace each other, nor is it really possible to imagine communicative practices breaking completely, or that dramatically, with long-standing patterns of interaction and language use. With reference to other communication technologies - most notably the internet and web - scholars of computer-mediated communication (CMC) have for some time been challenging the assumption that technologicallymediated modes of communication are necessarily impoverished and antisocial (Walther & Parks, 2002; Spears et al., 2001) . Not least because so much CMC is text-based, more specific interest has also been with emerging linguistic forms and practices - or computer-mediated discourse (CMD) (Herring, 2001; Herring, 1996; Baron, 1998; Werry, 1996; Collott & Belmore, 1996). Not only as a technology for communication but also as a text-based format like instant messaging and online chat, the study of SMS is easily brought within the remit of CMC. As Grinter & Eldridge (2001:219) put it, mobile phones are, in effect, 'mini-terminals for textbased communication'. One of the principle arguments of both CMC and CMD is that generalizations about communicative and linguistic practice are inherently problematic, conflating as they do important differences in the affordances and constraints of different technologies such as email, online chat, instant messaging, newsgroups and bulletin boards, webpages and 'virtual worlds'. Specifically, as Herring (2001) also notes, language will necessarily be

affected by technological (or medium) variables such as synchronicity (e.g. where instant messaging is synchronous, email is asynchronous), granularity (i.e. how long or short text may be) and multimodality (e.g. whether or not graphics, audio and video are included), as well as other non-linguistic variables such as participants' relationships, expectations and levels of motivation. To begin with, however, SMS may be broadly defined as asynchronous, text-based, technologically mediated discourse.

1.4. The current study

Apart from being unambitious, talking about text is yet another way of focusing on young people. grown-ups often seek to legitimate their own conversation by orienting it around youth putting their own spin on the youthful activity of text messaging - but what of the activity itself? (Calcutt, 2001)

Distinguishing between 'expert framing' and 'folk framing' respectively, Katz & Aakhus (2002) comment on how little academic input there has been to balance everyday, popular discourses about mobile phones. Indeed, with the exception of their own edited volume and one by Brown et al. (2001), academic interest in text-messaging is only recent and fairly scattered. [note 6] While the Information Society Research Centre at the University of Tampere in Finland (e.g.Kasesniemi & Rautiainen, 2002) has been researching the mobile communication culture of children and young people since 1997, this is seldom the case elsewhere. What is more, for all the hype and hysteria about text-messaging and young people's use of textmessaging in particular, we know of very little published research which has specifically examined the (English) linguistic/discursive practices of textmessaging in the way that, say, Baron (1998) has done with email messages or Werry (1996) has done with online chat. [note 7] Nor is there an extensive mobile phone survey to compare with the Pew Project's (Pew Internet and American Life Project 2000) report on the use of the internet and instant messaging (IM) among young American people - the CMC technology which competes most directly with text-messaging for the attention of young people in the USA. This lack of attention to discursive aspects of technologically-mediated communication is consistent with the struggle of the scholars like Herring (Herring, 1996; Herring, 2001) to prioritise discourse in CMC. It was because of this noticeable hiatus, and in the face of popular discourses like those sketched above, that we were keen to undertake the following 'snapshot' survey; for us, this was a means of tracking the use of ever new communication technologies by young people, and also a way of rendering more empirical populist claims about the language of text-

messaging. With both Baron (1998) and the Pew Report (Pew Internet and American Life Project 2000) as inspiration, our investigation was framed by two straight-forward research questions relating to the linguistic forms and communicative functions of young people's text-messaging: (a) what are young people using text-messaging for? and (b) to what extent are they experimenting with conventional language in their text-messages? It is answers to questions such as these which help to improve the sociolinguistic or discursive mapping of new communication technologies more generally (cf. Thurlow, 2001b).

4. Further discussion
txtin iz messin, mi headn'me englis, try2rite essays, they all come out txtis. gran not plsed w/letters shes getn, swears i wrote better b4 comin2uni. &she's african Hetty Hughes [note 10]

As we suggested at the start, much is often said too readily about the uniformity of so called 'youth culture', from the tempestuous nature of young people's relationships, to their dependence on anti-normative practices, and their zealous take-up of new technologies. As Griffin (1993:25) describes it, '"youth" is/are continually being represented as different, Other, strange, exotic and transitory - by and for adults.'; nowhere is this more true than the heightened images in the press and broadcast media regarding young people's use of new technologies generally and mobile phones in particular. Certainly, new communication technologies can empower young people and many do indeed explore and develop imaginative ways of making the technology work best for them (see Thurlow & McKay, 2003). Furthermore, as is clear from the current investigation, mobile phones and text-messaging are undoubtedly very popular among older teenagers. Notwithstanding this, what we have been concerned to do is to address some of the ubiquitous generalizations about young people's use of text-messaging, and, specifically, to examine the reality behind popular notions of their somehow reinventing language in the way that Hetty Hughes' well-publicized poem implies.

4.1. The communication imperative: Intimacy and social intercourse

In situating text-messaging in the broader context of computer-mediated (or at least technologically-mediated) communication, much the same need arises for establishing the interplay between what the technology itself allows (or affords) and what the communicator herself/himself brings to the technology. Most obviously, in the case of text-messaging, the equipment is small and, eponymously, mobile; it therefore affords users an unobtrusive and relatively inexpensive mode of communicating. At the same time, textmessaging is also technically restricted to allowing only a certain number of characters per message, and, like text-based CMC, is 'QWERTY-driven' (Hale, 1996) - a point we address in the section which follows. Whether or not an aspect of the technology (or 'medium variable' - Herring, 2001:614) is a constraint or an opportunity, however, invariably depends on the user. For example, unlike the landline telephone and instant messaging, the asynchronicity of text-messaging affords greater control over when and how messagers respond to incoming messages. Ling & Yttri (2002:159)make the point that this allows users time for reflection before having to respond which in turn allows greater face-management. Importantly, however, the degree of synchronicity is more in the hands of its users (unlike email, IRC and the telephone) so that the time between receipt and reply may also be varied. Indeed, as is revealed in the data set for this paper, and as Kasesniemi & Rautiainen (2002) have noted in their long-term research, young people's text-messaging is becoming increasingly dialogic and, as such, resembles online chat in its conversational structure (i.e. turn-taking and message length). It is in this way that users infuse an ostensibly asynchronous technology with a certain synchronicity in the way they actually use it; as is so often the case, the technology is thereby co-opted and exploited to serve the underlying imperatives of intimacy and social intercourse. Other seemingly minor affordances of text-messaging also reveal substantial interpersonal benefits: for example, being able to turn the sound off allows for more discrete, parallel exchanges; the forward function (like email) facilitates the gifting' of chain messages; and, in addition to the face-saving potential of asynchronicity, caller/number display which enables users to screen incoming calls. [note 11] Still a useful theoretical framework, Uses & Gratifications Theory ( McQuail et al., 1972 ) proposes that audience-related variables invariably reveal the nature of a technology better than the technology itself - which is to say, it is the needs people seek to gratify which explain how they will actually use a

technology. For example, more recent research (e.g. Dimmick et al., 2000) has shown how the principal gratifications of the telephone to be sociability (i.e. social bonding), instrumentality (i.e. social coordination) and reassurance (i.e. security and understanding). Rafaeli (in Rssler & Hflich, 2002) also comments on the 'Ludenic' or entertainment qualities technologies - a capacity clearly taken up by the messagers in our corpus. Ling & Yttri (2002:151) suggest that certain of the affordances are especially attractive to children and teenagers - most notably: (a) being constantly accessible to, and in touch with, friends, and (b) being outside the purview of, and beyond the immediate reach of, parents and other authority figures. Although the second of these appears to play a smaller role with the young adults in the current study, there can be little doubt that accessibility and friendship contact continue to be immensely important. For the young people in our investigation, it seems that text-messaging can be characterized in terms of at least four gratifications, each of which may be compared with another CMC technology like email: high transportability (more so than email), reasonable affordability (more so than email), good adaptability (e.g. also voice-phone) (perhaps equivalent to email in the light of its increasing multimodality) and general suitability (e.g. it is quiet, discrete). Ultimately, however, the over-riding gratification which each in turn appears to serve is the need for intimacy and social intercourse. That relationship-building and social intercourse are both central to, and facilitated by, technologies for communication should be in no doubt (cf. Parks & Floyd, 1996; Walther, 1996), even though popular opinion still feeds on the once-popular scholarly idea that computer-mediated communication is necessarily asocial and/or antisocial (see Walther & Parks, 2002, for a discussion of these arguments). Certainly, opinion about the advantages of mobile phones often centres on practical or instrumental benefits such as convenience and security, followed by accessibility and control (see Leung & Wei, 2000). [note 12] Nonetheless, perhaps even more so than the telephone (cf. Hutchby, 2001:80), the mobile phone and textmessaging are 'technologies of sociability'. As participants' messages show, much of what is being transmitted to and fro is at the level of phatic communion and/or the kind of micro-level social coordination described byLing & Yttri (2002). That this is so, was evident not only in the functional or communicative orientation of participants' messages but was also revealed in the linguistic and orthographic content of their messages.

4.2. The language of SMS: Re-inventing the (English) language?

In her paper on the language of email, Baron (1998) sought to grapple with the idea that email might herald a new linguistic genre; her conclusion was ultimately that email language rather represented a creolizing blend of written and spoken discourse. Like email, and indeed most CMD, textmessages have much the same hybrid quality about them - both in terms of the speech-writing blend but also in terms of old and new linguistic varieties. [note 13] Although, as such, we are partly persuaded by Rssler & Hflich's (2002) notion of text-messaging as 'email on the move', this sort of metaphoric label belies the complex nature of discourse as being always contingent, dynamic and hybrid. [note 14] In its transience and ephemerality, for example, text-messaging is as much like instant messaging as it is like email - and, indeed, speech. In keeping with Herring's (2001) proposals, therefore, we are more inclined to view the language of SMS in its own terms; whatever formal similarities it may bear with other types of CMD, the linguistic and communicative practices of text-messages emerge from a particular combination of technological affordances, contextual variables and interpersonal priorities.
4.2.1. The sociolinguistic maxims of SMS

From what we have seen in participants' text-messages, and not unlike much CMD, the language of SMS appears to be underpinned by three key sociolinguistic 'maxims' (cf. Grice, 1975), all serving the principle of sociality which drives the messaging:
(1) brevity and speed; (2) paralinguistic restitution; and, (3) phonological approximation.

As the first and indeed foremost of these, the dual maxim of brevity and speed is manifested most commonly in (a) the abbreviation of lexical items (including letter-number homophones) and (b) the minimal use of capitalization and standard, grammatical punctuation (e.g. commas and spaces between words). Importantly, and as we have already suggested, the need for both brevity and speed appears to be motivated less by technological constraints, but rather by discursive demands such as ease of turn-taking and fluidity of social interaction. Likewise, in terms of the second and third maxims, where paralinguistic restitution understandably seeks to redress the apparent loss of such socio-emotional or prosodic features as stress and intonation, phonological approximation adds to paralinguistic restitution and engenders the kind of playful, informal register appropriate to the relational orientation of text-messaging. On occasions, the second and third maxims appear to override the brevity-speed maxim, but in most cases all principles are served simultaneously and equally. So, for the sake of

paralinguistic restitution, capitalization (e.g. FUCK) and multiple punctuation (what???!!!) may be more desirable; on the other hand, lexical items such as ello, goin, and bin serve both the need for abbreviation and phonological approximation. Nevertheless, some graphical punctuation seems more persistent, most notably the use of question marks (?) and full-stops (.). With reduction of 'typographic contrastivity' (Crystal, 2001:87), however, the use of capitalization and punctuation becomes more semantically marked and, in this way, grammatical marks are co-opted for other less grammatical effects (e.g. wow!!!! or No wait). Another example of paralinguistic restitution in graphical form is the famous emoticon - a direct borrowing from netlingo and a feature which appears to be similarly unpopular and, therefore, relatively infrequent - in spite of its exaggerated depiction in the media.
4.2.2. Non-standardness in SMS

Beyond the most obvious impact on linguistic forms of the sociolinguistic maxims, what has been most noticeable about the non-standard items (or 'new' linguistic forms) in the current corpus is how so few of them were especially new or especially incomprehensible (see Table 1 - pdf download). There were, in fact, few examples of items which were not semantically recoverable, even in isolation of their original, discursive context; much of what participants recorded would not be out of place on a scribbled note left on the fridge door, the dining-room table or next to the telephone - where precisely the same brevity-speed imperative would apply. [note 15] In this sense, therefore, claims (both academic and lay) for the impenetrability and exclusivity of SMS language are clearly exaggerated and belie the subtlety and contextuality of discourse. Like the fridge-door note-maker, SMS users surely recognise the obvious need also for a certain intelligibility - in Gricean terms, for example, quantity and manner (Grice, 1975). One of the best examples of this, in terms of abbreviation, is the use of consonant clusters (e.g. THX), recognising that consonants in English usually have more semantic detail/value than vowels. Besides, many of the non-conventional spellings found in participants' messages (also in Table 1) have a currency which is more widespread and pre-dates SMS; examples of this include the use of z as in girlz, the k in skool, as well as those which also entail phonological approximation such as Americanized (or even AAVE) forms like gonna, bin, coz and any g-clippings like jumpin, havin, etc. In point of fact, the orthographic (or typographic) conventions and the sociolinguistic maxims which underpin the language of text-messaging evidenced in this corpus are interesting but, in some respects, largely unremarkable. The notion of standardness in written language is itself a convention and always an abstraction from spoken language (see Cameron,

1995); in this sense, therefore, like the fridge-door note and the phonetic transcriptions of expert linguists, many of the typographic practices of textmessaging offer more 'correct', more 'authentic' representations of speech.
The use of non-standard orthography is a powerful expressive resource. [which] can graphically capture some the immediacy, the 'authenticity' and 'flavor' of the spoken word in all its diversity. [and] has the potential to challenge linguistic hierarchies (Jaffe, 2000:498)

In their text-messages, young people 'write it as if saying it' to establish a more informal register which in turn helps to do the kind of small-talk and solidary bonding they desire. The language they use is therefore not only intelligible but also appropriate to the overall communicative function. What is more, in a message like M31, it is apparent that they also approach SMS language with a metalinguistic awareness and a robust sense of play:
M31: hey babe.T.Drunk.Hate all luv.Have all men.Fuck them.how r u?We're ou utery drunk.im changing.Now.Ruth.xxx. Hate every1

It is a similar metapragmatic awareness which may also account for messagers' use of such apparently clichd forms as letter-number homophones and emoticons in the sense that they may be used with ironic effect and/or self-consciously to enact or perform 'text-messaging'. In other words, in a Hallidayan sense (Halliday, 1969/1997), the act of texting has both an interpersonal and textual function as people send messages not only for the kinds of communicative functions outlined above (e.g. relational bonding and social coordination) but also to be seen to be texting inasmuch as texting and mobile phones also carry cultural capital in and of themselves (cf. Kasesniemi & Rautiainen, 2002; Ling & Yttri, 2002). Put more simply, mobile telephones are also fashion accessories and ludic resources in their own right. Irrespective of message content, the very act of texting has cachet and communicates something about the sender; part of buying into the cachet of texting is drawing on discursive-cum-identity resources such as ringtones, keypad covers, and popularized linguistic markers like initialisms, clippings and letter-number homophones.
4.2.3. Personal style in SMS

All of which also raises the question of personal style and register; for example, compare the following messages:
M32: AS IF,wot ugly unsespectin minga has got u?only jokn fatsy,I new ud laf,dats i sent it-erd ur doin levis proj,did u 12 borrow mine?

M33: Moo!we live at 32 Sudbry Rd which is next to the Dough caf past the Firkin - if you want,I could meet you at the Firkin though.xx Bazz M34: Hi mate,how are you today?I'm watching Eden on channel 4,and I know the girl called Cliona.This is really weird.Going to the gym later on.Have a nice day

Probably the most reasonable explanation for the noticeably different orthograhy in messages M32 and M33 would be the difference in their communicative functions (relational and informational respectively) which prompted an understandable shift in register. However, the difference between two relational messages such as Messages 32 and 34 is less clear and might just as easily index a difference in the personal style of the messagers. In much the same way, assumptions about other discursive patterning in text-messaging (e.g. length, use of capitalization, emoticons and so on) need to be made with caution; for example, in addition to situational and conversational factors, personal preference may just as easily account for the differences in length is M35 and M36, where one exchange runs across two messages (see also our comments about length):
M35: What? M36: Safe Hi babe!Angie + Lucy had words last nite-stood there arguing 4 ages,loads of people outside cobarna.Bit obvious theywerent gonna fight tho cos they were there 4 so long!I was a bit pissed (woh!) Good nite tho!Spk 2u lata xxBeckyxx

In fact, a colleague (and more experienced text-messager) informs us that it is not uncommon for recipients to recognise the 'visual signature' (cf. Jaffe, 2000:509) of incoming messagers based on cues such as abbreviations and emoticons or and message length, in addition presumably to common discursive style markers like topic and lexicon. [note 16] It is surely a mistake to assume that text-messaging and/or young people are any less sensitive to contextual concerns for register and style, or that there is little variation in the appearance of messages; discursive factors such as interactional function and not technological features are just as likely to account for the relative use of 'new' linguistic forms.
4.2.4 Non-English messaging

The assumption is so often that the language of new technologies for communication is English ( Thurlow, 2001b; Yates, 1996 ), although there is little doubt that the global impact of English and the emergent discourse practices of new technologies are heavily interdependent. For example, Kasesniemi & Rautiainen (2002) note how English is a regular feature of the text-messages of the Finnish children and teenagers they

have been studying over the past five years. In the case of this study, however, the use of languages other than English was found only six times not surprisingly for a predominantly monolingual, English-speaking campus.
M37: Bore da moz.Sri am dihuno ti!Wyt t you dod i darlith medieval Europe am 2?Ost ya, t isie cwrdd tu fas law building am 1:50?Nia xxx [Welsh] M38: Ello cariad.Caru ti lds [Welsh] M39: Bist du ok? [German]

Nonetheless, what is interesting here is to see how persistent English is even in these few examples: in the case of M37, M38 and M39 (translations in note 17), the English names of lectures, words like ok, lds 'loads' and ello 'hello'. Importantly, these choices are typical also of the colloquial, hybridized 'Wenglish' spoken (and indeed written) by many young people in Wales. Although an isolated instance in this corpus, isie 'eisiau' (Eng. 'want') in M37, is also a Welsh version of precisely the kind of phonological approximations discussed above.
4.2.5 The generic features of SMS

While the kinds of orthographic (or, technically speaking, typographic) choices which young people make in their messages are sociolinguistically and communicatively intelligible, this is not to say that text-messages are without character or interest. Removed from its physical context, M31 is somehow clearly a text-message. How is this? Does this not imply a specific 'text-message' genre? All genres and all language are necessarily and always hybrid (see Chandler, 1997, for an overview of genre theory); nonetheless, text-messages are communicative events characterized not only in terms of their linguistic form but also their conversational or interactional function. Although some appear more informational or content-focused, the vast majority of which are clearly relational - so much so, that this solidary function becomes an almost genre-defining rule. Admittedly bearing some resemblance to a single IM (instant messaging) or IRC (internet relay chat) exchange, we suggest that what does give text-messages a distinctive (not unique) generic feel is the combination of: (a) their comparatively short length); (b) the relative concentration of non-standard typographic markers; and (c) their regularly 'small-talk' content and solidary orientation. Key qualifications here are 'combination', 'comparatively', 'concentration' and 'regularly'; none of these three features is individually sufficient to characterise text-messaging.

Once again, none of this is intended to suggest that text-messages are functionally unimportant and peripheral, or that they are uniform and strictly formulaic in form. Interactionally speaking, all 'small-talk' is 'big-talk' (Coupland, 2000). As Androutsopoulos (2000) has demonstrated in the case of 'fanzines', non-standard orthography is a powerful but also playful means for young people to affirm their social identities by deviating from conventional forms; in doing so, they differentiate themselves (from adults) and align themselves with each other. To which we would add the opportunity also to personalize and informalize their messages. Textmessages are therefore simultaneously remarkable and unremarkable in their relative unconventionality.

4.4. Conclusion: Putting things into perspective

Although something of a clich, it is necessary to acknowledge the speed with which these communication technologies are changing and how academic research in this area slides towards obsolescence before it even gets going. Just as Baron (1998:164) warned of email's being a 'technology in transition', the same is certainly true of mobile telephony and SMS. Not least given its commercial potential, the applications of SMS are being extended all the time - most notably in terms of the still largely untapped potential of internet-mobile phone interfaces (i.e. so called WAP 'wireless application protocol' technology). Along with such practical considerations as diminishing consumer charges and increasing commercial advertising, messagers are also increasingly being encouraged into SMS-chat and SMSdating as well as a host of information services (e.g. news, sports and music) - see, for example, <www.sms.ac>. In this way, the fields of CMC and SMS are themselves beginning to blur. What's more, just as the textbased nature CMC is changing in the face of ever increasing internet bandwidth, so too is text-messaging poised to become ever more multimodal. Other technical innovations likely to impact of the discourse of text-messaging are more sophisticated predictive text systems and keypad innovations. It is presumably for reasons such as these that, with particular reference to personal communication technology (PCT), Katz & Aakhus's (2002) have called for more data-driven research and comment. As researchers from the Information Society Research Center attest, however, it is not always easy to access data like text-messages which are almost always private and personal, and sometimes very intimate and often 'illicit' (Kasesniemi & Rautiainen, 2002:174). [note 18] In spite of its largely decontextualized linguistic data, the current study offers an empirically-based contribution to

growing interest in mobile communication as well as a more critical perspective on the role of new technologies in the lives of young people. In fact, what is evident from the current study is just how blurred the boundary between computer-mediated communication and face-to-face communication really is; for participants, there certainly seems to be little sense in which their text-messaging necessarily replaces face-to-face communication but rather their text-messaging has come to be 'folded into the warp and woof of life' (Katz & Aakhus, 2002:12). What is more, just as new linguistic practices are often adaptive and additive rather than necessarily substractive, young text-messagers manipulate conventional discursive practices with linguistic creativity and communicative competence in their pursuit of intimacy and social intercourse.

A phobia is an irrational fear, a kind of anxiety disorder in which the sufferer has a relentless dread of a situation, living creature, place or thing. Individuals with a phobia go to great lengths to avoid a perceived danger which is much greater in their minds than in real life. If confronted with the source of their phobia, the person will suffer enormous distress, which can interfere with their normal function; it can sometimes lead to total panic. For some people, even thinking about their phobia is immensely distressing. A phobia starts when a person begins organizing their lives around avoiding the object of their fear. A phobia is much more serious than a simple fear. Sufferers have an overpowering need to steer clear of anything which triggers their anxiety. If the phobia is of something the phobic person very rarely comes into contact with, such as snakes, their daily lives will not be affected. However, some complex phobias are impossible to avoid, such as agoraphobia (fear of leaving home or public places) or social phobia (fear of being among groups of people). Non-psychological phobias - photophobia means sensitivity to light. For example, if you have conjunctivitis or amigraine your eyes may be particularly sensitive to light. This does not mean the person is afraid of light. One of the symptoms of rabies is hydrophobia, which is the inability to drink water. Discrimination or prejudice - some words which include the word "phobia" do not refer to fear, but rather to prejudice or discrimination. Homophobia is not an uncontrollable fear of homosexual people; it is a dislike, a discrimination against them. Some older people may dislike youths or teenagers (ephebiphobia). Xenophobia is a dislike of strangers, foreigners or the unknown. There are three main categories of phobias:

Specific phobias (simple phobias) - involve a disproportionate fear about specific situations, living creatures, places, activities, or things. Examples include a fear of: - Dentists (dentophobia) - Bats (chiroptophobia) - Dogs (cynophobia) - Flying (aviophobia) - Snakes (opidiophobia) - Birds (ornithophobia) - Frogs (ranidaphobia)

The two cateogories below, social phobia and agoraphobia are known as complex phobias. They are linked to a deep-rooted fear or anxiety about certain situations, incidents or circumstances, which make them much more disabling than simple phobias.

Social phobia - now called social anxiety disorder. A person with social phobia finds being in social situations difficult and sometimes unbearable. Going to parties, weddings, functions, or exhibitions cause sufferers anxiety; there is fear of being embarrassed or humiliated in public. The ultimate nightmare for a person with social phobia is probably to have to talk in public or act on a stage of front of an audience. There is a fear of being judged by other people. People affected with social phobia feel that they will be scrutinized and singled out in the crowd, which would be an unbearably embarrassing ordeal. The dread of being laughed at because of their clothes, voice or some feature of their body is so intense that they prefer to avoid social gatherings altogether. Psychologists say that a high proportion of adults with social phobia started taking measures to avoid social situations during their teenage years. Studies have shown that their progressively isolated lifestyles make them more susceptible to developing depression. Experts emphasize that social phobia is not the same as shyness. Obese people may develop social anxiety disorder, simply because of their weight.

Agoraphobia - an individual with agoraphobia is frightened of finding himself/herself in situations where there is no escape; they fear being stuck in a desperate situation with no help. Agoraphobia may include a dread of traveling on buses or trains, going into large shops or shopping malls. When symptoms are severe, the patient may find it unbearable to even step out

of their own home. Sufferers have an 80% risk of also suffering from panic disorder. As with social phobia, crowded and public places are avoided.

How common are phobias?

In the industrial nations, phobias are the most common kind of anxiety disorder. Over 50 million people in the USA and 10 million in the UK are thought to live with a phobia. They can affect people of any age, sex, and socioeconomic status. The National Institute of Mental Health estimated in 2011 that between 8.7% and 18.1% of Americans of all ages suffer from phobias. A much higher percentage of women suffer from phobias than men. Simple phobias usually start early on in life - during childhood, and often go away by the time the person reaches late teens. Complex phobias generally start later on.

What are the signs and symptoms of phobias?

A symptom is something the patient feels and describes, such as a headache, while a sign is something other people, as well as the patient can detect, as may be the case with a rash, swelling or bruising. The following symptoms are common across the majority of phobias:

When exposed to the source of the fear there is a sensation of uncontrollable anxiety

A feeling that at all costs, the source of that fear must be avoided

The anxiety is so overwhelming when confronted with the source of the fear, that the person

is unable to function properly

It is common for sufferers to acknowledge that their fears are irrational, unreasonable and

exaggerated; however, in spite of this, they are unable to control their feelings

Panic and intense anxiety, which may include:

- sweating - abnormal breathing (panting, trying to catch your breath) - accelerated heartbeat - trembling - hot flushes or chills - a sensation of choking - chest pains, chest tightness - butterflies in the stomach - pins and needles - dry mouth - confusion and disorientation - nausea - dizziness - headache

A feeling of anxiety when the source of the fear is not there but is simply thought about

Children may cry, become very clingy, attempt to hide behind a parent's legs or an object, or

have tantrums Complex phobias Complex phobias are much more likely to severely affect the patient's wellbeing than specific phobias. Those who suffer from, for example agoraphobia, may have a number of other associated phobias as well, such as monophobia (fear of being left alone) or claustrophobia (fear of feeling trapped, closed spaces). In severe cases, agoraphobics will rarely leave their homes.

What are the causes of phobias?

It is unusual for a phobia to start after the age of 30; most of them begin during early childhood, teenage years or early adulthood. They can be caused by a stressful situation or experience, a frightening event, or a parent or household member who has a phobia which the child becomes progressively aware of. Common causes for specific (simple) phobias These usually develop when the child is between four and eight years of age. In some cases it may be the result of something that happened early in life. The trigger might have been an unpleasant experience in a confined space, which festered and developed into claustrophobia over time.

As mentioned above, witnessing a family member's phobia is a common cause for phobias which started during childhood. A kid whose mother suffers from arachnophobia is much more likely to develop the same phobia as well. Experts stress that phobias picked up from parents are learned fears - they are not genetically inherited. Common causes for complex phobias The causes of agoraphobia or social phobia are still a mystery, nobody is really sure. Health care professionals believe they are caused by a combination of life experiences, brain chemistry and genetics. Social phobias are more likely to be caused by an extremely stressful experience than agoraphobia, researchers say. Phobias and survival - there may be evolutionary explanations to many phobias. In prehistoric environments, remaining in wide open spaces would have increased the risk of being attacked and eaten by a predatory animal. The instinct of staying at home, especially for young children, aids survival. Young children in their caves and huts would have had to rapidly learn to avoid dangerous snakes and spiders. Social phobia may have been a useful survival instinct during ancient and prehistoric times. Being among people you do not know, from perhaps another tribe, was much more dangerous than finding yourself among a crowd of strangers in a shopping mall today.

Neurobiology - some areas of the brain - the prefrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala - store and recall dangerous or potentially deadly

events. In future occasions, if a very similar event is confronted, those areas retrieve that same memory and the body reacts is if there were a recurrence. With some people, the event may feel as if it is repeating itself many times. Some effective treatments manage to get the brain to replace the memory and reactions with something more rational. Phobias are irrational phenomena - the brain overreacts to a stimulus. Unfortunately, the brain areas that deal with fear and stress keep retrieving the frightening event inappropriately. Neuroscience researchers have found that phobias are often linked to the amygdala, which lies behind the pituitary gland. The amygdala can trigger the release of "fight-or-flight" hormones, which put the body and mind in a highly alert and stressed state.

How are phobias diagnosed?

People with a phobia nearly always know they have it, and are not defensive when discussing their symptoms with a doctor. This helps diagnosis enormously. Even so, millions of sufferers never discuss their fears with a health care professional. This is unfortunate, because there are effective treatments available today. Diagnosing agoraphobia - Anxiety UK, a British charity, has a Do-it-Yourself diagnosis, which consists of a list of questions. People who answer "Yes" to most of the questions below, most likely are affected and should see a doctor: Do any of the situations below make you anxious?

Leaving the house Standing in long queues (lines) Going on the subway (underground), a tunnel or any confined space Being on your own at home Being in wide, open spaces, such as a park or a field Being with many people, such as a crowd Do you deliberately avoid the situations mentioned above? An intense fear of embarrassment or humiliation in at least one social situation. The fear is persistent. The fear is typically with people they are unfamiliar with, or when they are being scrutinized closely.

Diagnosing social phobia - the doctor will try to determine where there is:

Feared situations trigger severe anxiety; even panic attacks.

