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F. Scott Fitzgerald's lauded reflection on fame and addiction first published as a three-part series in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Esquire. Available in full, below, it contains an outdated and potentially offensive description of race. You can find every Esquire story ever published at Esquire Classic.
Part I: The Crack-Up
Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside—the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within—that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick—the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.
Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation—the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true. Life was something you dominated if you were any good. Life yielded easily to intelligence and effort, or to what proportion could be mustered of both. It seemed a romantic business to be a successful literary man—you were not ever going to be as famous as a movie star but what note you had was probably longer-lived; you were never going to have the power of a man of strong political or religious convictions but you were certainly more independent. Of course within the practice of your trade you were forever unsatisfied—but I, for one, would not have chosen any other.
As the Twenties passed, with my own twenties marching a little ahead of them, my two juvenile regrets—at not being big enough (or good enough) to play football in college, and at not getting overseas during the war—resolved themselves into childish waking dreams of imaginary heroism that were good enough to go to sleep on in restless nights. The big problems of life seemed to solve themselves, and if the business of fixing them was difficult, it made one too tired to think of more general problems.
Life, ten years ago, was largely a personal matter. I must hold in balance the sense of futility of effort and the sense of the necessity to struggle; the conviction of the inevitability of failure and still the determination to "succeed"—and, more than these, the contradiction between the dead hand of the past and the high intentions of the future. If I could do this through the common ills—domestic, professional, and personal—then the ego would continue as an arrow shot from nothingness to nothingness with such force that only gravity would bring it to earth at last.
For seventeen years, with a year of deliberate loafing and resting out in the center—things went on like that, with a new chore only a nice prospect for the next day. I was living hard, too, but: "Up to forty-nine it'll be all right," I said. "I can count on that. For a man who's lived as I have, that's all you could ask."
—And then, ten years this side of forty-nine, I suddenly realized I had prematurely cracked.
Now a man can crack in many ways—can crack in the head, in which case the power of decision is taken from you by others; or in the body, when one can but submit to the white hospital world; or in the nerves. William Seabrook in an unsympathetic book tells, with some pride and a movie ending, of how he became a public charge. What led to his alcoholism, or was bound up with it, was a collapse of his nervous system. Though the present writer was not so entangled—having at the time not tasted so much as a glass of beer for six months —it was his nervous reflexes that were giving way—too much anger and too many tears.
Moreover, to go back to my thesis that life has a varying offensive, the realization of having cracked was not simultaneous with a blow, but with a reprieve.
Not long before, I had sat in the office of a great doctor and listened to a grave sentence. With what, in retrospect, seems some equanimity, I had gone on about my affairs in the city where I was then living, not caring much, not thinking how much had been left undone, or what would become of this and that responsibility, like people do in books; I was well insured and anyhow I had been only a mediocre caretaker of most of the things left in my hands, even of my talent.
But I had a strong sudden instinct that I must be alone. I didn't want to see any people at all. I had seen so many people all my life—I was an average mixer, but more than average in a tendency to identify myself, my ideas, my destiny, with those of all classes that came in contact with. I was always saving or being saved—in a single morning I would go through the emotions ascribable to Wellington at Waterloo. I lived in a world of inscrutable hostiles and inalienable friends and supporters.
But now I wanted to be absolutely alone and so arranged a certain insulation from ordinary cares.
It was not an unhappy time. I went away and there were fewer people. I found I was good-and-tired. I could lie around and was glad to, sleeping or dozing sometimes twenty hours a day and in the intervals trying resolutely not to think—instead I made lists—made lists and tore them up, hundreds of lists: of cavalry leaders and football players and cities, and popular tunes and pitchers, and happy times, and hobbies and houses lived in and how many suits since I left the army and how many pairs of shoes (I didn't count the suit I bought in Sorrento that shrank, nor the pumps and dress shirt and collar that I carried around for years and never wore, because the pumps got damp and grainy and the shirt and collar got yellow and starch-rotted). And lists of women I'd liked, and of the times I had let myself be snubbed by people who had not been my betters in character or ability.
—And then suddenly, surprisingly, I got better.
—And cracked like an old plate as soon as I heard the news.
That is the real end of this story. What was to be done about it will have to rest in what used to be called the "womb of time." Suffice to say that after about an hour of solitary pillow-hugging, I began to realize that for two years my life had been a drawing on resources that I did not possess, that I had been mortgaging myself physically and spiritually up to the hilt. What was the small gift of life given back in comparison to that?—when there had once been a pride of direction and a confidence in enduring independence.
I realized that in those two years, in order to preserve something—an inner hush maybe, maybe not—I had weaned myself from all the things I used to love—that every act of life from the morning toothbrush to the friend at dinner had become an effort. I saw that for a long time I had not liked people and things, but only followed the rickety old pretense of liking. I saw that even my love for those closest to me had become only an attempt to love, that my casual relations—with an editor, a tobacco seller, the child of a friend, were only what I remembered I should do, from other days. All in the same month I became bitter about such things as the sound of the radio, the advertisements in the magazines, the screech of tracks, the dead silence of the country —contemptuous at human softness, immediately (if secretively) quarrelsome toward hardness—hating the night when I couldn't sleep and hating the day because it went toward night. I slept on the heart side now because I knew that the sooner I could tire that out, even a little, the sooner would come that blessed hour of nightmare which, like a catharsis, would enable me to better meet the new day.
There were certain spots, certain faces I could look at. Like most midwesterners, I have never had any but the vaguest race prejudices—I always had a secret yen for the lovely Scandinavian blondes who sat on porches in St. Paul but hadn't emerged enough economically to be part of what was then society. They were too nice to be "chickens" and too quickly off the farmlands to seize a place in the sun, but I remember going round blocks to catch a single glimpse of shining hair—the bright shock of a girl I'd never know. This is urban, unpopular talk. It strays afield from the fact that in these latter days I couldn't stand the sight of Celts, English, Politicians, Strangers, Virginians, Negroes (light or dark), Hunting People, or retail clerks, and middlemen in general, all writers (I avoided writers carefully because they can perpetuate trouble as no one else can)—and all the classes as classes and most of them as members of their class…
Trying to cling to something, I liked doctors and girl children up to the age of about thirteen and well-brought-up boy children from about eight years old on. I could have peace and happiness with these few categories of people. I forgot to add that I liked old men—men over seventy, sometimes over sixty if their faces looked seasoned. I liked Katherine Hepburn's face on the screen, no matter what was said about her pretentiousness, and Miriam Hopkins's face, and old friends if I only saw them once a year and could remember their ghosts.
All rather inhuman and undernourished, isn't it? Well, that, children, is the true sign of cracking up.
It is not a pretty picture. Inevitably it was carted here and there within its frame and exposed to various critics. One of them can only be described as a person whose life makes other people's lives seem like death—even this time when she was cast in the unusually unappealing role of Job's comforter. In spite of the fact that this story is over, let me append our conversation as a sort of postscript:
"Instead of being so sorry for yourself, listen—"she said. (She always says "Listen," because she thinks while she talks—really thinks.) So she said: "Listen. Suppose this wasn't a crack in you—suppose it was a crack in the Grand Canyon."
"The crack's in me," I said heroically.
"Listen! The world only exists in your eyes—your conception of it. You can make it as big or as small as you want to. And you're trying to be a little puny individual. By God, if I ever cracked, I'd try to make the world crack with me. Listen! The world only exists through your apprehension of it, and so it's much better to say that it's not you that's cracked—it's the Grand Canyon."
"Baby, et up all her Spinoza?"
"I don't know anything about Spinoza. I know—" She spoke, then, of old woes of her own, that seemed, in telling, to have been more dolorous than mine, and how she had met them, overridden them, beaten them.
