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Speech-Language Pathology/Stuttering/My Life in Stuttering

How has stuttering affected your life? What setbacks and frustrations have you had? Has stuttering given you any positive experiences?

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What does it mean to be a stutterer? by Matt Goodman What does it mean to be a stutterer? Can't talk, can't speak, and can't communicate. I go though more pain than you will ever know. My life has been a hard one, filled with pain, and sorrow, and disgust. My voice can be changed to British, to Scottish, ... to Texan, ... to sometimes a New Yorker, ... and yet I cannot speak. But what is normal? Is it not being able to speak, being thought of as a freak, not being able to communicate your ideas. Is that normal? Maybe not for you, but it is for me. I am a stutterer now and forever, one of the few, the proud, the ridiculed, the Stutterer! I have been a stutterer for 14 years now, and it has not been easy for me. I have gone though the pain of childhood. Elementary school was terrible. Kids make fun of you, just because they do not understand you. Junior High was worse, The teens made fun of you because it was accepted, as normal. I survived, but why? Why me? Why me, to suffer for all these years! Just because I was born with this? I know the question all stutters are asking! WHY US? Maybe it developed over time, or yet... maybe... it just happened, maybe... we learned it, or better yet... maybe... its just a phase, or maybe... it is Genetics. Oh, yes that's the one, huh. And maybe if there was more knowledge there would be a cure? or better yet a cause. Day and night Day and night, Day and night, 24 to 7 you are fluent. 24 to 7 I am not! I am one of the few, the Proud, and the disgraced. And you are the Majority, the Normal, the fluent. This is my life, my challenge, my dream. Oh, when will this curse, this wretched curse be over. I will survive, now and always, Forever, I will never give up, my fight for fluency, for if I do, ALL IS LOST, but all is not lost, there is hope. There is always hope. That is what it means to be a stutterer.

It means trying not to be afraid of doing things that others take for granted; ordering a meal at a restaurant, booking a reservation over the telephone. It means preparing yourself to appear like a fool every day - but you grow a thick skin: you have no choice - you have to get on with it, but you have a feeling that you are never going to reach your full potential, primarily because other people prevent you from doing so.

By this, I mean the job interview. I have lost count on how many I have had. Sure, some of it is that I'm not quite the right person for the job, but in other cases it is evident that I am the subject of other peoples misconceptions. I now tell people that I have a stutter to try to make them feel more comfortable, but you still see their wringing hands and stressed eyes, even though you are a lot less embarassed than they are. "Was my speech an issue when it came to choosing the right candidate?" I asked once when seeking interview feedback. The reply was, "it was a concern for one of the members on the panel". I was told that the company had a profit to make. This implied that if I was employed I would have reduced their profitability. Of course, I raised this with the personnel department, but by then they had figured out their excuses.

For me, age brings it's benefits. The older that I get, the more I am happier in my own skin, the more fluent I become. My early teens were the worst - all that angst and stress. If only I knew then that it would get better. When I was younger I could barely speak at all. I wasn't teased so much, it was the situations that one had to endure. Now, a whole week can pass without realising that I speak in a clumsy way.

Although I hate giving presentations and know I freak out the audience, I try to go ahead and do it anyway (although I don't actively seek out these situations). I try to remember that whatever doesn't will you makes you stronger. Most people are accepting, but there are some who give you a wide birth, not knowing how to deal with you or what to say to you. I want to tell these people, "just be normal... after all, in every other way, I am as normal as everybody else".

I've participated in two different periods of therapy when I was young. I enjoyed the first, and liked the therapist and was interested by the whole experience, but then I moved home and went into remission. My second session was as a teenager. The therapist saw me as a stutter rather than a person who has had the stuffing knocked out of them what feels like a million times. The whole person needs to be considered - how they feel about themselves, and what they think others think about themselves too.

It's never going to go away, but I have already achieved more than I thought I would achieve, yet I still have a desire to do more with my life. You get reminded of who you are from time to time, when you put yourself in difficult situations and get knocked back, but I try to think that this isn't your fault.

You have to be 'superhuman' to move forward. You have something that most other people don't have. I take solace in the fact that I am undeniably special - I am gifted with a unique way of experiencing life.

Here are my words of advice to stutterers - do not give up. There is hope.

I am 56 years old and have been a stutterer all my life and know first hand how embarrassing and debilitating it can be. It has severely limited my social life and has prevented me from making female friends. We all know the horrifying situations, speaking to strangers, answering the phone, ordering in a restaurant, public speaking or speaking to someone in authority.

As a child, I remember being taunted by my uncle and cousins. In hindsight, I believe that relatives and peers have exacerbated the problem which may not have occurred if less attention was given to it.

