Problem Solving for Adults With ADHD

Problem Solving for Adults With ADHD ADHD Adult ADD/ADHD Print How Adults With ADHD Can Be Better at Problem-Solving By Keath Low Keath Low, MA, is a therapist and clinical scientist with the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities at the University of North Carolina. She specializes in treatment of ADD/ADHD. Learn about our editorial policy Keath Low Updated on February 07, 2020 ADHD Overview Symptoms Causes Diagnosis Treatment Living With In Children Musketeer / DigitalVision / Getty Images When problems come up in your daily life, are you able to move forward in a solution-focused and thoughtful way, or do you tend to get stuck? For some adults with ADHD, the process of problem-solving becomes so overwhelmingâ€"too many options, too much uncertaintyâ€"that they have trouble moving forward. Thus, no resolution is reached at all. They may even feel a sense of paralysisâ€"wanting to move forward, willing themselves to make a decision around the problem, but ultimately unable to do either. Too many thoughts and possibilities can also cause you to become derailed so the original issue may even get lost. This can certainly create even more feelings of self-doubt in your ability to solve the problem at hand successfully. Sometimes individuals with ADHD have a difficult time drawing from past experiences and this can make problem-solving more difficult, too. For other adults with ADHD, an impulsive and unplanned reaction that ends up being regretted later may occur. Rather than being thoughtful about the solution, the person goes with the first decision that comes to mind, though the decision may not be the most appropriate one. If any of these patterns sound familiar, it may help to follow some simple tips to help you make a good decision when faced with a problem. Here are some steps to effective problem-solving. Identify the Problem Try to get as specific as possible. Don’t hesitate to ask for help from a trusted friend if you are feeling uncertain. Sure it sounds simple, but sometimes it is hard to boil things down to the core. What is the specific problem you want to resolve? Brainstorm Possible Solutions Brainstorm a list of possible solutions. Let your creative juices flow. Don’t judge or prioritize any of the solutions yet, just jot them all down. Chunk It Down Once you have the problem identified and have generated possible solutions, it isn’t unusual to begin to feel a bit overburdened with all the obstacles that may get in the way of solving it. If this happens often, the most helpful thing to do is “chunk it down”â€"that is, break the obstacles down into smaller and more manageable chunks, then brainstorm solutions to each one of them individually. Pick a Solution and Try It Spend some time going through your list of options and prioritize one to try first. Spend a trial period assessing if this solution is working. If things aren’t working like you’d hope, try to sort through what may be creating obstacles. Again, enlist the help of a trusted friend who may be able to give you a fuller picture of what is happening. Sometimes it can be hard to see the whole picture when you are so close to the problem. Don’t ever feel afraid or ashamed to ask for help when you need it. Continue to Assess Is the solution working? Are you seeing any positive results? If so, continue to fine-tune the solution as you need along the way. If you are still not seeing positive results, even after you have addressed the obstacles, go back to your list of solutions and try another. Try not to get discouraged and give yourself a pat on the back for each little step you make towards solving the problem.