The fear is acknowledged, but it makes no difference, the patient is unable to control it.

The patient avoids social situations, as well as situations where he/she has to appear in front of people and perform (public speaking, being on a stage in front of an audience)

Social phobia symptoms affect the patient's life severely. Their ability to work, take part in social activities, and function in relationships are badly affected.

Other possible explanations for the phobia have been ruled out, such as an illness or condition, a psychological disorder, or the side-effect of a medication.

Additional criteria for children with social phobia:

In social situations the child shrinks away, cries, has tantrums, or freezes still.

The child is unable to acknowledge that their fear is irrational and unreasonable

Their fear persists for over six months

For a doctor to be able to diagnose social phobia, it is important that the source of the fear is caused by anxiety, and not secondary symptoms of another disorder, such as delusional or obsessive disorders. The anxiety must be caused by being in the social situation and nothing else. A prominent feature of the patient's condition must be the avoidance of social situations.

Phobias: The rationale behind irrational fears

Phobias are very common, with many people admitting to being irrationally afraid of something. But where does this fear come from, and what can we do about it?
Even the most outlandish of fears can have a valid origin. Illustration by Simon Feeley

Recently, this section featured an article about the tarantulaTyphochlaena costae. While the piece was very interesting, this was likely lost on some readers, as it's difficult to focus on details while distracted by the sound of your own screaming. Arachnophobia is one of the more well-known phobias and can be very potent. Searching the science section for some lunchtime reading is not the sort of activity that typically includes spiders, so to be suddenly confronted, apropos of nothing, by an image of a humungous tarantula probably caught many unawares. How many tablets/phones/laptops were ruined due to being hurled across the room in a panic? Most would consider this an overreaction. Granted, there are many dangerous species of spider (I'd link to examples but can't find any without pictures, and I'm not a hypocrite) but the odds of encountering one are, in the UK at least, vanishingly small. And even then, the biggest spider is physically no match for a person; a rolled up newspaper is not considered a lethal weapon among humans. Arachnophobes substantially outnumber people who have been genuinely injured by spiders, and yet the irrational fear of spiders is commonplace. What scares people often makes little logical sense. As I do stand-up comedy on occasion, I'm regularly told I'm "incredibly brave", yet all I'm doing is saying words in front of people. The people who tell me I'm brave think nothing of driving, an often fatal practice. But when you do genuinely fear something for no rational reason, then you may have aphobia. Phobias are psychologically interesting. There are three possible types:specific phobias, social phobias and agoraphobia. Agoraphobia isn't just a fear of open spaces; it describes a fear of any situation where escape would be difficult and/or help wouldn't be forthcoming. The fact that most such situations occur outside the sufferer's home results in them not going out much, which is probably where the "open spaces" confusion comes from. Specific phobias are probably the most recognised. Specific phobias are an irrational fear of a specific thing or situation. Specific phobias can befurther subdivided into situational (eg claustrophobia), natural environment (eg acrophobia), animal (eg the aforementioned arachnophobia) or blood-injection-injury types (eg blood and injections, I guess). You could still have a phobia which doesn't fit any of these descriptors though. Maybe you've got an irrational fear of being categorised? If so, sorry. Social phobias are where you have an irrational fear of how people will react to you in a situation. The fear of rejection or judgement from others is a powerful force for humans; much of how we think and behave is calibrated around the views and behaviours of others. There's a whole discipline about it. People value the views of others differently of course. One way to reduce the

value you place on the opinions of strangers is to read the comments on the internet. Any comments, anywhere. How do we even develop a fear that is by definition irrational? One explanation is classical conditioning; you experience something bad involving a thing, you associate the bad experience with that thing, then you become afraid of that thing. But clever humans can also learn by observation; you see your mother panicking frantically in response to a wasp when you're a child, you'll likely be afraid of wasps too. If we are given enough (possibly inaccurate) information, we may just "figure out" things are scary via instructional fear acquisition. Certain horror films are particularly good at this, presenting everyday things likebirds as things to be feared, associations which stay with people for a long time. The Final Destination series is particularly cruel in that it tries to make people terrified of "not dying". We may even have evolved to acquire some phobias. Research has shown that primates tend to learn to fear snakes very quickly when compared to other stimuli. If you're evolving in an environment where snakes are a genuine but subtle threat, this tendency would help no doubt. It might explain the spider thing too. Not so sure about aerophobia though, we probably didn't need to worry about that on the African Savannah What can you do about this? It's not like those with phobias aren't aware of them. One of the criteria in the DSM-IV for diagnosing phobias is that the sufferer is aware of the irrational nature of their fear. There are a lot of brain regions involved, like the insular cortex and amygdala. And you can't simply make someone encounter the thing they're afraid of to show them it's harmless. As far as the brain is concerned, the fear response IS a negative physical consequence, so on a subconscious level the phobia is self-fulfilling. There are methods of treating phobias if they're genuinely debilitating.Systematic desensitisation is one approach (where the source of the phobia is introduced in easily-managed stages), cognitive behavioural therapy, even antidepressants if all else fails. It's different if you're talking about things like homophobia or Islamophobia, as often these are more likely to be misleadingly named prejudices than genuine phobias. There are fewer options for treating these though; science has tackled many psychological conditions, but there's still no known cure for being a dick. Dean Burnett encourages you not to be afraid and follow him on Twitter@garwboy

A phobia, according to the Encarta Encyclopedia, is an "intense and persistent fear of a specific object, situation or activity. The anxiety is typically out of proportion to the real situation and the victim is fully aware that the fear is irrational." Although there's nothing funny about terror, some of the objects of such dread are, well, unusual.

Lots to Fear Here Besides Fear Itself, but There's Relief

Reporter's Notebook September 04, 1989|MARY LOU FULTON | Times Staff Writer

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The feeling washes over me every time I hear of an airplane crash or even a near-collision. "I'm never going to fly again," I tell myself as my mind replays the video of the latest airline disaster. "I can't cope with being 30,000 feet above the ground anymore." Of course, I know the statistics show that flying is safer than driving. I also know that the odds are overwhelmingly against anybody in the Southland dying in an earthquake, but that it does not stop me from worrying, either. And what about all those crazy drivers who weave in and out of freeway traffic, missing my bumper by about six inches? That makes me nervous too.

Yes, I am phobic, defined as having an irrational, excessive and persistent fear of some particular thing or situation. And before you start laughing, is there anybody out there afraid of heights? How about snakes or dogs? Thunderstorms? Turns out that nearly 15% of Americans harbor some kind of phobia during a lifetime, ranging from absolute avoidance of people to nervousness about elevators, according to a 1988 study by the National Institute of Mental Health. There is even a Phobia Society of America, which has 7,000 members. My phobias have worsened since I moved to Long Beach about two years ago, and I secretly blamed California in part. Irrational? Maybe not, said Tustin psychologist Jerry Kasdorf, co-owner of Phobia Care Treatment Center. People are more susceptible to phobias when they feel unstable or alone, Kasdorf said. And few things are as unsettling as a solo move across the country to an enormous metropolitan area such as Los Angeles, he said. "Southern California is very mobile," Kasdorf said. "There isn't a great sense of stability in terms of a support system. The more alienated you feel from the population as a whole, the more alone you feel." I also think there is a general level of madness here that makes people nervous, from constant traffic struggles to sewage spills, to air so polluted that spotting mountains on the horizon is a cause to rejoice. Kasdorf agreed, noting that "if your car breaks down in Southern California and somebody stops to help, you worry about who's going to get out of that other car." What's the answer? Kasdorf advised those afraid to inject a degree of control into a phobia. A phobic has to face the problem situation and find a way to work through it.

He counsels his "fear of flying" clients to research the subject to find out which airlines have the best safety records. Fly out of an airport with less traffic than Los Angeles International. Choose a specific airline and ask for a particular seat. A disaster preparedness plan can help those who fear earthquakes, he said. Having emergency supplies at home, the office and in cars provides some sense of security.

As for freeway anxiety, he recommended driving a stable car and staying in the traffic lanes that produce the least nervousness. "Most people will worry about things," Kasdorf said, "but they won't take steps to take care of the things they're worried about." And if you're not careful, some phobias can change your life. Some who suffer from agoraphobia, or fear of open spaces, allow their condition to advance to the point where leaving the house is unthinkable. Earlier this year, I decided against vacationing in Hawaii because it involved a plane flight. But I agreed, amid some nail-biting, to take a plane trip next month. I know I'll spend much of the flight listening for suspicious engine noises, but at least I'm going.

Health : Probing the State of Our Minds : Major Study of Mental Illness Finds It Surprisingly Common
November 01, 1988|ALLAN PARACHINI | Times Staff Writer

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Almost a third of all Americans suffer from acute mental illness during their lifetime and, at any one moment, major mental disorders afflict almost 15% of the nation's population, according to new findings from the largest study of its kind ever conducted. The proportions of mental illness, contained in new projections from the study sponsored by the federal government's National Institute of Mental Health, significantly exceed many earlier estimates and conflict with assumptions made about them by public-policy officials.

For instance, nationwide rates of obsessive-compulsive disorder, in which sufferers engage in endless repetitive behavior such as washing themselves or checking to see if the stove is turned off, have turned out to be 25 to 60 times greater than previously thought. Instead of being rare, the disease is commonplace. People Find Ways to Cope The newly calculated rates also suggest, experts familiar with the study say, that huge--though unmeasured-proportions of people with such disorders as acute schizophrenia, debilitating phobias and major depression simply find ways to cope with their symptoms and live their lives as best they can, never coming in contact with mental health workers. "We had no idea of the level of phobic conditions and of anxiety disorders. This has been a real eye-opener," said Dr. Darrel Regier, the NIMH director of the study, which is to be published today. For instance, in some patients with major fear disorders, speculated Regier, people who are unable to bring themselves to drive across high bridges may simply find alternate routes to work. They live with their illnesses instead of seeking treatment either because they choose to, because treatment resources are financially out of reach or because they are too ill to realize how to get help. "Somehow, they are able to work around it," Regier said. "They just don't go on trains (for instance). They cordon off certain areas of their lives where they can't function." The ordeals such individuals face in their daily lives are often completely unappreciated by even their close friends, said Dr. Daniel X. Freedman, the UCLA-based editor of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, which is publishing the findings. "These people are walking up a much steeper gradient to accomplish what they can accomplish than the general population," Freedman said in an interview. "It's a hard thing to appreciate. You can understand an amputee having a little trouble walking, but if there are just joint disorders, (the problem may be ignored or misunderstood). Well, there are a lot of creaky psychological joints here that are hurting." In addition, according to Regier, the findings suggest that at least some old people who are presumed to be afflicted by irreversible dementias like Alzheimer's disease may simply be depressed and that they could respond to drugs and other therapy--if only treatment were attempted. The new observations represent the final conclusions of a $20 million NIMH study originally commissioned in 1980. The study, in which more than 18,500 people selected at random underwent detailed diagnostic interviews, first made headlines four years ago when preliminary results--from interviews in just three of five cities where data were gathered--implied that almost 20% of Americans suffered from serious mental disorders during any six-month period.

The research project is officially called the NIMH Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, meaning that it relies on interviews in catchment areas--standardized, carefully predetermined geographic areas within the five cities involved. Mental health services are organized around a nationwide system of local catchment areas.

To arrive at national rate projections for the 13 disorders involved, a complex statistical manipulation was used that took into account interview samples in rural and urban settings and among a variety of ethnic groups. The new rates were based on a more extensive and sophisticated statistical methodology than the estimates released four years ago. In the new findings, the final data--from which statistically complex national projections were made for 13 different categories of mental disease--indicate the six-month illness rate is even higher than was previously reported--19.8%, or more than one full percentage point higher than 1984 preliminary figures. The new estimates of prevalence of mental diseases at any given moment were based on the proportion of subjects who had symptoms within 30 days before they were interviewed. Because positive diagnosis often requires symptoms to have persisted for at least two weeks, the 30-day interval was equated with disease existing at any given time. Overall, the study found 32.2% of Americans have one or more serious mental diseases during their lifetime. Among the study's other major conclusions are these:

Take a Tip From the Freeway Phobic: There's Real Life on City Streets
Page 2 / NEWS, TRENDS, STYLE AND BUZZ | Drive Time August 09, 2000|MARY McNAMARA | TIMES STAFF WRITER

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I have a friend who can't drive on freeways. Actually, I have several friends who can't drive on freeways, who suffer from driving phobias of varying types and intensities. But this particular friend, a local journalist whom I will call Johnny, suffers from a freeway phobia so severe it has caused him to black out, and so he hasn't driven on a freeway in almost 11 years. And it doesn't bother him one bit. Unlike my other friends who would like to overcome their fears and get back on that ribbon of highway, Johnny doesn't care if he ever drives on a freeway again.

"I tried biofeedback, I tried therapy, I tried relaxation tapes, I tried everything," he says. "And then I decided there were more important things in my life to work on."

You'd be surprised," he adds, "how many people in L.A. don't drive on the freeways." Especially on those days when it seems every single person in the world is not only driving on a freeway, but on the very freeway you have chosen. But he's right. There are thousands of Southern Californians out there poring over Thomas Guides, bumming rides, calling cabs or using (gasp) mass transit because the freeways make them black out, or hyperventilate, or just break out in a cold sweat. The problem keeps plenty of therapist-types in business, including Sy Cohn, "the driving therapist" who has made a career of rehabilitating phobic drivers. (His Web site, http://www.phobiafree.com, is full of desperate seekers and exultant testimonials.) For Johnny, however, a life without lane changing is just dandy. Because he's "centrally located," as he puts it, in the Mid-Wilshire district, there are only a few places out of surface-street reach. "I once had to take a bus to Laguna. You should have seen the driver's face when I told him I was going to the Ritz. He was so shocked someone would take a bus to the Ritz that he drove me a mile out of his route. "But really," he insists, "I can't say that I have been prevented from doing anything because I don't drive on the freeways. I mean, even if I could drive on freeways, I probably wouldn't most of the time because, frankly, they don't get you there any faster." Some of his friends, he says, seem to forget that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Or Beverly Boulevard. And it's true; just as there are the freeway phobic, there are also the freeway addicted--those who will drive miles out of their way to get on a congested freeway that loops past their destination under the mistaken assumption that freeways are always faster. Not that L.A. surface streets are forgotten country lanes. But even if they add five or 10 minutes to your drive time, surface street routes have a lot of advantages. For instance, if you have to sit in traffic--and you do-wouldn't you rather be looking at people and trees and bulldozers and really great old motel signs than cars and cars and cars and cars? When you're driving through a city, wouldn't you sometimes rather drive through a city? Since the point of freeways is speed, not scenery, they skirt past or over anything remotely resembling a destination. On a freeway you see the big landmarks, the flashing signs; on the surface streets you find reality, the endless array of language and music, the borders where one way of life ends and another begins. There, for a block or two here, a mile or so there, you can find the grand blurring of this and that, of them and us--the first glints of the city's past and its future.

On a freeway, you miss all that. On a freeway, L.A. and its environs are a series of exits and interchanges, its people a flock of grim shapes rushing by. On the freeway, you could be anywhere, or nowhere.

And that's pretty scary. Mary McNamara can be reached at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.

Figuring out phobia

Researchers are using neuroimaging techniques to delve into the neurobiological underpinnings of phobias, with a view to improving treatments. By Lea Winerman Monitor Staff July/August 2005, Vol 36, No. 7 Print version: page 96 More than 10 million adults in the United States suffer from some sort of phobia, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. These exaggerated fears--whether of spiders, needles (see page 100), snakes, heights, social situations (see page 92) or even public spaces (see page 94)--can become so all-consuming that they interfere with daily life. The good news is that over the past several decades, psychologists and other researchers have developed some effective behavioral and pharmacological treatments for phobia, as well as technological interventions. Now researchers are taking the next step, says psychologist and phobia researcher Arne hman, PhD, of the clinical neuroscience department at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. They are using neuroimaging techniques like positron-emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand the brain circuitry that underlies phobia and what happens in the brain during treatment. They're finding that the amygdala--a small, almond-shaped structure in the middle of the brain's temporal lobes--is a key player, and that malfunctions of the amygdala and associated brain structures may give rise to many phobias. Still, researchers have yet to work out the details of how this happens. "As soon as we know more about what is happening in the brain, then we can fine-tune treatment," hman says. The biology of fear All phobias are anxiety disorders, lumped in the same class as post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorder, among others. And anxiety disorders are, fundamentally, based on fear. "What we know about the neurocircuitry and brain basis of fear originally comes from animal research," says psychiatrist Scott Rauch, MD, of Harvard Medical School. Indeed, more than 30 years of research has examined the neurological underpinnings of fear in laboratory rats. The workhorse paradigm has been the fear conditioning/fear extinction model, Rauch explains. In this model, researchers condition rats to fear a neutral stimulus, like a particular tone, by pairing it with something aversive, like an electric shock. Then, later, the researchers can "extinguish" this fear by repeatedly playing the tone without the accompanying shock. The researchers can use electrodes to record electrophysiological activity in the rats' brains during the fear conditioning or extinction process. "Using this paradigm, in the past 25 years we've been able to pinpoint pretty precisely where to look for fear in the brain," says New York University psychologist Joseph LeDoux, PhD, a pioneer of this type of research. What they've pinpointed is the amygdala. LeDoux and others have found that there is a double pathway leading to and from the amygdala. One path leads directly from a frightening sensory stimulus--like the sight of a snake or the sound of a loud crash--to the amygdala in just a few thousandths of a second. A second, slower pathway travels first to the higher cortex before reaching the amygdala. "The shorter pathway is fast but imprecise," LeDoux explains. "If a bomb goes off, you might not quickly be able to evaluate any of the perceptual qualities of the sound, but the intensity is enough to trigger the amygdala. If you knew a lot about bombs, then through the cortex pathway you could evaluate the danger, but it will take longer." The fast pathway, then, is the brain's early warning system, explains LeDoux, and leads to physical manifestations of fear like a racing heart and sweaty palms. The second pathway can override the first, and either lead to conscious feelings of fear or no fear. Studies like these have led researchers to believe that phobias and other anxiety disorders are caused by some type of dysfunction in the amygdala and related brain areas. Moving to humans

The detail and scale of what researchers have learned from animal experiments is extraordinary, according to Rauch. "But the disadvantage is that you have to extrapolate from what you've learned to humans, and particularly to humans with anxiety disorders," he says. So about a decade ago, researchers began to try to examine the analogous processes in people, using brain-imaging technology such as PET and fMRI. What they've found has already led to a greater understanding of many anxiety disorders, particularly obsessivecompulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Fewer studies have focused on phobias, Rauch says: "The data there are a little less developed, and the results less cohesive." The first studies, from the early and mid 1990s, were symptom-provocation studies: Researchers would show, say, a snake-phobic person a snake or a picture of a snake, and then use PET scans to examine the brain's reaction. "Heuristically, it was appealing to believe that these phobic disorders would be related to abnormalities in the fasttrack through the amygdala," Rauch says. But in fact the earliest studies--like a 1995 study by Rauch in the Archives of General Psychiatry (Vol. 52, No. 1, pages 20-28)--didn't find any evidence of amygdala activation, although some cortical areas that communicate with the amygdala were active. As measurement and experimental techniques have developed over the past decade, though, the findings have developed as well. For example, fMRI works more quickly than do PET scans, so researchers can examine the brain's reaction to stimuli in a narrower time scale, Rauch explains. In a 2003 study from Neuroscience Letters (Vol. 348, No. 1, pages 29-32), for example, psychologist Wolfgang Miltner, PhD, and his colleagues at Friedrich Schiller University in Germany used fMRI to examine spider phobics as they viewed pictures of spiders, snakes and mushrooms. This time the researchers found that the amygdala was more active in the spider phobics than in control participants. Other researchers have found that "masking" the phobia stimulus, so that participants see it but are not consciously aware of it, produces interesting results. In a 2004 study in Emotion (Vol. 4, No. 4, pages 340-353), hman and his colleagues flashed 16 snake and spider phobics with pictures of a snake and a spider, each followed by a neutral picture. The presentation was so fast that the participants were not consciously aware that they had seen the snake or spider. Next, the researchers waited long enough for the participants to consciously register the feared stimuli before presenting the neutral ones. The researchers found that when the timing did not allow conscious awareness, the amygdala responded to both the phobic and fear-relevant stimuli (fear-relevant stimuli were snake pictures for spider phobics, and vice versa). But when the timing did allow awareness, the amygdala responded only to the phobic stimuli. This suggests, hman says, that the amygdala responds immediately to anything that might be threatening, but that with more time to process other areas of the brain suppress the amygdala's initial response. Finally, some researchers have begun to look particularly at what happens in the brain during and after phobia treatment. Psychologists Tomas Furmark, PhD, Mats Fredrikson, PhD, and their colleagues at Uppsala University in Sweden used PET scans to examine the brain activity of 18 people with social phobia as the people spoke in front of a group. Then, one-third of the participants received nine weeks of cognitive-behavioral therapy, one-third received the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor Citalopram and one-third received no treatment. The researchers tested the patients again, using the same public speaking task, at nine weeks and again after one year. They found that the activation in the amygdala and related cortical areas at nine weeks could predict which people's symptoms would improve after one year. Though all of these findings are shaping researchers' understanding of the parts of the brain that give rise to phobia, the picture is far from complete. "This is a critical area of research for the future," says Rauch.

Nature's perfect killing machine

Opinion by ZekiYuro posted over a year ago

The Australian crocodile is the largest crocodile in the world.It can grow up to seven metres long and the biggest can weigh up to 1000 kilos.It has only 2 muscles to open its mouth but 40 to close it! What makes crocodiles so dangerous is that they attack incredibly quickly and they take their victims under the water to drown them.They usually attack in the water,but they can suddenly come out of a river and attack animals or people,and they can run on land at 17km/h. Every year in Australia there are crocodile attacks on humans.2 years ago a 24-year-old German tourist died when she went for a swim in a lake.Although there were signs warning people that there might be crocodiles,the girl and her friends decided to have a midnight swim.The girl suddenly disappeared and next morning her body was found.Near it was a four-metre crocodile.And only last month 2 Australian boys watched in horror as their friend was killed by a crocodile when they were washing their moutain bikes in a river.They climbed a tree and stayed there for 22 hours while the crocodile waited below. But you CAN survive a crocodile attack.Last year Norman Pascoe,a 19-year-old,was saved from a crocodile when his aunt hit it on the nose.Norman's aunt said:'I hit it and I shouted,"Help!"The crocodile suddenly opened its mouth and my nephew escaped.' Rogue brings Australian filmmaker Greg McLean, whose previous effort was the harrowing thriller Wolf Creek, back to the horror fold with an effective and well-crafted monster movie that pits a boatful of tourists against the title beast: a king-size crocodile with an insatiable appetite. McLean wisely follows the paradigm outlined by Jaws and other notable giant creature features by keeping his croc largely offscreen for the pic's first third, focusing instead on his human cast, which includes Michael Vartan(Alias) as a coolheaded American travel writer and Silent Hill's Radha Mitchell as the tour guide (Wolf Creekfans will note that film's antagonist, John Jarrett, among the ill-fated travelers). Once the monster makes its spectacular entrance by capsizing the boat, the suspense kicks into high gear as the tourists are faced with an unenviable choice: swim for their lives or wait until the tide overtakes their refuge on a tiny island. Surprisingly, McLean doesn't sacrifice quality in his pursuit of broader audience appeal; the award-winning special effects are top-notch, but so are the performances and photography, which capture the rough beauty of Australia's Northern Territory. Likewise, characters are not simply bodies waiting to be chomped; McLean's script takes the time to build them into full-bodied people, which adds a level of substance and sympathy to the story. All in all, Rogue is the meatiest in the spate of killer croc pics of recent years, and worth a look for those who were intrigued by Lake Placid or Primeval. The unrated DVD includes commentary by McLean as well as a battery of making-of documentaries, which cover the film's inspiration (a real-life croc attack on an Aussie riverboat in the '70s) as well as its impressive technical aspects. --Paul Gaita Import Blu-Ray/Region A pressing. From the director of Wolf Creek comes this terrifying look at nature's perfect killing machine. When a group of tourists stumble into the remote Australian river territory of an enormous crocodile, the deadly creature capsizes their boat - trapping them on a tiny mud island with the tide quickly rising and darkness descending. As the hungry predator closes in for the kill, they must fight for survival against all odds. Starring Michael Vartan (Alias) and Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill), Rogue delivers brutal action and breathless suspense as it speeds towards one of the most intense final showdowns ever filmed.

Crocodiles have a rather off-putting character trait: they bite. Its fair to say few people like being bitten. We like being eaten even less, and reserve our most

morbid fears for creatures that dare to consume us. Many find it quite unnerving to live and work in areas where humans are demonstrably not at the top of the food chain. It is surprising that weve done so little work to track clashes between crocodiles and humans, including where, when and why they occur. This week Big Gecko and Charles Darwin University are launching CrocBITE, a worldwide crocodilian attack database that does exactly that. With nearly 2000 incidents recorded across 16 species, 50 countries and 150 years, it provides a strong baseline to better understand croc attack trends and risk factors.

Fatal (F; red) and non-fatal (NF; olive) attack incidents across 16 species from 2008 to 2013. Nile crocodile attacks are likely underrepresented due to limited record-keeping. CrocBITE

lick to enlarge

How is Australia doing?

Crocodile attacks are increasing in many countries, but some places are doing a better job than others at keeping them in check. Since 1971, Australia has witnessed 99 attacks on people by saltwater crocodiles, of which 27% were fatal. On average thats around 2.3 attacks per year over four decades, of which 0.6 were fatal. Thats pretty good going for a country with the highest river densities of saltwater crocodiles in the world, and an active human population that spends a lot of time in and around water.

Australian croc attack data. The stacked bars show total attacks for each 10-year period, with reports of fatal attacks shown in red and non-fatal attacks in green. The black line shows the percentage of attacks that were fatal in each decade. CrocBITE

lick to enlarge Although the rate of attacks has increased in the last decade (4.5 attacks per year since 2004), the fatality rate has actually fallen since the 1970s and 1980s from 57% (1974 to 1983) to 29% (2004 to 2013). This probably reflects the greater proportion of crocodiles in the size range (around 3 m) that typically lead

to non-fatal attacks. With an ongoing increase in the proportion of very large crocodiles, we might expect a greater proportion of fatal attacks in the future. Australias strong and mature crocodile management program can take a lot of credit for keeping fatalities low. Management in other countries within the saltwater crocodiles range still has a long way to go, as evidenced by much higher attack and fatality rates (for example, since 2007, Timor Leste has had 53 attacks, 72% fatal; Sumatra has had 107 attacks, 49% fatal). Its not just humans that suffer from conflict. We kill around 250-300 crocodiles around Darwin each year to reduce risks to people. Queensland is starting to adopt a similar approach. This is a tiny proportion of the total crocodile population, but we still have a limited understanding of how removing different sized crocodiles might influence croc behaviour in ways that could affect our safety.

Croc-free zones
Crocodiles are survivors. They have been around for well over 100 million years, and their ability to survive is strongly correlated with the quality of their remaining habitat. The trouble is, as our towns and cities continue to expand, were increasingly coming into conflict with creatures that are as determined as us to survive. In Queensland, the state government has passed laws allowing some areas to be declared crocodile exclusion zones, where crocodiles will not be tolerated, with the option of putting in barriers to stop them returning. In zones considered to be at higher risk of crocodile-human interaction, such as Cairns and surrounding beaches and rivers, rangers have been catching and removing crocs bigger than 2 metres long.

Living with killers

Crocodile conservation has been a victim of its own success in many parts of northern Australia. From uncontrolled exploitation after the second World War, to blanket protection from the early 1970s, our conservation strategies have continually needed to adapt. Once protected populations became numerous enough to result in more frequent crocodile attacks, public support quickly eroded. Management shifted from protection to sustainable use, with the promise of profit as a conservation incentive. Someone once told me they hate crocodiles with a passion, but they love their community with equal passion, and if having crocodiles supports local jobs then theyre OK as long as they toe the line. The trouble is, crocodiles toe no line. They are wild animals subject to natural behaviour and the mathematical beauty of their population ecology. The more crocodiles there are around people, the greater the likelihood of someone stumbling across their path occasionally with fatal results. People will only tolerate so much. Attacks propagate fear, no matter how small the actual risk of being attacked. Once the pressure to do something reaches a sympathetic political ear, crocodiles come off second-best. Despite this, pressure to change may be essential for the continued successful management of crocodiles in northern Australia, based on sound science and pragmatic compromise between competing interests.

Learning from sharks

The new CrocBITE website and database encourages contributions from individuals and agencies around the world. We have more than 50 data

contributors so far, and we have designed it to be citizen science friendly, to attract data from diverse sources. CrocBITE is inspired by the success of the International Shark Attack File, which since 1958 has provided information and advice on shark attacks worldwide. Based in Florida and run by expert shark biologists, it stores more than 3,400 individual investigations into shark attacks globally from the mid1500s up to the present. Partly thanks to that database, we now have a more mature understanding of shark ecology and behaviour, as well as analysis of circumstances leading to shark attacks around the world, and even the benefits of having sharks around. Before CrocBITE, we did not had a similarly comprehensive database of crocodile attacks, making it difficult to properly analyse where and why they have occurred. However, translating this knowledge into good policy for handling shark and crocodile attacks still remains a challenge, as the responses to recent shark attacks in WA and NSW demonstrate. The science tells us that culling sharks is the wrong approach, especially where endangered species are involved. Unfortunately, culling is much easier to sell politically. Does culling work for crocodiles? It is undoubtedly easier to target specific problem crocodiles within a management area, and the Northern Territory has demonstrated that a pro-active removal strategy has benefits for public awareness and reducing risk. Yet it doesnt change the simple fact that its dangerous to swim in crocodile habitat. Culling crocs will not eliminate risk. Crocodiles and sharks elicit similar strong emotions. Ensuring the best results will require hard scientific and political work. Ultimately, the most effective strategy for staying safe is common sense.