I recall a classmate in high school who was a severe stutterer. When he was required to answer a question in the classroom he would block completely, and yet, outside in the playground he would be yelling for the football at the top of his lungs.

Some of my most fearful stuttering experiences occurred in my teenage years. In high school they tried to introduce us to public speaking. We had to make oral presentations in front of the class. On another occasion, for five straight days each student had to read passages of scripture in front of about twenty priests gathered for lunch at the local seminary.

In my first year at university I realized that I could benefit from professional intervention but could not afford it as a student. In the end I never received any direct treatment. The turning point for me came in my university years. I started to get involved in committees. I became president of a student club. I started to gain confidence speaking in front of the class on subject matter of which I was knowledgeable. It was much easier for me to speak out when I had the floor. But it was never easy in speak in random conversation within a group.

What was my most embarrassing moment as an adult? As the president of a local community club, I had to make a short presentation to city council. Even though I was well prepared with script in hand, the words just did not want to flow. I must have sounded like an incompetent fool. Fortunately my vice president was with me and he did an excellent job of delivering what I had failed to do.

The following is simply my own experience and analysis and does not represent any formal academic thesis on the subject. I characterize my experiences and observations of stuttering into three stages, repetition, blocking and facial contortions. Repetition appears at an early age and is common in children. It is like trying to start a car engine that just doesn’t want to go. Or it is like having "to make a running start" in anticipation of getting over the hump or block. Blocking is the real manifestation of stuttering. Repetition is a learned habit of attempting to overcome the block.

Facial contortion represents the more severe manifestation of blocking where the facial muscles, through a lifetime of undesirable training and exercise just would not let go of old habits and the words just would not come out. Forcing the words out while blocking will only reinforce the problem. Sometimes severe blocking is accompanied by slapping the hand on the legs or thighs, or by foot stamping.

Some consequences of stuttering are avoiding certain situations such as answering the phone or talking to people. You tend not to participate in group discussions or to provide verbal answers in class. Word substitution becomes common. When you anticipate that you will stutter on a certain word, you substitute it with another word sometimes resulting in lesser impact or conveying the wrong message. Common stuttering words are "but" and "and". I used to think that certain consonants such as "b" or "p" cause me the most problems but I believe that this is no longer true. Multi-syllabic or difficult words such as "meteorology" or "epidemiology" are examples of stumbling blocks. The strangest of them all is I stutter saying my own name. To this day I still do. I took a year of learning Spanish. For whatever reasons, my stuttering increased when speaking a different language.

Stuttering is not a neurological disorder. It is a developmental disorder. It is an involuntary habit trained and exercised since early childhood. If you began walking with a limp you would end up walking with a limp. If you walked slumped over you will end up like that. If you speak ending every sentence with an um or eh you will continue to do so. The difference is stuttering is involuntary and it is very difficult to break out of the rut. You have to literally untrain your muscles in order to break out of the habit. I agree with the statement that "stuttering is what stutterers do trying not to stutter". Speaking is an art form of expression. Just like dancing or playing a musical instrument, it takes years of training and practice to be able to do it automatically and fluently. Ideally, I would like my speech to be automatic and I should not have to be conscious of my efforts. The more I think of my stuttering the more likely I am to stutter. The chapter on Zen in the Art of Stuttering is wonderful reading. Another section that I find very useful is the discussion on autonomous motor learning, Three Stages of Motor Learning.

Here is what appears to work for me. First of all, I have a lot of self confidence in what I do. I have high self esteem. I believe that this is very important. You have to believe in yourself and know what your strengths and weaknesses are. Here are the things that I have done in the past. I began by reading aloud privately. I read slowly and quietly at first. I paid attention to my breathing, trying to be slow and controlled. I focussed on articulation and exaggerated the spacing between words. When I became comfortable with this I gradually increased my volume. I pretended that I was in a large room and tried to project my voice as if I were speaking to the person at the back of the room.

In general, I have found that taking a deep breath appears to be the wrong thing to do. I am more likely to block by doing so. Instead, I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Now while halfway through exhalation, I say the words I want to say. I believe this makes my muscles more relaxed. I certainly want to avoid hyperventilating. If I find myself blocking, I stop. I must not force my way out of a block. I know that doing so continues to exercise the wrong muscles.

Perhaps, what has had the most significant impact is learning to control stress and anxiety. As I grow older I grow mellower. I don’t sweat the small stuff and I am more relaxed. For example, I watch my driving habits. I have slowed down to the speed limit. I don't try to beat the red lights and I stop at all stop signs. I try to be courteous and I let the other drivers in. I don't switch lanes just to get ahead. Instead, I slow down for the slower driver in front of me and I give myself lots of space. Overall, I am a much calmer and happier person.