I felt a certain reaction to what she said, but I am a slow-thinking man, and it occurred to me simultaneously that of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. In days when juice came into one as an article without duty, one tried to distribute it—but always without success; to further mix metaphors, vitality never "takes." You have it or you haven't it, like health or brown eyes or honor or a baritone voice. I might have asked some of it from her, neatly wrapped and ready for home cooking and digestion, but I could never have got it—not if I'd waited around for a thousand hours with the tin cup of self-pity. I could walk from her door, holding myself very carefully like cracked crockery, and go away into the world of bitterness, where I was making a home with such materials as are found there—and quote to myself after I left her door:
"Ye are the salt of the earth. But if the salt hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?"
Matthew 5:13
Part II: Pasting It Together
In a previous article this writer told about his realization that what he had before him was not the dish that he had ordered for his forties. In fact—since he and the dish were one, he described himself as a cracked plate, the kind that one wonders whether it is worth preserving. Your editor thought that the article suggested too many aspects without regarding them closely, and probably many readers felt the same way—and there are always those to whom all self-revelation is contemptible, unless it ends with a noble thanks to the gods for the Unconquerable Soul.
But I had been thanking the gods too long, and thanking them for nothing. I wanted to put a lament in my record, without even the background of the Euganean Hills to give it color. There weren't any Euganean Hills that I could see.
Sometimes, though, the cracked plate has to be retained in the pantry, has to be kept in service as a household necessity. It can never again be warmed on the stove nor shuffled with the other plates in the dishpan; it will not be brought out for company, but it will do to hold crackers late at night or to go into the icebox under leftovers…
Hence this sequel—a cracked plate's further history.
Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary daytime advice for everyone. But at three o'clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn't work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day. At that hour the tendency is to refuse to face things as long as possible by retiring into an infantile dream—but one is continually startled out of this by various contacts with the world. One meets these occasions as quickly and carelessly as possible and retires once more back into the dream, hoping that things will adjust themselves by some great material or spiritual bonanza. But as the withdrawal persists there is less and less chance of the bonanza—one is not waiting for the fade-out of a single sorrow, but rather being an unwilling witness of an execution, the disintegration of one's own personality…
Unless madness or drugs or drink come into it, this phase comes to a dead end, eventually, and is succeeded by a vacuous quiet. In this you can try to estimate what has been sheared away and what is left. Only when this quiet came to me did I realize that I had gone through two parallel experiences.
The first time was twenty years ago, when I left Princeton in junior year with a complaint diagnosed as malaria. It transpired, through an X-ray taken a dozen years later, that it had been tuberculosis—a mild case, and after a few months of rest I went back to college. But I had lost certain offices, the chief one was the presidency of the Triangle Club, a musical comedy idea, and also I dropped back a class. To me college would never be the same. There were to be no badges of pride, no medals, after all. It seemed on one March afternoon that I had lost every single thing I wanted—and that night was the first time that I hunted down the specter of womanhood that, for a little while, makes everything else seem unimportant.
Years later I realized that my failure as a big shot in college was all right—instead of serving on committees, I took a beating on English poetry; when I got the idea of what it was all about, I set about learning how to write. On Shaw's principle that "if you don't get what you like, you better like what you get," it was a lucky break—at the moment it was a harsh and bitter business to know that my career as a leader of men was over.
Since that day I have not been able to fire a bad servant, and I am astonished and impressed by people who can. Some old desire for personal dominance was broken and gone. Life around me was a solemn dream, and I lived on the letters I wrote to a girl in another city. A man does not recover from such jolts—he becomes a different person, and, eventually, the new person finds new things to care about.
The other episode parallel to my current situation took place after the war, when I had again overextended my flank. It was one of those tragic loves doomed for lack of money, and one day the girl closed it out on the basis of common sense. During a long summer of despair I wrote a novel instead of letters, so it came out all right, but it came out all right for a different reason. The man with the jingle of money in his pocket who married the girl a year later would always cherish an abiding distrust, an animosity, toward the leisure class—not the conviction of a revolutionist but the smoldering hatred of a peasant. In the years since then I have never been able to stop wondering where my friends' money came from, nor to stop thinking that at one time a sort of droit du seigneur might have been exercised to give one of them my girl.
For sixteen years I lived pretty much as this latter person, distrusting the rich, yet working for money with which to share their mobility and the grace that some of them brought into their lives. During this time I had plenty of the usual horses shot from under me—I remember some of their names—Punctured Pride, Thwarted Expectation, Faithless, Show-off, Hard Hit, Never Again. And after a while I wasn't twenty-five, then not even thirty-five, and nothing was quite as good. But in all these years I don't remember a moment of discouragement. I saw honest men through moods of suicidal gloom—some of them gave up and died; others adjusted themselves and went on to a larger success than mine; but my morale never sank below the level of self-disgust when I had put on some unsightly personal show. Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement—discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.
When a new sky cut off the sun last spring, I didn't at first relate it to what had happened fifteen or twenty years ago. Only gradually did a certain family resemblance come through—an overextension of the flank, a burning of the candle at both ends; a call upon physical resources that I did not command, like a man overdrawing at his bank. In its impact this blow was more violent than the other two but it was the same in kind—a feeling that I was standing at twilight on a deserted range, with an empty rifle in my hands and the targets down. No problem set—simply a silence with only the sound of my own breathing.
In this silence there was a vast irresponsibility toward every obligation, a deflation of all my values. A passionate belief in order, a disregard of motives or consequences in favor or guesswork and prophecy, a feeling that craft and industry would have a place in any world—one by one, these and other convictions were swept away. I saw that the novel, which at my maturity was the strongest and supplest medium for conveying thought and emotion from one human being to another, was becoming subordinated to a mechanical and communal art that, whether in the hands of Hollywood merchants or Russian idealists, was capable of reflecting only the tritest thought, the most obvious emotion. It was an art in which words were subordinate to images, where personality was worn down to the inevitable low gear of collaboration. As long past as 1930, I had a hunch that the talkies would make even the best selling novelist as archaic as silent pictures. People still read, if only Professor Canby's book of the month—curious children nosed at the slime of Mr. Tiffany Thayer in the drugstore libraries—but there was a rankling indignity, that to me had become almost an obsession, in seeing the power of the written word subordinated to another power, a more glittering, a grosser power…
I set that down as an example of what haunted me during the long night—this was something I could neither accept nor struggle against, something which tended to make my efforts obsolescent, as the chain stores have crippled the small merchant, an exterior force, unbeatable—
(I have the sense of lecturing now, looking at a watch on the desk before me and seeing how many more minutes— )
Well, when I had reached this period of silence, I was forced into a measure that no one ever adopts voluntarily: I was impelled to think. God, was it difficult! The moving about of great secret trunks. In the first exhausted halt, I wondered whether I had ever thought. After a long time I came to these conclusions, just as I write them here:
(1) That I had done very little thinking, save within the problems of my craft. For twenty years a certain man had been my intellectual conscience. That was Edmund Wilson.
(2) That another man represented my sense of the "good life," though I saw him once in a decade, and since then he might have been hung. He is in the fur business in the Northwest and wouldn't like his name set down here. But in difficult situations I have tried to think what he would have thought, how he would have acted.
(3) That a third contemporary had been an artistic conscience to me—I had not imitated his infectious style, because my own style, such as it is, was formed before he published anything, but there was an awful pull toward him when I was on a spot.
(4) That a fourth man had come to dictate my relations with other people when these relations were successful: how to do, what to say. How to make people at least momentarily happy (in opposition to Mrs. Post's theories of how to make everyone thoroughly uncomfortable with a sort of systemized vulgarity). This always confused me and made me want to go out and get drunk, but this man had seen the game, analyzed it, and beaten it, and his word was good enough for me.
(5) That my political conscience had scarcely existed for ten years save as an element of irony in my stuff. When I became again concerned with the system I should function under, it was a man much younger than myself who brought it to me, with a mixture of passion and fresh air.
So there was not an "I" anymore—not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect—save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more. It was strange to have no self—to be like a little boy left along in a big house, who knew that now he could do anything he wanted to do, but found that there was nothing that he wanted to do—