Australian Saltwater crocodiles are by far the most dangerous animals in Australia. They are huge, aggressive, territorial, and plentiful across the north of the Australian Outback. Crocodiles kill on average one to two people per year! On this page you can learn about Australian saltwater crocodiles, their life, their habitat and their conservation. You don't need to be paranoid about crocodiles, paranoia never helps. But you do need to be aware of the danger if you travel in the northern Australian Outback. To learn how to be crocodile safe and to read about attacks that have occured in the past, go to the next page: Crocodile Attacks in Australia The males can reach a length of up to 6 or 7 metres (2.5 to 3m for females), though such a size is rare. In fact, anything over 5 metres is rare, but that is more than big enough anyway. This is a large headed species with a heavy set of jaws, and the jaws can exert a pressure of several tons. "Salties", as we "Aussies" call these Australian crocodiles, eat mainly small reptiles, fish, turtles, wading birds etc..., but they can also kill and eat much larger prey. They are known to take wild pigs, buffaloes, and also live stock like cattle and horses. The name saltwater crocodile is misleading. Salties can live in the brackish waters along the coastlines but are just as happy in freshwater rivers, swamps and billabongs many hundred kilometres inland. Breeding and raising of the young saltwater crocodiles actually happens in freshwater areas. Between November and March the female lays 40 - 60 eggs in a nest made from plant matter and mud on a river bank. The location of the Australian crocodile nests is sometimes used as an indication of how much rain can be expected during the upcoming wet season... But the crocodiles don't always get it right. Many nests are flooded every year, killing the embryos. The mother guards the nest, even preventing it from drying out if necessary by splashing it with water. The eggs take 90 days to develop. Interestingly the sex of the young Australian saltwater crocodiles is determined by the incubation temperature. Below 30 oC the hatchlings will be female, and above 32oC they will be male. When the little crocs are about to hatch they make chirping sounds in their eggs, and the mother helps them by digging them out of the nest. Then she takes the hatchlings to the water's edge in her mouth and from here on watches over them until they are able to look after themselves.

It takes females 10 to 12 years, and males 16 years and more to reach maturity... Despite mum's caring ways less than 1% of the hatchlings will get there. Predation by turtles and goannas takes its toll in the early days, and later on the juveniles are often killed and eaten by territorial mature males. The territorial behaviour of the male saltwater crocodiles forces the young crocodiles out of the region in which they have been raised. They have to find an unoccupied territory for themselves. If they are unable to do that they will either be killed or be forced out to sea. Here they will move around until they find another river system. Return to top

Australian Saltwater Crocodile Conservation

You might have heard or read that today there are more Australian saltwater crocodiles living in the Northern Territory than Territorians. I'm not sure about that, but there are certainly more crocodiles than people where I live, in the Kimberley in Western Australia. The Australian crocodile population is estimated to be over 150,000. It makes Australia a major stronghold of the species, and possibly the only one. Things didn't always look so good for our saltwater crocodiles. From the late 1940s to the 1970s extensive hunting for their hides (the most valuable of all crocodile skins) had reduced their numbers to a critical level. Their reputation as a maneater didn't help them much either. The two facts combined made crocodiles just about disappear in other countries that previously had healthy populations. When the Australian crocodiles were finally made a protected species their numbers slowly recovered. Today several breeding programs exist in Australia, for skin and meat production. For this Australian crocodile eggs are collected from the wild. The egg collection so far hasn't shown any detrimental effect on the population numbers. Neither has the permission of limited hunting that was given to native people of the area. The numbers are so good that some regulated trophy hunting is being discussed. Aggressive trapping of problem crocodiles and their removal to Australian crocodile farms has reduced the numbers of conflicts between humans and reptiles. Despite the trapping and ongoing education campaigns there are many calls by residents to shoot the b......s again. I know, because I live in serious crocodile country. All of the Kimberly with its abundance of tidal rivers is perfect habitat for Australian crocodiles. I moved here over 12 years ago. Back then it was safe to swim in our lake, and in several places along some rivers. Not any more... Theterritorial nature of the males requires every mature male to have its own territory. As saltwater crocodile numbers increase they move further and further inland, and closer and closer to human settlements. We have been watching it with our own eyes for years. The potential for conflict is certainly there. Monitoring and trapping helps, but it doesn't eliminate all risk.

BE CROCWISE

What is CROCWISE When it comes to crocodiles, the Northern Territory (NT) Government takes your safety seriously, but ultimately how you behave around crocodile habitats is your responsibility. Any body of water in the Top End may contain large and potentially dangerous crocodiles.

The NT Government Parks and Wildlife Service actively manages saltwater crocodiles to reduce the risk of crocodile attack across the Top End, with the exception of Australian Government controlled lands such as Kakadu National Park.

In the Top End, many people live and participate in recreation activities in and near the water. People need to BE CROCWISE and know how to enjoy the waters safely.

CROCWISE integrates public education and active crocodile management by the Northern Territory Government to reduce the risk of crocodile attacks in the Top End.

Changing public behaviour around water To be safe the public need to understand the risks and appropriate behaviours so that they can make informed, sensible choices to enable them to stay safe in and around Top End waters.

CROCWISE behaviour is the most important way to reduce the risk of a crocodile attack in the Northern Territory.

Territorians can not become complacent. You need to be cautious every time you go near or in a waterway in the Top End.

Principles behind CROCWISE Saltwater crocodiles are common in the Northern Territory and pose a significant risk to human life Top End waterways are some of the best remaining habitats for saltwater crocodiles in the world. There is estimated to be over 100,000 saltwater crocodiles in the NT at the moment. Population studies indicate that saltwater crocodile populations are stabilising in some rivers; the average size is increasing as the population ages; more animals are moving further upstream and into more marginal habitats.

There are important reasons to continue to protect and manage saltwater crocodiles in the NT: ey are internationally threatened. ator and a critical part of the aquatic environment.

a valuable tourist attraction.

om the wild is an important part of the crocodile industry in the NT. DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT AND THE ARTS

-2People live and participate in recreational activities in or near waterways where saltwater crocodiles live Most Territory towns and urban areas are established on the coast, harbours or rivers. These are all places where saltwater crocodiles live. Darwin is located close to the Adelaide River floodplain, one of the best breeding areas for saltwater crocodiles in the world, and the expansion of Darwin into the rural areas is bringing more people closer to significant populations of crocodiles.

Many of the recreational activities enjoyed by Territorians and visitors to the Top End, such as fishing, swimming, camping, boating, wildlife viewing and bushwalking, can bring people and crocodiles close together, increasing the subsequent risk of a fatal crocodile attack. This risk is increasing due to changes in both crocodile and human populations.

In areas where saltwater crocodiles live, there are no guarantees that a natural waterway is 100% safe Crocodile management activities such as surveying, trapping and removing saltwater crocodiles are used to reduce the risk of crocodile attacks in many locations across the Top End. In some places, the risk of a

saltwater crocodile entering the area is reduced to a level where it is possible to recommend swimming. However, even in those locations there is still a small risk that a saltwater crocodile may enter an area unobserved. In all other locations, people need to assume that a saltwater crocodile could be present at any time and behave accordingly.

Only swim where there are designated safe swimming signs Designated safe swimming signs are erected in locations that are considered safe from crocodiles, such as Berry Springs Nature Park and Litchfield National Park.

Although warning signs have a role to play, it is not possible to have warning signs at every location across the NT that saltwater crocodiles may inhabit. It should be assumed that any water body in the saltwater crocodiles natural range in the NT is unsafe to swim, unless signposted otherwise.

Your personal safety is your responsibility Safe behaviour in and around Top End waterways is important. Think about your actions and do not become complacent.

The safety of the public depends largely on public behaviour to reduce the risk of a crocodile attack. Do not behave recklessly and place yourself at risk.

The NT Government has a strategic approach to saltwater crocodile management The NT Government Parks and Wildlife Service has dedicated and active saltwater crocodile management programs for a number of public water bodies, to reduce the likelihood of a fatal crocodile attack. Parks and Wildlife Service assess the potential risk of crocodiles to determine the level of management activity for any given area.

The Parks and Wildlife Service assists other landowners and managers to manage crocodiles on their land. However, responsibility for public safety on those lands remains the responsibility of the landowners and managers.

The Australian Government has responsibility for crocodile management on their land, such as Kakadu National Park.

Saltwater Crocodile Facts

The Australian Estuarine or Saltwater Crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) can be found all across the north of Australia, and further north of here. From the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu across Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the Philipines, Malaysia, all the way to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and India, and everywhere in between. They can travel over a thousand kilometres by sea, which explains their wide distribution. But only the populations in Australia and PNG are stable. Illegal hunting and habitat destruction has severely depleted their numbers elsewhere. Australian saltwater crocodiles are the largest reptile in the world in terms of mass (can be over 1000kg), and the largest crocodile with a confirmed measurement.

ALLIGATORS AND CROCODILES USE TOOLS TO HUNT

THE DAILY DISHMore on PawNation: Alligators, Awesome, Crocodiles, Reptiles
By Discovery Dec 13th 2013

It's official: Reptiles can use tools to help them hunt. New research shows that alligators and crocodiles can use small sticks to attract birds looking for nesting materials. If the birds get too close, they become a meal. The behavior has so far been observed among American alligators in Louisiana, as well as mugger crocodiles (also known as marsh crocodiles) in India. Alligators only engaged in this trickery during the nesting season and in areas where birds nested, said Vladimir Dinets, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. During nesting season, there's often a shortage of sticks in marshy areas where these reptiles and birds overlap, and birds sometimes even fight amongst themselves to procure sticks to build nests. The study, which Dinets co-authored and which was published in late November in the journal Ethology Ecology & Evolution, suggests that there is no other explanation for this behavior than as one of tool use. "What's really remarkable - they are not only using lures, but they are timing it to just when the birds they want to capture are nesting and looking for sticks to use," said Gordon Burghardt, an ethologist (animal behaviorist) and comparative psychologist specializing in reptiles at UT-Knoxville. "They are making some assessment of the birds themselves." "This is indeed the first convincing evidence of tool use in any reptile," said Burghardt, who wasn't involved in the study. (Alligator Alley: Pictures of Monster Reptiles) The finding, along with other recent work, suggests reptiles are much more intelligent than generally acknowledged, Dinets said. As anybody who studies the beasts can attest, they are quite smart, he added. Crocodiles, for example, have complex communication systems, can hunt in coordination and ambush prey, and both parents may help raise young, he said. NEWS: Huge Croc Extinction Led to Dinosaur Domination Relatively less is known about crocodiles and alligators than many animals, because, as large predators, they are difficult to raise in the lab and study up close in the wild. Their cold-bloodedness also makes them slow. "They operate on a different time scale; they do things more slowly," Burghardt said. "Sometimes we don't have the patience to let them strut their stuff, as it were ... so this kind of study is important."

Wading birds like snowy egrets have been known to nest in wooded islands near areas with high levels of alligators, for example in Florida. Scientists think the birds nest near such scaly enemies because the alligators keep at bay predators like snakes. Apparently, the occasional loss of adult birds to the hungry alligators, or nestlings that fall into the water, is worth the lowered risk of being eaten by something else, according to the study. More from LiveScience: Photos: Giant Pythons Invade Everglades Creative Creatures: 10 Animals That Use Tools Album: Bizarre Frogs, Lizards, and Salamanders Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. This story originally appeared on LiveScience.com.

Byline: PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY THE two teenage boys who saw their friend killed by a crocodile in the Australian Outback will have to get used to the idea that there will be no official revenge. The crocodile is protected in Australia and the worst that will happen to this one is that it will be trapped and transported to a farm to be used for breeding young for the crocodile skin industry. Crocodiles inspire respect and awe in Australia as Man's most deadly enemy, one which has evolved over 200million years into Nature's perfect killing machine. They can grow to more than 20ft long, weigh more than a ton and have no natural predators. Related to dinosaurs, they managed to outlast them all. They can live in salt, brackish and fresh water and drink all three. They can see equally well by day and by night and have a transparent membrane, like a pair of swimming goggles, to protect their eyes under water. Crocodiles need to
Murphys Law Expecting the Unexpected

Uh-oh!
iStockphoto/Saturated

Does the phone always ring when you're just dashing out of the door? Does your PC crash when you're in the middle of writing that really important piece of work and you haven't saved for 20 minutes? And if you're planning to get the decorative lights out for your seasonal celebration at the last minute, just what do you think is going to happen when you test them? Now, here at Mind Tools, we often emphasize that feeling out of control is a major factor in feeling stressed. So if you feel out of control when events like those described above occur, and this raises your stress levels here's the good news that can help you get back in control: A theory exists that predicts these kinds of event, and when they occur. It's called Murphy's Law. Understanding the Theory In its simplest form, Murphy's Law states: If anything can go wrong, it will. However, as with many successful business theories, the original law has been extended over time to cover specialist areas, several of which are given below:

Project Planning: If anything can go wrong, it will. Usually at the most inopportune time. Performance Management: If someone can get it wrong, they will. Risk Assessment: If several things can go wrong, the one you would LEAST like to happen will occur. Practical creativity: If you can think of four ways that something can go wrong, it will go wrong in a fifth way. Origins of the Law Believe it or not, Edward J Murphy was a real person. No, really. In fact, he was a Major in the US Air Force in the 1940s, specializing in development engineering. As much of his work involved testing experimental designs, he was frequently faced with things that didn't exactly go to plan. Scholars differ on precisely what words were originally used when the phrase "Murphy's Law" was first coined, but the meaning is clear. Furthermore, as Murphy and his team were breaking new ground, they were unable to rely on the kind of tried-andtested procedures used effectively elsewhere in the military to ensure zero defects. As a result, they had to depend on their own initiative to get things right, and one team member in particular could virtually be relied upon to step on the proverbial banana skin. This almost certainly led to the Performance Management application of Murphy's Law given above. (Some people believe that Murphy's Law was first proposed by a guy named Sod and the law should be called after him accordingly.) How to Use the Tool You feel stressed when events that you did not expect to happen occur. And your stress is increased when this happens at the least ideal time. To reduce the stress you feel, you need to take back control! The following steps will allow you to predict the outcome, and because you are initiating the event, you also know when it will occur. As you go through the steps, your confidence will increase thanks to your application of Murphy's Law. Step 1: Butter a piece of toast.

Step 2: Think of two or more things that could happen if you dropped it. Are any of these more likely to happen if you are wearing suede shoes or are about to set off for a job interview or meet your prospective parents-in-law? Step 3: Drop the toast. Step 4: Say "Hmm, I thought that would happen", and allow a smile to spread across your face. You are in control! When to Use the Tool There are many other situations where you can easily apply Murphy's Law to regain control. Here are some situations when you might want to try it:

Next time you lose something important, expect that you will find it in the last place you look. Don't be tempted to cut corners by looking there first, though. When standing in line in a large store with multiple checkouts, expect the other lines to move faster. Try moving to a shorter line as many times as you like, but always expect it to become the slowest. If your laptop has been misbehaving and you take it to your IT Department, expect it to work perfectly when the IT guy tries it out. Example Here's an example of how Murphy's Law can help when things go wrong. Simon L Tod had recently been promoted to the role of Production Manager at a toy manufacturer. He felt honored to have been chosen, and knew it was because he had always worked hard. But as the peak production season loomed, he was feeling more and more stressed. Things kept happening that he wasn't expecting, and they always seemed to go wrong at 5pm on a Friday, or just as the team were starting work on an urgent order. Simon mentioned his concerns to his boss, who suggested he apply Murphy's Law to his work to identify what would go wrong and when. So, on Monday Morning, Simon drew up a list of the key things he had to do that week, when they needed to be completed by, and some of the ways they could go wrong. He also estimated the likelihood of things going wrong in this way. His list included the following items: Task Schedule Risks Stuffing machine will break (10% chance) Stuffing Machine operative off sick (5%) Courier company won't deliver on time (5% chance)

Stuff batch of 1,000 teddy bears

Delivery to Customer by 8am on Wednesday

Assemble 2,000 toy cars

Wheel supplier sends wheels late 1 to boss for his son's birthday (20% chance) (on Friday). Remainder to Wheel supplier sends wrong size Customer any time on Friday. wheels (10% chance)

On Monday, everything progressed to plan. It was all looking good on Tuesday morning too. But after lunch, when there were still 200 teddy bears to stuff, Simon was called to the workshop by an anxious Quality Control Supervisor who was holding quite the lumpiest teddy bear he'd ever seen. Simon picked the toy up and squeezed it. Instead of being soft and cuddly, it seemed to be filled with solid items that crunched against each other. Soon, all became clear: the stuffing machine operator had managed to fill the teddy bear stuffing machine hopper with car wheels. The machine had broken these up as they passed through it, but it had still managed to fill the bears. All of the car wheels were now in little fragments; Mostly inside furry bear bellies. As Simon stood holding the crunchy bear, he saw the courier company van draw up outside the loading bay doors. He now realized that Murphy's Law had predicted that something other than the risks he'd predicted would go wrong, just before the deadline. This allowed him to stay calm and think fast.

He got his packaging supervisor to print out extra labels to put on each bear's box, offering $200 to the first purchaser who sent a bear back to the factory, un-tampered with, correctly identifying what the bear was filled with. The crunchy bear line turned out to be one of the company's bestsellers that year. Simon ordered more wheels from his supplier, who thought the teddy bear story was so funny that he gave Simon an excellent discount, not only on the repeat order but on future orders of the wheels too. That left one problem to resolve a little boy's birthday present. The new batch of wheels couldn't get to the factory till Friday morning which was too late. So Simon suggested that his boss bring his son down to the factory after school on Friday for a special treat to see his new car have its wheels fitted. The little boy was thrilled and so didn't mind the fact he'd not has his present at breakfast that morning. By apply Murphy's Law, and expecting the unexpected, Simon L Tod remained in control throughout a week that would otherwise have proved to be very stressful. Try it yourself today! - See more at: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_MurphyLaw.htm#sthash.xqdtdoyE.dpuf

The Fastest Man on Earth (Overview and Index)

Why Everything You Know About Murphys Law is Wrong by Nick T. Spark whatcangowrongwill@yahoo.com www.Regulus-Missile.com and www.eyeballoverload.com Los Angeles, California

I have become the worlds leading expert on Murphys Law. No really, Im serious. You doubtless have heard the Law: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. To some it is a profound statement of philosophy, a reminder that life can be defined just as much by its inherent challenges as anything else. To others however the Law is a pessimistic comment that underscores, albeit in more elegant terms, that shit happens. Whatever you might think about Murphys Law, one thing is certain: it is as ubiquitous an expression as there is in American English. Over the years it has been cited in thousands of articles, websites and news reports, been the subject of several books, appeared as the title of at least one bad Charles Bronson movie and a TV show, and inspired about a dozen zillion corollary Laws. Just about every time something goes wrong somewhere, the Law gets its two cents in. Fortunately my expertise owes very little to actual adversity Im not writing this from a hospital bed and almost everything to research. Historical research. Which is to say I have become the expert on the origins of Murphys Law. This happened by accidentand if Id known what the consequences would be of sticking my nose into it how Id draw the wrath of Chuck Yeager, get caught in the middle of a nasty 20-year feud, and nearly wind up in a hospital bed I probably wouldnt have bothered. - See more at: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i5/murphy/murphy0.html#sthash.0nZ SBcwz.dpuf

The Road to Murphys Law This all began a few months ago, after I showed an article Id written for an aviation history magazine to my neighbor. The article concerned some goings on at Edwards, the famed Air Force flight test facility, in the 1950s. You know, my neighbor said, Youd probably be real interested in talking to my father, David Hill Sr. He worked at Edwards, on a bunch of rocket sled tests in the 1940s. In fact, he continued proudly, he knew Murphy. Murphy? I inquired, searching my memory for a test pilot of the same name. Yeager, Crossfield, Armstrong It didnt ring a bell. You know, Murphy, he went on. The guy who invented Murphys Law. I didnt say it, but I was absolutely skeptical. Who wouldnt be? One might as well claim to be friends with Kilroy, know the identity of Deepthroat, or the whereabouts of Amelia Earhart. The notion seemed outright laughable. Your father knew Murphy? Sure he did! If Murphy wasnt some imaginary Irish folk hero, then he was probably a gentle sage who drank a lot of Guinness and lived back in the 1700s. Needless to say I let the subject slide.

Figure 2. THE FACE OF STAPP. These are the photographic frames that made John Paul Stapp famous. Printed in physics textbooks and shown in drivers education classes for a generation, they vividly illustrate the concept of G forces --

and also the courage of the Gee Whizs lone human rider. Ironically, while Stapp and his work had a tremendous, if largely unappreciated, impact on the life of every American, it was Murphy and the Law that became household names. Photos courtesy of EAFB History Office.

But a day or two later, I almost tripped over a slender book called Murphys Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong that had been left on my doorstep. The book cited Murphys Law and then listed literally hundreds of amusing corollaries. The extremely brief foreward to the volume included a letter written by an engineer named George Nichols. And this is where things got interesting. Nichols said hed worked on a series of rocket sled tests at Edwards in the 1940s with a Colonel John Paul Stapp and that Murphys Law emerged from these tests. The Laws namesake, Nichols wrote, was Capt. Ed Murphy Jr., a development engineer Frustrated with a strap transducer which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gauge bridges caused him to remark if there is any way to do it wrong, he will referring to the technician who had wired the bridges. I assigned Murphys Law to the statement and the associated

variations That appeared straightforward enough, and piqued my interest. I subsequently did some research and I discovered to my surprise that the story of the origin of Murphys Law was not something generally agreed upon. Accounts in fact varied wildly. Some sources gave the credit solely to Ed Murphy Jr., a man they praised for his wisdom, insight, and panache, but said almost nothing about. In other places, Nichols letter appeared often word for word explaining how he had come up with the statement. And at least a few writers suggested that Colonel Stapp, also known as the Fastest Man on Earth, had invented the Law. It made my mind race. What were the real facts? Exactly who was Capt. Ed Murphy? What on earth was the point of Stapps rocket sled tests? And what the heck is a strap transducer? I decided I had to find out. How hard could it be? I thought. Murphys Law might be something of an urban legend -- like the story about the guy who strapped rocket bottles to his car and accidentally launched himself into a mountainside but thanks to my neighbor I had apparently stumbled upon a real, living, tangible link.

The Rocket Sled

When I walked into David Hills house, I immediately spotted ten or so photographs from the sled tests arranged on his dining room table. The sled itself is a primitive looking steel and aluminum car armed with four massive rocket bottles yes, the same type that allegedly hurtled that crazy fool into that mountain and in the photo it is shooting down a railroad track like a hoot owl out of Hell. Behind it trailed a twenty-foot long dagger of fire. Thats Captain Stapp, David Hill says, pointing to a fuzzy figure strapped to the sled. He points him out again, this time in a group photo. Stapp is a bespeckled, smiling, somewhat pudgy man who doesnt remotely resemble the lean, tough astronaut or test pilot Id expected. And heres George Nichols, Hill continues, pointing to a dapper, white shirted fellow standing nearby. To his right, a very young David Hill squints in the bright sun. Is Murphy in the photo, I ask? No, Hill answers. I dont have any Figure 3. DAVID HILL. David pictures of Murphy. He was only there with us a couple of Hill Sr., a project participant, days. photographed here in July 2002. Although a bit set back by Parkinsons, 83-year-old Hill Photo by the author. still has the rock solid mind of an engineer, and recalls events with startling clarity. In 1947, hed accepted a job at Northrop Aircraft and been dispatched to Muroc (later renamed Edwards) to work on Project MX981. These tests were run by Capt. Stapp who, Hill says, wasnt just an Air Force officer. He was a medical doctor, a top-notch researcher, and a bit of a Renaissance man. The goal of MX981 was to study human deceleration. Simply put, the Air Force wanted to find out how many Gs a G is the force of gravity acting on a body at sea level a pilot could withstand in a crash. For many years, Hill says, it had been an established fact that the limit was 18 Gs. Every military aircraft design was predicated on that statistic, yet certain incidents during WWII suggested it might be wrong. If it was, then pilots were needlessly being put at risk.

Figure 4. OSCAR EIGHTBALL. Oscar Eightball is tucked in for a ride on the Gee Whiz. The dummies used in the tests were primitive, but proved invaluable in terms of getting the bugs out of the test sled. Later in his career, Stapp would help define specifications for test dummies, and supervise their apparently first-ever use in automobile crash tests. Photo: courtesy of David Hill Sr. Collection.

To obtain the required data, the Aero Medical Lab at Wright Field contracted with Northrop to build a decelerator. It was a track, just standard railroad rail set in concrete, about a half-mile long, says David Hill, pointing to another photo. It had been built originally to test launch German V-1 rockets during WWII. At one end of the track engineers installed a 50foot long series of hydraulic brakes that looked like dinosaur teeth. The sled, nicknamed the Gee Whiz, would hurtle down the track and hit them at near maximum velocity, upwards of 200 mph. Exerting millions of pounds of force, the brakes would bring the sled to a stop in less than a second. In that heart-stopping moment, the physical forces at work would be equivalent to those encountered in a plane crash. While the brass assigned a 185-pound, absolutely fearless, incredibly tough, and altogether brainless anthropomorphic dummy known as Oscar Eightball to ride the Gee Whiz, David Hill remembers Stapp had other ideas. On his first day on site he announced that he intended to ride the sled so that he could experience the effects of deceleration firsthand. It was a statement that Hill and everyone else found shocking. We had a lot of experts come out and look at our situation, he remembers. And there was a person from M.I.T. who said, if anyone gets 18 Gs, they will break every bone in their body. That was kind

of scary. But the young doctor had his own theories about the tests and how they ought to be run, and his nearest direct superiors were over 1000 miles away. Stappd done his own calculations, using a slide rule and his knowledge of physics and human anatomy, and concluded that the 18 G limit was sheer nonsense. The true figure he felt might be twice that if not more. That might sound like heresy, but just a few months earlier someone else had proved all the experts wrong. Chuck Yeager, flying in the Bell X-1 rocket plane, broke the sound barrier in the same sky that sheltered the Gee Whiz track. Not only did he not turn to tapioca pudding or lose his ability to speak, as some had predicted, but hed done it with nary a hitch. The real barrier wasnt in the sky, Yeager would later write. But in our knowledge and experience.

Exit Oscar Eightball, Enter John Paul Stapp But if Stapp was a maverick, he was also a scientist and a methodical one at that. For several months Oscar Eightball rode the sled, and in the process several design flaws were detected and corrected. On Oscars first trip, the primary and emergency brakes failed and the Gee Whiz shot off into the desert. On another test Oscar got loose at 200 mph and sailed 700 feet downrange, leaving his rubber face behind on the Whizs metal windscreen. Clearly, some damnable forces were at work.
Finally in December 1947 after 35 test runs, Stapp got strapped into the steel chariot and took a ride. Only one rocket bottle was fired, producing a mere 10 Gs of force. Stapp called the experience exhilarating. Slowly, patiently he increased the number of bottles and the stopping power of the brakes. The danger level grew with each passing test but Stapp was resolute, Hill says, even after suffering some bad injuries. And within a few months, Stapp had not only subjected himself to 18 Gs, but to nearly 35. That was a stunning figure, one that would forever change the design of airplanes and pilot restraints.

As fate would have it, David Hill was in charge of the telemetry gear that collected all of the test data. That proved to be challenging work, especially since most of the equipment was custom made or experimental. Almost all of it relied on balky vacuum tubes, which had a tendency to fail without warning, and radio and electronics technologies that were still in their infancy.

Figure 5. OSCAR AIRBORNE. Traveling at high velocity, Oscar Eightball shoots off the Gee Whiz and right through a wooden windscreen -- on his way towards the Muroc dry lake. This accident was actually done intentionally to demonstrate the considerable physical forces at work on the sled track. Photo: courtesy of David Hill Collection.

The Famous Incident Which brings up, David Hill says at last, the famous incident. At one point an Air Force engineer named Captain Ed Murphy came out to Edwards. With him he brought four sensors, called strain gauges, which were intended to improve the accuracy of G-force measurements. The way Hill tells it one of his assistants, either Ralph DeMarco or Jerry Hollabaugh, installed the gauges on the Gee Whizs harness.

Later Stapp made a sled run with the new sensors and they failed to work. It turned out that the gauges had been accidentally installed backwards, producing a zero reading. If you take these two over here and add them together, Hill explains matter-of-factly, You get the correct amount of G-forces. But if you take these two and mount them together, one cancels the other out and you get zero. It was a simple enough mistake, but Hill remembers that Murphy was kind of miffed off. And that gave rise to his observation: If theres any way they can do it wrong, they will. Despite the fact that his people were apparently being blamed for the mistake, Hill shrugged it off. I kind of chuckled and said, thats the way it goes, he sighs. Nothing more could be done really. Murphys sour comment proceeded to make the rounds at the sled track. When something goes wrong, Hill says, The message is distributed to everyone in the program. The way the fat got chewed Murphys words if theres any way they can do it wrong, they will were transformed into a finer, more demonstrative if anything can go wrong, it will. A legend had been hatched. But not yet born. Just how did the Law get out into the world? Well, David Hill says, John Paul Stapp held his first-ever press conference at Edwards a few weeks after the incident. And he was attempting to explain his research in clinical terms when a reporter asked the obvious question: How is it that no one has been severely injured or worse during your tests? Stapp, who Hill says could be something of a showman, replied nonchalantly that, we do all of our work in consideration of Murphys Law. When the puzzled reporters asked for a clarification Stapp defined the Law and stated, as Hill puts it, the idea that you had to think through all possibilities before doing a test so as to avoid disaster. According to Hill, that was a defining moment. Whether Stapp realized it or not, Murphys Law neatly summed up the point of his experiments. They were, after all, dedicated to trying to find ways to prevent bad things aircraft accidents from becoming worse. As in fatal. But there was a more significant meaning that went to the very core of the mission of the engineer. From day one of the tests there had been an unacknowledged but standard experimental protocol. The test team constantly challenged each other to think up what ifs and to recognize the potential causes of disaster. If you could predict all the possible things that could go wrong, the thinking went, you could also find a way to prevent catastrophe. And save John Stapps neck. If anything can go wrong, it will. It was a concept that seized the cumulative imagination at the press conference. So when articles about the Gee Whiz showed up in print, Murphys Law was often cited right along with Newtons Second. I didnt think heres some profound statement that been made that will shock the world, says Hill, expressing amazement that the remark gained such prominence. It wasnt made as such. Of course its true that if theres a right way to do something, theres generally a wrong way to do it also. And its good to recognize the difference. To my disappointment, Hill couldnt remember much more than that. He didnt really know Ed Murphy, he confessed. Regardless he was sure that Murphy had passed away, as had Stapp, DeMarco, and Hollobaugh. If anyone will know who coined the Law itll be George Nichols, he concluded. If hes still alive, then hes the last one besides me who was there when it happened.