I was 47 when my father died and none of my siblings would give the eulogy at his funeral service, even though I am the youngest of his children. I willingly took myself to the task and I am pleased to say that my delivery was flawless. As an adult, I have served on a club executive, serving as president for one year. I now teach at a major university. Two of my professors were severe stutterers and yet they were able to conduct lectures in front of three hundred students. On another occasion I was emcee at the memorial service for a professor with about 150 people in attendance.

I have four wonderful children. When one of my sons was about three we witnessed incidences of stuttering. Knowing what I have gone through in my life as a stutterer I did not want him to have to do the same. My wife and I discussed this at great length and mutually agreed on our set of strategies.

1. We recognized that some degree of disfluency in children is normal and quite often they outgrow it. 2. We agreed that bringing the child’s attention to it or the attention of those around him would do more harm than good. 3. We agreed to model both good speaking and listening habits by speaking slowly and clearly and by listening without interrupting.

Most importantly, we allowed the child to speak without interrupting, giving our full attention with eye-to-eye contact, whether on a one-on-one basis or in a group at the dinner table, for example. Today he is eleven, a bright and confident young man and speaks fluently.

In retrospect, I believe that reading and writing have helped me to overcome my stuttering. As a child and teenager I did very little of both. Being a stutterer caused me to be introverted which resulted in my having poor verbal communication skills. I never did dwell on the thought that I might have poor language skills as well. I am now made aware of this having read "Boys of Few Words" by Adam J. Cox. Another book, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by John Gray, discusses how men and women can be so different in communication skills.

As a young adult, witnessing the birth of personal computers and desktop publishing, I became the editor of a club newsletter. I have read and written a lot more since then. I now see the importance of developing language skills and how this has helped me. Being introverted did not necessarily mean that I was capable of internalizing all my thoughts and feelings clearly and fluently. I needed to develop my language skills as well.

I have created my personal book of "Writings" for no other reason except for enjoyment. This is not a diary or journal but a collection of thoughts, ideas, theories or personal analyses of anything that comes to mind, usually about religion, philosophy, politics, economics, conservation, etc. I can write a lot more fluently now than ever before. When I speak I have difficulty finding the right words to say. Quite often I know the word I am looking for but it doesn’t come to mind quickly enough. Writing has allowed me to improve my sentence construction and words appear to come more quickly and fluently.

The goal as a stutterer is to be able to say the words without having any thoughts of stuttering. As said before, "stuttering is what stutterers do when they are trying not to stutter". Let the sleeping dog lie. I can declare myself to be one hundred percent fluent, despite the fact that I do stumble occasionally. I say this because I am no longer afraid to speak to an audience. I can handle all situations that I was so fearful of in the past. I no longer use word substitution. I know that I can speak fluently. When I speak, the words come more easily and I no longer have to think about stuttering. On the few occasions that it rears its ugly head I revive the techniques to allow me to glide over it and put it aside. My life is so much richer now that I have the confidence to speak in public. (--Charlie2 13:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC))

12 September 2008 - Update I am happy to announce that I have been a very active member of Toastmasters, an internationally renowned organization that promotes building confidence in communication and leadership. My purpose for joining Toastmasters was not to overcome my problems with stuttering but to prepare me for the greater role of becoming an effective public speaker. Joining Toastmasters has been a very rewarding and entertaining experience for me. -- Charlie2


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Speech-Language Pathology/Stuttering/Acting and Theater

Audience Reaction Video
After performing in a play I interviewed audience members asking what they thought about seeing an actor who stutters.--Thomas David Kehoe 01:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Watch the video.

First Interview
WOMAN: I thought you did a great job. And at first I didn't know if it was part of the acting or not. I even asked Richard if it was part of it or not. I couldn't even tell if you were acting or if it was real. But I thought you did a great job and I didn't think it made it any worse than it would have been if you didn't stutter. I thought it was great.

Second Interview
WOMAN: I thought you were excellent. I met you before the show so I already knew. But it was like part of the act. I didn't know that was an anti-stutter device. I just thought that was part of your costume. I thought you were great.

Third Interview

TDK: What did you think of my stuttering?

MAN: It just seemed natural, like a part of who you were. And also there were times when you used it well.

TDK: If you heard that another play had an actor who stuttered in it, would that make you less likely to go see the play, or would you not care?