(The watch is past the hour and I have barely reached my thesis. I have some doubts as to whether this is of general interest, but if anyone wants more, there is plenty left, and your editor will tell me. If you've had enough, say so—but not too loud, because I have the feeling that someone, I'm not sure who, is sound asleep—someone who could have helped me to keep my shop open. It wasn't Lenin, and it wasn't God.)
Part III: Handle with Care
I have spoken in these pages of how an exceptionally optimistic young man experienced a crack-up of all values, a crack-up that he scarcely knew of until long after it occurred. I told of the succeeding period of desolation and of the necessity of going on, but without the benefit of Henley's familiar heroics, "my head is bloody but unbowed." For a checkup of my spiritual liabilities indicated that I had no particular head to be bowed or unbowed. Once I had had a heart but that was about all I was sure of.
This was at least a starting place out of the morass in which I floundered: "I felt—therefore I was." At one time or another there had been many people who had leaned on me, come to me in difficulties or written me from afar, believed implicitly in my advice and my attitude toward life. The dullest platitude monger or the most unscrupulous Rasputin who can influence the destinies of many people must have some individuality, so the question became one of finding why and where I had changed, where was the leak through which, unknown to myself, my enthusiasm and my vitality had been steadily and prematurely trickling away.
One harassed and despairing night I packed a briefcase and went off a thousand miles to think it over. I took a dollar room in a drab little town where I knew no one and sunk all the money I had with me in a stock of potted meat, crackers, and apples. But don't let me suggest that the change from a rather overstuffed world to a comparative asceticism was any Research Magnificent—I only wanted absolute quiet to think out why I had developed a sad attitude towards sadness, a melancholy attitude toward melancholy, and a tragic attitude toward tragedy—why I had become identified with the objects of my horror or compassion.
Does this seem a fine distraction? It isn't: identification such as this spells the death of accomplishment. It is something like this that keeps sane people from working. Lenin did not willingly endure the sufferings of his proletariat, nor Washington of his troops, nor Dickens of his London poor. And when Tolstoy tried some such merging of himself with the objects of his attention, it was a fake and a failure. I mention these because they are the men best known to us all.
It was dangerous mist. When Wordsworth decided that "there hath passed away a glory from the earth," he felt no compulsion to pass away with it, and the Fiery Particle Keats never ceased his struggle against T.B. nor in his last moments relinquished his hope of being among the English poets.
My self-immolation was something sodden-dark. It was very distinctly not modern—yet I saw it in others, saw it in a dozen men of honor and industry since the war. (I heard you, but that's too easy —there were Marxians among these men.) I had stood by while one famous contemporary of mine played with the idea of the Big Out for half a year; I had watched when another, equally eminent, spent months in an asylum unable to endure any contact with his fellowmen. And of those who had given up and passed on I could list a score.
This led me to the idea that the ones who had survived had made some sort of clean break. This is a big word and is no parallel to a jailbreak when one is probably headed for a new jail or will be forced back to the old one. The famous "Escape" or "Run away from it all" is an excursion in a trap even if the trap includes the South Seas, which are only for those who want to paint them or sail them. A clean break is something you cannot come back from; that is irretrievable because it makes the past cease to exist. So, since I could no longer fulfill the obligations that life had set for me or that I had set for myself, why not slay the empty shell who had been posturing at it for four years? I must continue to be a writer because that was my only way of life, but I would cease any attempts to be a person—to be kind, just, or generous. There were plenty of counterfeit coins around that would pass instead of these and I knew where I could get them at a nickel on the dollar. In thirty-nine years an observant eye has learned to detect where the milk is watered and the sugar is sanded, the rhinestone passed for diamond and the stucco for stone. There was to be no more giving of myself—all giving was to be outlawed henceforth under a new name, and that name was Waste.
The decision made me rather exuberant, like anything that is both real and new. As a sort of beginning there was a whole shaft of letters to be tipped into the wastebasket when I went home, letters that wanted something for nothing—to read this man's manuscript, market this man's poem, speak free on the radio, indite notes of introduction, give this interview, help with the plot of this play, with this domestic situation, perform this act of thoughtfulness or charity.
The conjurer's hat was empty. To draw things out of it had long been a sort of sleight of hand, and now, to change the metaphor, I was off the dispensing end of the relief roll forever.
The heady villainous feeling continued.
I felt like the beady-eyed men I used to see on the commuting train from Great Neck fifteen years back—men who didn't care whether the world tumbled into chaos tomorrow if it spared their houses. I was one with them now, one with the smooth articles who said:
"I'm sorry but business is business."
"You ought to have thought of that before you got into this trouble."
"I'm not the person to see about that."
And a smile—ah, I would get me a smile. I'm still working on that smile. It is to combine the best qualities of a hotel manager, an experienced old social weasel, a headmaster on visitors' day, a colored elevator man, a pansy pulling a profile, a producer getting stuff at half its market value, a trained nurse coming on a new job, a body-vender in her first rotogravure, a hopeful extra swept near the camera, a ballet dancer with an infected toe, and of course the great beam of loving kindness common to all those from Washington to Beverly Hills who must exist by virtue of the contorted pan.
The voice too—I am working with a teacher on the voice. When I have perfected it the larynx will show no ring of conviction except the conviction of the person I am talking to. Since it will be largely called upon for the elicitation of the word "Yes," my teacher (a lawyer) and I are concentrating on that, but in extra hours. I am learning to bring into it that polite acerbity that makes people feel that far from being welcome they are not even tolerated and are under continual and scathing analysis at every moment. These times will of course not coincide with the smile. This will be reserved exclusively for those from whom I have nothing to gain, old worn-out people or young struggling people. They won't mind—what the hell, they get it most of the time anyhow.
But enough. It is not a matter of levity. If you are young and you should write asking to see me and learn how to be a somber literary man writing pieces upon the state of emotional exhaustion that often overtakes writers in their prime—if you should be so young and fatuous as to do this, I would not do so much as acknowledge your letter, unless you were related to someone very rich and important indeed. And if you were dying of starvation outside my window, I would go out quickly and give you the smile and the voice (if no longer the hand) and stick around till somebody raised a nickel to phone for the ambulance, that is if I thought there would be any copy in it for me.
I have now at last become a writer only. The man I had persistently tried to be became such a burden that I have "cut him loose" with as little compunction as a Negro lady cuts loose a rival on Saturday night. Let the good people function as such—let the overworked doctors die in harness, with one week's "vacation" a year that they can devote to straightening out their family affairs, and let the underworked doctors scramble for cases at one dollar a throw; let the soldiers be killed and enter immediately into the Valhalla of their profession. That is their contract with the gods. A writer need have no such ideals unless he makes them for himself, and this one has quit. The old dream of being an entire man in the Goethe-Byron-Shaw tradition, with an opulent American touch, a sort of combination of J.P. Morgan, Topham Beauclerk, and St. Francis of Assisi, has been relegated to the junk heap of the shoulder pads word for one day on the Princeton freshman football field and the overseas cap never worn overseas.
So what? This is what I think now: that the natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness. I think also that in an adult the desire to be finer in grain that you are, "a constant striving" (as those people say who gain their bread by saying it) only adds to this unhappiness in the end—that end that comes to our youth and hope. My own happiness in the past often approached such an ecstasy that I could not share it even with the person dearest to me but had to walk it away in quiet streets and lanes with only fragments of it to distill into little lines in books—and I think that my happiness, or talent for self-delusion or what you will, was an exception. It was not the natural thing but the unnatural—unnatural as the Boom; and my recent experience parallels the wave of despair that swept the nation when the Boom was over.
I shall manage to live with the new dispensation, though it has taken some months to be certain of the fact. And just as the laughing stoicism which has enabled the American Negro to endure the intolerable conditions of his existence has cost him his sense of the truth—so in my case there is a price to pay. I do not any longer like the postman, nor the grocer, nor the editor, nor the cousin's husband, and he in turn will come to dislike me, so that life will never be very pleasant again, and the sign Cave Canem is hung permanently just above my door. I will try to be a correct animal though, and if you throw me a bone with enough meat on it I may even lick your hand.