- See more at: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i5/murphy/murphy1.html#sthash.GDA9oL M8.dpuf

The Careful Daredevil I tried to locate George Nichols, but didnt have any luck. While continuing the search, and beginning to write an article about the work of Dr. Stapp, I decided to put in a call to Edwards historian Ray Puffer. Youre writing an article about Stapp and Murphys Law? he sighs. I can literally hear his eyes rolling. As a public affairs officer, Puffer explains patiently, hes inundated with requests from all over the world to comment about it. Its a tiring, not to mention distracting, drill. Just the other day some fellow called me from Oxford, he says, Hes putting together a phrase dictionary and wanted me to verify the whole story. Verify it? How do you do that?! After some gentle cajoling, Ray agrees to meet so that I can go through the Stapp archive at Edwards. As a bonus, he offers to introduce me to Dr. Dana Kilanowski, a researcher who interviewed Stapp and is writing a book about him. Who knows? he says drolly, Maybe you twoll get to the bottom of all this. The highlight of my visit to Edwards is a trip with Puffer and Kilanowski to see the remains of the Gee Whiz track. Sitting at the edge of the mighty planar lakebed, near where Space Shuttles land and secret aircraft are tested, the track lies forgotten amid the tumbleweeds. A surprising amount of it remains. The entire 2000-foot concrete foundation for the rails pokes out of the sand, and part of the brake stand is still extant. At the end of the track a set of aircraft wheels, once part of the emergency braking system, stand forlornly amid the sagebrush. Edwards is such a big place, Dr.Kilanowski muses, that when they finished with a project theyd just abandon it and move to another site. Walking among the ruins, listening to the desert wind howl, it is hard to imagine what kind of man would willingly subject himself to the forces that Stapp endured. According to Kilanowski, the toll he took was staggering and his courage nothing short of monumental. The G-forces produced deep concussions, and the seat harness cracked his ribs and collarbone, and left him bruised and sometimes disoriented. Yet he never complained. Theres a famous story, Kilanowski tells me. Stapp broke his wrist on the sled twice. One time, being a doctor, he set the break himself on his way back to his office. Whether Stapp showed fear or not, the tests must have been terrifying. The sled track was like a giant gun barrel, and Stapp was riding the bullet. When I speak several months later to Air Force pilot Joseph Kittinger, who worked with Stapp later in his career on Project Manhigh where he set a world record by parachuting from a balloon at 102,800 feet he calls Stapp without hesitation the bravest man I ever met. It is a heck of a compliment coming from one of the most fearless men to walk the Earth. He knew the effects of what he was getting himself into, Kittinger says by way of explanation. And he never hesitated. Another rocket sled pioneer I speak to, Eli Beeding, confides that for him the stress of the tests became so bad that he would often spontaneously throw up before each run. Eventually, he had to quit because of it. Yet Stapp received far worse punishment, Beeding says, and faced scarier side-effects. Yet he never

wavered. It is no wonder that around Edwards a place known for its machismo the softspoken, round-faced M.D. developed a reputation and a nickname: the Careful Daredevil. Some of the injuries Stapp endured, Kilanowski notes, were of a variety seldom seen and more scary as a result. At accelerations above 18 G while travelling backwards (to minimize shock Stapp faced backwards in the initial tests), he began to experience white outs a condition where blood pools in the back of the head, causing momentary loss of vision. In the forward position, Stapp suffered painful red outs as the blood surged forward in his eyes and broke vulnerable capillaries. Stapp once compared the sensation to having a tooth extracted. Only it lasted for hours. Theres only one reason he did it, Kilanowski suggests. His mission in life was to save lives. And he felt that this was one way he could do that. Both of Stapps parents, she notes, were Baptist missionaries, and Stapp spent his childhood with them in far-off Brazil. Later in his life hed mostly distanced himself from religion, but the missionary zeal remained.

Stapp in and on Seat Belts And while saving the lives of aviators was important, Kilanowski says Stapp realized from the outset that there were other, perhaps even more important aspects to his research. His experiments proved that human beings, if properly restrained and protected, could survive an incredible impact. Yet the automobiles of the era didnt have seatbelts, even as optional equipment. Few had any safety design features to speak of. In fact, quite the opposite. Many of them had ornamental, and very solid, steering wheels and dash boards that were utterly unforgiving in a crash, bumpers and frames that didnt absorb any shock, and doors that tended to pop open in a collision. Without seatbelts, the occupants of a car involved in a crash were thrown around like rag dolls and often ejected. So when things went wrong, they often went very wrong. The carnage on American roads in the 40s, 50s and even 60s was nothing short of hideous. Improving automobile safety was something no one in the Air Force was interested in, but Stapp gradually made it his personal crusade. Each and every time he was interviewed about the Gee Whiz, Kilanowski notes, he made sure to steer the conversation towards the less glamorous subject of auto safety and the need for seatbelts. Gradually Stapp began to make a difference. He invited auto makers and university researchers to view his experiments, and started a pioneering series of conferences. He even managed to stage, at Air Force expense, the first ever series of auto crash tests using dummies. When the Pentagon protested, Stapp sent them some statistics hed managed to dig up. They showed that more Air Force pilots died each year in car wrecks than in plane crashes. While Stapp didnt invent the three point auto seatbelt, he helped test and perfect it. Along with a host of other auto safety appliances. And while Ralph Nader took the spotlight when Lyndon Johnson signed the 1966 law that made seatbelts mandatory, Stapp was in the room. It was one of his real moments of glory. He saved a lot of lives, says Kilanowski brightly. In 1940 there were 25 million licensed drivers and 40,000 traffic deaths, and in they year 2000 there were 72 million drivers and 42,000 deaths. And I think that sums up his life. I cant imagine how many millions of lives that mans research saved over the years He was a wonderful human being and a citizen of the world.

Stapps Version, Sort of But what about Murphys Law? Kilanowski says she only spoke to Stapp about the subject in passing. They had a test run one day, she tells me, and Captain Murphy was here from Wright Field. And the cables were set wrong, backwards. And the sled test was run and they couldnt recover any of the data. And at the time I believe Stapp said something like, If anything can go wrong hell do it. A couple days later there was a press conference in Los Angeles and Stapp said something like, it was Murphys Law if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.
Im dismayed that Danas version of the origin of the Law is so woefully incomplete. But Im intrigued at the possibility that Stapp had coined the phrase. Does Kilanowski really believe he did? She nods her head affirmatively. Its very much like him, she replies. Stapp was a man for all seasons. He had a wonderful presence about him, and was always saying wonderful things. Funny, quotable things. One of her favorites is Stapps Ironical Paradox, AKA Stapps Law: the universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle. He always thought that was too wordy and too intellectual for the general public, she laughs. But Murphys Law was something everyone could relate to and is more

Figure 7. STAPP BRAKING. Stapp hits the brakes, hard. The white sheeting in the background obscures the brake stand, and was apparently intended to produce better high speed films of the tests. For whatever reason, Stapp decided not to wear a helmet for this run. Other details worth noting: he is wearing shorts and a tshirt, and has a high-speed camera checkerboard painted on his knee. Photo: courtesy EAFB History Office. catchy.

I mention that Ive read that Murphy and/or Nichols came up with the Law. Well, I have heard that Murphy claimed he invented Murphys Law, Kilanowski says. But Stapp is the one noted for his witticisms, his haikus, and his plays on words. He published a little book called Stapps Almanac and another called For Your Moments of Inertia which have pages of jokes and sayings and wit. And, she adds, Weve never heard anything else from Murphy. So I cannot imagine that Murphy developed it. Then she throws in a kicker: Why dont you ask George Nichols? He is not only alive, she tells me, but living in nearby Pasadena. Another person you might consider talking to is General Yeager, says Kilanowski. He knew Stapp. They were friends. Thats right, adds Ray Puffer, whos been quietly listening in on our conversation. In fact, Ive heard that Dr. Stapp checked on Yeagers ribs, the day before he broke the sound barrier.

Thats an interesting tidbit. Chuck Yeager is of course the most legendary figure at Edwards, and the biggest legend surrounding him is that he broke the sound barrier with a couple of cracked ribs. Was it really possible that Stapp examined Yeager, and told him he was okay to make that flight? If so, it was a new and exciting revelation, and one that had never made into the history books. On my way out of Edwards I pick up a copy of Stapps For Your Moments of Inertia at the base bookstore. By the time I get back to Los Angeles, Im pretty much convinced by Kilanowskis argument that Stapp is the one who refined Murphys statement into Law. The book doesnt cite the Law, but it is filled with wit. There are poems, limericks, and one-liners like, Advice to Actors: Dont be a ham if you want to bring home the bacon, Better a masochist than never been kissed, and Im as lonely as a cricket with arthritis.

Nichols on Stapp When I call George Nichols and tell him Id like to speak to him about Stapp and Murphys Law, he is both excited and emotional. Stapp was one of his best friends, he explains, and hes always happy to talk about him. As for the origins of Murphys Law, he says its a sore spot. Hell talk about it but only if I agree to really pay attention. You know, most people, he says with all seriousness, have it all wrong.
From the moment we begin speaking, George Nichols becomes teary-eyed. Stapps death in 1999, at the age of 89, was expected but still hit him hard. Nichols couldnt attend because he was recovering from open heart surgery. Stapp was a tremendous guy, Nichols says, and a real humanitarian. Stapp, he recounts, looked after the health of many of the dependents at Edwards who werent entitled to Air Force medical care due to ridiculous red tape. He accomplished many things in similar fashion: off the books, against convention and military doctrine. He scrounged equipment for the Gee Whiz site like a corrupt supply sergeant, and defied his bosses at the Aero Med Lab in order to advance his research. For an officer, he had a heck of a rebel streak. He lists example after example, and concludes with this one: When Chuck Yeager cracked his ribs before the supersonic flight,

Figure 8. STAPP DECELLERATING. In this astonishing photo, actually a frame from a high speed motion picture camera, John Paul Stapp is caught in the teeth of a massive deceleration. One might have expected that a test pilot or an astronaut candidate would be riding the sled; instead there was Stapp, a mild mannered physician and diligent scientist with a wicked sense of humor. Photo: courtesy of David Hill Sr. Collection.

he went to see Stapp. Because he didnt believe the flight surgeons on base would permit him to fly. Stapp signed off on Yeager, Nichols continues, because he didnt believe the injury would hinder Yeagers ability to pilot the X-1. Wow, I say. Amazing. While were on the subject of injuries, Nichols begins speaking about what Stapp endured. The sled tests, he says, were an awful albatross around his friends neck. Stapp didnt feel he would be able live with himself if another person were injured or killed in the course of his research, so he insisted on doing all the groundbreaking tests himself. As a result, he took a tremendous amount of punishment. Nichols repeats many of the incidents Kilanowski related cracked ribs, broken wrists, concussions, and bloody cysts caused by flying grains of sand -- and adds one more. When the Gee Whiz tests were completed, Stapp rode on a much more sophisticated sled called the Sonic Wind at Holloman, New Mexico. On his twenty-ninth and what turned out to be final sled ride, Stapp reached a speed of 632 miles per hour -- actually faster than a speeding bullet -- and encountered 46.2 Gs of force. In his pursuit of the knowledge of the physiological limits Stapp hadnt just pushed the envelope, hed mailed it to the post office. 632 miles per hour broke the land speed record, making Stapp the fastest man on earth. And 46.2 Gs was the most any human being had ever willingly experienced. Prior to the test Nichols had real doubts about whether it was actually survivable. It turned out it was, although Stapp paid a severe penalty. He suffered a complete red out. His eyes had hemorrhaged and were completely filled with blood, Nichols remembers, his voice cracking. It was horrible. Absolutely horrible. The image of Stapps crimson visage haunts Nichols to this day. Yet while initially doctors feared Stapp had been blinded, they quickly confirmed that his retinas were intact. A day later, he could see again more or less normally. Hed have a trace image in his field of vision for the rest of his life. Bravery was one thing. But the trait that really endeared Stapp to everyone, Nichols goes on, was his wit. At a dismally hot, sandy, brutal place like Edwards, a little laughter went a long way. He had an extremely unique sense of humor, says Nichols, citing his puns, limericks and especially, laws. Now at that time there werent a lot of laws being used, Nichols muses, Except for the standard ones in physics and science. Stapp started this whole business of laws, he says emphatically. Now youve got millions of them. Stapps Ironical Paradox was one. Another was the Sunshine Law, which meant that if the sun was shining over Edwards, there must be work to do. The entire team eventually got into the act, coming up with Laws. Nichols Law for instance came into being after he witnessed a colleague attempt to jump across a dry concrete canal. The attempt failed. So my law, Nichols says proudly, is: If a proposed action has any unsatisfactory results, forget about it. Which leads us to Murphys Law. The reason most people get it wrong, Nichols indicates, is that they dont know how it was originally stated or what it meant. Its supposed to be, If it can happen, it will, says Nichols, Not whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. The difference is a subtle one, yet the meaning is clear. One is a positive statement, indicating a belief that if one can predict the bad things that might happen, steps can be taken so that they can be avoided. The other version presents a much more somber, some might say fatalistic, view of reality.

Nichols on Murphys Law How did the Law come into being? Nichols relates a story similar to Hills, only more detailed. Captain Edward A. Murphy Jr., he says, was a West Point-trained engineer who worked at the Wright Air Development Center. Thats a totally separate facility from the Aero Med Lab, he emphasizes. He had nothing to do with our research. Nevertheless Murphy one day appeared at the Gee Whiz track. With him the interloper brought the strain gauge transducers -- a transducer is an electronic measuring device Nichols notes -- that Hill described. Only Nichols adds that they were actually of Murphys own design.
The strain gauge transducers represented a potential solution to a problem with the Gee Whizs Gforce instrumentation. Questions had been raised about the accuracy of the accelerometers used on the sled. What Murphy hoped to do was to actually use the test subject, be it a dummy, chimpanzee or human being, to help obtain better data. The subject always wore a restraint system consisting of a heavy harness equipped with two tightening clamps. Murphy proposed placing strain gauge bridges in two positions on each clamp. When the sled came to a stop, the bending stress placed on the clamps would be measured, and from that an accurate measure

Figure 9. STAPP ON THE WIND. John Paul Stapp on board the sled Sonic Wind, at Holloman, New Mexico. The Wind was the successor to the Gee Whiz, and was built with one goal in mind: to allow Stapp to reach a speed of Mach 1.0 in a deceleration test. Photo: courtesy of EAFB History Office. of G-force could be produced.

Because he planned to return to Wright the very next day, Murphy implored Stapp and Nichols to have his transducers installed immediately. And I said, well, we really ought to calibrate them, remembers Nichols. But Stapp said, No, lets take a chance. I want to see how they work. So I said okay, well put them on. So, we put the straps on and took a chance on what we thought the sensitivity was. A few hours later a test was run with a chimpanzee, and to Nichols surprise the records showed no deflection from the gauges at all. It was just a steady line like it was at zero, Nichols comments. Even if theyd been calibrated wrong, the transducers should have registered something. And we guessed, Nichols continues, that there was a problem with the way the strain gauges were wired up. An examination revealed that there were two ways the strain gauge bridges could have been assembled. If wired one way -- the correct way -- they would measure bending stress. In the other direction they would still function, but the bending stress reading would be effectively cancelled out. In its place would be a measure of the strap tension, which in the case of determining G load was useless. David Hill and Ralph DeMarco checked the wiring, Nichols continues, and sure enough thats how theyd wired the bridges up. Backwards.

Yet unlike David Hill, Nichols insists the error had nothing to do with DeMarco, Hollabaugh or anyone else on the Northrop team. The gauges hadnt been installed wrong theyd actually been assembled incorrectly at Wright Field and delivered as defective merchandise. Perhaps Murphy had designed the gauges incorrectly. Or perhaps hed made his schematic in such a way that it was unclear, causing his assistant to wire them backwards yet if the assistant had actually done that, then hed truly had bad luck. On the face of it, the fellow would have had a 50% chance of wiring each gauge correctly. But hed managed the hat trick, wiring all four wrong. Either way, Nichols figured, Murphy was at fault because he obviously hadnt tested the gauges prior to flying out to Edwards. When Murphy came out in the morning, and we told him what happened, remembers Nichols, he was unhappy. But much to Nichols surprise, Murphy almost spontaneously blamed the failure on his assistant at Wright. If that guy has any way of making a mistake, Murphy exclaimed with disgust. He will. At the time Murphys comment didnt seem like much of anything except a declaration of frustration and, in Nichols view, an expression of extreme hubris. Certainly no one knew a eureka moment a Watson, come here! or The reaction is self-sustaining had just taken place. No one realized that the miswired transducers were like a singular destined apple, falling free of a branch and landing square on Newtons head, raising a bump and revealing a universal truth. According to Nichols the failure was only a momentary setback the strap information wasnt that important anyway, he says and regardless good data had been collected from other instruments. The Northrop team rewired the gauges, calibrated them, and did another test. This time Murphys transducers worked perfectly, producing useable data. And from that point forward, Nichols notes, we used them straight on because they were a good addition to the telemetry package. But Murphy wasnt around to witness his devices success. Hed returned to Wright Field and never visited the Gee Whiz track ever again. Long after hed departed however, Murphys comment hung in the air like a lonely cloud over the ancient dry lake. Part of the reason was, no one was particularly happy with Murphy, least of all Nichols. The more he thought about the incident, the more it bothered him. He became all but convinced that Murphy, and not his assistant, was at fault. Murphy had committed several cardinal sins with respect to reliability engineering. He hadnt verified that the gauges had been assembled correctly, he hadnt bothered to test them, and he hadnt given Nichols any time to calibrate them. If he had done any of those things, Nichols notes dryly, He would have avoided the fiasco. As it was Murphys silly, maybe even slightly asinine comment made the rounds. He really ticked off some team members by blaming the whole thing on his underling, Nichols says. And we got to thinking as a group. You know? Weve got a Murphys Law in that. And then we started talking about what it should be. His statement was too long, and it really didnt fit into a Law. So we tried many different things and we finally came up with, If it can happen, it will happen. So Murphys Law was created, more or less spontaneously, by the entire Northrop test team under the supervision of Nichols. In one sense, it represented a bit of sweet revenge upon Ed Murphy. But George Nichols rapidly recognized it was far more than that. Murphys Law was a

wonderful pet phrase, an amusing quip that contained a universal truth. It proved a handy touchstone for Nichols day to day work as project manager. If it can happen, it will happen, he says. So youve got to go through and ask yourself, if this part fails, does this system still work, does it still do the function it is supposed to do? What are the single points of failure? Murphys Law established the drive to put redundancy in. And thats the heart of reliability engineering.

The Murky Propagation of Murphys Law Like David Hill, Nichols says Stapp is the person who popularized the Law, via a press conference at Edwards. A few weeks later it started showing up in articles and trade publication advertisements. By the mid-1970s, when Nichols heard that a writer named Arthur Bloch was working on a Murphys Law book, the phrase was ubiquitous. Yet Nichols had realized that almost no one knew its origin. So he wrote a short letter of explanation, not realizing that it would become the forward to the book and the definitive word on the subject. If he had, he might have amplified his comments. Nichols had heard a rumor that Murphy was working for Hughes Helicopter in Los Angeles, but didnt see any reason to contact him prior to the publication of the book. But when it appeared Nichols decided to put in a call to his colleague. And I asked him if he had seen it, says Nichols. And he said no, hed heard about it. He wasnt really interested in it. Nichols was surprised, and his colleagues brusque response annoyed was more like it led him to question something quite basic. Up until that moment, hed always assumed Ed Murphy knew that he was the Murphy. Now he became convinced that Ed hadnt a clue about it, and was completely ignorant of his legacy. He didnt even know about Murphys Law until Bloch published his book, Nichols says firmly. And until I told him he was mentioned in it, he didnt even get a copy. Its a peculiar part of an otherwise straightforward story. But thats just the beginning. Shortly after hed contacted Murphy, Nichols explains, things began to go seriously awry. What should have been a nice gesture on his part produced the opposite response. Murphy called and He just went ballistic, says Nichols. And he made this horrible, vitriolic speech in which he said that he thought Stapp and I were taking advantage of him. Murphy claimed that what he had said that morning was a paragraph about reliability, about the use of redundancy and so on... and insisted that he had made up the Law himself. He also asserted that his comment that day had been intended all along as a philosophical statement about reliability and engineering. In short, he was attempting to stake a claim on the broad implications of the Law and its legacy.

A frustrated Nichols listened to Murphy carry on, respectfully disagreed, and tried to let it go at that. But Murphy wasnt satisfied. According to Nichols, he contacted a few reporters and tried to get his side of the story out in the press. He also set to work writing a short text that presented his version of events. Eventually he sent a copy to Nichols, Stapp and for whatever reason Chuck Yeager to sign. He wanted to put this on a plaque at Figure 10. BUSINESS END. The business end of the West Point, Nichols recalls bitterly. Sonic Wind. A much more sophisticated sled than the And Stapp and I talked about it, Gee Whiz, it was designed to carry up to twelve and I said this guy is trying to massive rocket bottles and could travel into the rewrite history. And Stapp said, I supersonic range. Stapp called it a wonderful test dont like that and Im not going to instrument." Photo: courtesy of EAFB History Office. support it. At that point, Nichols felt Murphy had crossed a line, but he was still willing to forgive him. But then Murphys wife called Nichols and made some desultory statements about him and Stapp. She accused both of them of making money off of the Law, something Nichols says was absurd. And she chastised them for not signing the letter for the plaque. Stapp had suffered so many concussions in his lifetime, she implied, that he obviously couldnt remember what had transpired. A short time later Murphy called and according to Nichols he tore me apart. Then he tore Stapp apart. And he tried to take credit for (the Law). That was the last straw. Nichols hung up the phone and never spoke to either Murphy or his wife again. Murphy died in 1989, Nichols notes, and that was the end of that. It was very very intense, says Nichols sadly. And it just ruined a normal friendship. I used to look back on some of this as a good memory Im relieved when Nichols reaches the end of the story. By now hes gotten himself pretty worked up, and in the back of my mind Ive been remembering that hed had heart bypass surgery. I can just picture it now, the paramedics and their defibrillators, and me trying to explain that this is all a result of Murphys Law. Fortunately, Nichols rapidly collects himself, and starts talking about more positive things for example about how he once used Murphys Law as a case study in a Bible class.

In Search of Murphy Driving home a little while later, I cant help but think how my opinion of John Paul Stapp has grown mightily while talking to Nichols. Yet at the same time, my vision of Murphy has been completely shattered. The person Nichols described was not a charming, silver tongued Irish rogue with a unique sense of humor and amazing insight, as I had wanted to believe. He was apparently a pompous, jealous toad, someone who might actually have been so dour as to believe that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

At the same time, Im not altogether surprised to hear that Murphy might have gone off the deep end, at least in the immediate aftermath of Blochs book being published. To have a bestseller, not to mention that bad action movie and all those calendars, t-shirts, and bumper stickers sold with your name on them and not to get a dime out of it! -- that would really be irritating. Anyway, after talking to Nichols I feel I know a lot more about the Law. But Im also keenly aware Ive only heard one side of the story. What if Murphy really had come up with the Law, as some people claimed? And what if I trusted what Nichols said, but in reality he was the one modifying the truth? And all because Murphy simply wasnt around to defend himself. An old saying kept coming to mind: History is told by the winners. Theres a corollary to this that is even more fitting: History is told by the survivors. I put in a call to West Point to see if they might be able to help me find any of Murphys descendents. I dont make much progress but I do wind up with a copy of a page from the 1939 West Point yearbook. In it is a photograph of a dashing Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr. in full dress, and below that a picture of him tinkering with a gas-powered model airplane. Our earliest memory of Murph, the Howitzer notes in a short tribute, is of a plebe convulsed with laughter at the antics of the Beast Detail. That certainly seemed closer to what one might imagine about the Murphy a man with a sense of humor. And, in that context and in hindsight, the next line of the tribute seemed eerily prescient: Abounding with ideas, (he) sought new solutions for each problem, and he enjoyed nothing so much as an argument on his methods. Murfs originality amused and amazed us; his friendly grin won a place in our memory. It was a fascinating description, especially the part about Murphys ingenuity and need to debate his methods. But what stayed with me was that last comment about his grin. Like the Chesire cats persistent smile
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The Voice of Murphy Despite how badly my interview with Yeager concluded, I feel strangely relieved. I dont feel nearly so bad that Ive failed to find a definitive answer about the origins of Murphys Law. Yeagers right: there is no definitive truth. History, as the old saying goes, is nothing more than a pack of lies that everyone agrees are true. The second thing that transpired was that I unexpectedly received several emails from Robert Murphy. In one he wrote that he wanted to clarify that his father passed away in 1990, not 1989 as hed written in his letter to the editor. In another he wrote that hed found a note on Los Angeles West Point Society stationery asking if they could make a plaque about Murphys Law for possible submission to the Academy. In other words, he continued, this was not something my father was campaigning for. As I told you, self promotion was completely foreign to my Father In the same email Robert cited the comments I made at our meeting and noted that in his view George Nichols is just an angry old man who regrets that the Law was not named after him, nothing more. He is a self-tainted source. And then Robert wrote an email containing some exciting news. Hed been going through some things Id asked him to please find a photo of his father and hed come across a cassette

tape of a radio interview about the Law. He presents it, and a photo of his father working on some rocket sled components, to me at a subsequent meeting. The cassette tape is unmarked, and there is no spoken introduction whatsoever on the recording. I guess it might be the CBC, or NPR, and probably dates from the time of the People article, early 1980s. Its as close as Im going to get to interviewing Ed Murphy, and of course I cant wait to hear it. Yes, Virginia, says the nameless commentator broadly, there really is a Murphy. Ed Murphy, who weve got on the phone today... Ed Murphys voice is serious, deliberate and humorless. Absolutely appropriate, I decide, for a career engineer. Asked to tell his version of the Murphys Law story he goes into the kind of excruciating detail youd expect from someone obsessed with precision. It leaves the interviewer, who apparently believed he was going to interview a slick, witty personality, completely flummoxed. The senior Murphy said clearly in the interview that, as Nichols and Hill claimed, he wasnt part of the Gee Whiz team. Hed only been to Edwards once during Stapps tests. He was working at Wright Field he recalled, on a project similar to Stapps but which involved the use of a centrifuge. Hed designed some innovative electronic measuring equipment for the centrifuge, and when John Stapp heard about that, he called and asked if Murphyd design some similar components for the Whiz. Murphyd leapt at the chance, he said, because he admired Stapp and the groundbreaking work he was doing. According to Murphy, he sent his equipment out to Edwards and it worked well for a few tests. But then something went wrong. Stapp called him to say that hed risked his neck riding on that darn sled and the instruments had produced no data. So I got on the next airplane to Muroc and had a meeting with him, Murphy explained. And I said all right, lets see the accelerometers. An examination revealed to Murphy that like Hill and Nichols said they had put the strain gauges on the transducers ninety degrees off. Yet contrary to what Nichols said about Murphy not taking the blame for the trouble, Murphy said in the interview that he felt to a certain degree it was his fault. I had made very accurate drawings of the thing for them, and discussed it with the people who were going to make them but I hadnt covered everything, he sighed. I didnt tell them that they had positively to orient them in only one direction. So I guess about that time I said, Well, I really have made a terrible mistake here, I didnt cover every possibility. And about that time, Major Stapp says, Well, thats a good candidate for Murphys Law. I thought he was going to court martial me, Murphy noted dryly. But thats all he said. When a confused Murphy wound up the courage to ask Stapp what he meant by a Murphys Law, Stapp reeled off a host of other Laws, and said smartly that from now on were going to have things done according to Murphys Law. And that, Ed Murphy concluded, is about the way I think it happened. This has been literally a five minute explanation, full of confusing technical information that would puzzle a rocket scientist. And while reciting the facts, Murphy seemingly didnt bother to state his own Law, and didnt make a single droll comment. So when the interviewer finally gets a word in edgewise, he doesnt know what to say except that There is now a new Murphys Law and this is it: you ask Captain Edward Aloysius Murphy a question and by God you get an

answer! Then the interviewer tries to pin Murphy down. Now most people, he says, think that Murphys Law goes like this: if anything can go wrong, it will. Is that right? Well, Murphy replied, I wouldnt say its wrong. But how did you say it originally? the interviewer teased. About that way. But I wouldnt say thats exactly the words, Murphy retorted. I dont remember. It happened thirty five years ago, you know. Okay, the interviewer conceded. But tell me the truth. Are you tired of being asked about it? No, said Ed Murphy, just before signing off. I enjoy it. I make a lot of friends that way. Everybody likes to think, that they have discovered a wonderful thing when they hear Murphys Law for the first time.

Murphys Law Applies to Murphys Law Its true: Murphys Law is a wonderful thing and something which, many centuries down the line, will probably still be quoted with regularity. It is a universal truth, a highly reliable precept, and applicable to almost any situation. My own included. Where the story of the origins of the Law is concerned, I couldnt possibly have hoped to get it right. At least thats the lesson Im forced to draw. If Murphys Law can be seen in some respects as a statement about entropy, human frailty or fallibility, then the contradictory story of its origins is annoying but also altogether apropos.

Figure 14. THE TRACK TODAY. A contemporary view of the Gee Whiz track at Edwards North Base. On this desolate stretch of desert history was made, and rockets roared and brakes screamed, Now, all is quiet. While much of the track has receded into the desert, a surprising amount of it remains. This photograph shows

Indeed, when I think back on the facts Ive managed to gather, all I can do is smirk. Few stand up to scrutiny. Nichols might have written in Blochs book that he coined the term Murphys Law Yet during our interview he described it as more of a group effort. Murphy claimed in People and in his radio interview that Stapp named the Law, but apparently told Lawrence Peter that Nichols had done it. And while Nichols had claimed that Murphy had tried to usurp the Law, I couldnt find any direct evidence of that. Just as I couldnt find any evidence, despite what Kilanowski believed, that Stapp had ever claimed hed coined it. In similar fashion, David Hill told me the words Murphy uttered after the failure were If theres any way they can do it wrong, they will. Whereas Nichols claimed it was If theres any way he can do it wrong, he will. Yet when Murphy told the story to Peters, he claimed hed said, If theres more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will end in disaster, then somebody will do it that way... Hed told the radio interviewer something entirely different (I really have made a terrible mistake here, I didnt cover every possibility) and when pressed, he said he couldnt remember exactly what hed said. I could go on. While Ed Murphy blamed himself for the mistake, Hill blamed DeMarco and/or Hollobaugh, and Nichols blamed Murphys assistant at Wright Field and/or Murphy -- although for different reasons than Murphy did! While Nichols said there were four strain gauges, and that their failure wasnt a big deal, and that a chimp was involved, Murphy said there were six gauges and that the failure was an extremely costly mistake which occurred while Stapp rode the sled. Similarly, Murphy said he wasnt there when the transducers initially failed, but Nichols and Hill said he was. Robert Murphyd once thought the problem lay with On and Off switches, Kilanowski believed Stapp said Murphys line, and Ray Puffer and George Nichols thought Stappd examined Yeagers ribs... You get the point. It all depends whose story you want to believe. the brake stand area, which is about two-thirds of the way down the track. Photo by the author.