FAST-TALKING WOMAN: It gives the opportunity to slow down and actually the words that are being said. Otherwise if they're flying by too fast then it just kinda does just that, you're not even able to catch it as it rides by. But if you slow down and catch, you syllabalize it goes then that would seem to me to be a good thing. Just kinda slowing down the gears a little bit, snapping them back.

Fourth Interview

TDK: What did you think about me stuttering?

SETH'S MOM: Well, what I first thought that it was part of your act. Then eventually I caught on and I just thought it was great that you were performing and just being who you were and being an actor and making us all comfortable with that. It's not an experience I have every day, communicating with someone that has any kind of speech difficulties. And then the part where you said, "No, I just stutter," after the crushed nut episode, that was just a real, it just helped us all, kind of, yeah, it was a joke, and broke the ice, along with everything else being, talk about rawness of human emotions and kind of everything laid open, it was very helpful, and once again remembering that we're all human and we all have things to contribute and we all have things we don't like about us.

SETH DREAMSEEKER WAXING MOON BRAUN: I felt like it's engaging to watch you perform because what's engaging about a performer is presence, and you're ability to stay present with the dynamic of your character, even though you're stuttering. It's very interesting, it's like, if you're that committed as a performer, to move through what might be difficult, it engages me.

TDK: What did you think of my electronic anti-stuttering device? Was it weird or distracting that I was using this?

SETH DREAMSEEKER WAXING MOON BRAUN: Well, since I know you, David, I thought, OK, I wonder if that's an anti-stuttering device? But I didn't even think about that until I'd seen it like ten minutes into the show. It was just like, maybe this is character. I really that it was part of a shift of character because you used it really well.

TDK: There's a group of teenagers who stutter in New York City who've formed an acting company. Is there anything you'd like to tell them?

SETH DREAMSEEKER WAXING MOON BRAUN: Hell yeah! I support you in training as young warrior artists.

Fifth Interview

TDK: What did you think about me stuttering?

DUNE: I just saw these different characters on stage, and it was just a quality of that character. Every different, completely different character. It took on a different quality, just like any other attribute that a person would have.

TDK: A group of teenagers who stutter in New York City have formed an acting company. Is there anything you'd like to say to them?

DUNE: Right on! Just keep doing what you're doing. I mean, I think that watching the performance, people that are trying out these different aspects of themselves, I want to do it. So I think that anyone that's doing it, go for it. It must be really a freeing thing, and takes a lot of courage.

Sixth Interview

TDK: Nir Banai was also in this play. What was it like working with a person who stuttered?

NIR BANAI: It was great. It was very inspiring to see you do such a performance with stuttering and having so much confidence to do it. It was really impressive. It was so impressive that you even used it as a joke in one of the skits. I was really impressed that you feel so comfortable with it.

Seventh Interview

TDK: If you heard that another actor in another play stuttered, would that make you less likely to go to the play?

MAN: Well, no, I don't think so. I mean, no. Definitely not.

TDK: There's a group of teenagers who stutter in New York who have formed an acting company. Is there anything you'd like to say to them?

MAN: Well, um, so, I think if they are looking for some inspiration then, um, well, if I was them I would have found that tonight.

Eighth Interview

TDK: What did you think about me stuttering?

GIGGLING WOMAN: I thought it was beautiful. You did a great job, I thought it was very real. Yeah, I was convinced—

TDK: Well, it was real, I do stutter!

GIGGLING WOMAN: You do stutter? No, you don't really stutter, do you?

TDK: Amazingly real, isn't it?

GIGGLING WOMAN: It was. It was very very real.

TDK: Wow. Great. I achieved that.

GIGGLING WOMAN: Yeah.

TDK: What did you think of the electronic anti-stuttering device I was wearing?

GIGGLING WOMAN: Oh this thing? I thought that was super cool. I did, I thought it was great.

Ninth Interview

TDK: What did you think of me stuttering?

WOMAN: It was beautiful. For real. I thought, I was much more, like, into the creativity of the play and thought that you guys pulled off a really beautiful creation, that you guys made.

TDK: You weren't wishing they had someone who wasn't stuttering?

WOMAN: No way, man. No way. I thought it was beautiful. It was great. You were great. I was very impressed.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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French/Texts/Simple/News story

From Premier incendie de l'été en région PACA/Brève

The news story

30 juin 2005. – Une centaine d'hectares de forêt a brûlé jeudi après-midi en région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.Le Centre opérationnel départemental d'incendie et de secours du Var a déclaré que le terrain était « très difficile d'accès en raison de la densité de la végétation ».

Toutefois, avec l'aide d'importants moyens (huit avions, et deux hélicoptères), les pompiers espèrent maîtriser l'incendie avant la nuit bien que le feu soit attisé par un vent d'ouest. Les raisons de l'incendie restent inconnues, une enquête est ouverte.