text:
Fabrizio Perin
I'm a PhD candidate at the Software Composition Group, University of Bern since October 2008.
At the moment I'm working on an extension of Moose called Moose JEE. The purpose of this extension is to provide a set of analyses on Java Enterprise Applications.
My research interests are reverse engineering and pattern detection. I am also interested in software quality control.
Reverse engineering, pattern recognition, software analysis, software modeling, software quality control

subset: commoncrawl


text:
This article was originally published in the September/October 1997 issue of Home Energy Magazine. Some formatting inconsistencies may be evident in older archive content.
| Back to Contents Page | Home Energy Index | About Home Energy |
Home Energy Magazine Online September/October 1997
by Rick Clyne and Steven Bodzin
Rick Clyne is a freelance technical writer living in Denver, Colorado. Steven Bodzin is Home Energy's associate editor.
There are many software packages available to evaluate residential energy conservation measures. Energy-10 is among the new generation of easy-to-use programs that have been helping architects and engineers evaluate the details of building energy use at every step in the design process.
In the past two decades, many energy analysis software packages have appeared on the market. Most of these have been time-consuming, complicated to use, or unable to handle a sufficient number of variables. Consequently, these packages have seen little use in the design field. Their applications have been mostly limited to the latter stages of the design process, when design details are being finalized and modifications are increasingly expensive to incorporate.
Recent improvements in energy analysis software have brought about significant increases in their speed and comprehensiveness, while also making them much more user friendly. Energy-10 is one such new software package developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Developed as a simulation-based design tool for architects and designers, Energy-10 has a fairly good track record in the world of small commercial construction. Although it can also handle residential buildings, it has not yet seen widespread use in that sector. Doug Balcomb, the leader of the Energy-10 design team based at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, says, there are few restrictions. [The system] is fully capable of dealing with the issues that are important in residential applications.
Energy-10 helps designers assess how a building will use energy and identify which energy-efficient strategies are the most effective. It simulates a year of building energy use to determine heating and cooling loads, and ranks the most cost-effective efficiency improvements. With Energy-10, energy analyses can be accomplished in just half a day at the beginning of the design process. Before the first elevation is sketched, a designer using Energy-10 can simulate many of the energy performance characteristics of the building and determine how to maximize energy efficiency.
Energy-10 gets its name from its ability to analyze buildings with up to 10,000 ft2 of floor area. Seventy percent of the commercial structures built today are under 10,000 ft2, and they consume 25% of the total energy used in the commercial building sector. Energy-10 was specifically developed to analyze these small, commercial building designs.Quick Analysis In the earliest stages of the design process, Energy-10 requires only five preliminary design descriptors. The program uses these descriptors to create a simple shoebox version of the building. Using the shoebox, users can begin running simulations to evaluate energy performance.
Balcomb says he wanted to make the program quick and easy to use. In the design process, time is essential. Say a designer has an idea, and they sketch it out. They need to know the energy implications of that design idea right away--in ten minutes, not ten days. Our goal was to compress all of the energy analysis, which includes dozens of calculations, into an afternoon's worth of time. It has to happen that quickly if it is going to be done at all.
After the shoebox analysis, the simulation evolves with the building design. From the predesign to the final building plan, the user can set or modify hundreds of building descriptors, allowing the simulated building to reflect the growing level of detail. In this way, the user can gain an in-depth understanding of how each change in the design affects energy use.
The program evaluates building energy use through a year of simulated performance in one-hour increments, relying on detailed weather data for all climatic regions in the United States. The simulation speed depends heavily on the computer being used. The program is available only for a PC Windows-based operating system, and the minimum hardware requirements are a 66-MHz 486 processor with 16 megabytes of RAM. Simulations run on this configuration take about 12 minutes. As usual, bigger is better--simulations run on a 200-megahertz Pentium Pro take only 18 seconds.
Energy-10 can evaluate the effect of a specific energy efficiency strategy or a set of strategies on the building's overall efficiency. Version 1.2, the current release, can evaluate a wide range of components, including insulation, passive solar heating, air leakage control, shading, high-efficiency HVAC, energy-efficient lighting, glazings, thermal mass, daylighting, economizer cycles, and HVAC controls.
The user selects one or more strategies and uses the program's Apply function to modify the design with those strategies. As part of this process, the user can specify strategy characteristics. For example, before selecting the insulation strategy, the user can define the R-values for the walls, ceiling, perimeter, and doors. Within a few minutes, Energy-10 simulates a year of energy use in the house. It then displays graphics that quantify the effect of the selected strategy on energy use.Heat and Light--Finding the Balance One key to a comfortable, energy-efficient building is balance among heating, cooling, and lighting systems. Finding this balance for a specific design in a specific location accounts for much of the complexity in the design process. For example, a house that has overdesigned passive solar features may save on heating bills, but may not be particularly comfortable, even in winter. Also, the characteristics of a well-balanced, energy-efficient home designed for New Orleans will differ considerably from those in Salt Lake City.
To balance these systems properly for a given climate, Energy-10 has a weather database containing a full year of hourly meteorological data for 239 locations in the United States. These data are used in conjunction with the program's thermal and lighting simulation engines. The software uses the California Nonresidential Engine (CNE), which calculates a multizone, thermal network solution that lets Energy-10 simulate two HVAC zones. When the user runs a simulation, Energy-10 transfers the building description to the CNE, where it is transformed into a thermal network model. The CNE iterates to find a consistent solution to the loads and systems calculations, using 15-minute time steps (for numerical accuracy); finding an energy balance at every step; and taking into account heat storage in each material layer. This energy balance is crucial, especially for the highly interactive energy efficiency strategies used in a balanced passive-solar design. CNE reports results hourly, monthly, or annually.
The daylighting simulation engine was written at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and incorporates the split-flux routine used in the DOE-2 computer program. During a simulation, the analysis routine first calculates daylighting illuminance at a control sensor location for each of 20 sun angles for each aperture. Illuminance values are then calculated for each lighting zone. For buildings wider than 30 ft, Energy-10 creates five lighting zones within each thermal zone.
Energy-10 integrates the hour-by-hour daylighting calculations into the thermal analyses run by the CNE, accounting for the heating effects of both natural and artificial lighting.
When building descriptors are not initially specified by the user, the software defaults to user-definable standard construction practices based on the specified building use. For example, in our Salt Lake home, we specified residential as the building use, 2,700 ft2 as the floor area, a conventional heating and cooling system, and one-story construction. The program defaulted to standard 2 x 4 external wall framing, R-19 ceiling insulation, uninsulated foundation walls, and 12% of the floor area in wall glazing. If standard construction in the designer's area is different, the defaults can be changed. As the design evolves, the user can replace these and other default values with actual values and specifications. The defaults simplify initial input requirements to produce energy use comparisons quickly. The default reference case reflects widespread building practice, rather than best practice. For example, the default case has supply and return ducts in the attic, resulting in combined conduction and air loss leakage of 18%. After defining the reference case description, the program defines an alternative low-energy case using another set of defaults for the strategies selected and simulates both buildings.
The lack of initial detail might seem like a fatal problem, but Balcomb maintains that the simulations are accurate. Many people believe that the detail of the building layout is the vital factor influencing energy use, he says. In reality, it is not vital to many energy-efficient strategies. User experience has shown the energy performance of the shoebox version is quite similar to that of the detailed building layout that eventually takes shape. However, for some strategies, such as shading, window placement, and daylighting, design detail does affect performance, and so the user should adjust the building description in the computer to more and more accurately characterize the actual building as the design evolves.
Once the reference case and low-energy buildings are created, the software runs a climate-specific simulation of energy use for each hour of the year. It then prints out side-by-side comparisons of how both structures use energy. It is possible to change assumptions about either the reference case or the low-energy case. By specifying almost identical buildings, the user can simulate the incremental savings from one or a few design changes.
This initial analysis gives the designer a realistic set of energy performance targets to shoot for as the design process moves forward. If the right mix of energy-efficient strategies is incorporated, the performance of the actual building should approach the performance of the low-energy AutoBuild simulation. Unfortunately, there are few controlled comparisons to validate how close the simulation comes to reality. The most comprehensive test for simulations is BESTEST, which has been approved by the U.S. Department of Energy and is being used by home energy rating systems. It compares various simulation programs to ensure that they are consistent with one another. There is no comprehensive test suite based on measured data, partly because of the inherent variability introduced by occupants (see Home Energy Rating Systems: Actual Usage May Vary).
As the user provides more detail, the computer keeps two simulated buildings in memory at all times to facilitate comparisons. Originally, these are the reference case building and the low-energy case building. Thus as the user updates the building description he or she has an accurate, up-to-date indication of the combined effect of design improvements. It is also possible to examine the effect of a single change by changing only one feature, such as wall insulation, in one of the buildings.Ranking Energy-Efficient Strategies One of Energy-10's most powerful features is its ability to estimate which measures will result in the lowest operating costs. (This is not yet an evaluation based on life cycle costs. A life cycle cost analysis would require estimating first costs, a feature not available in the current version of Energy-10.) A user who knows how much a measure will cost to install can use the simulation's estimate of operating cost savings to evaluate cost-effectiveness. Assumptions about thermostat setpoints and other occupant variables are easy to change within the program, providing a customized estimate of operating cost savings.
Early on in the design process--shortly after the initial AutoBuild comparison is run--the user can select the Rank function. This function identifies which energy-efficient strategies have the greatest effect on reducing energy use. The user can then ensure that the most effective strategies are incorporated into the building design.
When the Rank function is run, Energy-10 applies a single strategy to the reference building, puts it through a year of simulated performance, and saves the results. It then removes that strategy, applies the next strategy, and reruns the simulation. This automated process continues until simulations have been run on all desired strategies. The user can specify the ranking criterion used to compare the strategies, such as lowest annual energy use or lowest annual operating cost.
The reduced heating and cooling loads also make it possible to scale down the home's mechanical systems. The heating system in the improved home requires only 29,000 Btu/h output, rather than the 97,000 Btu/h before scaling down; the cooling system is reduced from 5 1/2 tons to 2 1/2 tons; and fan flow is reduced from 2,600 CFM to 1,400 CFM. In many cases--especially in commercial buildings, where mechanical systems represent a significant portion of the total construction cost--the monetary savings realized from the scaled-down mechanical systems is sufficient to pay for the costs of incorporating the energy-efficient strategies. Thus energy efficiency is achieved without increasing construction costs.
Energy-10 can present data output in 27 graphic formats, all of which compare the two cases in the computer's memory. Bar graphs compare energy loads, operating costs, and cost breakdown by end use. Line graphs show monthly loads, average daily profiles, daylighting effectiveness, and actual hourly results for any selected periods.An Energy-Efficient Future Energy-10, version 1.0, was released in June 1996. Software owners can upgrade to the current version, 1.2, for free at the Energy-10 Web site at http://www.nrel.gov/buildings/energy10/. The site also contains detailed information on obtaining and using Energy-10 and general information on passive solar technology and energy efficiency.
The Energy-10 project brought together building expertise from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Berkeley Solar Group, and the Passive Solar Industries Council (PSIC). The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Energy-10 is bundled in a package called Designing Low-Energy Buildings, which also includes a user manual and a guideline book called Passive Solar Strategies. The package is available from PSIC to professionals for $250 and to students for $50. Training programs based on the theory discussed in Passive Solar Strategies and the practical application provided in Energy-10 are available throughout the United States. To learn more about the workshops or to obtain a copy of the package, contact Doug Schroeder at (202) 628-7400 Ext. 210, through e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.com, or by writing PSIC, 1511 K St. NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20005.
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Whether you need assistance dealing with a car accident, surgical procedures, or will need long term care for a persistent disease or disability, property medical care is often a practical alternative that has been becoming popular, for a explanation. Studies have shown that recovering in your own home is way better for the patient's mental and physical health. Today's property medical care professional services can provide anything from help with errands and duties like food preparation and washing, to qualified medical treatment from nurses and practitioners. But because of so many home healthcare companies popping up, how do you know what one to select?
Thankfully, when you comply with these standard suggestions, you could be confidant when selecting your house physician:
o Explore the agency's qualifications.
Make sure the home medical services you decide on is accredited where you live, is qualified by Medicare health insurance, and is also certified from a governing agency including the Joint Commission's Home Treatment Official certifications Software.
o Check out the caregivers' references.
Besides trying to find suppliers that are friendly and helpful, be sure you ask about the caregivers' specialist coaching. Will they be bonded and insured? Does the property medical care services have got a supervisor supervise the grade of the assistance? Also, demand referrals for your health care providers on their own, and learn in case the property healthcare agency monitors their staff.
o Make clear all invoicing issues.
The company should certainly give literature clearly outlining its charges and providers. Ensure you know in the beginning about co-will pay, insurance deductibles, and uncovered expenditures. Inquire if they feature just about any financial assistance to people in need.
o Be crystal clear on what solutions you are getting.
Inquire about receiving a written plan detailing the assistance you may be receiving, so that there is no frustration. Be sure to are aware of the particular providers your home overall health health worker will likely be offering, including any tasks or housework. Also, find out what several hours the home healthcare company has on-get in touch with help, in the case of an urgent situation. A 24 hour hotline with someone available is attractive and helpful.
Lastly, soon after your house healthcare plan is in position, check the support, making sure it can be in accordance with that which was actually talked about. If you take these steps you can ensure that your property health care assistance will probably be useful to all.
Inspired by: ezinearticles