Whatever Can Go Wrong There are at least some undeniable facts. No matter who was at fault or who named the expression, the Law was named in honor of Ed Murphy, thats for sure. And Stapp was the person who popularized it, no question about that. In fact without Stapps showmanship at that fateful press conference, without his Promethean effort at contextualizing it and showing the world it was a universal truth, the Law probably would have vanished into the ether.

Its a notion I think about when the third thing remember I said three things happened to me after I met Robert Murphy? happens. Im driving down the road at the speed limit, and I idly change lanes. Everything looks all clear, but suddenly my car is hit from behind with terrific force and goes spinning all the way across the street into the curb. Later, reconstructing events, I realize that the other driver, who was speeding, changed lanes to pass me at the exact same time I changed lanes. There was seemingly no way I could have seen him, and he was travelling too fast to stop or avoid hitting me. Of course I cant shake the thought: whatever can go wrong... My car is nearly totaled the rear crumple zone is completely Figure 15. MURPHYS RESTING PLACE. Today compressed but because of that Edward A. Murphy rests quietly in a veterans and my shoulder harness seatbelt I cemetery. Whether or not it was he who he coined the walk away uninjured. Its a miracle Law, and whether it was named in his honor or out of really. And as I sit on the curb and spite, the amazingly adaptable Murphys Law endures, wait for the police to arrive, I cant and its appeal shows no signs of abating. Photo by the help but think about what author. Kilanowski told me about John Paul Stapps steadfast, tireless efforts in the cause of auto safety. He might not have invented Murphys Law, achieved household word fame or semantic immortality, but Stapps contributions are real and remain with us in the present day. In that sense, Stapp is the true hero of the Law. Hes a ghost in the machine of every modern airplane and automobile, making sure that when things go wrong really wrong they dont become much worse. So, sitting there on the curb, I say a silent thank-you to the man who risked his own life in an effort to save thousands of others. My own included. John Paul Stapp was a courageous man, a great man I think, and his legacy continues to grow with each passing day.

Nick Spark is a writer and documentary filmmaker. He lives in Los Angeles.

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Phil Reisman: Murphy's Law, or how life throws curves

My boiler cracked during the cold snap, and the replacement will run me into the thousands. I asked the oil guy why this happened, which probably sounded more like a lamentation than a question. Why me? (The temperature outside was about 5 degrees that day.) He gave a cryptic explanation but it basically translated to Murphys Law: What can go wrong will go wrong. Sinatra put it another way. Thats life, he sang. Life and the inevitable replication of Murphys Law can put a strain on a persons sense of humor though the boilers sticker shock inspired my announcement that the dogs college education will unfortunately have to be delayed for a year and Im very sorry but he will have to get a job. Well, I admit that joke sounded funnier out loud. Murphys Law is in play everywhere and usually its nothing to laugh at. Look at the ongoing nightmare at Target where cyber crooks bore their way into the retail chains computer systems and gained access to the personal records of millions of customers. Was it really a surprise? After all, we live in a crowded, complicated world of encryption with passwords, user names and keywords tied to virtual money that is transferred in lightning-fast transactions over an astonishing network of technology few of us can begin to understand. It was just a matter of time before hackers got around to pulling off a caper on the scale of Target. Thats not pessimism. Thats life modern life and the stress is real. Targets president and CEO Gregg Steinhafel said as much in a full-page newspaper apology to customers on Monday.

I know this breach has had a real impact on you, creating a great deal of confusion and frustration, he said. I share those feelings. So we try to go with the flow, ride with the tide. We count our blessings and remind ourselves that this, too, shall pass. But its not always easy. Sometimes when things go wrong it feels like an act of considerable courage to just get up in the morning and trudge off to work. Its precisely this kind of test of forbearance that has confronted some 300,000 people living in nine West Virginia counties who havent had potable water for the past four days, ever since 7,500 gallons of a toxic chemical used to clean coal leaked out of a storage tank. Tempting Murphys Law, the storage tank was only a mile upriver from the regions water treatment plant. Which brings me around again to the story of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the political mess caused by the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge. Traffic congestion is a miserable fact of life in Turnpike country, as made plain by the late cartoonist B. Kliban who drew a picture of a man in coattails high-stepping down a highway lined with swamps and smokestacks. The caption: Houdini escaping New Jersey. But the bridge fiasco had nothing to do with Murphys Law. It was an inspiration of petty revenge conceived by hacks who betrayed the publics trust. The truth is most people really dont give a damn about Republicans and Democrats and their inane, never-ending squabbles. Most people are really of one party, which has nothing to do with politicians. Its a party that makes no speeches, never meets the press and whose simple platform is paying the bills, putting food on the table and getting through the day. Im reminded of an email I received from a woman in Carmel, who told me about her husband who has worked 35 years at an outdoor job. She said it was not unusual for him to work six days a week, whatever the weather.

His company has downsized. Getting even a single day of vacation is hard to come by, if not impossible. Retirement seems impossible. The woman asked me to withhold her name because she didnt want to embarrass her husband. Life just throws you curves, she told me on the phone. Life is hard enough to navigate without some clown messing with the traffic cones.

Accidents will happen

Jon Henley salutes the simple brilliance of Murphy's Law: the rule that if something can go wrong, it will

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Jon Henley The Guardian, Monday 5 January 2009

One formulation of Murphy's Law has it that the more advanced your equipment, the further you will be from civilisation when it fails. Photograph: Rex Features

Among the many fine anniversaries in prospect this year, not the least is the 60th birthday of Murphy's Law, alternatively - though erroneously known as Sod's Law or, if you're really into this kind of thing, Finagle's Law. This is the commonly held perception that the world is inherently a perverse place; in other words, if something can go wrong, it will. The proverbial example of the principle is, of course, that if you drop a slice of toast, it will land buttered side down. There are countless others; people have written entire books of them and websites abound (includingmurphys-laws.com, to which my thanks). The military are fond of: "The more advanced your equipment, the further you will be from civilisation when it fails." Parents will relate to: "No child ever throws up in the toilet." Drivers will appreciate: "The other lane is always faster." Shoppers will relate to: "The simpler and quicker your transaction, the more complex and time-consuming the transaction of the person in front of you in the queue." We can all enjoy: "The paper is strongest along the perforated line", "You always find something in the last place you look" (a necessary corollary of which is: "You will never find something in the last place you look but in the first place, where you did not see it first time around") and (my personal favourite) "Any foreign body in your shoe will invariably work itself into the position where it causes most discomfort." It is worth noting that there is no point disputing Murphy's Law (ML). It is both correct and self-proving, as can be shown by the following: ML states that if anything can go wrong, it will. ML itself can therefore go wrong. If ML can go wrong, then things can sometimes go right. We know from experience that things do sometimes go right. Ergo, ML can go wrong. Ergo, ML is correct and self-proving. There is, however, some dispute about its precise origin. The principle it embodies has obviously existed since the dawn of mankind, and dedicated researchers from the American Dialect Society have found it described in print as early as 1877. But according to a fascinating series of articles by one Nick T Spark in the Annals of Improbable Research, there can be little doubt that Murphy's Law as we now know it is named after Edward A Murphy Jr, a test engineer for the McDonnell Douglas aerospace

manufacturer during a series of G-force experiments carried out in 1949 by the US air force to assess the tolerance of the human body to acceleration. One experiment apparently involved a set of 16 sensors attached to the subject's body. These could be mounted in one of two ways, and one of Murphy's assistants installed all of them the wrong way round, resulting in a zero reading. According to Robert Murphy, Edward's son, the words his father uttered at the time were along the lines of: "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way." This we might term the original Murphy's Law. However George Nichols, another engineer present at the experiment, recalls the phrase as: "If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will," a rather cruel jibe later more kindly condensed by the McDonnell Douglas team to: "If it can happen, it will happen." Major John Paul Stapp, the subject of the experiment, then reportedly summed up the newly coined law at a press conference some days later as: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." The first mentions of Murphy's Law in this context occur in print in 1952 and 1955, whereafter it gradually became a commonplace, although in a multitude of variants. Finagle's Law is actually a corollary to Murphy's, and states: "Anything that can go wrong, will - and at the worst possible moment." All of which, of course, only serves to bear out Murphy's third law of journalism (just invented by me), which reads: "The likelihood of your misquoting someone is directly proportional to their present or future importance".
Murphy's Law is a prototype of a literary genre in which profound truths are summarize in the form of brief pithy statements. Similar laws have been formulated for every sphere of human life.
ARTICLE: MOVE OVER, MURPHY: SOME " SOURCE: OFFLINE BOOK/JOURNAL SAVES 121 | SHARE

The inventive minds of the nation's testiest technocrats, craziest computer cuckoos, and most mischievous mathemagicians gave birth to scores of Murphy stepchildren such as the Peter Principle, Klipstein's Corollary, Skinner's Constant, Zymurgy's Laws, and the Pollyanna Principle, followed by Boob's Law, the Laws of Applied Confusion, Frothingham's Fallacy, and Pardo's Postulates. Murphy apostles improvised variations on the master's theme. O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law proclaimed that "Murphy was an read more
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In 1952, Yale Book of Quotations, first listed the adage as Murphys Law, in a quote by an unnamed physicist, from a book by Anne Roe: There were a number of particularly delightful incidents. There is, for example, the physicist who introduced me to one of my favorite laws, which he described as Murphys law or the fourth law of thermodynamics (actually there were only three last I heard) which states: If anything can go wrong, it will.
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British stage magician Nevil Maskelyne wrote in 1908, "It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that can go wrong will go wrong."
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Sayings like this stretch way back to 1877 when Alfred Holt wrote, "It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later."
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The exact history of the saying may never be known, as there are several different stories explaining how it came about.
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While I admit that the name of Murphy's laws is a pleasant one as is the story of how it came to light, but the original name for 'if anything can go wrong it will' was sod's law because it would happen to any poor sod who needed such a catastrophic event the least. It also removes the ability to say "I coined this phrase!" because sod's law has been around long before any living man and has existed in many forms for hundreds of years.
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Edward Murphy was an engineer who was involved in the U.S. Army Air Force Aero Medical Laboratorys project MX-981. Project MX-981 was designed to test the effects of deceleration forces of high magnitude on the human body. When a technician wired all of the strain gauges backwards, Capt. Murphy was heard muttering his famous phrase and the rest is history. Since they assumed mistakes were being made and things would go wrong, the attention to detail was heightened and the inevitable errors were caught. When read more
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By the use of an appropriate mathematical model we can show that the clustering of unpleasant events in our daily lives is, in fact, a result of simple probability theory and

has very little to do with what we normally call "bad luck." That probability should be mentioned with respect to Murphy's Law is, indeed, appropriate, since some versions of Murphy's Law are, in fact, simply restatements of certain well-known facts from probability theory.
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Incidentally, a lot of Brits think that Murphy's Law is an Irish joke. Murphy is an Irish name of course, and the Irish have been the butt of jokes from Brits for a long time. Anyway, a lot of Brits seem to think that what Murphy's Law refers to is that the Irish are to blame for things going wrong because they are careless or stupid or both, at least according to British mythology on the Irish.
ARTICLE: MURPHY'S LAWS SITE SOURCE: MURPHY LAWS SITE - ORIGIN
Murphy must never have imagined that his casual statement would someday become law! Murphy's Laws symbolize the errorprone nature of people and processes. Given below is a top 10 list of Murphy's Laws. These weren't actually uttered by Murphy. They just belong to the category of quotations that are known as "Murphy's Laws."

1. Murphy's Law If something can go wrong, it will.

2. Murphy's Law If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

3. Murphy's Law Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

4. Murphy's Law Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.

5. Murphy's Law The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. 6. Murphy's Law The buddy system is essential to your survival; it gives the enemy somebody else to shoot at. 7. Murphy's Law Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand. 8. Murphy's Law The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm. 9. Murphy's Law Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure. 10. Murphy's Law The first myth of management is that it exists.

The topic Moulin Rouge is discussed in the following articles:

exponent of French entertainment

TITLE: cabaret ...in the Montmartre district of Paris at the tiny Chat Noir in 1881, listed poetry readings, shadow plays, songs, and comic skits. The primary exponent of French cabaret entertainment was the Moulin Rouge, in Paris; established in 1889 as a dance hall, it featured a cabaret show in which the cancan was first performed and in which many major stars of variety and music hall later appeared....

The cabaret probably originated in France in the 1880s as a small club in which the audience was grouped around a platform. The entertainment at first consisted of a series of amateur acts linked together by a master of ceremonies; its coarse humour was usually directed against the conventions of bourgeois society. The typical program, which first flourished in the Montmartre district of Paris at the tiny Chat Noir in 1881, listed poetry readings, shadow plays, songs, and comic skits. The primary exponent of French cabaret entertainment was the Moulin Rouge, in Paris; established in 1889 as a dance hall, it featured a cabaret show in which the cancan was first performed and in which many major stars of variety and music hall later appeared. The world of the Moulin Rouge in its heyday was immortalized in the graphic art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Imported from France about 1900, the first German Kabarett was established in Berlin by Baron Ernst von Wolzogen. It retained the intimate atmosphere, entertainment platform, and improvisational character of the French cabaret but developed its own characteristic gallows humour. By the ... (200 of 688 words)

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Read TCM's article on Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge (1953) There have been a number of films with the title Moulin Rouge, including a 1944 French release with Josephine Baker, a 1934 Hollywood comedy with Constance Bennett and Franchot Tone, and of course Baz Luhrmann's 2001 over-the-top re-imagining of the musical genre, appropriately fitted with an exclamation point at the end of the title. But although the latter film had John Leguizamo in a supporting role as a cartoonish Toulouse-Lautrec, John Huston's 1952 release is the only one to delve into the life of the famous French painter and chronicler of the Parisian belle poque. Not that the facts of this bio-pic are to be taken as the gospel truth. Moulin Rouge (1953) is based on Pierre LaMure's fictionalized account of the life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, descendent of a prominent old aristocratic family who in the mid-1880s moved to Montmartre, the center of Parisian bohemian life. In the few years left in his short life (he died at 36 in 1901), the artist painted the world of the cabarets, dance halls, and brothels; pioneered the art of poster design; and became a fixture of local night life, particularly at the nightclub of the title, which opened in 1889 and immediately became one of the city's most popular and scandalous entertainment spots. Director-screenwriter Huston was interested in making a film of Toulouse-Lautrec's life, and contacted Jose Ferrer about playing the lead. He was surprised to find Ferrer had already optioned the rights to La Mure's novel to develop it into a play. The two worked together to create a fuller, more complex portrait than the character in La Mure's book, but some of the more flamboyant, outrageous aspects of the artist's life are absent in Huston's screen version. What is more outstanding than any question of biographical verisimilitude is the way Huston and his crew evoked the period and Toulouse-Lautrec's art through costumes and cinematography. Huston claimed to have spent a year in Paris as a starving young artist (an assertion open to dispute) and he certainly had a deep interest in painting. In fact, it may have been his enthusiasm to recreate the look and feel of ToulouseLautrec's paintings on screen that attracted him to this project more than the details of his subject's life. With the help of Life magazine photographer Eliot Elisofon as special color consultant, director of photography Oswald Morris worked at capturing the quality of the artist's work through the use of color filters and blue-green backgrounds splashed with orange, yellow, and pink. Huston found Technicolor too sharp in its contrasts, so he had Morris use an array of spotlights in a wide range of colors to tint each shadow and highlight. Morris' critically praised work was overlooked in the film's seven Oscar nominations, but Marcel Vertes' costume design and Paul Sheriff's art direction (along with Vertes' set decoration) brought home awards. Other nominations included Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Ferrer), Best Supporting Actress (French ballerina Colette Marchand in the role of a prostitute who almost drives Toulouse-Lautrec to suicide), and Best Editing (Ralph Kemplen). The production was very grueling for Ferrer, who went to great pains to achieve a physical likeness to the character. Toulouse-Lautrec suffered from a congenital bone disease that stunted his growth to under five feet - the top of his body developed into adulthood but his legs never did. To create the illusion that the nearly six-foot actor was tiny, Ferrer bent his knees and relaxed his legs for medium and close shots. In several sequences requiring full body shots, the actor had his legs painfully strapped behind him as he walked on his knees. At such times, frequent breaks would have to be taken in filming while Ferrer had his legs massaged extensively to restore circulation. Huston, who had a reputation for being a heavy drinker, a womanizer, and often difficult to get along with, drove his actors hard, pushing them to their limits on this production. A physically daring, driven man, he was quite different than the more cerebral Ferrer, and the two were rumored to be at odds through much of the shoot. Typical of the way he was accused of abusing people to the breaking point to test their worthiness, Huston forced Marchand to play a scene over and over again in a too-tight corset, driving her to near hysterics over her inability to breathe properly. When he was satisfied he had the scene he wanted, he hugged the young woman and presented her with flowers and champagne. But there was very little even

Huston could do with Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was cast in the part of singer Jane Avril, one of Toulouse-Lautrec's most famous subjects. Huston wanted to replace her, but it was decided to keep her since her singing voice was dubbed anyway. Not much could be done about her acting, however, and the director resorted to getting Marchand to show her how to walk because "she moved like a tank," according to cinematographer Morris. At one point, Huston threatened her by saying, "If you go dead again on the end of a line, I'll shoot you." Oddly enough, the two eventually became friendly because of their mutual love of horses. Look for future British horror movie stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in small roles. Lee has an uncredited bit as famed pointillist painter Georges Seurat.

Traditional 'Moulin Rouge' a treat for ears and eyes

November 04, 2012|By Sid Smith, Special to the Tribune "Moulin Rouge -- the Ballet" nicely transports the viewer back in time to a seductive locale steamy with earthy, Bohemian pleasure co-existing with great art. That art of late 19th-Century Paris includes incredible music, of course. One of the best aspects of this ballet that Jorden Morris crafted for Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet, on view over the weekend at the Auditorium Theatre, is the score he assembled. Instead of one composer, he has more like a dozen, from obvious period choices such as Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, to such surprises as Franz Lehar and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Paris - "Moulin Rouge"

"Moulin Rouge" (French: Moulin Rouge, The Red Mill) is a night club, cabaret in Paris, opened on the first World Exhibition October 6, 1889. It is close to the famous red-light district, the hill and Montmartre Place Pigalle. The hall holds 850 people. Here are sung Jean Gabin, Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier, Yves Montand, Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli and others. The famous Khan-Khan, who became emblematic here is of quadrille music Offenbach. In the late 19th century Englishman Charles Morton called it French-Khan Khan and says he is "terribly noisy dance came from France." The star of "Moulin Rouge" became known mainly paintings of famous artist Henri de ToulouseLautrec, who from the opening cabaret comes to him every night and inspired by the beautiful

dancers create their works. The lights went out, the curtain rises. The troupe of "Moulin Rouge" appears on stage in front of astonished eyes of hundreds of spectators who came to experience the magic of the iconic Parisian cabaret. To get into the hall where 100 of the most beautiful men and women dancing French KanKan, happens once in a lifetime. Everything in "Moulin Rouge" is brilliant - dancers, costumes, decor, menu ... Every night, 365 days a year, one of the most lavish and costly spectacles in the world runs to 850 people. Twice. The current show "Color pageant" worth 9,000,000 - a colossal budget, thanks to a poster of the show stands for years. Only the establishment and maintenance of the costumes of the 100 dancers have spent 4 million. From concept to layout the full development of all the thousands of travel suit two years. They are completely sewn by hand embroidery is done by the best specialists in the field of haute couture. We use real feathers, pearls and precious crystals. Everything is done by hand. What is the secret of creating bootee "cancan"? Three years ago, "Moulin Rouge" buy famous studio "Klervoa" for fear it would not suspend its activities. Than half a century there making shoes for a glamorous cabaret shows. When creating a spectacle must be made seven hundred and fifty pairs of shoes every time you engage a new dancer, need to order new shoes for her. Being part of the continuous show "Moulin Rouge" is not so accessible. Minimum height of the dancers in the famous cabaret is 1.72 meters. And as an exception only if its really good. "I prefer girls to have higher 1.75 or 1.80 m for boys minimum is 1,85 m. But growth is not everything. Special attention is paid to the physique, the silhouette, especially the length of the legs. Long legs better wear costumes. Over 240,000 bottles of champagne are opened in the year. Many visitors to save the symbol of Paris for a long time to be able to afford a night of hot passion cabaret. Dinner followed by grandoznoto show "Color pageant", starting from 150 euros per person upwards depending on the menu. Plateaus have many different names as Art "Lautrec Menu", "Menu French kan-kan," etc. For banquet customer care 120 waiters and 25 cooks. Priduzheno eating is a sophisticated champagne and a wide selection of mature wines. Cabarete is the largest private buyer of champagne in the world. In the cellar he kept true wealth. Per year in restaurant drink 240,000 bottles of champagne every night cooling in 700 silver shampaniers. "Moulin Rouge" is the center of Paris and the global elite. More than 120 years, millions of spectators witnessed the magic of "Moulin Rouge". Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Elton John, Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, and many other world celebrities have sung on stage the most famous cabaret in the world. But how it all started? "Moulin Rouge" opened on 6 October 1889 Founding of the cabaret are Zidler and Joseph Charles Oler, creator of iconic concert hall in Paris 'Olympia.' From the outset, the Parisian Bohemia runs down there every night, attracted by the splendor and extravagance of the performances. Under the dome and wings of the mill show mixes circus, theater, dance. This is the beginning of the musical. The artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, one of the regular customers "red mill" perpetuates violent nights in numerous portraits of cabaret dancers. His favorite is La Gulyu that every night waving his foot in the frenetic rhythm of French Cannes-Cannes. In 1915 fire destroyed "Moulin Rouge" to the ground. Later he built the new hall, in which singing and dancing Mistanget legendary. In the sixties with the advent of Hugh baletmaystorkata Doris "Moulin Rouge" became a real cabaret. "Doris Girls" as they call them today and begin to provide more lavish productions. One of their fans and Queen Elizabeth II.

Author: Atanassova Cveta, the team of the show "Strangers"

Still for Sale: Love Songs and Prostitutes from la Traviata to Moulin Rouge
By Kehler, Grace Academic journal article from Mosaic (Winnipeg), Vol. 38, No. 2 Article details

Beginning of article
This essay challenges the prevailing notion of popular culture as debased by interrogating the fraught relationship with commodity culture Baz Luhrmann's 2001 Moulin Rouge shares with its reviewers. ********** Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, hailed by its supporters as the triumphant remake of the movie musical (Wilmington; Talen), has also drawn extensive criticism for a number of its musical choices, particularly its use of a pastiche of popular songs from the 1890s to the present. The litany of complaints regarding the songs includes charges that they are borrowed and consequently unoriginal (Rudolph); composite and as such fragmented and incomplete; already popular and therefore commercial panders; MTV-edited and thus all of the above (Leydon; Noh; Keough). In one form of trivializing Moulin Rouge, critics took delight in compiling lists of the film's musical predecessors of far superior quality, citing Giuseppe Verdi and Francesco Piave's 1853 La Traviata as well as Giacomo Puccini's 1896 La Boheme as authentic examples of song fusing with drama (see for example, French; Leydon; Burns; McCarthy; Gioia; Sweitek; Andersson). Quite apart from the twin, prosaic objections to this line of reasoning--that both operas involve generic departure from the highly successful literature that they adapted for the operatic stage, and that Moulin Rouge follows in this tradition of reforming the familiar--the reviews of Luhrmann's film troubled me for two reasons: their insinuations of the movie's commercial appeal as a form of prostitution and their relative indifference to the ideologies at work in this 2001 re-presentation of the Victorian prostitute, alluring and fatally diseased, and her English, middle-class lover who has come to a bohemian section of Paris hoping for creative inspiration and passion. (Rudolph's and Andersson's reviews constitute two notable exceptions.) The fin-de-siecle setting of Moulin Rouge borrows extensively from La Boheme (itself derived from Henri Murger's novel Scenes de la vie de Boheme) with its antiestablishment, penurious artists, sexually uninhibited women, and conflicted love affairs. Blazoning the centrality of La Boheme-inspired passion that "resist[s] bourgeois respectability" (Hutcheon and Hutcheon 49), Luhrmann literally places his protagonist Christian under "a huge, lipstick-red, neon sign announcing L'Amour" (Gioia). Affixed to the facade of Christian's Parisian boardinghouse, this sign is a recreation of one that Luhrmann used when he directed a Sydney opera production of La Boheme (Gioia). Yet his cinematic tribute to the vitality and the difficulties of bohemian existence becomes increasingly vexed as it merges with and, at points, becomes subsumed by plot entanglements and ideologies derived from Verdi and Piave's La Traviata. Unlike La Boheme, La Traviata, its source play La dame aux camellias (by Alexandre

Dumas, fils), and Moulin Rouge complicate their doomed romances with class tensions between the principals, a middle-class man and a courtesan. While La Boheme's Mime and Musetta become involved with wealthy, upperclass men, neither the women nor their artist lovers classify these relationships as a form of prostitution. By contrast, Moulin Rouge repeats La Traviata's intent scrutiny of a woman whose sexual employment and cultural identity have been conflated, focussing on the prostitute as a means to interrogate contemporary society's fraught treatment of the commercial. Like La Traviata, Moulin Rouge sets to affecting music the tale of a courtesan, Satine, who is at once too available and elusive--a problem designated by the multiple meanings of "consumption," which suggests her disease and profession. The middle- and upper-class men who invest in her affirm her social and economic worth, while her diseased state simultaneously allows for moral qualifications that stymie her entrance to the "respectable" classes and for temporal limits to

Moulin Rouge! and the Undoing of Opera MINA YANG

Abstract While Moulin Rouge! (2001) riffs on and even exaggerates conventions from classic Hollywood backstage musicals, it owes a clear debt to an even earlier musico-dramatic genre the opera. Combining operatic and film musical elements with those of pop videos, contemporary cinema and the rave scene, Baz Luhrmann's film engages with many of the thorny issues that have concerned opera critics of late, such as power, gender, exoticism, authorship, and identity construction and performance. The spotlight on the central love triangle of a consumptive courtesan, a writer and a wealthy patron makes possible a deeper scrutiny of traditional gender roles in the production and reception of Western art. The film's formulaic plot and the backstage musical format render transparent the commercial impetus behind the creative process and demystify the role of the Romantic artistgenius. Finally, the transnational and transhistorical elements of the film a mostly Australian production team and crew, American and British pop songs, a Parisian backdrop, the Bollywood-inspired show-within-a-show, numerous anachronisms that refuse to stay confined within the specified time setting of the late nineteenth century disrupt the Classical ideals of artistic unity and integrity and suggest new postmodern geographies and temporalities. This article considers how Luhrmann, by simultaneously paying homage to and critiquing operatic practices in Moulin Rouge!, deconstructs and reinvents opera for the postmodern age. Mina Yang is an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Southern California and the author ofCalifornia Polyphony: Ethnic Voices, Musical Crossroads (University of Illinois Press, 2008). She is currently working on a book on classical music in the postmodern age.

The Devils Dictionary, satiric lexicon by Ambrose Bierce, first compiled as The Cynics Word Book in 1906 and reissued under the authors preferred title five years later. The barbed definitions that Bierce began publishing in the Wasp, a weekly journal he edited in San Francisco from 1881 to 1886, brought this 19th-century stock form to a new level of artistry. Employing a terse, aphoristic style, and the full range of his self-education, Bierce lampooned social, professional, and religious convention, as in his definitions for boreA person who talks when you wish him to listen; architectOne who drafts a plan of your ...
The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical "reference" book written by Ambrose Bierce. The book offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language, lampooning cant and political doublespeak, as well as other aspects of human foolishness and frailty. It was originally published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book before being retitled in 1911. Modern "unabridged" versions that include Bierce "definitions" that were for various reasons missed by earlier editions continue to be popular a century later.

Origins[edit]
The origins of The Devil's Dictionary can be traced to when Ambrose Bierce was a columnist in the San Francisco-based News Letter, a small weekly financial magazine which had been founded by Frederick Marriott in the late 1850s. The News Letter, although a serious magazine aimed at businessmen, contained a page set aside for informal satirical content, entitled The Town Crier. Bierce was hired as this page's editor in December 1868, writing with satire, irreverence and a lack of inhibition, thus becoming known as the 'laughing devil' of San Francisco. Although the origins of The Devil's Dictionary are normally placed in 1881 (the point at which Bierce himself said it began) the idea started in August 1869 when Bierce, short of topics to write about and having recently bought a new copy of Webster's Unabridged dictionary, suggested the possibility of writing a "Comic Dictionary". He quoted the entry from Webster's for Vicegerentsand italicised the section, Kings are sometimes called God's vicegerents. It is to be wished they would always deserve the appellation He then suggested how Noah Webster might have used his talent in a comic form and it was here that the idea of a Comic Dictionary was born. The idea manifested itself in 1875 when Bierce, who had resigned at the Town Crier and had spent three years in London, returned to San Francisco in the hope of regaining his earlier journalistic post in the News Letter. He sent two submissions to the editor of the News Letter, both written under aliases, one of which was entitled The Demon's Dictionary and contained 48 words with new definitions in Bierce's trademark style of acerbic wit. Although forgotten by Ambrose Bierce in his compiling of The Devil's Dictionary, these entries were made available in the Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, which was first published in 1967.