Breaking The Status Quo Free From The Shadows - 977 Words

Dominique Avila Ms. Nieto ENG 2213-003 5 November 2015 Breaking the Status Quo: Free from the Shadows American society has always been dominated by misogyny. It has allowed men to subjugate women in their actions and words, though the women fight this through their own actions and words. In â€Å"Trifles†, Susan Glaspell gives the women power over the men by setting the play in a female dominated area of the house, defending their friend, and by conducting their own small investigation. The women succeed in tearing from the shadows of their husbands for brief moments and in the process, they are empowered, thus having control over the play. The beginning of the play centers on the male characters, yet the setting reveals the women to actually be the focal point. Their arrival into the kitchen, the remarks of its appearance, and Mr. Hale’s statement of his findings the day before, are used as the story’s exposition. They appear to be commanding the plot, including the female characters present. This is evident in the first line of dialogue, when Mr. Henderson commands the females, â€Å"come up to the fire, ladies† (278). Male domination was concept during the early twentieth century, yet Mrs.Peters resists when she states she is not cold. This is the first indication that the male characters of the story are not in control as they would like to think. The setting of the play also represents the control the women actual have over the situation. The first half of the play starts offShow MoreRelatedJapanese 5s Management1568 Words   |  7 Pages Method and Implementation Approach. 5S is a cyclical methodology: sort, set in order, shine, standardize, sustain the cycle. This results in continuous improvement. The 5S Pillars Sort Sort, the first S, focuses on eliminating unnecessary items from the workplace that are not needed for current production operations. 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As exemplified through various film techniques, the movie manages to portray the hardships of the strict rulebook a woman had to follow in the 1950s and how that could prohibit a budding lesbian couple from finding true happiness. There is a recurring motif in the costume design where Carol and Therese stand out in vibrant colors, trying to break the heterosexual mold that held women down so tightly in the 1950s, versus the bland browns and blacks ofRead MorePolitical Situation in Pakistan14875 Words   |  60 Pageslies the valley of death. Must we let ourselves fall into it consciously by marching ahead to disaster or should we not draw back? There is no alternative but to pull hack. This does not entail a loss of prestige. It only saves this beautiful world from senseless destruction. Pakistan is caught in a whirlwind. As we look back on the twenty years of our existence, we find a dangerous tendency for international and subcontinental problems to get fused together. To maintain the view that crisis is theRead More The Drama of the Clinton Sex Scandal Essay4650 Words   |  19 Pagestheir vulnerability and tends to question the actual power they can actually exert. All presidents, at some time or another , became frustrated at what they perceived as unfair treatment by the press, even while acknowledging its vital function in a free society, and many presidents have been a part of a scandal. The current presidential scandal with Monica Lewinsky had swept the Nation overnight. It seems quite impossible to know just how it will all turn out, and unfair to even speculate, but theRead MoreChild Labor Research Paper4040 Words   |  17 Pagessupport a company that uses child labor to produce its goods, almost everyone has, in fact, knowingly or unknowingly, supported these businesses in one way or another. Children are involved in the production of many of the everyday goods we import from overseas, including the manufacturing of clothes, shoes, toys, and sporting equipment, the farming of cocoa, cotton, sugarcane, and bananas, and the mining of coal, diamonds, and gold (The U.S. Dept. of Labor). Often, we are blinded to this fact. Read MoreBirmingham Jail Letter Essay4668 Words   |  19 PagesEditor s Note: From the Birmingham jail, where he was imprisoned for a nonviolent demonstration against segregation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in longhand this letter to resp ond to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. King, who was born in 1929, did his undergraduate work at Morehouse College and attended the integrated Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he was one of six black pupils among 100 students,