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In their debut film Open Water (2003), husband-and-wife filmmaking duo Chris Kentis and Laura Lau established a knack for building suspense and genuine fear by depositing hapless everyday folks into a hostile and unforgiving environment. They carry that experience forward with Silent House, a home-invasion thriller built around a gimmick and a twist, either one of which will elevate to cleverness or kill it in its tracks, depending on whether or not you buy into them.
The twist will not be spoiled here, whereas the gimmick is pretty well known at this point: Much like Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, Silent House unfolds in real-time via what appears one long, continuous shot (although observant moviegoers will spot at least a couple of the seams in the editing). The technique is tricky bit of stunt filmmaking that is rarely used, since they ultimately constrict the story. One can only squeeze so much plot and character development into such a tight narrative space. It should be noted at this point that Silent House is a remake of the 2010 Uruguayan movie La casa muda, which also used the same hooks, so originality is not to be found here.
Elizabeth Olsen stars as Sara, a pensive young woman helping her father, John (Adam Trese), and uncle, Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens), empty out and repair the family's vandalized lake house prior to putting it on the market. A remote two-story home with boarded up windows, no electricity, and in an area without cell phone coverage, it's the sort of place that begs for nightmarish shenanigans. Within in 20 minutes Sara is separated from her family and stalked throughout the house by a stranger who is heard more often than seen.
There's little more than that, at least not until the final ten minutes or so, when the big reveal is made and all is put into perspective. Getting to that point depends on the patience of the viewer. Though their choreography is superb, Kentis and Lau don't maintain a consistent enough control over their filmmaking environment — nor can they, given the limits of the situation — and the movie suffers for it. The handheld camerawork is inconsistent, vacillating between fluidly unobtrusive and shaky incoherence; the lighting alternates between beautifully moody (especially the exterior scenes) and impenetrably murky.
It's the climax that tries the viewer's patience, however, when the story suddenly slides into camp psychodrama via the same kind of illogical bait-and-switch that yanked the rug out from under the crapfest that was High Tension. There's some visual sleight of hand involved that is handled well, but like the final act it feels woefully out of place. Silent House is indicative of contemporary horror flicks, which have segued from torture porn to punish by proxy and cheap gimmicks for the sake of immediate and quickly forgotten impact.
If Silent House has a saving grace, it lies with its lead actress. Olsen is saddled with carrying the entire film; and though she's given little else to do outside of the usual screen victim antics, she does make the most of the quieter moments that actually give her room to act. Olsen proved herself to be an actor worth keeping in eye on in last Fall's chilling drama Martha Marcy May Marlene, which screened at last year's Sundance Film Festival along with Silent House. Martha is definitely the stronger of the two, and it's sad to see the talent she displayed there wasted on schlock as this.


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The owner of an Eau Claire health care business blames a lack of government reimbursements for his decision to shut down his in-home care operation.
LifeNet told state officials it would close the Eau Claire site on March 26th, leaving 120 people out of work.
Owner Jeff Fresia said it's also forcing about 400 clients to look for new providers. He said the local Community Health Partnership program went bankrupt before it could pay LifeNet a large sum of money but it eventually paid some back.
He also said another government provider, whom he would not identify, has been in arrears since last July. Fresia also Medicaid reimbursements have not increased in 11 years, and, "We can't be treated like second-class citizens."
He also cited a nearly 300 percent increase in unemployment insurance premiums, taxes, and uncertainty over the Obama health care act as reasons to close.
Fresia said he would help the Eau Claire clients move to other services, and he has asked employees to stay with those clients if they can.
LifeNet also has a facility in Schofield which will stay open. A facility in Medford closed some time ago.
Larry Lee-WSAU


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It's time once again for the annual NBA Free Agent Sale — and this year our deals are hotter than ever! Yes, you too, for a contract totaling only slightly more than the gross national product of Kiribati, can own your very own NBA Superstar Free Agent! We have so many great models to choose from, like this 2010 Hungry Franchise Savior:
This 2010 Tough and Proven Veteran comes fresh off a Finals appearance and is ready to provide leadership to your team!*
*Buyer assumes all responsibility for injuries or performance issues resulting from past wear and tear.
And brand new for 2010, our Miracle Kid — if he can successfully return from microfracture surgery and learn how not to sulk about playing time, think of what he can do for you!**
**The NBA Players Association can not ensure Miracle Kid's continued unselfishness when not on the same team as Steve Nash. Oh, and the knee surgery thing. We make no promises about that either.
Also available, the 2010 Free Spirit and Proven Winner*** models:
Can't decide? Group packages may be available!****
What are you waiting for? At these prices, these players won't last long!*****


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A recent paper by Heather Tallis et al. reports the finding that win-win conservation projects — those that aim to achieve both conservation objectives and economic gains — are relatively rare. In this paper (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2008 Jul 15 105(28):9457-64), the authors examine World Bank projects with dual objectives of alleviating poverty and protecting biodiversity and find that only 16% made major progress on both objectives.
These results suggest that trade-offs among ecosystem services may be more common than previously thought. (Fairly interesting since other studies have shown that win-wins are common;however, those studies have generally not considered agriculture/food to be an ecosystem service. Since agriculture is one of the key services that has trade-offs with conservation, it is an important one to consider when assessing the conservation potential in an area.)
Nevertheless, the authors point out that there are strategies for improving management of ecosystem services and human well-being. These include better monitoring of conservation projects' effects on ecosystem services and human well-being and also improving monitoring of multiple ecosystem services, including the flow of services from one region to another and the effects of markets on provision of ecosystem services.


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Borile B500CR
A Screamin' Italian Single With Soul
Near Venezia, Italy, April 26, 2001 -- It was the late John Britten who was once asked why, of all things, did he choose to build a motorcycle. It has to be remembered that the guy was a successful land developer, an architect and a glass craftsman. "Because it is not too big a project," was his answer. And indeed, coming to think of it, all you need to build a bike is really a good tube bending machine, a lathe, a milling machine and a pair of extremely co-ordinated hands.
Umberto Borile must have thought along the same lines. The guy lives only about 70 miles from Bologna, a huge center of the Italian motor industry, so that even casting crankcases for an engine was a reasonable endeavor for him. But unlike most of us eternal daydreamers, Umberto got his act together. After a "few" years of work, he rented a little booth at the 1999 Milan show to expose the fruit of his labor for the entire world to see.
The bike that I saw there, two years ago, was so unlike anything else on show. It was as if somebody had read my mind and produced my ideal Sunday morning ride. Even if you hadn't been raised on a steady diet of British singles (like me) you'll have a hard time resisting the simple and honest allure of a svelte, sharp and agile road-going single that is loaded with cool retro looks. Instinctively, I grabbed a catalog and business card, knowing that some day I would certainly want to examine Umberto's work more closely.
Exactly one year after the Milan show I decided to phone Umberto, just to see how was his project coming along. As it turned out, I couldn't have chosen a better time to call.Making Contact "So when are you coming?" came Umberto's reply. Surprise, surprise. The bike is up and running and I am going to be the first journo to test it.
My encounter with the Borile begins a number of miles before ever arriving in Italy where Umberto's shop is located. This guy lives in a picturesque and quiet area just next to a hilly natural reserve, southwest of Venezia. With such calming vistas around him, it is a very small wonder that Umberto is so full of the inspiration that led him to the creation of his machine.
Umberto's "factory" is as charming as the beautiful surroundings. The driving directions led me to the front of a small bike dealership. Until Umberto's project really gets off the ground his income still depends on selling KTMs to the area's inhabitants. But the true jewels are in the workshop area behind the showroom. Beautiful British classics in all stages of restoration; Rows of ready-for-installation Borile engines and, of course, a few prototypes of his own machine, the Borile B500CR. With such museum pieces lying around, there is little wonder that the Borile has turned out to be so full of nostalgia in its lines.
Umberto is quick to point that, although the lines of his B500CR are indeniably classic in nature, there is nothing old about the 500 c.c. single that powers his creation. OK, so bending tubes to form a new frame is kind of understandable, but creating a whole new engine? Umberto chose a smart way to get the powerful and lightweight engine he wanted for his thumper. Using the cylinder head, cylinder, piston and crankshaft from the GM speedway engine, he got around the problem of developing a totally new engine from scratch.
If you are not familiar with the GM engine, do not worry. Unless you follow speedway racing closely, there is little chance that you might have heard about it. Italy's GM have been producing world championship wining engines for a few decades. Speedway engines are known for a truly wide powerband, needed to power slide bikes around oval tracks while having a nice 60-plus horsepower available on the top end. The only problems facing Umberto before using this engine were the lack of a proper oiling system or gearbox.
For their short mile tracks, speedway bikes often run with just one or two gear ratios. Transforming the oiling system involved the attachment of a proper oil pump to the engine. Creating a full road-going gearbox meant designing entirely new crankcases to house the transmission as well as all the gears and the shifting mechanism to go in them. The existence of proven, high performance, engine parts convinced Umberto to undertake this heavy task.The Borile's engine ended up with looks that successfully mix old and new. The engine's right-hand side has strong visual links with the famous Gilera Saturno engines from the 50's whereas the big cooling fins are reminders of bare-bones, sporting British singles. But as stated, the engine's technology is pretty much up to date: Four-valve head, ceramic cylinder coating, electronic ignition.
The frame is a big part of the Borile's visual impact, too. In the best Italian tradition, it is an interesting mix of engineering reasoning and emotional decisions expressed with shinny aluminum tubes. Or, in other words, a modern day interpretation of how a BSA Gold Star would look if it were produced today. The frame is basically a single cradle affair with the down-tube splitting under the engine. Screwed to its back is a minimalist (you will hear the term often from now on) rear subframe, a monoshock rear suspension and an aluminum swingarm with notable bracing. And what are those odd-looking side tubes, you might ask? Umberto replies with his heart, "well, they do add some rigidity, but above all, I like their looks." Umberto may be a motorcycle producer, but he is also very romantic about his handicraft.