Ce premier feu de forêt de l'été fait craindre une situation difficile pour les pompiers : les spécialistes craignent une situation similaire à celle de l'été 2003 lors duquel plusieurs centaines d'hectares du massif des Maures avaient été ravagés.

Questions

 * 1) Why was the area where the fire had burned difficult to access?
 * 2) Why do the firefighters want to control the fire before nightfall?
 * 3) What happened during the summer of 2003?

title: French/Texts/Simple/News story


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User talk:71.142.16.65

Please stop defacing Wikibooks
When you type something bad, then click "Save page", everyone sees it.

Because you trashed the books, you are temporarily blocked from editing Wikibooks. When the block expires, you will be able to edit pages again. I suggest the Sandbox for those who want to play around, experiment, learn how "Save page" works, without defacing our existing books. --Kernigh 02:52, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:71.142.16.65


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Cookbook talk:Indian Potatoes

Don't use olive oil. use Ghee or mustard oil

title: Cookbook talk:Indian Potatoes


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User:Oni Ookami Alfador

This is the Wikibooks account of the Wikipedia user Oni Ookami Alfador. If you have something that is urgent, you may want to leave a note on my Wikipedia talk page as I check that more often. Better yet, [mailto:Alfador@oniookami.net?subject=WIKIPEDIA E-mail me].

title: User:Oni Ookami Alfador


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User talk:Oni Ookami Alfador

This is the Wikibooks account of the Wikipedia user Oni Ookami Alfador. If you have something that is urgent, you may want to leave a note on my Wikipedia talk page as I check that more often. Better yet, [mailto:Alfador@oniookami.net?subject=WIKIPEDIA E-mail me].

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User talk:210.210.50.6

i dunno that looks wrong

title: User talk:210.210.50.6


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Climate Change/Science/Atmospheric Balance

One may wonder where exactly is the top of the atmosphere, and with good reason. We know that the atmosphere consists primarily of the gaseous envelop around Earth, and that pressure decreases with height, according to they hydrostatic approximation. Does the atmosphere end only when the pressure reaches a vanishingly small value? No, but there is not a good definition of the top of the atmosphere, and it changes with sub-discipline. For our purposes, we can usually take the top of the atmosphere, often abbreviated TOA, as somewhere in the low to mid-stratosphere, or even simply the tropopause. In this chapter, we can imagine it is the level at which the downward shortwave radiative flux is negligibly different from the solar constant and where there is negligible downward longwave flux (that due to the sun, which is small).

Now that we have an idea of what the TOA is, we can ask why it might be useful.

First consider conservation of energy in an equilibrium system. This could be a tank of water with a heating lamp above it all enclosed in a box. It could be a simple blackbody system, or any isolated system. Conservation of energy means that the total amount of energy does not change, which is equivalent to saying that any energy that is input to the system must be balanced by an outward flux of energy. In the case of Earth (as the "system"), this means that the energy coming in (the sunlight) must be balanced by outgoing radiation. We know the solar constant ($$1367 W m^{-2}$$), so if we integrate over the Earth's surface, we know how much incoming energy there is. This incoming energy, sometimes called solar insolation or downward shortwave radiation, needs to be balanced. Why? Well, if it is not balanced by an equal loss of energy, then the temperature of the system must change (this is the 1st law of thermodynamics). Wien's law tells us that the wavelength of peak emission from a blackbody is inversely related to the temperature, and for normal Earth-like temperatures that puts the emission in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Thankfully, this light is invisible to humans, and because the wavelength is longer than visible light (solar or shortwave), the terrestrial infrared radiation is often referred to as longwave radiation. The amount that is radiated to space (which differs from that emitted by the surface because of the greenhouse effect) is often called outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). The OLR (which is equal to the net longwave at TOA) balances the net shortwave at the top of the atmosphere when the system is in equilibrium.

Is the net shortwave radiation at TOA equal to the incoming shortwave? The answer is no. The net shortwave, which when averaged over suitable time and over the global, is the source of energy to the climate system, but not all the solar insolation is absorbed by the earth. Let's not beat around the bush. What happens to incoming solar radiation when it arrives in the atmosphere? There are really just three paths a photon (a "particle" of light) can take. First it can be absorbed, either in the atmosphere or at the surface. Absorption means that the energy associated with the photon is imparted to some atom or molecule, resulting in a higher energy level in that particle. Second, the photon can be reflected, which means that the path of the photon is reversed. More generally, we should say that the photon can be scattered, with some probability of being scattered back in the direction it came from, but we do not need to deal with scattering right here. Third, the photon can continue unimpeded, ultimately reaching the surface and being absorbed or reflected; while the photon is traveling through a medium without interacting, it is said to be transmitted. To study climate, one need not (usually) worry about individual photons, but the effects of the light in aggregate. Since we now know what can happen to each photon individually, we can sum over all the photons that make up the solar insolation such that $$F_\downarrow = A + R + T$$, where F is the total downward shortwave flux, A is the fraction of light absorbed by the atmosphere, R is the fraction reflected back to space before reaching the surface, and T is the light transmitted to the surface.