Early development[edit]
The Devil's Dictionary did not reappear in Bierce's next column ("Prattle," in the magazine The Argonaut, of which he had become an editor in March 1877). Nevertheless, he used the idea of comic definitions in his columns dated November 17, 1877, and September 14, 1878. It was in early 1881 that Bierce first used the title, The Devil's Dictionary, while editor-in-chief of another weekly San Francisco magazine, The Wasp. The "dictionary" proved popular, and during his time in this post (188186) he included 88 installments, each of 1520 new definitions. In 1887 Bierce became an editor in The Examiner and featured "The Cynic's Dictionary," which was to be the last of his "dictionary" columns until they reappeared in 1904, when they continued erratically before finishing in July 1906. A number of the definitions are accompanied by satiric verses, many of which are signed with comic pseudonyms such as Salder Bupp and Orm Pludge; the most frequently appearing "contributor" is "that learned and ingenious cleric, Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J., whose lines bear his initials".

Publication[edit]
What had started as a newspaper serialization was first reproduced in book form in 1906 under the dubious title The Cynic's Word Book. Published by Doubleday, Page and Company, this contained definitions of 500 words in the first half of the alphabet (AL). A further 500 words (MZ) were published

in 1911 in Volume 7 of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, this time under the name of The Devil's Dictionary. This was a name much preferred by Bierce and he claimed the earlier 'more reverent' title had been forced upon him by the religious scruples of his previous employer. In 1967, an expanded version of The Devil's Dictionary was published, following extensive research by Ernest J. Hopkins. This version included the definitions which had been left out by Bierce when his Collected Works were compiled, due to the fact that he was compiling it in Washington, D.C. but many of the entries were in San Francisco and unavailable following the earthquake of 1906. This updated version adds 851 definitions to the 1,000 which appeared in versions published in Bierce's lifetime; in particular, it includes the words preceding "Abasement" which were originally defined in the Demon's Dictionary. Various editions are currently in print including ISBN 0-19-512627-0, by Oxford University Press, and ISBN 0-8203-2401-9. It is also available online through Project Gutenberg as well as throughWiktionary, a freely editable dictionary. The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary is in print in the Penguin Classics series, as ISBN 0-14-118592-9. In 2000, S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz published The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary (ISBN 0-82032196-6), including previously uncollected, unpublished and alternative entries, restoring definitions dropped from previous editions and removing almost 200 wrongly attributed to Bierce. 14 Dec 2009 this work was brought out in paperback.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The Devil's Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. In that year a large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic's Word Book, a name which the author had not the power to reject or happiness to approve. To quote the publishers of the present work: "This more reverent title had previously been forced upon him by the religious scruples of the last newspaper in which a part of the work had appeared, with the natural consequence that when it came out in covers the country already had been flooded by its imitators with a score of 'cynic' booksThe Cynic's This, The Cynic's That, and The Cynic's t'Other. Most of these books were merely stupid, though some of them added the distinction of silliness. Among them, they brought the word 'cynic' into disfavor so deep that any book bearing it was discredited in advance of publication." Meantime, too, some of the enterprising humorists of the country had helped themselves to such parts of the work as served their needs, and many of its definitions, anecdotes, phrases and so forth, had become more or less current in popular speech. This explanation is made, not with any pride of priority in trifles, but in simple denial of possible charges of plagiarism, which is no trifle. In merely resuming his own the author hopes to be held guiltless by those to whom the work is addressed

enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor and clean English to slang. A conspicuous, and it is hoped not unpleasant, feature of the book is its abundant illustrative quotations from eminent poets, chief of whom is that learned and ingenius cleric, Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J., whose lines bear his initials. To Father Jape's kindly encouragement and assistance the author of the prose text is greatly indebted. A.B.
To the Devil
The Devil's Dictionary at 100.
By Stefany Anne Golberg

CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. One hundred and five years ago, in 1906, a book written by the infamous curmudgeon Ambrose Bierce was published as The Cynics Word Book. It was Bierces preference that the book a collection of satirical definitions which he had written for various newspapers in a desultory way at long intervals from 1881 to 1906 be called The Devils Dictionary, but publishers had always been nervous about the anti-religious implications of the title. In 1906, American bookshelves were flooded with a score of cynic b ooks The Cynics This, The Cynics That, The Cynics tOther, to name a few. As far as those other cynic books were concerned, Bierce added, most were merely stupid, though some of them added the distinction of silliness. Among them, they brought t he word cynic into disfavor so deep that any book bearing it was discredited in advance of publication. As Bierce wrote his definitions for various newspapers columns over the years, they had appeared under a variety of names: The Cynics Dictionary, The Demons Dictionary, The Cynics Word Book. But no title was ever as satisfying as the one he finally demanded. One hundred years ago, in 1911, Bierce got his wish when the work was published as The Devils Dictionary.

On the surface, its not clear why cynicism was such a popular attitude in those years padding the front and back ends of the turn of the century. It was decades past the Civil War and years before the First World War. America had started to become comfortable in her role as a country that was powerful but not so powerful as to shoulder the burden of being a real global force. Progress was fast becoming the new religion, giving Americans a sense of excitement about their place in the universe. Americans put on wonderful exhibitions about their own wonderful inventions light bulbs, remote control technology, the telephone, the Ferris wheel while not yet feeling the full invasion of technology and amusement that would define the 20th century. Yet with all this optimism came a sense of unease. It had been a while since Americans, as a whole, had felt anything to be at stake. Americans were brought together socially by the Civil War and light bulbs, but they were also becoming unmoored from the traditions that once gave them a sense of community. Cynicism became another diversion. It was a way to discuss the growing emptiness of American life and the coming disorientation of modernity with an easy hilarity cynicism for cynicisms sake. It was to Bierces annoyance that he found himself persistently and flagrantly plagiarized by all those lesser writers out there trying to make their livings as cynics. No doubt, Bierces writings were smarter and funnier than the stupid, distinctively silly cynic books of his time. He was a satirist of the first order. But Bierce was angered by these people because he saw himself as no mere humorist, no dandy wit seeking cheap titters from parlor rooms. Rather, Bierce saw himself as a voice of authority and a harbinger of truth. No one was safe from his verba l blitz. Its amazing that any newspaper ever employed Ambrose Bierce, who readily showered his bile on anyone and anything in society he deemed hypocritical which was just about everyone and everything. The Devils Dictionary was an attack on politics, philosophy, the aristocracy. For example, a POLITICIAN was: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.

While a LORD was In American society, an English tourist above the state of a costermonger. sometimes used, also, as a title of the Supreme Being. He defined a MONAD as a little gentleman destined to evolve into a German philosopher of the first class, not to be confused with the MICROBE, an entirely distinct species. LOVE was A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder, while HATRED was a sentiment appropriate to the occasion of anothers superiority. Even the medium of The Devils Dictionary itself was an excuse for a quip: DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. Though Bierce was quick to add: This dictionary, however, is a most useful work. Just as devastating were his, shall we call them, metaphysical critiques. Bierce had no patience for those who acted badly in the name of faith. For his part, Bierce claimed to have no religious convictions, only that he cared a good deal for truth, reason, and fair play. (You can tell a lot about a mans metaphysics when he classifies GOOD as an adjective instead of a noun.) Bierce defined WORSHIP as Homo Creators testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride. FAITH was Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things wit hout parallel. His definition of WRATH implicated everyone from priests to kings to worshipers: WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, the wrath of God, the day of wrath, etc. Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest. God is now Love, and a director of the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster. Cynicism, for Bierce, was not just an attitude; it was his life force. Its ironic then that The Devils Dictionary is seen today primarily as a delightful little book of irreverent (if now anachronistic) witticisms. This is entirely Bierces fault. In life and in art, Bierce made it his prerogative to present himself as a Class A misanthropic know-it-all. Much of the real sensitivity and even anguish that produced The Devils Dictionary is obscured by an intentional ironic distance. By the time The Devils Dictionary was published, Bierce was 69. He had made a career as a curmudgeon, a writer with a big personality who always kept distance between himself and his public. He was famous for his motto nothing matters and was known as Bitter Bierce. Even his popular short stories, based on his experiences of the Civil War (see the classic An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge) were never autobiographical, never meant to bring readers closer to the man. He publicly attacked friends, employers, and of course, other writers. (Bierce had a literary run-in with Oscar Wilde once after the latter declared satire to be as sterile as it is shameful, and as impotent as it is insolent. Bierce responded in print with a torrent of insults, calling Wilde a gawky gowk, a dunghill he -hen. and the littlest and looniest of a brotherhood of simpletons who had the divine effrontery to link his name with those of Swindburne, Rosetti and Morris.) How could someone who addressed his book to thoseenlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor and clean English to slang be taken all that seriously, especially by 21st-century readers? Today, The Devils Dictionary comes off as smart but smug. Who was Ambrose Bierce to pronounce such judgments on humanity? HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. Despite his attempts to obscure it, Bierces autobiography is key to understanding The Devils Dictionary. Ambrose Bierce was born in what his biographer Roy Morris calls the ramshackle religious community of Hor se Creek Cave, Ohio. The site of Bierces childhood, writes Morris, was a hotbed of revivalist frenzy, full of spirit -rappers, tonguetalkers, stump-shouters, and psalm-singers. His parents (unwashed savages, Bierce once called them) were very poor and very pious. They ran a large household of 13 children, none of whom Bierce ever felt close to. In this milieu, the sensitive and serious Bierce was lost, and his sadness translated quickly to bitterness. Even as a child, the passion Bierce had for the Truth outweighed his sympathy for human weakness. As a child, Bierce once asked his mother to verify the existence of Santa Claus. Of course there is a Santa Claus, his mother assured him. But Bierce was soon to discover, as all children will, the horrible reality. It was this, Bierce said years later, that cemented the deep and irreparable betrayal of his mother: I proceeded forthwith to detest my deceiver with all my little might and main.

Yet inside the Bierce home was a secret treasure his fathers library, said to be the largest in the county. It was here that the Bierce familys 10th child found refuge. (A man of considerable scholarship, Bierce once called his father in a contradictory turn. All that I have, he said, I owe to his books.) In t his complicated household, Bierce experienced profoundly the tensions between religion and reason, truth and fiction, knowledge and faith. Lacking any sense of belonging, he became rebellious, idealistic, and angry. He resented his upbringing; resented the angry hollers of the self-appointed men of God that designed sermons to terrify little boys; resented living in small-minded, small-town America; resented the poverty and the convention. Bierce began adulthood early. At the age of 15, he left the family farm to work as a printers devil for an abolitionist newspaper, and throughout his teens supported himself through odd jobs he thought beneath him. But the event that would most define the young Bierce was the Civil War, which began when he was 19. Bierce immediately enlisted, sufficiently zealous for Freedom and with a youthful excitement for the romance of war. What he saw instead was evil. Unlike many other writers of his day, who would write eloquently of the war at arms length, Bierce was a real soldier and lived the soldiers horror. Any last shreds of idealism he may have had about the goodness of humanity were buried at Philippi and Shiloh. Later, in between his more satirical newspaper columns, Bierce continued again and again to put his demons into words: Dead horses were everywhere; a few disabled caissons, or limbers, reclining on one elbow, as it were; ammunition wagons standing disconsolate behind four or six sprawling mules. Men? There were men enough; all dead apparently, except one, who lay near where I had halted my platoon to await the slower movement of the line a Federal sergeant, variously hurt, who had been a fine giant in his time. He lay face upward, taking in his breath in convulsive, rattling snorts, and blowing it out in sputters of froth which crawled creamily down his cheeks, piling itself alongside his neck and ears. A bullet had clipped a groove in his skull, above the temple; from this the brain protruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings. I had not previously known one could get on, even in this unsatisfactory fashion, with so little brain. One of my men whom I knew for a womanish fellow, asked if he should put his bayonet through him. Inexpressibly shocked by the cold-blooded proposal, I told him I thought not; it was unusual, and too many were looking. from What I Saw of Shiloh (1862) These stories, though, were just never quite as popular as his satire. Bierce himself was badly wounded in the war. He received honors for heroism (contrary to the character in the above story, for rescuing a wounded soldier in battle). But his injuries, physical and otherwise, would plague Bierce for the rest of his life. And though he just made it out of the war alive, one gets the feeling he wished he hadnt. Demons haunted Bierces personal life, too. He married and bore three children, yet felt oppressed by conventions of family life. Bierce would spend long cold stretches of time away from his wife Mollie, feeling her to be an unsuitable match. In 1888, Bierce found a stack of love letters addressed to Mollie from a stranger and accused her (falsely) of infidelity. He abandoned her after 17 years of marriage, cutting her off as abruptly as he had his mother years before. In letters, he referred to Mollie as wife and Mrs. B. In 1904, he filed for divorce; Mollie died alone the next year, before the proceedings could go through. Even so, he once told his daughter that Mollie was the only woman he ever loved. Bierce would also witness the death of both his sons. The eldest, Day, was shot in a gunfight over his fianc, who had left him for another; the second son, Leigh, died of pneumonia related to alcoholism. MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. Bierces definition of CYNIC as a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be is easily dismissed as the rant of a self-important curmudgeon. This is a grave misunderstanding. As much as anyone, Bierce saw things as they really were and knew that there had to be another way. He had seen America in the depths of hell, had seen love from the bottom of a pit. He had shaken hands with greedy governors and jaded journalists, saw how men and women could abuse each other in the name of freedom and justice and altruism. For all its humor, The Devils Dictionary is a damnation of human hypocrisy, avarice, and selfishness. No one gets out clean not even Bierce. For whom better to spread the word of evil than the Devil himself, the author of Bierces eponymous work? The Devils Dictionary is a memoir of a man who knew all about selfishness and hypocrisy, a man who had seen hell. No wonder Bierce was adamant about the title. This was no The Cynics tOther. This was a dictionary of the Devil. Theres a connection between the Devil and the word that goes back to the original Greek dibolos, which means slanderer or accuser. Bierce knew all too well the demons that lurk in our language. He wrote that the cynic sees

things as they are, but also wrote that they ought to be otherwise. This is another way of saying that the cynical writers role is to bring the message of goodness. For only a writer who had known evil could channel virtue from the arms of the Devil and bring it back to humans. Bierce attacked goodness precisely because he believed in it, not because he didnt. He attacked faith because he had lost it. Its notable that a definition for God is missing from The Devils Dictionary. Its as if Bierce was saying, anyone who wants to know about God should read the Bible, but anyone who wants to know humanity should read this. SATAN, n. One of the Creators lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. There is one favor that I should like to ask, said he. Name it. Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws. What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul you ask for the right to make his laws? Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself. It was so ordered. The archetypal Cynic is a 5th-century Greek fellow named Diogenes. He wasnt the only Cynic philosopher and he wasnt the first. But Diogenes practice of Cynicism was so extreme, and so full of anecdotes about his eccentric behavior, that he came to define what we think of as classical Cynicism. Diogenes made fun of Alexander the Great and sabotaged the lectures of Plato. He was reported to dwell in a tub and live on a diet of onions. Diogenes is famous for stalking the streets of Athens carrying a lantern in the daytime, searching for an honest man (and infamous for masturbating in the marketplace). Diogenes, however, was no showboat. At the heart of Cynic philosophy was the message that virtue could only come through wisdom and self-sufficiency. The Cynic must be free of influence wealth, power, fame, as well as social convention. In his antics, Diogenes was taking the word of Cynicism to its logical conclusion. In this, Bierce walked in Diogenes shoes. See, for instance, how Bierces definition for SATAN fits comfortably with this tirade against the Greeks attributed to Diogenes: to all appearances you are men, you are apes at heart. You pretend to everything, but know nothing. in contriving laws for yourselves you have allotted to yourselves the greatest and most pervasive delusion that issues from them, and you admit them as witnesses to your ingrained evil. That people needed laws in the first place was evidence enough of their fundamental lack of virtue. The Cynic, then, has no allegiances, no state, no home, for excellence cannot be attained when one pledges allegiance to institutions and traditions. Bierce, too, gave in to the dissolution of his family, his home, his allegiance to his country, his allegiance to anything save an impossibly high standard of moral virtue, which even he could not achieve. In the end, his rejection of the world was to the later detriment of his writing and, more important, his life, which ended as lonely as it began. Two years after the publication of The Devils Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce disappeared and never returned. He had gone on another one of his truth-seeking missions. Legend has it he traveled to Mexico and got caught up in Pancho Villas revolution after making a tour of his old Civil War battlegrounds. Some say he met his end by firing squad, others say by his own hand. All we know is that, whatever he saw, Bierce never made it back to share the news. Nobody knows what really happened to Bierce, but his definition of Heaven gives us a clue as to where Bierce might have hoped hed end up. HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.

For Ambrose Bierce, this would have been Heaven indeed. 26 September 2011

Ambrose Bierce last produced a version of his masterwork, "The Devil's Dictionary," a century ago. That compendium of satirical, cynical, and ridiculous definitions exposed the harsh, hidden truths behind the commonplace, genteel words of the English Language. Bierce's book, coming at the beginning of the age of mass marketing, was a vital corrective to the serial abuse of our mother tongue. The century that followed was a linguistic riot. It has gotten so bad that people feel compelled to say "do you know what I'm saying?" after attempting, and mostly failing, to say what they're saying. Ambrose Bierce is gone, but his great project lives on. Herein, in no particular order, is my humble contribution to "The Devil's Dictionary: The Digital Years."

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Biography Related Links & Articles Quizzes Forum Discussions Ambrose Bierce [pseudonym Grile Dod] (1842-c1914), American journalist and author wrote The Devils Dictionary (1906); DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work. Started as weekly installments in one of his newspaper columns in 1881, many of Bierces definitions were soon popularised in everyday use. The Devil's Dictionary was originally titled The Cynics Word Book. CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. First finding his voice in newspapers, Bierce became a prolific author of short stories often humorous and sometimes bitter or macabre. He spoke out against oppression and supported civil and religious freedoms. He also wrote numerous Civil War stories from first-hand experience. Many of his works are ranked among other esteemed American authors like Edgar Allen Poe,Stephen Crane, and Mark Twain. Many of his oft-quoted works are in print today and have inspired television and feature film adaptations. BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters. Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce was born on 24 June 1842 in Horse Cave Creek, a religious settlement in Meigs County, Ohio State, U.S.A. He was the tenth of thirteen children (all their names starting with the letter A) born to Laura Sherwood (1804-1878) and Marcus Aurelius Bierce (1799-1876). Not one

tending to sentiment, Ambrose was never close to his parents, devotees to the fire-and-brimstone First Congregational Church of Christ. He does use them for many of his stories including Three and Three Are One, but often to their peril, or the readers amusement. Marcus Aurelius was unsuccessful in his many pursuits ranging from farming to shop keeping, although he had accumulated an extensive library by the time Ambrose was born. In those tomes his youngest son found solace and education, and admiration for the written word. The family had moved to Indiana when Ambrose was four, and in 1857, at the age of fifteen, he left home. For a year he was printers devil at the Northern Indianian, an abolitionist newspaper in Warsaw, Indiana. He next went to live with his paternal uncle, lawyer Lucius Verus Bierce, in Akron, Ohio. Lucius had been Mayor of Akron and, as with many in the Bierce family, also had a military history. Young Ambrose respected his uncle who encouraged him, at the age of seventeen, to enroll in the Kentucky Military Institute. There Bierce studied architecture, history, Latin, and political science. After studying for a year, he left the school and started a wandering existence between odd jobs including laborer and waiter. WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Bierce enlisted in the Ninth Indiana Infantry, either by the call of his military ancestors or boredom. For the next four years he travelled to many states, fought in many of the well-known battles including Shiloh, Pickettss Mill, and Chickamunga, and created strategic topographical maps. After a distinguished period of service, he resigned in 1865 after a bullet wound to the head continued to plague him with dizziness and black outs. The experience gave him much to write about and his future short stories based on the Civil War include The Crime at Picketts Mill (1888), A Son of the Gods (1888), The Coup de Grce (1889), Chickamauga (1889), The Affair at Coulters Notch (1889), Parker Adderson, Philosopher and Wit (1891), A Horseman in the Sky (1891), Two Military Executions (1906), and, some say his most popular short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890). In 1891 his collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians was published. While Bierce had started to write seriously during his war service, it was not yet a career for him. His next occupation was Treasury agent for the state of Alabama before he settled in San Francisco, California. There he worked for the United States Mint. EDITOR, n. A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, . . . . Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos. Now on the west coast living with a brother, Bierce was soon putting pen to paper, writing reviews, essays, poems, short stories, and sketches and submitting them to such newspapers as the San Francisco News-Letter and the California Advertiser. In 1868 he met Mark Twain, became editor of the News-Letter, and wrote the column The Town Crier in which he honed his skills of critical observation and wit in matters cultural and political. He soon became known for his biting wit and satirical exposs of public figures and while his columns were very popular they also gained him many harsh critics, one of the more notable being Oscar Wilde. MARRIAGE, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two. On 25 December 1871 Bierce married the daughter of a wealthy miner, Mary Mollie Ellen Day (d.1905), with whom he would have three children. The next year he resigned from the News-

Letter and he and Mary travelled throughout England, settling in Bristol. That same year their first son Day (1872-1889) was born. While writing for the humour magazine Fun as Grile Dod and regularly contributing to other such publications as Figaro and the London Sketch Book, Bierce started to have severe bouts of asthma. He often sought a cure at spas, and the long periods away from the family negatively impacted his marriage. During this time a number of his novels were published in England including The Fiend's Delight (1873), Nuggets and Dust (1873), and Cobwebs From an Empty Skull (1874). In 1874 the Bierces second son Leigh was born (1874-1901). Daughter Helen (b1875) was born next, the same year the Bierces returned to San Francisco. Home of the famed Bohemian Club where Bierce was a member, he met many notable authors of the day including Mark Twainand Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton. In 1877 Bierce took on the role of editor with the Argonaut. It was in this publication that he started his famous column Prattle. In 1880 Bierce went to South Dakota to work with a gold mining company. As an already fierce critic of mans greed and hypocrisies in areas of government and institutions, the mining experience provided much fodder for his future writings. In the Wasp he continued his popular column Prattle, where he soon started to publish entries that would be collected in his Dictionary. In 1886 left the Wasp and Bierce was approached by publisher William Randolph Hearst to write for his San Francisco Examiner. Prattle was resurrected and Bierce found the editorial freedom he had longed for. No one was immune to his caustic style and black humour: preachers, lawyers, bigots, politicians, racists, capitalists, poets, anarchists, and women, to name a few. While Bierce had reached the height of his fame, he also suffered losses: in 1888 he and his wife Mary separated (she died on 27 April 1905) and in 1889 his son Day died. In 1899 Bierce moved to Washington, D.C. WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to. to continue writing for the Examiner as well as Hearsts Cosmopolitan. In 1901 his son Leigh, a news reporter, died of pneumonia. Bierce was profoundly grieved to outlive two of his children. Bierce made a couple of trips to California, and visited some of the old battlefields he had known in the war. Ending his career with Hearst in 1909, Bierce looked south and wrote to relatives of travelling to Mexico. His journey led him through Texas and while there are many rumour of his whereabouts and some alleged sightings and interviews with him along the way, his last correspondence is dated 26 December 1913. After that Bierce mysteriously disappeared. Biography written by C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2007. All Rights Reserved. Other works by Bierce include; Can Such Things Be? (1893), Fantastic Fables (1899), Black Beetles in Amber (poetry, 1892), Shapes of Clay (poetry, 1903), The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays (1909), Write it Right (1909), and Collected Works (1912). PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in

sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one--the knowledge and the dream. The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission.

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In praise of Ambrose Bierce: still witty and wise after 100 years
The Devil's Dictionary, published in 1911, remains a topical, if at times cynical, take on language, politics and religion

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Who said Americans don't do irony? Someone who has never seen The Simpsons or read Ambrose Bierce, whose best-known work, The Devil's Dictionary, was published 100 years ago. Bierce, born in 1842 (the 10th of 13 children whose forenames all began with the letter A), was a journalist and author who lived a colourful life he fought in the American civil war, and disappeared without trace at the age of 71 when travelling as an observer with Pancho Villa's Mexican revolutionaries. He also lived in Britain for three years in the 1870s. The Devil's Dictionary ironic to the point, at times, of sarcasm and cynicism is a wise, witty and hugely enjoyable alphabetical take onlanguage, politics, religion, and various other targets. While some entries have dated, much of the book remains strikingly topical: in the Rs alone we find definitions of radicalism ("the conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day"), referendum ("a law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion"), and riot ("a popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders"), Like the Guardian, he objects to Miss, "a title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market", and suggests that for consistency there should be a title for the unmarried man: "I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to Mh."

In some ways, Bierce was born too soon: many of his aphorisms would have made wonderful tweets. He would have savoured the controversy over the Man Booker prize ("novel: a short story padded") and phone hacking ("pillory: a mechanical device ... prototype of the modern newspaper"). Here is an A-Z of my favourites. absurdity, n. A statement of belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. Bacchus, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk. Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wants to replace them with others. Die, n. The singular of "dice". We seldom hear the word, for there is a prohibitory proverb, "Never say die." Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man. Happiness, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. Irreligion, n. The principal one of the great faiths of the world. Justice, n. A commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service. Kiss, n. A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for "bliss". Lawyer, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law. Me, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Nonsense, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary. Omen, n. A sign that something will happen if nothing happens. Proof-reader, n. A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible. Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated. Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. Scribbler, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own. Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. Usage, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion. Vote, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. Wheat, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whiskey can with some difficulty be made, and which is also used for bread. X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language. Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments. Zeal, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. You can enjoy the whole thing online here, or buy the paperback, and there is a Kindle version.

Freed of his campaign obligations, Old Nick himself arrived yesterday to kick back with some old friends. It turns out he is turning his attention back to his magnum opus, The Devil's Dictionary. It has been almost a century since the first edition was put out, with Ambrose Bierce as his ghost writer. Bierce's present status, the Dark

Angel pointed out, does not permit him to engage in further earthly endeavors, of course. It is time for digital edition anyway. Over the past 100 years, Mephistopheles has been busy enough sowing confusion in all the languages of the world, but especially English. "The English tongue went viral right after the first Dictionary went to press," he observed, "largely because I showed it to be so capable of warping the way mortals think." I reflected that it truly has become the lingua franca of every tyrant, tinpot despot, and political philosopher since Lenin. It is hard to see how they could have gained any traction relying on their own languages. Stalin certainly gave it a good try, but in the end Orwell was able to pen in one English-language novel more deceptive phrases and pernicious usages than Uncle Joe's boys were able to pull off in three decades. His stable of writers did some amazing things with "liberation" and "democratic," but the Russian language does not have the versatility to invent entire replacements for rational speech, Consider good old English words like "diversity," for example, or "sustainable." One can clearly see the Devil's work in them. I mentioned this to Satan, and he replied with a smile. "Yes, you found me out. They are the culmination a product line I first tried out during the New Deal, and it really moved when World War II got going. I called it the Protean Line. They seem like euphemisms, but with a twist: they are not a pleasant way of saying something unpleasant, but rather a pleasant way of saying nothing at all." The demand for that type of usage is self-evident. One can get it off the rack and alter it to dress up any pernicious ideology or prejudice. This feat is way above warping words; it is excising the necessity of logic and coherence from vocabulary altogether. "The Protean Line is a killer app. Everyone can be for one of these word products - or put another way, no one can say they are against it," Satan observed. "It does not have an antithesis, so it meets no resistance at all. 'Proactive' is another big mover. No one had even heard of that before 1938. " But the Devil acknowledges that parlor tricks from the Protean Line do not fit well into the format of his Dictionary. It will not do have scores of listings, each followed by the definition "a borrowed word returned without content." To qualify for The Devil's Dictionary, a word or phrase must carry a specific, deleterious, and hidden meaning. After all, the very point of the book is to enable one to unmask what a politician, merchant, lawyer, or journalist is really saying. Beezlebub then handed me some words he had scribbled down as he sneaked them into the language. "Give those a gander," he said, "and get back to me with definitions as you understand them. There may be a fee in it for you. My people will

get a contract over to you to sign - in blood, of course. " Here follow the feeble results: "Public-Private Partnership": A device for getting the people to pay twice for something they neither want nor need. "Win-Win Situation": When two players agree to tie for first in a three - person contest. "Too Big to Fail": Having achieved a state of disorder that is too complicated for all but the unsophisticated to grasp. "Investing in Our Future": a means of extrasensory communication by which the living convince the unborn to accept government programs under which they cannot afford to live. "Making Every Vote Count": assuring that the groaning of the mules does not drown out the songs of the passengers. "Climate change": mass delusion that arises when people grasp that weather is not static. "Stakeholder": a player who has someone else's skin in the game. "Settled science": A monetary cycle under which (a) universities use government grants to excoriate the unaesthetic byproducts arising from pursuit of individual happiness, (b) the resulting outcry stimulates a geometric increase in government grants for universities to devise ameliorative programs, and (c) taxes and regulation required to implement ameliorative programs starve pursuit of individual happiness and thus the unaesthetic byproducts thereof. See butterfly effect.
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A Review in Anger of The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Monday, Jun 25, 2007 by Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)

Writer and satirist Ambrose Bierce began including humorous definitions of common and uncommon words in his Town Crier newspaper column in 1881. These definitions formed the basis of his 1911 collection The Devil's Dictionary. It is regarded as one of the finest works of American satire and is considered by many to be on the same level as the works of Mark Twain. Can you recall the paroxysms of laughter that contorted your body as you read Huckleberry Finn? Yes, The Devil's Dictionary is said to be that funny. I recently made the mistake of purchasing a copy of The Devil's Dictionary to look smart and look like I cared about things, which I am not and do not. I was surprised to discover, after sitting with the book for a couple hours, that Ambrose Bierce is not funny. I cannot say for certain whether or not he was ever funny, but he definitely is not funny at present. I knew I was in for trouble when I saw P.J. O'Rourke quoted on the back cover declaring the hilarity of Bierce's Magnum Opus. P.J. O'Rourke calling you funny is like having your hygiene complimented by Pig Pen as he lays dying from Hep-C. O'Rourke is, to put it another way, totally unequipped by nature to judge what is funny and what is not. If you've never read or heard or seen P.J. O'Rourke, he can be heard laughing uproariously at his own jokes as the audience murmurs uncomfortably on any of a variety of panel talk shows on American TV and radio.