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Boy Crowned Prom Queen in Virginia
There was once a time where a boy being crowned prom queen, as per his wishes, would have been an exciting and subversive act. Now it just feels like yet another manifestation of the Gleeing of America. Still, congratulations to Jake Boyer, a openly gay senior from Blacksburg High School in Virginia, who actually had the prom queen balls to go through with it.
After coming out last year, Boyer was encouraged by the largely accepting student body to make a grab for the tiara. He won, duh, and attended prom dressed as Lady Gaga.
"This was as much a social experiment as it was a fun thing to do," explained Boyer.
I'd tell the dude it gets better, but it sounds like things are pretty hunky dory as it is! Besides, do things ever really get better for the prom queen? Nope — it's three kids, a Toyota minivan, and a bitter, pot-bellied, former all-state running back of a husband parked on the couch in store for the missus. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. [WDBJ7, screengrab via WDBJ7]


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There are lots of reasons someone might be upset at work, from the personal (divorce, illness, kid troubles) to the professional (a failed project, bad review, or nasty colleague). Given how much time we spend in the office, it seems inevitable that people will occasionally get emotional. But how should you handle tears as a manager? What should you do with a distraught employee?
What the Experts Say
Many managers are uncomfortable with emotional behavior — whether it's positive or negative. "People think to be professional, you need to ignore your emotions and those of the people around you," says Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, an associate professor of management and organization at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, whose research shows this to be the norm in most American workplaces. But few people can live up to this standard. "We don't leave our humanity at the office door," he says. Anne Kreamer, author of It's Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace, agrees: "You can't decide what to wear to work, let alone close a deal, or make an important presentation without emotions being involved," she says. Crying is a biological reaction to stress, "an emotional reset valve" (and one that is more easily triggered in women for physiological reasons). So instead of ignoring your employees' tears, respond to them. Here are some practical steps.
Act like yourself
When you're faced with a weeping employee, your first instinct should be to help. Sanchez-Burks advises approaching the person as if he's someone in your social network outside of work. "We already have the script and the capability, but we need to get over how to do it inside the office," he says. What specifically you do — offer a tissue, ask what's wrong, give a hug, suggest a walk outside — will depend on your relationship, how long you've worked together, and the office culture. The key is to engage, and let the tears flow, instead of ignoring or judging the person.
Figure out what's really going on
Sometimes even when the reasons for the tears seem clear, they might not be. An employee might start sobbing in a review conversation but she's really upset about her mother being sick. Once they've let the emotions out, "it's your job to tease out what's going on and how you can help," Kreamer says. Managers should be able to gently ask questions that get at the underlying issue. Try saying, "What's going on?" or "Is there anything else you want to tell me?" "You don't need to be a therapist," says Sanchez-Burks, "you just need to be available." At the same time, respect your employees' boundaries. She might not want to confide in the boss. Don't take it personally. Instead, try to monitor the situation from a distance, or ask another employee who's close with her to check in and make sure she's all right.
Keep it simple
If you've identified that the problem is a personal one, stick to simple and comforting responses — "I'm sorry" or "This is a horrible situation." Don't tell him that everything's going to be OK or imply that he should buck up. And resist the temptation to tell a story of your own. "The last thing in the world an anxious employee wants to hear about is how you handled your own or someone else's illness," says Kreamer.
Focus on work-related concerns
"The most helpful thing you can do is listen and try to help them solve their work-related concerns," Kreamer advises. If you discover that an office issue prompted the crying, work with the employee, and colleagues if necessary, to address it. If it's a personal problem, you can also help her make a plan. You might say something like, "This is rough, let me know what would be most helpful to you and we'll see if we can make that happen." Try to get specific. Can you temporarily reduce her workload? Can you set up regular check-ins to monitor the situation and how it's affecting her work? "In the most extreme case, it could be necessary to suggest a leave of absence and bring in temporary help," Kreamer says.
Don't play psychiatrist
There may be some situations that you're not equipped to handle: mental illness or substance abuse, for example. In these cases, or in any situation that you're not comfortable addressing, refer the person to HR or an employee assistance program (EAP). This shouldn't be your first reaction when you see tears, but you also shouldn't take on something out of your comfort zone.
Pay attention
Don't wait for a crisis to tune into people's emotions. Provide opportunities for employees to talk with you about what's going on in their lives. You might set aside a few minutes at the end of one-on-one meetings. Kreamer suggests asking questions like, "Are there any issues on the horizon that might affect you? Let's put them on the table and see what we can do about them." This gives employees permission to open up. "Often employees are frightened to ask for help because they feel they're risking their value to the organization," she says. Sanchez-Burks' research shows that being attuned to your employees not only makes you more human; it makes you a better leader, too.
Principles to Remember
- Act like you would in a social situation — be comforting and solicitous
- Keep your responses simple and focused on the employee
- Make a specific plan for handling the situation going forward
- Judge people who bring emotions to work — it's not unprofessional to cry, it's human
- Try to get your employee to stop crying — offer a tissue and let the tears flow
- Push a person to tell you what's happening if he doesn't want to talk about it
Case study #1: Allow space for grief
Jessica Zinner* was the associate director of a small nonprofit in Boston when her 24-year-old colleague, Ellen*, became gravely ill. After three months in the hospital, Ellen passed away. "She was the keystone of our organization and we were a tight-knit group," Jessica says. There were 15 people who worked in the organization. Ellen died right before the office closed for the Christmas holiday, and over the break, Jessica worked with the executive director to come up with a plan for the staff's return. "We knew this was going to be devastating. We had a lot of conversations about what the right expectations were, how we should talk about the situation, and how we should support people."
When people came back after the New Year, the atmosphere was "dark." "Every single person — men and women — at some point came into my office sat in my chair and cried," Jessica says. But she never tried to stem the tears. "People have to fall apart before they can pull themselves back together. Unless you give people space to grieve, it will leak out in other ways."
She met with staff members individually to help them process their grief and to make a work plan going forward. "People were wondering what to do: 'Do we work or not work?'" she says. Jessica and the executive director told people to do what they could. "We wanted people to come in and do their best." In addition to the individual meetings, they also got together every morning to check in as a group. This gave people room to express what they were going through and to connect with others. They did this for two weeks and then moved the meeting to once a month. "Eventually it morphed into a general meeting where we checked in about things outside of work, not just about Ellen," she says.
Jessica acknowledges that the organization's work suffered. But she accepts that as part of the process. "It took the better part of a year to recover but we became a much more emotionally engaged organization," she says.
*not their real names
Case study #2: Bring in help when you need it
Steve Easley, the owner of Breakrock Consultants, is familiar with employee tears. "Over my career I have had employees that have cried in my office for everything from a bad evaluation to a personal tragedy," he says. A few years back, he was working on a contract to provide accounting services to a government agency. His team of ten accountants worked in a single large room so that everyone was within earshot of each other. One day, one of his employees, Jane*, came into work upset. "I could tell she was choking back tears," he says. When he asked if she was OK, she said yes but didn't look him in the eye. He knew something was going on so he asked another employee — a young woman that he suspected Jane might open up to — if she would check in with her. This woman found out that Jane's son was in legal trouble. Steve asked the young woman to convey to Jane that she could take time off to deal with the situation but Jane refused. She continued to come in visibly upset. "I was beside myself," he says, "For the first time ever her work began to suffer and I knew this added to her emotions."
He called a meeting with the team (without Jane there) and explained that she was having a hard time, without divulging what he knew. He subtly asked that they give her space and empathy. Soon after, he left for a lunch meeting. While he was gone (he later found out), Jane broke down and explained the situation to her colleagues, who consoled her. "When I returned the whole mood of the room had changed," he recalls. "Jane looked less distraught and the team seemed happy and productive." Steve believes the crying was a good thing — one employee got the support she needed and the rest of the team got a boost from helping her.