From our understanding of the downward shortwave flux, we can continue the analysis by considering the surface. The amount of light absorbed by the surface is not exactly equal to the transmitted light, T. Why? Well, the surface can be highly reflective. For example, snow and ice reflect up to 80% of incident light, while open ocean surfaces reflect almost none. The reflectivity of the surface is usually called the albedo, denoted $$\alpha$$, and is simply the fraction of incident light that gets reflected. Knowing that the surface has a given albedo, we can now say that the amount of light absorbed at the surface must be equal to $$F_{\mathrm{absorbed}} = (1 -\alpha)^{-1} (F_\downarrow - A - R)$$. This says the absorbed light at the surface is equal to the transmitted insolation that is not reflected by the surface. Note that the albedo is constrained by definition to always be between 0 and 1, with typical global average of about 0.3.

It should also be noted that the shortwave light reflected by the surface does have a chance of being reflected (by clouds or particulate matter) or absorbed by atmospheric constituents. However, for most discussions of climate, and for the purposes here, we will neglect this process. Furthermore, we can (to a reasonable approximation) assume that the atmosphere is transparent to shortwave radiation, meaning there will be no absorption. This simplifies our previous expressions by eliminating the term A. To further simplify our notation, we can say that the total "planetary albedo" is the sum of the atmosphere albedo (later will will call this the cloud albedo) and the surface albedo, $$\alpha_p = \alpha_s + \alpha_c$$. These simplifications allow us to write the "net shortwave at TOA" as $$F_{net} = F_\downarrow - F_\uparrow = (1 - \alpha_p)F_\downarrow$$

As mentioned above, the radiative flux from the surface acts approximately according to the Steffan-Boltzmann and Wien's laws of blackbody radiation. Even if we take the total energy from the solar constant spread over the full surface area of Earth, the emission must be in the infrared. The calculation is left as an exercise.

When we assume that the surface absorbs some fraction of the incident shortwave, $$(1 - \alpha_s)F_{sfc}$$, and that the temperature reaches equilibrium, the emitted flux is then $$Q_{sfc} = \sigma T_{sfc}^4$$. Of course, in reality there is some emissivity associated with different surface types, but we neglect that here. Once emitted, these photons face similar consequences as the down-welling shortwave radiation. The difference in the longwave is primarily that the atmosphere is much more opaque in the infrared than visible, so the absorption can not be neglected. Various atmospheric constituents absorb infrared energy, then emit at a wavelength commensurate with the temperature of that part of the atmosphere. This is the natural greenhouse effect, and the active gases are often referred to as greenhouse gases; primary among these are water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane.

The consequences of the natural greenhouse effect are crucial for life on Earth. In the absence of an atmosphere, the longwave radiation emitted to space would be exactly equal to the shortwave absorbed, and the surface temperature would be a chilly 255 K. Because greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation, they act to warm the planet. How? We can think of the effects in two ways. First, the gases are heated by the absorbed radiation, and then radiate isotropically (equally up and down), sending energy back toward the surface to act as an extra energy source. Second, the absorption and subsequent emission by greenhouse gases changes the effective emission temperature of Earth (as seen from space). This second effect is a useful way to understand the greenhouse effect, and can be easily applied to changing climates. As a thought experiment, consider all the absorption by greenhouse gases happening in a thin layer of the atmosphere, which can effectively be thought of as a thin shell around the Earth. From space, the emission from the planet will be coming from an elevated level, with a much colder temperature than the surface. Of course, that means that the flux from that surface will be less than the incoming flux of solar insolation. The only way the climate system can achieve equilibrium, which is required by conservation of energy, is for the lower levels to warm, emit more energy as longwave radiation, which in turns warms the atmosphere, and changes the effective emission height and temperature. This adjustment continues until the shortwave and longwave budgets are balanced at the top of the atmosphere.

The figure below shows a rough cartoon of the radiative balances in the atmosphere. So far, we have focused only on the clear-sky scenario (on the left of the cartoon). Later we will consider the modifications that arise in the presence of clouds, and we will also explore the implications of changing the atmospheric composition.