Some might argue that O'Rourke is funny, and that by extension my value judgment of Ambrose Bierce is incorrect. These people are contemptible scum worthy of nothing more than a short life of physically demanding unskilled labor that culminates in a fatal accident and their bodies being ground up and sold as dog food in China to feed dogs that are not even loved by their owners. Dogs in China are the only animals filled with adequate disdain for mankind. I feel assured that a Chinese dog would unclench its bowels and void out the last digested remains of these wretches with a suitable degree of hostility. Returning to the subject of Ambrose Bierce, he is clever, I will give his fans that much. I will even admit that he is a skilled writer. He constructs admirable sentences and several of his short stories are excellent in that way that has since been spoiled for generations by M. Night Shyamalan. Alas, the years have not been kind to the mummy-dry humor contained in Bierce's satirical definitions. If you don't believe me, see if these two give you a real belly laugh: FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed. MAYONNAISE, n. One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

Granted, it's funnier than Dennis Miller, but guys like Dennis Miller and P.J. O'Rourke get called funny by people who enjoy reading Heritage Foundation whitepapers on intervention in Iran. That's not exactly a lofty height to which a humorist should aspire to ascend. Did you know that P.J. O'Rourke won a Pulitzer Prize as a political satirist? It's true! Thomas Friedman has three of them and he may be the dumbest person still able to operate a computer.

You might as well hand out Pullitzers to the menu at the Waffle House. Although, that explains why Pulitzers go for so much less than Daytime Emmys on eBay. Returning, belatedly again, to the subject of Bierce, he salts the hilarity earth of his masterwork by shoehorning in comedic poetry wherever possible. Nothing prompts gales of unrestrained teary-eyed laughter quite as well as comedic poetry written under a jokey pseudonym. Here's an example taken from Bierce's definition of the word "Bath": The man who taketh a steam bath He loseth all the skin he hath, And, for he's boiled a brilliant red, Thinketh to cleanliness he's wed, Forgetting that his lungs he's soiling With dirty vapors of the boiling. Richard Gwow Willickers! I certainly hope he regales us with the legend of R.T. Farty and the musical fruit of beans! I do not claim that Bierce is deserving of inconsiderate scorn. On the contrary, I would argue that my scorn is very well-considered. His wit is quite apparent throughout the work, as I touched on earlier; it simply exists outside the fickle realm of contemporary sensibility. It is the transient nature of both humor and language that have rendered The Devil's Dictionary obsolete, not any specific failing of Bierce. It is not an uncommon occurrence. I have no doubt, for example, that sub-literate cavemen of 20,000 BC would find primitive delight in the hundreds of tiny black snakes that to them constitute one of Thomas Friedman's columns about Iraq. Similarly, what might a giant Cambrian insect do with a copy of The Atlantic featuring an essay by P.J. O'Rourke in which he muses that he saw a woman by a Fig Newton with food stamps? One can only surmise that it would involve vomited digestive juices, dissolving advertisements for the Complete John Updike Collection, and a very satisfied giant insect. Throughout the years, a number of men and women have sought to recapture Bierce's humor by recreating The Devil's Dictionary, either by remaking it whole or from the perspective of a specific subject. John Wortheimer's The Cat Phrenologist's Dictionary was a huge hit during the cat phrenology craze of the 1930s and Louise E. Farrow's Cat Phrenology A-to-Z successfully capitalized on the nostalgia market for cat phrenology in the late 1950s. Both works are forgotten, as

are most other attempts to recreate The Devil's Dictionary, with the possible exception of Al Franken's 2003 bookShrubisms: How the Apemmander and Chimp Talks Down to Us.

I ask you, gentle reader, why fight the short-lived nature of humor? It is a futile gesture akin to Wounded Knee or that time Norman Smiley wrestled Hulk Hogan. History has recorded our defeat before the battle has even begun. Embrace the now! Accept the fleeting existence of your humor and apply it to the most temporal subject matter. Write your own Devil's Dictionary covering Internet slang or cynically deconstructing business jargon. Include a lot of pussy jokes. A lot of them. Sarah Silverman has made those way hot and you need to snatch that trend with both dewclaws and ride it to the finish. Having fully rendered my opinions of Bierce and his masterpiece, I offer you one last morsel of review for this book. These two sentences are excerpted from a very positive review written by Gaelen Hudson for Amazon.com. I will allow you to draw your own conclusions about their significance here. I'll admit it, I'm a tech dork. I work for an Internet company and this book is perfect for tag and signature lines for email.

Midlife Crisis: Transition or Depression?

What do you do when a midlife crisis turns into depression?
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WebMD Feature Archive By Kathleen Doheny WebMD Feature Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD What's a midlife crisis? It's the stuff of jokes and stereotypes -- the time in life when you do outrageous, impractical things like quit a job impulsively, buy a red sports car, or dump your spouse. For years, midlife crisis conjured those images. But these days, the old midlife crisis is more likely to be called a midlife transition -- and it's not all bad. The term crisis often doesn't fit, mental health experts say, because while it can be accompanied by serious depression, it can also mark a period of tremendous growth. The trick, of course, is to realize when the transition is developing into depression so you can get help. Defining Midlife Crisis Beginning in the 1980s, the term midlife crisis got a lot of attention, says Dan Jones, PhD, director of the Counseling and Psychological Services Center at Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C. He has researched adult development and transitions. "It was never a formal diagnostic category," he says of the term midlife crisis. And the age at which midlife crisis strikes can vary, he says. When midlife occurs depends on whom you ask and partly on such factors as how long they expect to live. A midlife crisis might occur anywhere from about age 37 through the 50s, he says. By whatever term, the crisis or transition tends to occur around significant life events, he says, such as your youngest child finishing college, or a "zero" birthday announcing to the world that you're entering a new decade. "The death of parents can be a marker, too, for these midlife events," Jones says. Midlife Crisis: His vs. Hers Men and women are equally likely to experience a transition or crisis, Jones says. "But it looks different in both genders," he says. "The stereotype is a man buys a red sports car," he says. That's not always the case, of course, but Jones says men do seem more intent on wanting to prove something. Men might gauge their worth by their job performance, he says. They may want to look successful, for instance, even though their achievements don't measure up as they had hoped. "Women often get validity through relationships," he says, and that's true even if they've had a lifelong career. So at midlife, they are likely to evaluate their performance as a wife, mother, or both. The Midlife Crisis as a Normal Stage in Life The midlife transition is looked on, more and more, as a normal part of life. Yale psychologist Daniel Levinson proposed in his well-regarded theory of adult development that all adults go through a series of stages. At the center of his theory is the life structure, which is described as the underlying pattern of a person's life at any particular time.

For many people, the life structure involves mainly family and work, but it can also include religion and economic status, for instance. According to his theory, the midlife transition is simply another, normal transition to another stage of life.

Michael P. Nichols` ``Turning Forty in the `80s`` is aimed at helping people cope with such rites of passage--what Jerry Lee Lewis refers to in song as being ``middle-aged crazy.`` The author puts it more prosaically, ``the end of growing up and the beginning of growing old.`` The book certainly can`t hurt and it is undoubtedly cheaper than going to a psychiatrist, which, by the way, is what Nichols is. The difficulties he describes are quite real, prevalent and often extremely painful and disruptive. People fraught with doubts and fears about how their lives are unfolding may resort to alcohol, drugs or extramarital affairs rather than confront their distress honestly and directly. Nichols has some better ideas. Indeed, one of his confessed reactions to his own midlife crisis was writing this book. Besides his personal experience, the author`s contact with others who have weathered the storm, drawn from his patients, is extensive. It is unlikely that readers will not see something of themselves among the many case histories that are recounted. There is the man who has been married to his job at the expense of enjoying a deep and satisfying relationship with his wife, children or friends. The single woman who has singlemindedly pursued her career and suddenly in her late 30s experiences an intense ``baby hunger.`` Or the wife who regrets years of sacrificing her personal ambitions to her children and a husband who seems increasingly distant. These and other anecdotes are the saving grace of chapters that drone on like a college textbook. Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson (among others) and their theories are trotted out. In addition, Nichols` attempt to add a new twist to the old midlife-crisis syndrome by asserting that matters are more traumatic in this particular decade falls way short. He refers repeatedly to a ``stagnant economy`` that is dashing the dreams of upwardly mobile Americans. Other alleged 1980s` demons include changing sex roles and the proliferation of computers. Were matters so much rosier when behaviors tended to be rigidly defined by gender or when people wrote with quilled pens? Today`s dilemmas are probably no better or no worse than those of the good old days. Still, there are nuggets of sound advice and information in this book. People around 40 who feel that life is closing in on them can gain valuable insights from Nichols` writing. It is encouraging to note the author`s concession that not everyone has a midlife crisis. At one point, he states that his clinical experience also indicates that most marital spats are not over sex or money but who is going to take out the garbage. This philosophic debate, of course, predates 1980.

It`s Crisis Time For Boomers

June 09, 1986|By Reviewed by David Holahan, a freelance writer and critic. Turning Forty in the `80s By Michael P. Nichols

Norton, 262 pages, $15.95 The waistline is spreading like an oil spill. The jump shot hits the rim rather than tickling the twine. Work is a crashing bore. And the old love life is, well, just that. So what time is it, baby boomers? It`s midlife-crisis time. Spell along: ``M`` (My ambitions are unrealized)-``I`` (I feel so depressed)--``D`` (Does anyone love me?). . . .

Mid-life crisis? Just excuse for men's bad behavior: U.S. poll
July 08, 2013|Reuters NEW YORK (Reuters) - Temper is the characteristic many American women would like to change in men and most females think a mid-life crisis is just an excuse for men to behave badly, according to a survey released on Monday. The 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair telephone poll of 1,186 U.S. adults also showed that most people think there is no such thing as the perfect man, and education trumps being hard working and being a gentleman as the most important quality for a man as he matures. Twenty-one percent of people questioned in the poll thought a mid-life crisis was a biological necessity, but nearly 60 percent described it as nothing more than an excuse for acting unfavorably. "The classic examples of buying a sports car or getting a young girlfriend are clichd," according to the poll. "A midlife crisis usually happens unexpectedly like when you're shaving in the mirror one day and it dawns on you that are not going to be president of the United States and your best days may be in the rear-view mirror." More than 60 percent of people questioned also disagreed when asked if chivalry was a thing of the past. Given the choice of changing a man's friends, mother, sense of humor, physique or hygiene, nearly 30 percent of women in a relationship selected temper. A third said they would not change any of those things. The poll was conducted between May 15-19. The margin of error is plus/minus three percentage points. (Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Bill Trott and Andrew Hay)

Midlife crisis? It's not a crisis at all

July 25, 2004|By Keith Blanchard. Well, I'm 38 now, and man, am I ever looking forward to my midlife crisis. It may not happen for another 5 or 10 or 15 years. But when the time comes for my one societysanctioned, automatically forgiven Responsibility Time-Out, I don't want to have to scramble. I've earned this puppy, and I intend to do it up right.

As I understand it, I have a delicious menu of choices. Should I ... have an affair with a gumsmacking 19-year-old waitress? Quit my job and join the professional billiards circuit? Surprise my family by selling all our worldly goods, taking the cash to Harrah's and putting it all on 13 black? Well, gentlemen, I've thought about it a lot, and I've made my d

Although originally used by psychologists to describe a transitional stage in adult development, today the midlife crisis is often associated with the guy in his 40s who finds a young girlfriend and runs off in his new sports car; or the woman, about the same age, who reinvents herself, buys a new wardrobe -- and sometimes buys a new face. Is it a myth? An excuse for impulsive, bad behavior and unrealistic transformations? Or is it a reality in need of a new name, given recent changes in contemporary culture? First identified by Elliot Jacques in 1965, the term "midlife crisis" became popular after it began to be used by Freudian psychologists. Among them was Carl Jung, who first described it as a normal part of adult maturation -- the time during which people took stock of themselves. He placed it midway between adulthood and the end of life. Erik Erikson, the theorist known for creating the Eight Stages of Development, explained it as a transition during the stage he called "middle adulthood" -- when people naturally struggle with questions about their meaning and purpose. With necessary adjustments made at midlife, he believed, people could achieve long term satisfaction by the last stage of life, called "late adulthood." Although viewed as a normal transition in adult development, psychologists believe it often starts with an overwhelming "uh-oh" moment -- when we first become aware that life is passing us by. Those who have made dissatisfying life choices feel especially troubled as they realize there is a finite amount of time left. They reflect back and see goals unattained, risks not taken and bucket lists unmet. Confusion, doubt, boredom and anger arise. There is often a wish to return to one's youth, or do life over again. Sometimes it leads to more extreme reactions, including symptoms of depression, anxiety, increased alcohol and drug use, with relief sought through psychotherapy or medication. More recently, researchers have questioned the validity of a true midlife crisis, wondering whether is it misleading to attribute this dilemma to a particular age. Some believe that people -- at various ages, for variable reasons (e.g. serious illness, loss of a parent or spouse or financial security) -- reflect back on their lives and wonder, "What's next?" Others question if midlife angst is truly a crisis -- a sudden experience, like the person who seems to change overnight. Or perhaps it is an emotional response to an accumulation of stresses - unhappy marriages, job dissatisfaction and financial troubles. There is also debate over

whether this crisis is biologically or environmentally based, some believing it is primarily triggered by signs of physical aging -- loss of potency for men and the end of reproductive years for women. Which brings me back to the most intriguing issue: How have changes in our culture influenced the way we view the midlife crisis? Specifically, do our longer lives and what we now expect from them bring new meaning to the term? My answer is yes. Not only do we need to rename this phenomenon so that it accurately describes what is really going on today, but by doing so, we may be better able to resolve it when we experience it ourselves or see it in others. Here are three reasons to rename the midlife crisis: Longer Life Span No doubt, our longer life span means adjusting the midlife point -- think halfway through "The Great Gatsby" versus "Great Expectations." When Jung first studied midlife crisis, he placed it at about age 40, then considered halfway between adulthood and the end of life. With life expectancy shifting from 55 to 78 and people now living well into their 80s and 90s (potentially longer as time goes on), midlife today would hit closer to age 55 or 60. Interestingly, although the midpoint has shifted forward, "uh-oh" moments have not. Psychologists find these moments of awareness are experienced at about the same age as they were decades ago, when people enter their 40s. There are two probable explanations for this. First, signs of aging continue to make their appearance at around 40 -- graying, balding, wrinkles and decreases in endurance, visual acuity and libido. It's also possible that awareness of these changes has been heightened by our youth- and beauty-obsessed culture, an issue I wrote about here in my post, "Too Young to Feel Old." "Uh-oh" moments are hitting even earlier, many say by age 30 to 35 (this group makes up 30 percent of all botox use). With angst about aging starting younger and younger and the years ahead stretching longer and longer, we have the perfect storm: a culture that virtually programs us to have a crisis at some point. People are stopping in their tracks, looking back, and then forward, wondering, "Do I want to live out my life with the choices I have made? Will I be able to remain vital, visible and satisfied for the next 50 or 60 years if I continue as I am?" Clearly, this is no longer the same midlife point that psychoanalysts identified years ago. But the crisis not only exists -- we are seeing more and more people struggle with it. Expectations Of Happiness Up until rather recently, the primary purpose of work and marriage was to create and care for our families. Deriving fulfillment and happiness played only a secondary role. John Jacobs, M.D., author of "All You Need Is Love and Other Lies about Marriage," says, "We are burdened today by the notion that our jobs and marriages will provide significant gratification or contribute dramatically to personal and emotional happiness." Whereas

frustration and dissatisfaction were once assumed to be part of these life commitments, today they are barely tolerable. "Finding happiness," Jacobs says, "has become the default expectation." Add to that the realization that we now have many more options available when dissatisfaction hits. Therapists see men and women who, in the past, might have remained at jobs and in relationships for a lifetime, even if they were dissatisfied. Remember, a lifetime was much shorter then. Now they want out. Even in today's recession, jobs are left. And one out of every two marriages end in divorce. As people face 30, 40, even 50 years of life ahead, the chance to achieve greater satisfaction is a driving force (or fantasy) and a difficult one to resist. Changing Roles The conventional image of the midlife man leaving his family to go off to have wild adventure or a sordid affair is as clichd as the idea of a woman replacing her empty nest with a rocking chair to start knitting for her grandchildren. Scenarios commonplace in the 1950s or 60s simply no longer apply. Women now make up the majority of the workforce,not only supporting themselves, but sometimes their families as well, as men are losing jobs at a faster pace since the recession began. About 25 percent of wives today earn more than their husbands. Clearly, some women can now afford the kind of life changes only their male counterparts once could. And let's not forget that many men are more involved in parenting today, some even choosing to be stay-at-home dads. These are not the kind of men who run off for a midlife adventure without great misgivings about separating from their kids. Nor can they confidently count on their mates (or soon to be ex-mates) to care for the nests they leave behind. In any case, statistics show that women are nearly as likely to be unfaithful today as men are, with 45 to 55 percent of married women and 50 to 60 percent of married men engaging in extramarital affairs. Add to that the fact that two out of every three divorces are initiated by women, and we see that the traditional family model has vastly changed. When faced with "Uh-oh, what's next?" there is now greater equal opportunity for men and women to act-out, reinvent and move on. So perhaps it's time to replace the traditional "midlife crisis" with a new, more appropriate name: "The Emerging Maturity Crisis." While the word "crisis" may sound overly dramatic, those who experience it continue to say it is exactly that -- a crisis. But it no longer is a true "midlife" event, erupting a good 10 years before what is now the midpoint of adulthood. Nor should it be viewed pejoratively, equated with reckless and reactive behavior, as it has so often been in the past. The good news is we have many years ahead before our actual end point. The bad news is that those years ahead can feel like an eternity when living an unhappy or unfulfilled existence. By calling this experience a crisis of "Emerging Maturity," we can view it less as a

flight from life as we knew it and more as a sobering emergence into mature adulthood. Although complicated by the many options in our ever-changing current culture, this event may propel us toward new opportunities and second chances -- or how ever many it takes to get it right -- to achieve long-term fulfillment. In the next few weeks, I will follow this piece with one describing the psychological steps that help navigate an "Emerging Maturity Crisis." Meanwhile, tell me if you know someone in the midst of one. Do you view it as a crisis or a transition? Share your thoughts, so we can give this phenomenon a more accurate identity. **** Vivian Diller, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice in New York City. She has written articles on beauty, aging, media, models and dancers. She serves as a consultant to companies promoting health, beauty and cosmetic products. "Face It: What Women Really Feel As Their Looks Change" (2010), written with Jill Muir-Sukenick, Ph.D. and edited by Michele Willens, is a psychological guide to help women deal with the emotions brought on by their changing appearances. For more information, please visitwww.VivianDiller.com.

Hard Evidence is a series of articles that looks at some of the trickiest public policy questions we face. Academic experts delve into available research evidence to provide informed analysis you wont get from politicians or vested interests. Its a hoary old chestnut: the man who, on turning 40, dons a leather jacket and buys a motorbike he doesnt know how to ride. The woman who hits her mid 30s and takes an Eat Pray Love-style journey to Asia to find herself. But theres more to the midlife crisis than worn out stereotypes. The evidence shows that we do indeed suffer more between the ages of 35 and 55. Explaining why is more difficult. In the well-being report weve looked at well-being in children, teenagers and adults and found that there are three critical time points in life when well-being dips: mid-teens, midlife and in oldest old age. The first phase can be explained by personal, social and economic circumstances, but the latter two episodes cannot.

Puberty blues
As children go through secondary school their well-being progressively declines. Between the ages of 11 and 15, the proportion with low levels of subjective wellbeing increases by more than two-thirds from 14% to 24%. This is in line with recent findings from a Childrens Societys inquiry, which found child wellbeing reached its lowest ebb among 14-15 year olds. Puberty is, of course, a critical stage in the life course, when there are many physical, emotional and social adjustments to be made. It would be easy to dismiss the dip in well-being as the inevitable consequence of hormones and physical change. But importantly, we found this is the result of social context and so could be responsive to changes in circumstances. For example, disruptive behaviour at school and being bullied were both linked to low subjective well-being, while feeling supported and sharing meals together as a family were critical to positive well-being among secondary school aged children. After controlling for these and other factors, the association between age and well-being was no longer significant.

Stuck in the middle

But what about the next dip the midlife crisis? Confirming a widely reported U-curve in subjective well-being - we also found that adult well-being was particularly low from the mid-thirties to the mid-fifties. However, unlike for children we did not find this dip was entirely explained by circumstances. Age remains a statistically significant predictor of well-being even when we statistically accounted for other factors.

Wellbeing has been measured using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale.

lick to enlarge We found this midlife drop in wellbeing was evident when looking at two different surveys that captured somewhat different aspects of life. The midlife crisis was apparent both when looking at all adults together and when analysing men and women separately. We used Understanding Society, a survey of 40,000 UK households, to focus in on the social aspects of life, looking in detail at relationships inside and outside the home with family and neighbours. We also used Health Survey for England data to look at predictors of well-being among men and women separately and including more detail on health. The latter analysis showed that the lowest dip occurred earlier among men, at the 35-44 mark. Among women, the lowest midlife dip was in the 45-54 age group and womens well-being also drops off again in later life.

lick to enlarge

Wellbeing has been measured using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale

No answers
The evidence is clear then, the midlife crisis is real. But what could be the reason for it; is it physiological or psychological? The short answer is we do not know what is driving it.

There seems to be something in particular about the midlife crisis (and the old age crisis for women) that makes it less amenable to differences in circumstances than the troubled mid-teen years. Our analysis showed that the midlife crisis is not because it coincides with the children in the household being moody teenagers. Nor is it because of the quality of the relationship between partners, or indeed whether one has a partner at all. Neither is it explained by feeling unable to cope with the demands of work, being unsatisfied with work, leisure or income or even poor mental health. Midlife remained stubbornly linked with lower well-being when we controlled for all these and a whole bunch of other characteristics. Other research has suggested that the midlife crisis occurs due to unmet expectations; the realisation that ones youthful aspirations have not and will not be achieved, and that as people adjust their expectations in later life wellbeing improves. That may be at least part of the explanation but we need more research to better understand this stage in life. We cant stop the passage of time or the ageing process but we can try to understand what factors predict the onset of, and recovery from, the midlife crisis. The midlife crisis is not inevitable, and not everyone will experience a substantial drop in their wellbeing between the age of 35 and 54. But until we know more about the factors other than age associated with this drop, we cannot make any recommendations for how people might be able to reduce the risk of them experiencing it.

Hard evidence: is the midlife crisis real?

Feeling lucky? The scientific proof that you DO make your own luck

Five years ago my friend Rachel was offered a job in Sydney. After a lot of dithering about whether she was brave enough to leave her family and friends not to mention her two cats to live on the other side of the world, she decided to go for it. Shed only been in Australia for a couple of weeks when a chance encounter changed her life for ever. It was a sunny Saturday morning and she had popped out for a walk around her new neighbourhood when she saw a hot pink lacy skirt in the window of a shop. She tried it on and loved it so much she bought it and put it on immediately.

Serendipity: All you have to do to be lucky is to keep a weather eye out for opportunities

Walking down the street, a woman asked her where shed got the skirt and they started talking. It turned out this woman, Julie, was also English and had moved to Sydney six months earlier. I can remember the moment so clearly, says Rachel. We were standing on a busy st reet and people kept bumping into us, but we didnt move because we couldnt stop talking we had so much in common.
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'I was delighted Id made a friend, and couldnt believe my luck that on other sid e of the world the first stranger to come up and talk to me was English. But that was only the beginning of Rachels good luck. Julie was on her way to meet friends for lunch and she asked Rachel if she would like to join them. Rachel was reluctant. I was shy about gatecrashing a lunch with people I didnt know, she says. But she twisted my arm and I went with her.

TAKE A CHANCE
The chance of winning the jackpot in the National Lottery is 1 in 14 million At the restaurant, I was introduced to a friend of hers from work, called Matt. I knew in minutes that he was The One. A couple of months later he had moved in with me and a year later we were married. Rachel still lives in Sydney with Matt and James, their 18-month-old son. She jokes that the secret to finding love, friends and happiness is to wear a bright pink skirt. But it seems the real secret of happiness is to go with the opportunities that life throws us to be open to serendipity. Serendipity is defined as a chance encounter or accident that leads to a happy sometimes life-changing conclusion. Without serendipity many of the most important discoveries would not have been made. The microwave, vaccinations, X-rays, the Pill and penicillin which was discovered when Alexander Fleming by chance noticed that mould in his Petri dish killed off the surrounding bacteria are all examples. Post-it notes, too, would not exist if a man who was trying to invent a strong adhesive didnt accidentally make a very weak one. But why do lucky accidents seem to happen to some people and not to others? And is there any way we can make ourselves experience more serendipity, or at least learn how to recognise and take advantage of it when it happens? A project at University College London is trying to find out. The SerenA project asked people to submit their stories to serendipitystories.net in order to see if there were patterns to peoples experiences. So far, stories include that of a woman who met the love of her life after getting on the wrong train, and a 91-year-old who achieved her dream of riding a motorbike after a chat with a Harley-Davidson-owning stranger in a cafe. So what did the researchers find that all these stories had in common?

By looking for patterns, weve found that serendipity is more than an accident, says Dr Stephann Makri, who is working on the project. While none of the people we interviewed engineered the opportunities that came their way, they all had two things in common. First, they realised that an opportunity was being presented to them. Then, they seized the opportunity and took action. When it comes to experiences such as walking down the road and bumping into someone you havent seen in y ears, who goes on to offer you a job or introduce you to the love of your life, several things need to happen. First, you need to notice the old friend. Then you need to stop and talk to them, even though you might be busy or running late. Finally, you need to follow up on whatever might come out of that conversation. In short, serendipity involves an element of luck that is out of our control but you also have to have the wisdom to spot the opportunity and act on it. The psychologist, Richard Wiseman, agrees. He has spent years researching serendipity, culminating in his book, The Luck Factor. He wanted to find out why some people seemed to always be in the right place at the right time. Wiseman found that they were not luckier just quicker to spot and seize opportunities. In one experiment, he asked people to read a newspaper and tell him how many photographs were inside. He had secretly placed a message halfway through the newspaper that read Stop counting there are 43 photographs in this newspaper. It was staring everyone in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people spotted it, says Wiseman. Why is this? Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. Lucky people, on the other hand, are more relaxed and open, which means they see what is there. So how can you be more open to serendipity? Wiseman has a few tips. Be outgoing the more people you are in touch with, the more chance encounters you are likely to have. Be prepared to deviate from plans. Unlucky people hate to break their routine. Dont be afraid of failure. Serendipity smiles on people who try new things, instead of worrying about what could go wrong. Research is also looking into whether our increased reliance on technology is reducing serendipitous opportunities. Technology is making our lives more efficient, but its also making our world narrower, which is the enemy of serendipity. There are, of course, exceptions. Twitter, Facebook and online dating can also throw people together unexpectedly, which reminds me of a friends experience. She had been internet dating for almost a year and was about to give up when a mans profile caught her attention. One of the things he said in his profile was that he loved those serendipitous events that make life interesting. The fact he spelled serendipitous correctly and used i t in the correct context was enough to make me like him, she laughs. We met up and it turned out he lived ten minutes away from me. That was a year ago and were still going strong. I put our meeting down to serendipity. That and good spelling.

Ask incredibly successful entrepreneurs ask people who are incredibly successful in any pursuit and ever one of them will say luck played an important role in their success. Talent, expertise, determination, perseverance, all those qualities and many more are certainly important. But so is luck: meeting the right person, being at the right place, making a snap decision that turns out so much better than you ever expected

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. Thomas Jefferson
Its easy to assume successful people are just luckier than the rest of us. Take Bill Gates: Lucky enough to go to one of the few schools with a Teletype connection so he could learn to program. Take Paul Allen: Lucky enough to stumble across an article which led to the idea to convert Basic into a product that could be used on an Altair computer and lucky enough to be friends with Bill Gates who was lucky enough to then be at Harvard and with access to a PDP-10 computer to use to develop and test the new operating system.

But were Bill and Paul simply lucky? Of course not. Luck isnt just a random gift from the universe. (Winning the lottery is, but thats a different kind of luck.) Luck actually has less to do with what happens to you and more to do with how you think and act. Luck does involve an element of chance, but lucky people respond to circumstances by spotting the opportunity and then acting on that opportunity. In fact, lucky people create their own luck by actively seeking to put themselves in the right place at the right time and being in the right frame of mind to seize lucky opportunities. So how can you become incredibly lucky? How do you manufacture luck? Do what other lucky people do: 1. They meet more people. Think of someone you know who got lucky and met the right person at just the right time: The hiring manager your friend met at a party, just days after she had lost her job; the angel investor your friend met at a fundraiser just days before his startup would have run out of operating capital; the CEO your met at a school play who became his companys biggest account. Luck? Yes and no. You cant luck into meeting the right person unless you meet a number of people: The more people you meet, the more your odds of getting lucky increase. If what you need involves people to buy, to connect, to mentor, to advise, to anything then you can only luck into the right sale or relationship or partnership if you actively try to meet the right kind of people. Get out. Meet people. Talk to the guy beside you on the plane. Talk to the woman behind you in line. Send a complimentary note to someone you dont know who did something awesome. You never know whom you might meet, especially if you assume good things will happen. Fortune favors the brave, but fortune also favors the prepared. When you assume good things will happen you will be primed to seize the opportunity when you meet and in time, you will meet the right people. By the way, a quick confession I'm really bad at meeting new people. As an introvert, itconsumes energy for me to meet new people. One way I work through that is using social media (I'm very active on twitter). I find it an easier way to make connections without the associated anxiety. 2. They try more. You would love to sell to bigger customers. You never will unless you try. A lot.

You would love to connect with influential people in your industry. You never will unless you try. A lot. You would love to land a better job. You never will unless you try. A lot. Most incredibly lucky people are incredibly persistent. They try, and try, and try some more. Many of those efforts dont pan out. A few do. Is that luck or is that persistence, and a willingness to learn from what didnt work so that next time you are even more prepared, more skilled, more talented and therefore more lucky? Take chances. Reach. Try. When you succeed, others will think you were lucky. (Youll know you werent; youll know you made your own luck.) 3. They expand their boundaries. Doing the same things day after day typically yields the same results. Take on a side project. Learn a new skill. Open up to different experiences. Do something you assume (but dont actually know) you wont like. The more you do, the more likely that good things will happen. Quick tip: Next time you're at the news stand (real or virtual), pick a publication that you normally wouldn't read. Something out of your immediate industry. Read the articles and the ads. 4. They give. Birds of a feather do actually tend to flock together. Mediocrity tends to flock with mediocrity; exceptional tends to flock with exceptional; only fools tend to suffer fools gladly. And giving people tend to associate with other giving people and by giving, they make each other lucky. Giving creates relationships. When youre sincerely generous, other people respond in kind: With advice, with connections, with assistance with everything. When you give out of sincerity and without the expectation of reciprocity, you wont have to hope youll be lucky in your friends. You will have earned your friends and the luck that comes with them. 5. They ask. Luck often comes down to the right person saying, Yes: T o your idea, to your startup, to your pitch, to your proposal, to your request.