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WASHINGTON -- Nine years ago this week, our Fox News team accompanied U.S. Marines as they swept into Baghdad and then north up the Tigris River to seize Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. It took less than three weeks to drive the tyrant from power in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and it appeared then that the force of American arms could ensure a new era of tranquility in a part of the world where brutality and anti-American despots had ruled for too long. But it was not so.
The Dec. 13, 2003, capture of the deposed dictator, dragged filthy and bedraggled from a "spider hole" within sight of his palace in Tikrit, failed to quell a rising insurgency. During the following spring and through the autumn of 2004, the U.S. Marines and soldiers we lived with in Anbar province were in daily gun battles with well-armed Sunni insurgents waging jihad against the "invaders." To the east and in Baghdad, Shiite militias launched a campaign of terror against their Sunni countrymen and coalition troops. At home, critics of the war and the Bush administration prognosticated that the fights for Fallujah and Ramadi were prelude to all-out civil war. But that didn't happen, either.
In the spring of 2005, we were embedded with the Marines when they launched Operation Matador in Qaim, where the Euphrates River enters Iraq from Syria. Their mission: stanch the flow of weapons, munitions and suicidal Islamist militants flooding into Anbar province from Syria. Interdicting the Damascus-supported ratlines turned out to be a very good idea. Five months later, we documented the first free national legislative election in Iraqi history -- and a better than 70 percent turnout.
U.S. military operations along Iraq's border with Syria didn't end the insurgency, but they made the subsequent "awakening" in Anbar -- and then the rest of the country -- possible. By the time we were covering the "surge" five years ago, the bloody operation in Qaim was all but forgotten by those who once predicted catastrophe in Iraq. The reporters who didn't make it to Qaim in 2005 ought to go there now. This desert town on the banks of the Euphrates is once again the scene of a flood from Syria. But now it's a torrent of refugees fleeing the sanguinary carnage wrought by Bashar Assad.
None of us -- including the U.S. Marines we accompanied to Baghdad and beyond nine years ago this week -- expected the outcome we now see in the Middle East. In the aftermath of the attack on 9/11, the end of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan was predictable. So, too, was the demise of Saddam Hussein once the battle in Iraq was joined. But no one in government or elsewhere spoke or wrote about these military operations precipitating a nearly spontaneous cascade of collapsing authoritarian regimes throughout the region. Yet that's what has happened.
When unarmed civilians protesting oppressive government policies, rampant unemployment and escalating food prices drove Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power in Tunisia on Jan. 14 of last year, devotees of Barack Obama attributed the event to our president's Nobel Prize-winning oratorical skills. They called it the "transition in Tunis" and described it all as the beginning of an "Arab Spring." It was repeated yet again in February as crowds in Cairo forced Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak from power. The term was still in vogue in October, when Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi fell to an armed rebellion -- and NATO airstrikes. Now it's happening in Syria -- but this time, the crowds are armed -- and no one speaks of an "Arab Spring" anymore.
This week's "cease-fire," brokered by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, hasn't stopped Syrian refugees from trekking through the Syrian Desert and across the border into Qaim. Deterred by harsh conditions, lack of fuel and inadequate food and water and banned by the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki from going any farther, they have become unwelcome squatters in the border town that once served as a refuge for terrorists.
The brutal irony in all this is that many of those who once passed through Qaim to threaten the government in Baghdad are now among the armed rebels menacing the regime in Damascus. For six years, Bashar Assad was deaf to U.S. pleas to cut the terror ratlines from Syria into Iraq. Instead, he did the opposite -- facilitating the movement of thousands of Islamist fighters into Anbar province to kill and maim. Now those same Islamists have turned on him, and he is learning one of the harsh realities of war: What goes around comes around.


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Obviously takendown, however I don't get the standard Google error page.
Understanding Why All Your Base May Belong To Google
from the it's-not-that-complicated dept
There's a lot of talk today about the supposed leak of a product called Google Base, with plenty of people predicting that this is a shot across the bow of eBay or Craigslist. While that could be the end result, it doesn't seem like that's the real target for this offering at all. Years back (when I still remembered how to do database design and SQL queries) I needed to do a quick prototype of a web-based application, and came across a great little service (long since deceased) called ActiveSpace. It was, basically, an online database system with an easy front-end creation tool and a little bit of middleware magic. Basically, everything you'd need to quickly build your own web-based app without having to do any of the real dirty work or set up a real database yourself. That went away, but soon afterwards, Intuit launched a similar (though, not nearly as useful) system called Quickbase. All of these systems realized the basic fact that most software is really just a front-end stuck on a database, with just a little magic in the middle to help make the app do what it needed to do. By having a simple, easy to set up database tool online, with easy front-end development tools, you can build simple applications without too much trouble at all. It appears that's exactly what Google is trying to do with Google Base. It's not about taking on Craigslist or eBay — both of which are more about the community than the technology — but about enabling people to create their own specialized apps, using a simple online database powered with Google's search tools. If this sounds familiar, it's the whole concept behind situated software, where people are developing specific apps that fit their needs, rather than for a huge community. In other words, Google Base seems more like something that the folks at Ning and Jotspot should be concerned about, rather than anyone at Craigslist and eBay. Of course, what isn't clear is what kind of tools Google then provides for adding front-end capabilities to the Google Base — but that would be the next obvious step if I were building the tool.


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This is a Draft Declaration
We request all those who read this page to suggest any changes before Monday 13th September 2010, so that the declaration can be released sooner than later. The draft is uploaded on the wiki page.
The text is pasted here for broad dissemination.
The Role of ICT and Education in Social Inclusion
Information & Communication Technology (ICT) is one of the most powerful technologies ever developed by humankind. It has drastically changed the way we do things, the way we communicate and even the way we think. Education is one of the spheres of human activity that is being strongly influenced by ICT. While the teaching of ICT has been incorporated at the school-level, ICT itself is being used in the classroom and outside for teaching and learning more effectively. However, access to ICT is not universal due to various reasons, including obscurity and the high cost of proprietary software.
Education is a basic requirement for a comfortable life in today's society. In view of this, some countries, including India, have made it a fundamental right. This is certainly a move in the right direction. Education in ICT and ICT-enabled education are also becoming wide-spread. Part of the reason for this is the rapid decline in the cost of hardware. At the same time, the high cost of software is acting as a hurdle for further progress. Another factor that prevents more wide-spread use of ICT is the fact that the interface is not available in many languages, which bothers a lot of people.
Obscurity stops people and especially students to learn how things work, software in particular. The right to use, know, change and share technical knowledge about modern artefacts is an essential human right in knowledge societies.
Why is Software Freedom a necessity and not a choice?
Proprietary software does not allow community participation in shaping the ICT to be used for education, and is not suitable for education since their solutions treat students as consumers. Free software community (sometimes called free and open source software community) on the other hand produced GNU/Linux operating system and a comprehensive stack of collaborative workspaces that enable students during the last 25 years. Most of the free software workspaces are made accessible for speakers of all languages of the world, including physically challenged students. The software freedom granted to the people (1. to use the software for any purpose; 2. to study how it works; 3. to modify it and 4. to distribute the modified software) is unquestionably the core source of the free software revolution that is being witnessed. Any software that grants these four freedoms is called Free Software. These freedoms are essential for students to learn how things work, and to share their experience, knowledge and collaborate with others without legal encumbrances.
The software freedom makes it eminently suitable for any purpose, especially for education. The software used in education has to be freely available and accessible to all because education has to be universal. Moreover, the software has to be available in the language used by the community in that part of the world, however small the community may be. This is normally not possible with proprietary software because some communities could be too small to satisfy the commercial interests of the company.
But the situation is different with Free Software. Since the source code is available for study and modification by anyone, students of computer science and software engineering are able to see code written by master programmers and learn from them, just as students of literature learn from works of great writers, or students of art or cinema learn from the works of great artists and movie makers. This is obviously not possible with proprietary software.
Any community that has people with reasonable software skills can customise the interface to show the menu and other items in their own language. They can also create fonts for the language if they are not available. And they can localise applications to suit their culture and environment.
Finally, the students who have computers in their homes can use the same software they use in their educational institutions without either breaking the law and using illegal software, or spending a lot of money to buy the same software.
Thus, Free Software is undeniably the most ideal for use in all educational institutions at all levels; for primary, secondary or higher education. Proprietary software keeps people divided and helpless, while Free Software empowers them. Free software nurtures the much needed creativity by encouraging us to critical thinking and reasoning while proprietary software forces us to consume what they pack.
It is important for the graduating students to become entrepreneurs or join the various agencies for employment. Considering this requirement it is essential that the syllabus in educational institutions focuses on skills and does not include any specific branded applications. Therefore, the syllabus should be neutral and not mention any particular brand.
Just as the software requires to be free, it is essential that learning and teaching resources including documentation, books, journals, and other media should be released with a license (such as Creative Commons by Share Alike) which grants similar freedoms for other resources. All these resources must also be encoded in an open standard so that the exchanged documents are decodable in all platforms ensuring interoperability.
considering all the reasons mentioned above, we, the undersigned, call on all educational institutions, policy makers, students and teachers in all corners of the world to discard all proprietary software and use exclusively Free Software.