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User:Yskyflyer

I am the same person as Wikipedia:User:Yskyflyer.

title: User:Yskyflyer


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International Relations/World Politics in the Twentieth Century

International Relations has not come out of the Cold war. Many may think the Cold war ended with the demolition of the Berlin Wall or with the decline of the USSR. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Cold war is a virus-like phenomena. It has changed the outlook from being a tussle between the West and the Communist block to a war between the developing and developed economy. The manifestations are the north south dialogues. The Russian President and U.S President all spoke the same language. Whether they spoke different languages in the so called Cold War period is it self to be questioned. Thus in the 21st century only the players change but not the game plan. Its always between the haves and have-nots.


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User:Mirlen~enwikibooks

As of now, please go to my account on Wikipedia for more information about general things and myself.

title: User:Mirlen~enwikibooks


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Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Places/Godric's Hollow

General Overview
Godric's Hollow is where Harry's parents lived when he was a baby. This is also where they were killed and Voldemort met his first downfall.

Harry did not actually visit the place until Christmas of the seventh year of our story. It is notorious, however, as the place where Harry Potter became known as "the Boy Who Lived".

Extended Description
It is not said where Godric's Hollow is physically located. However we have some indication from Hagrid. At the start of the story, Hagrid brings back the one year old Harry Potter from Godric's Hollow to Privet Drive in on a flying motorbike. He says to Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall that Harry "fell asleep as we was flyin' over Bristol."

If we assume that Hagrid flew an approximately straight line, there are only two places where Godric's Hollow can be: Southern Wales or Southern Ireland. Apparently, the author has indicated that Godric's Hollow is located in Cottonbridge, England, though a map search for that name does not seem to return any useful results.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we are told that, in A History of Magic, Bathilda Bagshot writes that Godric's Hollow, a "West Country village," is one of a number of villages where wizards settled in relatively large numbers after the ratification of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689.

It appears that the Dumbledore family moved to Godric's Hollow when Albus Dumbledore's father Percival was imprisoned. Albus and his mother Kendra, sister Ariana, and brother Aberforth lived here, until Kendra's and Ariana's deaths. At the time, Bathilda Bagshot was their neighbour. Godric's Hollow is famed as the birthplace of Godric Gryffindor, and also as the final resting place of at least one of the Peverell family.

There is some connection between Godric's Hollow and the Peverell family, who we first hear about in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and we know that Harry lived there for a while, though we believe he was not born there.

Harry, accompanied by Hermione, finally visits Godric's Hollow at Christmas in the seventh book. There, having discovered a monument to his parents, found his parents' graves, and seen the remains of the house where he lived, he encounters Bathilda Bagshot. Back in Bathilda's home, he finds that Bathilda is in fact deceased, and concealing Nagini. At Voldemort's orders, Nagini attempts to hold Harry, but Harry and Hermione escape.

In the aftermath of the battle, Harry relives Voldemort's memories of the night his parents were murdered. We later find that Harry' wand has been broken in the battle. Hermione has retrieved a copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, Rita Skeeter's scurrilous biography of Dumbledore; while it is a very inaccurate rendition of the facts, it does provide some useful information about Dumbledore's youth, information that to some extent drives Harry's later actions.

Analysis
Bathilda Bagshot's note that Godric's Hollow is the home of a relatively large number of wizards does not indicate that it is a purely Wizarding village; in fact, Hogsmeade village, according to what we are told, is the only purely Wizarding village in Britain. As such, wizard residents of Godric's Hollow must still avoid open use of magic to avoid disturbing the Muggle residents of the village. This is why the monuments to the Potter family must be hidden: the sculpture of the family appears to be an ordinary cenotaph except at certain angles, and presumably only wizards can see it at all; and the Potter house on the edge of the village is charmed to be invisible to Muggles. One must assume that a charm similar to the one that hides Number 12, Grimmauld Place must be in use at the latter site, to prevent Muggles from trying to build on the apparently empty lot as the village grows.

Given the Dumbledore family experience with Muggles, it is a little surprising that the family chose to settle at Godric's Hollow rather than Hogsmeade. However, it is possible that there was some family history that connected the family to this village; and it seems likely that the Dumbledore family chose to live in a part of the village that was primarily wizard-occupied.

Questions

 * 1) Why was it that the Potter house in Godric's Hollow is almost destroyed on the day when Voldemort tried to kill Harry?