No one can say yes until you ask, though. Unlucky people wait to be discovered and given what they want. Lucky people discover themselves and ask for what they want. Want the job? Ask for it. Want the sale? Ask for it. Want the investment? Ask for it. Many people will say, No. A few will say, Yes. Other people will assume you got lucky. You will know you made your own luck. Another confession: I'm terrible at asking for things. Really, really bad. If you're like me, another thing to try is instead of asking, try to give more. Heres the bottom line: Luck, true luck, is something you cant control. Luck, bad or good, happens to us. What we can control is how we respond to circumstance or chance, and more importantly how often we put ourselves into positions where we can be lucky. You know the old phrase, Its better to be lucky than good? I disagree: Its better to be good because then you will also be lucky.
We're taught to believe that some people are simply born lucky, when in reality, that's just a convenient excuse to lean back and take it easy, rather than try to exert some control over our destiny. After all, if you aren't one of the chosen fortunate ones, what can you possibly do about it?

Well, actually, quite a bit. The fact is, more and more psychologists are finding out that it isn't the hand you're dealt that's important in life but how you play your cards. To put it another way: We're all capable of making our own luck.

"What we think of as chance and luck are not at all the same thing," explains Richard Wiseman, Ph.D., a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire and author of The Luck Factor, who has done a decade of research on the topicenough to convince him that no more than 10 percent of life is actually random or pure chance. "The rest is luck," he says. "And luck is determined by your attitude toward life, by what you put out into the universe and how you respond to the results." Carol Sansone, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Utah, agrees: "What appears to be luck is really the result of perceptions, personality traits, choices, and actions. And all of that is within your control." Read on and discover how to put good luck firmly in your grasp.

Shift Your Focus

Hey, there's certainly nothing wrong with being a conscientious worker and pouring your heart and soul into a worthwhile project. But by tuning out the rest of the world, you may be missing out on another way to reach your goal. People who are less flexible tend to overlook opportunities by staying too focused on only one path, according to Elizabeth Nutt Williams, Ph.D., a psychology professor at St. Mary's College of Maryland. "That type of tunnel vision may lead to faster results," she says, "but being willing to explore unforeseen opportunities can lead to different and unexpected outcomes, and sometimes better results in the long run." Lucky You: Give it a rest, OK? Every once in a while, take a time-out from whatever project you've been slaving

over. Not only will taking a breather clear your head and refresh your mind, but it may bring you in contact with something (or someone) that can help with whatever it is you're working on. Inspiration can come from pretty much anywhere: After-work margaritas with coworkers can lead to some helpful piece of office gossip or help you get a better understanding of what makes your boss tick. A few minutes of Web surfing might uncover a recent news story or study that supports a thesis you're writing.

Brush Off Failure

Yes, failing sucks. But if you're going to let a critic's harsh words, a few (OK, numerous) impersonal rejection letters, or a job promotion that never materialized knock you out of the game or make you reconsider your goalyou're making a serious mistake. An important trait among lucky people, according to Lyubomirsky, is that they don't get terribly fazed when something doesn't go according to plan, and they tend to move quickly to the next step. "They have an adaptive way of dealing with failure," she explains. "They don't dwell on the negative or let obstacles get in the way of taking another chance later." Serendipitous types know that there are a lot of different paths for getting wherever it is they want to go. And even if their dream doesn't pan out, there's always another (usually better) opportunity just around the corner. Lucky You: Instead of sulking over a few nasty setbacks, use them to your advantage. Ask yourself, What have I learned from these experiences? What do I need to do next?Remember: Life's little roadblocks aren't the end, they're merely part of the journey as you make your way toward your ultimate goal. They're opportunities to tweak your talents and iron out the kinks so you can try again. And kick butt.

How to Make Your Own Luck

Posted: 03/17/2013 9:37 am

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If you're looking for a guaranteed way to win the lottery (other than purchasing every ticket available), you won't find it here or anywhere else. But there's another kind of luck, and it's not the "luck of the Irish." You have it within your power to create your own luck. Real luck is about taking control of your life and being receptive to opportunities that come your way. And it's about recognizing that there's far more in life that is for you than against you. By being receptive to things that are for you and allowing them to enter your life, you'll be able to achieve more of your aspirations and dreams. "Lucky" people look outside the box of their daily routine; they believe that good luck is predictable if they take more chances and adopt a receptive/optimistic point of view. They

understand that the more focused they are on accomplishing things that excite them, the more luck comes their way. Some would call it Providence moving in their favor. It doesn't matter what you label it; what matters is that you embrace the concept that if it is to be, it is up to me. Here are five tips for making your life a lucky one: 1. Be unreasonable in your thinking. What, be unreasonable? Yes. Toss away your old "book of reasons" about why life isn't working out as you hoped. This means seeing yourself differently, rather than looking at life in your usual way. Orville and Wilbur Wright were unreasonable when they decided to invent a heavier-than-air flying machine. Everyone laughed at their attempts to fly, but you have your frequent-flyer miles today because of these two lucky brothers. History is filled with great ideas that we initially scoffed at because they were unreasonable. Don't buy into that thinking! 2. Look for the opportunity in adversity. You make your own luck when you look at adversity as a source of opportunity. In this world of polarity -- of complementary opposites -- life cannot hand you a negative moment without a positive lesson hidden deep inside. This isn't to say that you should be in denial when negative moments happen. Denial isn't bliss! But when you can look beyond the negative and see the positive, that's the beginning of a lucky moment. 3. Turn whining into winning. When you catch yourself whining, it's time to make a Uturn. Whining about an aspect of your life moves you to the world of "WOE" ("What on Earth"), where you see the world as largely working against you. The opposite of WOE is "WOW" ("Wonderfully Obsessed with Winning"), a world in which whining is out of the range of human hearing. When you're Wonderfully Obsessed with Winning, luck happens because you're motivated to take the necessary steps to succeed. Think about the old maxim, "A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins." How about this paraphrased version: "A winner never whines and a whiner never wins!" 4. Become a luck magnet. When you think and act in optimistic and receptive ways, you attract lady luck into your life. You're looking at your future with an attitude of WOW, which alerts you to the many opportunities that are always right there in front of you. If you think of yourself as a winner, you become a winner. Again, it's not about waving a magic a wand and becoming the CEO of a global enterprise or the virtuoso you've always wanted to be. Both entail hard work and talent. But they also entail adopting the mindset of a winner. People who succeed think of themselves as winners long before they achieve their goals. That mindset is a critical element of luck! 5. Pay attention to your intuition. When you have a hunch, pause and listen to your inner voice. Intuition is keyed into aspects of the world that are off-limits to your rational mind. Often, intuition tells the rational mind where to look next for answers. You have to

leave the security of your comfort zone and feel safe in the wilderness of your intuitive self. The odds are that it will guide you to a lucky circumstance. If you follow these tips, you will find yourself loving life. When you love life, you boldly step forward with an attitude and mood that makes you feel energetic and ambitious. Things then begin to pan out as you hoped. Is that luck or what? For more by Rob White, click here.

How to Make Your Own Luck

by Maria Popova

All creators need to be able to live in the shade of the big questions long enough for truly revolutionary ideas and insights to emerge.
You are what you settle for, Janis Joplin admonished in her final interview. You are ONLY as much as you settle for. In Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career (public library), which comes on the heels of their indispensable guide to mastering the pace of productivity and honing your creative routine, editor Jocelyn Glei and her team at Behances 99U pull together another package of practical wisdom from 21 celebrated creative entrepreneurs. Despite the somewhat self-helpy, SEO-skewing title, this compendium of advice is anything but contrived. Rather, its a no-nonsense, experience-tested, life-approved cookbook for creative intelligence, exploring everything fromharnessing the power of habit to cultivating meaningful relationships that enrich your work to overcoming the fear of failure. In the introduction, Glei affirms the idea that, in the age of make-your-ownsuccess and build-your-own-education, the onus and thrill of finding fulfilling work falls squarely on us, not on the system: If the twentieth-century career was a ladder that we climbed from one predictable rung to the next, the twenty-firstcentury career is more like a broad rock face that we are all free-climbing. Theres no defined route, and we must use our own ingenuity, training, and strength to rise to the top. We must make our own luck.

Stressing the importance of staying open and alert in order to maximize your luck quotient, Glei cites Stanfords Tina Seelig, who writes about the importance of cultivating awareness and embracing the unfamiliar in her bookWhat I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: Lucky people take advantage of chance occurrences that come their way. Instead of going through life on cruise control, they pay attention to whats happening around them and, therefore, are able to extract greater value from each situation Lucky people are also open to novel opportunities and willing to try things outside of their usual experiences. Theyre more inclined to pick up a book on an unfamiliar subject, to travel to less familiar destinations, and to interact with people who are different than themselves.

But luck, it turns out, is a grab-bag term composed of many interrelated elements, each dissected in a different chapter. In a section on reprogramming your daily habits, Scott H. Young echoes William James and recaps the science of rewiring your habit loops, reminding us how routines dictate our days: If you think hard about it, youll notice just how many automatic decisions you make each day. But these habits arent always as trivial as what you eat for breakfast. Your health, your productivity, and the growth of your career are all shaped by the things you do each day most by habit, not by choice.

Even the choices you do make consciously are heavily influenced by automatic patterns. Researchers have found that our conscious mind is better understood as an explainer of our actions, not the cause of them. Instead of triggering the action itself, our consciousness tries to explain why we took the action after the fact, with varying degrees of success. This means that even the choices we do appear to make intentionally are at least somewhat influenced by unconscious patterns. Given this, what you do every day is best seen as an iceberg, with a small fraction of conscious decision sitting atop a much larger foundation of habits and behaviors. We cant, however, simply will ourselves into better habits. Since willpower is a limited resource, whenever weve overexerted our self-discipline in one domain, a concept known as ego depletion kicks in and renders us mindless automata in another. Instead, Young suggests, the key to changing a habit is to invest heavily in the early stages of habit-formation so that the behavior becomes automated and we later default into it rather than exhausting our willpower wrestling with it. Young also cautions that its a self-defeating strategy to try changing several habits at once. Rather, he advises, spend one month on each habit alone before moving on to the next a method reminiscent of the cognitive strategy of chunking that allows our brains to commit more new information to memory.

As both a lover of notable diaries and the daily keeper of a very unnotable one, I was especially delighted to find an entire section dedicated to how a diary boosts your creativity something Virginia Woolf famously championed, later echoed by Anas Nins case for the diary as a vital sandbox for writing and Joan Didions conviction that keeping a notebook gives you better access to yourself. Though the chapter, penned by Steven Kramer and Teresa Amabile of the Harvard Business School, coauthors of The Progress Principle, along with 13-year IDEO veteran Ela Ben-Ur, frames the primary benefit

of a diary as a purely pragmatic record of your workday productivity and progress while mostdedicated diarists would counter that the core benefits are spiritual and psychoemotional it does offer some valuable insight into the psychology of how journaling elevates our experience of everyday life: This is one of the most important reasons to keep a diary: it can make you more aware of your own progress, thus becoming a wellspring of joy in your workday. Citing their research into the journals of more than two hundred creative professionals, the authors point to a pattern that reveals the single most important motivator: palpable progress on meaningful work: On the days when these professionals saw themselves moving forward on something they cared about even if the progress was a seemingly incremental small win they were more likely to be happy and deeply engaged in their work. And, being happier and more deeply engaged, they were more likely to come up with new ideas and solve problems creatively. Even more importantly, however, they argue that a diary offers an invaluable feedback loop: Although the act of reflecting and writing, in itself, can be beneficial, youll multiply the power of your diary if you review it regularly if you listen to what your life has been telling you. Periodically, maybe once a month, set aside time to get comfortable and read back through your entries. And, on New Years Day, make an annual ritual of reading through the previous year. This, they suggest, can yield profound insights into the inner workings of your own mind especially if you look for specific clues and patterns, trying to identify the richest sources of meaning in your work and the types of projects that truly make your heart sing. Once you understand what motivates you most powerfully, youll be able to prioritize this type of work in going forward. Just as important, however, is cultivating a gratitude practice and acknowledging your own accomplishments in the diary: This is your life; savor it. Hold on to the threads across days that, when woven together, reveal the rich tapestry of what you are achieving and who you are becoming. The best part is that, seeing the story line appearing, you can actively create what it and you will become.

The lack of a straight story line, however, might also be a good thing. Thats what Jonathan Fields, author of Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance and creator of the wonderful Good Life Project, explores in another chapter: Every creative endeavor, from writing a book to designing a brand to launching a company, follows whats known as an Uncertainty Curve. The beginning of a project is defined by maximum freedom, very little constraint, and high levels of uncertainty. Everything is possible; options, paths, ideas, variations, and directions are all on the table. At the same time,

nobody knows exactly what the final output or outcome will be. And, at times, even whether it will be. Which is exactly the way it should be. Echoing John Keatss assertion that negative capability is essential to the creative process Rilkes counsel to live the questions, Richard Feynmans assertion that the role of great scientists is to remain uncertain, and Anas Nins insistence that inviting the unknown helps us live more richly, Fields reminds us of what Orson Welles so memorably termed the gift of ignorance: Those who are doggedly attached to the idea they began with may well execute on that idea. And do it well and fast. But along the way, they often miss so many unanticipated possibilities, options, alternatives, and paths that wouldve taken them away from that linear focus on executing on the vision, and sent them back into a place of creative dissidence and uncertainty, but also very likely yielded something orders of magnitude better. All creators need to be able to live in the shade of the big questions long enough for truly revolutionary ideas and insights to emerge. They need to stay and act in that place relentlessly through the first, most obvious wave of ideas. Fields argues that if we move along the Uncertainty Curve either too fast or too slowly, we risk either robbing the project of its creative potential and ending up in mediocrity. Instead, becoming mindful of the psychology of that process allows us to pace ourselves better and master that vital osmosis between freedom and constraint. He sums up both the promise and the peril of this delicate dance beautifully: Nothing truly innovative, nothing that has advanced art, business, design, or humanity , was ever created in the face of genuine certainty or perfect information. Because the only way to be certain before you begin is if the thing you seek to do has already been done.

In another section, Stanford psychology Ph.D. candidate Michael Schwalbeturns to the intricate dance of risktaking and the fear of failure. Citing the work of psychologists Daniel Gilbert, whose exploration of the artscience of happiness remains indispensable, and Timothy Wilson, whose work has revolutionized the way we think about psychological change, Schwalbe reminds us of the impact bias our tendency to greatly overestimate the intensity and extent of our emotional reactions, which causes us to expect failures to be more painful than they actually are and thus to fear them more than we should. Schwalbe explains:

Gilbert and Wilson highlight two phenomena to explain this bias. The first is immune neglect. Just as we have a physical immune system to fight threats to our body, we have a psychological immune system to fight threats to our mental health. We identify silver linings, rationalize our actions, and find meaning in our setbacks. We dont realize how effective this immune system is, however, because it operates largely beneath our conscious awareness. When we think about taking a risk, we rarely consider how good we will be at reframing a disappointing outcome. In short, we underestimate our resilience. The second reason is focalism. When we contemplate failure from afar, according to Gilbert and Wilson, we tend to overemphasize the focal event (i.e., failure) and overlook all the other episodic details of daily life that help us move on and feel better. The threat of failure is so vivid that it consumes our attention. This happens in part because the areas of the brain we use to perceive the present are the same ones we employ to imagine the future. When we feel afraid of failing at a new business or anxious about the shame of letting investors down and what our peers will think, its hard to also imagine the pleasure we will get from our next venture and the other everyday activities that are a necessary and enjoyable part of life. And yet Schwalbe reminds us that social science has invariably recorded that what people regret the most as they look back on their lives isnt what they attempted and failed at, but what they never tried in the first place: Of the many regrets people describe, regrets of inaction outnumber those of action by nearly two to one. We are left with a paradox of inaction. On one hand we instinctively tend to stick with the default, or go with the herd. Researchers call it the status quo bias. We feel safe in our comfort zones, where we can avoid the sting of regret. And yet, at the same time, we regret most those actions and risks we did not take. The solution, as a wise woman poignantly put it, seems to be: Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, dont compromise, and dont waste time. Start now. Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now. Now. Complement Maximize Your Potential with its equally insightful prequel,Manage Your Day-to-Day but dont let yourself forget that the good life, the meaningful life, the truly fulfilling life, is the life of presence, not of productivity.

Make Your Own Luck

Five principles for making the most of life's twists and turns.
By Rebecca Webber, published on May 01, 2010 - last reviewed on September 10, 2013

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Mary McGuire-Wien and her husband, Charles Wildbank, had been searching for a new home on Long Island for more than a year, but every place they'd seen was either unsuitable or unaffordable. After one long Sunday of unsuccessful house-hunting with their agent, the couple was anxious to get back home, but got stuck at a traffic light right next to an old barn that was under renovation. "A guy in a hard hat looked over at us and said, 'Are you looking for a house?'" says Mary. Though the barn didn't look like a houseit didn't even have any visible windowsMary and her husband got out to take a look. The building turned out to be loftlike, with beautiful historical details (including back-facing windows). "A normal family probably wouldn't want it," says Mary. "But it was absolutely perfect for us because we needed a space where I could have a yoga retreat, and where Charles could paint." They agreed to buy the place from the construction worker, who turned out to be the barn's owner. Related Articles

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Mary and Charles could be considered fortunatewhat are the chances that the owner would stop them when they were most in need of a home? And yet, they were the ones who agreed to investigate an unlikely prospect. Their open-mindedness turned a strange moment into a lucky break. People who spot and seize opportunity are different. They are more open to life's forking paths, so they see possibilities others miss. And if things don't work out the way they'd hoped, they brush off disappointment and launch themselves headlong toward the next fortunate circumstance. As a result, they're happier and more likely to achieve their goals. Psychologists are figuring out why some people always seem to juggle incredible opportunities. Their insights can help us all lead luckier lives.

1. See Serendipity Everywhere

Luck is hard to study, and yet scientists have uncovered the startlingly large role chance plays in love and work. We are more like pinballs bouncing around a machine than captains at the wheel. Certain types of people are well suited to this fact of life. Elizabeth Nutt Williams, a psychology professor at St. Mary's College in Maryland, found that chance was a significant factor in shaping the careerpaths of thirteen professional women she studied. Women who take advantage of happenstance have competence, self-confidence, and the ability to take risks. They also have a strong support system. And a North Carolina State University study found through interviews with 42 engineering workers that job tips often come from unlikely sources in unexpected situations. Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire and author of The Luck Factor, spent a decade researching people's perceptions of their luck. He found that those who call themselves lucky score higher on the personality factor of extraversion. That means that they are more likely to have a fortuitous encounter because they meet lots of new people and keep in touch with a large group of friends and acquaintances. These advantaged souls also score higher in openness, and lower in neuroticism, the tendency to experience negative emotional states like anxiety, anger, guilt, and depression. Wiseman conducted an experiment in which he placed the same chance opportunitiesmoney on the ground and a potential encounter with a connected businessmanin the paths of two different people, one who claimed she was an unlucky person, the other who said things always seemed to work out well for him. The "lucky" guy immediately noticed the money on the ground and pocketed it, then struck up a conversation with the businessman in the coffee shop where he'd been planted. The "unlucky" woman, meanwhile, stepped right over the cash, and sipped her coffee without saying a word to the same businessman.

2. Prime Yourself for Chance

Serendipity smiles upon people who have a more relaxed approach to life. They have clarified their long-term goals but don't worry too much about the details. Rather than aiming to become the top cardiac surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, they vow to be a doctor who helps save lives. Once they've pinpointed the ultimate destination, they believe there are many different ways to get there. This requires openness to life's surprising twists and turns as well as cognitive and behavioral flexibility. An open person heads to the dog park thinking he might encounter a potential new friend, business partner, or romantic interest. A closed person sees only dog owners. "Don't classify people and situations in advance," advises Wiseman. "Wait until you know what's in front of you." You can increase your opportunities for good luck by maintaining a large network of friends and acquaintances. Increasingly these days, the best opportunities float online, so make sure you're connected. Case in point:Marketing expert Shel Horowitz grabbed a chance to lecture in Davos, Switzerland, after noticing a LinkedIn search for conference speakers. Cognitive flexibility can be cultivated, too. To limber up your own brain, try thinking about different points of view on a single topic. Maybe you have a firm belief that underwater homeowners don't deserve a bailout. If that's the case, try to come up with 10 reasons it might actually be a good idea. You can also learn to behave more elastically. Flexible people often respond to the same stimuli differently than do rigid types. They might take varied routes to work, or stop at out-of-the-way places for a cup of coffee, rather than heading to their favorite cafe for "the usual." Exploring new territory naturally increases good fortune. "Do something different," says Ben Fletcher, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire. It doesn't even need to be meaningful to your goal. Trying to get a date? Read your neighbor's newspaper, switch seats on the train, or watch a new television program. Breaking behavioral habits can lever changes in mental habits that have kept you from success so far. "People's lives can be absolutely transformed by being nudged along a slightly altered route," says Fletcher. Try to keep your mood positive in order to catch more of the possibilities that whiz by every day. Researchers at the University of Toronto recently demonstrated the benefit of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. They found that people in good moods actually take in more visual information, while those in bad moods don't see as much around them. Anxiety in particular gives us tunnel vision; while we're focusing on a potential danger, we end up missing a lot of extraneous but potentially beneficial information. In another experiment, people were offered a large financial reward to carefully watch a dot on a computer screen. Occasional large dots were flashed along the edges of the screen, but the participants missed them. When they looked hard, they saw less.

3. Go Ahead, Slack Off

Conscientiousness is no friend to serendipity. A "big five" personality trait, it's strongly associated with achievement. "Conscientiousness means you do what you're supposed to do, and you stick with it," explains Carol Sansone, professor of psychology at the University of Utah. Problem is, conscientious people will persist in a task even when there's no good reason to do so. This may explain why it's possible to "try too hard." By rigidly pouring all of your effort into one approach, you miss out on unexpectedbut more directpaths to success. Wiseman conducted an experiment in which he gave subjects a newspaper and asked them to count how many photographs were inside. There were 43, and most subjects found them within a few minutes. However, they could have completed the task within seconds had they read the large type on the second page of the paper. It said "stop countingthere are 43 photographs in this newspaper." Or they could have instead earned $250 had they noticed the half-page message that said "Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250." The subjects didn't notice either message. But when Wiseman asked them to look through the newspaper a second time for anything unusual, they saw them immediately. The takeaway? Allow yourself to stray off-task sometimes. We need to be loose to become aware of hidden opportunities. So even when you're crunching to finish a project at work, participate in the cross-cubicle chatter, or follow the links from one interesting blog to the next. "You might miss your deadline," says Sansone, "but you could end up creating more understanding of your topic. Allowing yourself some flexibility in the process can lead to better long-term outcomes." Catching lucky breaks gets much harder as we get oldernot because our opportunities change, but because we do. "People in their teens and 20s tend to be open because they're discovering who they are as a person," says Todd Kashdan, a psychologist at George Mason University and author of Curious? "As we get older we become a lot more crystallized in our thinking. We think, 'I shouldn't be playing kickball because I'm 40.' But who decided kickball is not a proper thing for a 40-year-old to play? We create these rigid rules and eliminate chances to change all the time."

4. Say Yes
Once primed to discover life's opportunity, what do you do when a juicy one jumps into your path? If you're like most people, you're immediately besieged by two competing emotions: intrigue and anxiety. You're curious about that job opening, but you can think of a hundred reasons why you should stick with your current gig. "Which impulse will you act upon?" asks Kashdan. "Over time we develop a pattern." This explains why some people's lives seem full of fortuitous circumstances, while others are riddled with regrets about roads not taken.

Teresa Bondora turned down an invitation to join Aerosmith's tour across Europe as the band's wellpaid in-flight stewardess. "I wanted to finish college faster," Bondora says. "But not long after I said no, the regret started growing. Who says no to something like that?" Doug Hadley passed up an offer to play professional beach volleyball in California after college, choosing instead to stay close to his family in Indiana. "It's 30 years later and I still wonder how my life would have been different," he says. Serendipitous people are more fearless about trying something new. Instead of giving in to worry about what could go wrong, they think, "Isn't that interesting? I'd like to give that a try." Good outcomes increase self-efficacy, or the belief that you are capable of accomplishing whatever you set out to do; they also fuel an appetite for future risk. John Olson first found fortune as a 13year-old when he volunteered to sit apart from his classmates on the airplane during a class trip. "I ended up in first class," he says. "The best part was seeing the faces of my classmates as they filed past me to get to their seats in coach." Olson later worked his way up from supermarket stock boy to CEO of multiple e-commerce sites by pouncing on random opportunitieslike acquiring a neighbor's failed towel business for $20 and a case of beer. "If an opportunity is available, I will usually follow it," he explains. "It's allowed me to live in a sort of never-ending fantasy world." The rest of us have trouble ignoring our chattering minds, which might tell us we're not experienced enough to do that job, not attractive enough to talk to the woman in the red dress. And our loved ones don't always help matters. "As an actress, I turned down the chance to go to India," recalls Kama Linden, now a lyricist. "My mother said I would get some disease and never be able to dance again. The girl who took my place said they were treated like kings and queens." Remember that our mindsand our mothersdon't always tell us the truth. Acknowledge their concerns. Listen to your intuition, but don't expect to feel 100 percent certain. "If we wait until all negative emotions disappear, we're never going to go anywhere," says Kashdan. If you're truly unsure about a decision, try asking yourself, "What's the worst that can happen?" says Wiseman. And what's the true likelihood of that horrible outcome? Another helpful tactic: Think about which action you will regret more in the future. "Sometimes there's a short-term cost, in terms of your resources or time or stress," says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California at Riverside and author of TheHow of Happiness. "Like going to a party. You don't really want to go because you don't know anyone, so it's anxiety-provoking. But you end up having a great time and meeting new people. You paid a short-term cost but got a long-term benefit."

5. Embrace Failure
Of course, not every exploited happenstance will turn out well. Nancy Irwin broke her engagement to "a wonderful man" in order to pursue a career as an opera singer. But it didn't work out. "My voice is not big enough," she explains.

But like all serendipitous people, she was resilient: She took the suggestion of a theater critic to try stand-up comedy. "That lit me up. I went to a hole-in-the-wall open mic night and killed. I was hooked," she says. Later, she became a psychotherapist, and while she's incredibly proud of her accomplishments, she admits, "part of me wonders what my life would have been like if I had married Mr. Wonderful and had 2.2 kids and the big house and country club membership." The lives of the serendipitous are not always perfect and regret-free. "Most successful businesspeople are also failed businesspeople," says Fletcher. "The key factor is that they go after fortuitous moments, and they're not put off by failure once or twice." And whether or not any chance taken turns out well or badly, the benefits of regularly seizing serendipity are many. For one thing, it increases our day-to-day happiness by bringing variety to our lives. Recent studies by Lyubomirsky have shown that deliberately doing different things every day boosts contentedness in the short term and the long term. Also, seizing random circumstanceslike talking with the stranger in the checkout line, picking up and reading an abandoned magazine, or ducking into a store that caught your eyeadds novelty to our lives, which in turn can actually cause the growth of new brain matter and push back the cognitive decline of aging. Sometimes, maturity can even give us the courage to do something we were too afraid to do in our youth. Fifteen years ago Vivian Hutcheson turned down a chance to show her artworkornate clay masksto a Hollywood special effects studio. "I felt angst about what it could lead to: Did I want to be an artist? Was I willing to move?" she says. "I never did get my portfolio to him." For years she regretted letting the offer slip between her fingers. But after finishing her science degree, she realized she didn't want to work in a lab for the rest of her life and returned to mask-making. "I opened my own store and studio and now I'm taking a real shot at making a living as an artist," she says. Today, she reaches millions of potential customers around the world with an e-store on Etsy.com, an option that didn't even exist when she was in college. That's good news for the regretful. Even though some serendipitous opportunities slip away, there are always new ones coming along. Rebecca Webber

Born Lucky
Some birthdays are better bets than others. Scientists don't tend to buy into astrology, yet they've established that certain conditions such as schizophrenia, and even personality traits such as novelty seeking, are linked to birth months. It's not the planets at work per se, but rather subtle influences on fetal brain development due to factors including sleep and wake cycles and the prevalence of viruses that differ from season to season.

Knowing that some temperaments are linked to self-proclaimed luckiness, Richard Wiseman and colleagues decided to find out if fortune really is dependent on your grand entrance into the world. They asked a group of British study participants if they considered themselves lucky, and also assessed key personality traits. Across genders and ages, people born between March and August believe themselves to be luckier, on average, than those born in the colder months of September through February. (Relatedly, summer babies grow up to be more open-minded and less neurotic than winter tots.) May is the luckiest month of all, so if you want a fortunate kid, try to get lucky in August.

Think Lucky
The best opportunities arise when you approach life with a flexible mind-set. see how you can get out of the unlucky column: If you think this way about: Romantic Relationships "Here's my checklist. He has to be smart, attractive, financially secure, subscribe to The New York Times, love to cook, and love dogs." Try this approach instead: "I don't really have a type. I'm open to anyone as long as he's a good person. I'll know it when I see it." If you think this way about: Work "I need to finish this project by 11, team meeting at 12, lunch at 1, finish that report this afternoon, and I'm home free by 6." Try this approach instead: "I want to try to accomplish two major things today, but in my downtime, I'm going to explore a few other ideas that could help the company or my career." If you think this way about: Friendships "I already have a handful of really wonderful friends. I don't need or have time for anymore." Try this approach instead: "I love to make new friends, even if it never goes farther than a conversation and Facebook friending." If you think this way about: Errands "I need to hit the dry cleaner, the bank, and the grocery store. I should be home in time for the game."

Try this approach instead: "I have to get these things done, but I'm not going to rush because I don't really know what to expect or whom I'll meet. It will be interesting to see how it works out." If you think this way about: Business Meetings "I'm meeting up with this person to do a deal, not thinking of them as a friend or a potential partner." Try this approach instead: "I'll accept a meeting with anyone, anytime, because you never know where it might leadeven if it's five years down the road."