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The Dragon at the North Pole
The Dragon at the North Pole
John Shroades, Kate Klimo
Perfect for readers who've finished Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House series but who aren't quite ready for Harry Potter, this accessible fantasy series is imaginative and adventure-filled! "Funny and wonderfully written. A tall-tale adventure that will grab readers!" —Mary Pope Osborne, author of the Magic Tree House series In The Dragon at the North Pole, Dragon Keepers Jesse and Daisy wake on Christmas morning to a winter wonderland—it snowed overnight! Knowing that their dragon, Emmy, has never seen snow before, they hurry to the barn only to discover that she's disappeared. She's left a note behind: "Gone to help Santa." Santa?! Can it be true? With the help of two pairs of magic snowshoes, Jesse and Daisy visit the North Pole to find out!From the Hardcover edition.
Book Details
- Fantasy
Age Level:
- 8 - 12


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Faster, polymers, kill kill kill!
Good news for OCD types who are scared to touch doorknobs (and toilet seats, and public bannisters, and...): Scientists at MIT have developed a type of paint that kills some particularly nasty types of germs on contact.
If applied to doorknobs or other surfaces where germs tend to accumulate, the new substance could help fight the spread of the flu, says Jianzhu Chen, MIT professor of biology. ... The "antimicrobial paint," which can be sprayed or brushed onto surfaces, consists of spiky polymers that poke holes in the membranes that surround influenza viruses. ... The polymers are also effective against many types of bacteria, including human pathogens Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, deadly strains of which are often resistant to antibiotics. One of the benefits of the new polymer coating is that it is highly unlikely that bacteria will develop resistance to it, Klibanov said. Bacteria can become resistant to traditional antibiotics by adjusting the biochemical pathways targeted by antibiotics, but it would be difficult for bacteria to evolve a way to stop the polymer spikes from tearing holes in their membranes. "It's hard to develop resistance to someone sticking a knife in your body," Klibanov said.
But will it come in "Blue Bayou" or "Adobe Beige?" If so, I've got a bathroom that could really use a coat of this stuff...


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Why Pakistanis would reject $7.5 billion in US aid
New poll indicates that the Kerry-Lugar bill, already confronting opposition from Pakistan's political and military establishment, faces a wave of popular distrust of the US as well.
| New Delhi
The United States is offering $7.5 billion to Pakistan for development – but only 15 percent of Pakistanis support accepting it, according to a Gilani Poll/Gallup Pakistan survey released Wednesday. It is not affiliated with the Gallup polling group in the US.
Barely a quarter of the 2,500 Pakistanis polled believe the money earmarked in a bill put forward by Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts and Sen. Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana will improve the ordinary lives of the people.
The poll comes after Pakistan's military and political opposition strenuously objected to various strings attached to the aid, opening a rift in US-Pakistan relations.
Senator Kerry said Wednesday that there are no conditions attached to the bill that "impinge" on Pakistan's sovereignty. But the people of Pakistan, it seems, aren't convinced. The outcome of the poll suggests that the US, which is facing opposition from Pakistan's entrenched political and military establishment, is also confronting a wave of popular distrust of US motivations.
"It's not something that only the Islamabad pols discuss," says Ijaz Shafi Gilani, the Gilani Poll/Gallup Pakistan pollster. "It's not only about the conditionalities [on the money], but disenchantment with aid as an instrument of development."
The bill's controversial conditions
The conditions on the Kerry-Lugar aid that have proved most controversial include "direct access" to Pakistani nationals associated with nuclear proliferation, ensuring civilian authority over military promotions, and certification by the US Secretary of State that Pakistan is cooperating on counterterrorism.
Additionally, the tone of the whole document is "quite humiliating," says Khalid Rahman, head of the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad. The bill states that monitoring and certification requirements can be waived if it's in the American national interest, meaning "it will be the American interests – not the Pakistani interests – that will be served."
Initial efforts by the Pakistani government to declare the bill a success have fueled the outrage, since some of the concessions supposedly won through its lobbying efforts in Washington ring hollow. Congress merely inserted vaguer language, critics say.
"They took out "India'" but instead they put in the wording of "neighboring countries." You know and I know we are not neighbors of Tanzania and South Africa," says Sen. Tariq Aziz, a spokesman for the opposition PML-N party.
US skepticism
Pakistan's Army vociferously objected to the bill earlier this month – after the US Senate passed it. The military's intervention, coupled with a backdrop of past misuse of US funds, lead some US experts to caution against taking Pakistan's objections too seriously.
"The problem for Pakistan is that it knows the Kerry-Lugar restrictions represent legitimate US concerns ... not in the interests of the Pakistani Army and other elites," writes Timothy Hoyt, a regional expert at the US Naval War College, in Foreign Policy magazine. "[R]ather than reject the remarkably generous provision of aid, Pakistan's military will seek a work-around in practice ... maintaining their questionable activities at a sufficiently ambiguous level."
Could US goals backfire?
But if one American goal was to champion greater civilian control over the military, this bill will only accomplish the opposite, argues Mr. Rahman.
"There are very few people in Pakistan who endorse military rule, so the Army has already lost that ground, and it knows its limitations," he says. "Greater [public] trust in civilian institutions will not come with American support – that, the Pakistani people will never trust."
A more successful US approach, he suggests, would have been to run the terms of the aid through Parliament rather than working through individual leaders, especially the deeply unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari.
'Ungrateful' nation?
Mr. Gilani, the pollster, admits that Pakistan may come off in his survey looking like "an ungrateful nation" to Americans. But, he says, after decades of American assistance, "there's a growing perception that foreign assistance doesn't deliver development."
There also appears to be a disconnect on whether the aid is all that generous. Senator Aziz figures that, given rapid inflation in Pakistan and the way huge chunks of foreign aid actually pass back to the United States through contractor salaries, the real purchasing power of the aid will diminish to roughly $200 million a year.
Both he and Rahman say the $7.5 billion over five years is a drop in the bucket compared with US taxpayer outlays in Afghanistan. Conservative estimates place the economic losses to Pakistan caused by the war on terror to be $35 billion, notes Rahman.
"Pakistan has suffered a lot in terms of money, in terms of human lives, in terms of law and order, in terms of losses in investments and infrastructure. If, after that, America comes up with $7.5 billion, but you are required to do this and this, I don't think Pakistanis are really convinced," says Rahman.
The Pakistani diaspora sends back $6 billion a year, suggesting to Rahman that his country ought to tap its own people instead for financial help with fewer strings attached.
What the US could learn about healthcare from Taiwan, Japan, France, Germany, and Singapore.


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Before going further it is better to understand the following terms to simplify explanation.
These directories do not exist on disk. Instead these are created and deleted on demand in memory. If the system reboots all these directories vanish. In the previous figure, all directories under /home are virtual directories.
This is the directory that holds all Virtual directories. This directory does exist on disk and therefore it remains even after reboot. In the previous figure /home is virtual base directory.
These are the directories that actually reside on the disk. Even after reboot, these remain intact. In the previous figure all directories created under /autohome are real directories.
This is the directory that holds all real directories. In the above figure /autohome is real base directory.
Each virtual directory is mapped to a real directory. This means that whatever is written to or modified in the virtual directory is actually sent to the real directory.
On reboot of the system real directories and their content remain intact. But virtual directories are again created on demand, exactly as they were before.
Virtual directories are removed if these are not used for a specified period of time, and created again if necessary. When a Virtual directory is removed, the backup program is started on the corresponding real directory - if backup is configured.
Applications should access only virtual directories. Real directories are hidden from applications. Only the root user can see them. There is one exception: backup programs always access the real directories only.


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Keltie, Sir John Scott
Keltie, Sir John Scott, 1840–1927, Scottish geographer. He was inspector of geographical education for the Royal Geographic Society, librarian, and secretary of the society. In 1880 he became editor of The Statesman's Yearbook, and in 1925 joint editor of the Geographical Journal. His works include A History of the Scottish Highlands and Clans (1874), Report on Geographic Education (1886), The Partition of Africa (1894), Applied Geography (new ed. 1908), and History of Geography (with O. J. R. Howarth, 1914).
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