Greater Picture
It should be noted that Ignotus Peverell, one of the three brothers who, according to the myth, received the three Deathly Hallows from Death himself, is buried in the church yard at Godric's Hollow; Hermione discovers his tombstone there. It is possible that Ignotus was the brother who owned the Invisibility Cloak, and that it had passed down through the generations until Harry inherited it from his own father, James Potter.

Prior to the release of the seventh book, there was a great deal of discussion on various fan sites about the "missing day"; Voldemort had been dead for a full day before Hagrid appeared at Privet Drive with Harry. It was believed by many fans that the occurrences during that day would be important, possibly even pivotal, to events in the seventh book. It is entirely possible that, because of the Fidelius charm still being active, Hagrid would have been unable to find the place until one of the parties to the secret was there. We can safely assume that Sirius Black, as one of the Marauders, would have been aware of the Potters' location; in fact, he does say, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, that he had seen "the bodies and the destruction" of the house, so he must have known the secret, either before the Fidelius charm was performed, or by Peter Pettigrew informing him of it later. It is entirely possible that Hagrid was unable to enter the remains of the house to recover Harry until Sirius appeared on the scene; and it would have been Sirius who actually removed Harry from the wreckage and passed him to Hagrid to carry back to Little Whinging. However, against this we have Hagrid's word; he says that he had entered the house himself. So we can safely assume that either the Fidelius charm had ceased operation with the death of the Potters, or that Hagrid had been made privy to the secret.

That does, however, leave the entire day unaccounted for; in Voldemort's memory of the night the Potters died, it appears that the events occur early in the evening, and Harry is left at the Dursleys late the following night. The only explanation we can find is one of distance: it is four hundred miles, approximately, from where we believe Hogwarts is, to where Godric's Hollow seems to be, and two hundred fifty miles from Godric's Hollow to Surrey. We don't know how Hagrid gets to Godric's Hollow, as he doesn't meet Sirius until he gets there, and so doesn't have the flying motorcycle until then. We do know that Hagrid apparently travels by flying, as that is how he claims to have reached the shack on the rock in the first book. If we assume a speed of perhaps 60 miles an hour for whatever Hagrid was using to fly on (probably a thestral), it would take at least seven hours for Hagrid to reach Godric's Hollow, probably getting to the house early in the morning. Then, with Sirius' flying motorcycle, it would take another four hours to reach the Dursley home. We don't know what he was doing during the ten or so daylight hours; we can only guess that he was entertaining Harry, it being then unsafe for him to fly – even if Hagrid weren't so very large, a flying motorcycle in broad daylight would be bound to excite comment.

The mention of the "wreckage" of the house is also interesting; the Killing Curse does not destroy things, it only kills people, so it is unlikely that the house would have been destroyed by the reflected curse that killed Voldemort. In two cases later, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse at Harry and has it rebound upon him, and both times there is no damage except to Voldemort. So how did the house get destroyed? There was speculation that in fact it was Peter Pettigrew who destroyed the house, in a fit of madness at seeing his master, "the most powerful wizard of all time" (or so the Death Eaters think), killed by an infant. Peter would not have tried to harm Harry, out of fear at possibly meeting Voldemort's fate. Also, Peter, recovering Voldemort's body, could have chosen to blast his way out of the house rather than maneuver Voldemort's body down from the upstairs bedroom. When we visit Godric's Hollow at Christmas in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we see that the damage seems to be confined to that one room, which would seem to lend weight to this line of reasoning. This also means that Hagrid and, possibly, Sirius are guilty of exaggeration, when they talk about the damage done.

At the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry expresses a determination to go back to Godric's Hollow. There were suggestions that the death of one or both of Harry's parents might have been used to create additional Horcruxes, and there was a wide-spread belief that Harry's own death was intended to create another Horcrux; there was some suspicion that Harry might find either Horcruxes, or valuable artifacts meant to become Horcruxes, in Godric's Hollow when we get there in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. As it turns out, Harry never enters the house where his parents died; if there were such artifacts there, they did not enter the story.

One other point has been brought up that might be worth mention. There is mention that it was Albus Dumbledore who arranged the place where the Potters stayed, which leads us to believe also that this is Dumbledore's home turf. In fact, both the Potters and the Dumbledores apparently were neighbours to Bathilda Bagshot, making it possible that the Potters were living in Dumbledore's ancestral home at the time they died. It might have still belonged to the Dumbledore family, in fact; in interviews following publication of the final book, the author has said the Potters did not own that house, but did not suggest who did. If that is the case, what is the relationship between Dumbledore and Godric Gryffindor? Could Albus Dumbledore be a lineal descendant? Given that the Dumbledore family reportedly moved there after Percival's imprisonment, we cannot be certain, but the possibility remains.