Rapper Q Tip From Hip Hop - 1470 Words

Rapper Q-Tip from hip hop group, A Tribe Called Quest famously conveyed in â€Å"Excursions†, a track from the 1993 album The Low End Theory, that music is cyclical, and jazz is the foundation for the new abstract in hip-hop just as hip-hop will be the new ground for whatever music the black community creates next. Even before the advent of the hip-hop genre, Jazz musicians participated in riff borrowing and sharing on standards. Simon and Garfunkel reused recordings of earlier songs in tracks they produced later. These uses can easily be considered an early form of sampling, a practice that utilizes pieces of a musical recording in another musical work as an instrument. As hip-hop grew in popularity, moving from the early reggae grooves over which emcee’s rapped to sampled songs, controversy over creative ownership also flourished in the music community. It wasn’t until the landmark 1991 Biz Markie copyright infringement case over his use of a Gilbert O’Sullivan sample on I Need a Haircut that the courts determined sampling constituted willful infringement. Record companies, realizing the cost of an infringement case, pushed artists to declare the use of samples in their works. However, with fear of incurring additional costs, companies and artists also embraced the possibility of being sampled as they often earned royalties for their contributions. Some publishing companies, namely Bridgeport Music, Inc. and TufAmerica Inc., took the profitability of copyright ownership evenShow MoreRelatedThe Undeniable Influence of Kanye West1451 Words   |  6 PagesThe Undeniable Influence of Kanye West Kanye Omari West, an icon of hip-hop, pop culture, fashion and music in general. Kanye Omari West, a person belittled against and a person subjected to a life of racism and hate. Born on June 8th, 1977, Donda West, West’s mother, always knew he was destined for greatness, but did she know her son would turn out to be the Kanye West, a man lacking the respect he deserves for transforming a big part of the music we listen to on this very day? West came ontoRead MoreRap Hop And The Hip Hop Essay1825 Words   |  8 Pages The hip hop community has gone through a number of discussions on the worth and merit of mumble rap across well opinionated youtube videos, long winded podcasts, as well as the vicariously living through celebrities who mimic the style, technique and overall aesthetic of artists associated with the mumble rap genre. Let s say, for the most part, the hip hop community has a problem with mumble rap. For the most part, it makes sense. Humans are prone to resist change, especially as overt asRead MoreThe Persona Of The Typical Mc Is An Act1760 Words   |  8 PagesThe persona of the typical MC is an act. Ice-T, one of the great American rappers said, â€Å"The MC possesses the great gift of communication. He has the ability to capture everybody’s attention with incredible displays of verbal acrobatics and the power to command a crowd† (â€Å"Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap†). An important character of art, different cultures and people are reflected in different styles. â€Å"It didn’t start out as a popular culture movement, it didn’t even have pop culture ambitionsRead MoreRap : The Flow Of A Disputed Artform3070 Words   |  13 Pagesactuality, when all of it’s parts are taken into context and judged subjectively, rap music is in essence a technically demanding art form and a raw, powerful musical genre rooted in hip-hop culture. Like other modes of art, rap has a deep history that still continues on today. From the early roots of RB and background in hip-hop, rap has taken on its own character defined by lyrics and rhyme. In the 1970s, rapping in the US first started out as a kind of street art, especially among African American teenagersRead MoreThe Power of Hip-hop in the Business World Essay2228 Words   |  9 PagesSince its conception, Hip-Hop culture has always been popular among young people. Now businesses are beginning to use Hip-Hop cultures popularity among the young people to increase the sales of their products. By advertising fashion, films and other miscellaneous types of products businesses use the hip hop culture to appeal to a target audience. Since the late 1970s, Hip-Hop fashion has changed significantly over the years. As the future approaches it has become a prominent part of the fashion

Lesson Plan †3 Free Essays

A Detailed Lesson Plan in Notes in the Five Main Lines of the Treble Clef I. Objectives At the end of this learning session, the students should be able to: A. will learn to identify the names of the notes on the staff in the treble clef. We will write a custom essay sample on Lesson Plan – 3 or any similar topic only for you Order Now B. appreciates how the notes in the treble clef are important. C. creates new idea in forming a music. II. Subject Matter A. Topic Lesson: Notes in the Five Main Lines of the Treble Clef B. Instructional Materials Flash cards C. References Ricci Adams Copyright 2000-2005 http://www. childrensmusicworkshop. om/musictheory/lessons/html/id10_en. html Copyright  © 1999-2012 Demand Media, Inc. http://www. ehow. com/how_5125488_teach-children-music-notes. html http://www. ehow. com/how_6352010_beginners-can-learn-music-notes. html http://www. ehow. com/list_6188183_games-music-staff. html III. Procedures A. Preliminary Activity 1. Opening Prayer 2. Checking of Attendance 3. Mood Setting Teacher’s Activity| Student’s Activity| Hi class Good Morning! Today we will have a new lesson. Are you excited to learn new lesson? But before that I’m going to show you these pictures. What do you call this? (Showing G-clef)Okay, you are raising you hand, Ms. /Mr. _____________________Very good! Ms. /Mr. _____________________. You may sit down. Now, this one what can do you called this? (Showing the Staff)Yes you Ms. /Mr. _____________________. That’s right, Thank you Ms. /Mr. _____________________. And last, what is this? (Showing Quarter Note)Yes you Ms. /Mr. _____________________. Yes, thank you Ms. /Mr. _____________________. Okay, children. Look at the picture of the Staff. What do you observe? Let’s hear from, Ms. /Mr. _____________________. And how many lines and spaces does the Staff has? Very good observation, Ms. /Mr. _____________________. Ms. /Mr. ______________ said that the Staff has five lines and four spaces and that is right. Today, you will learn about the Five Main Lines and the Four spaces of the Treble Clef. | Good Morning teacher Nikki! Yes we are! (students raising their hands)(students raising their hands)(students raising their hands)(students raising their hands)Teacher, the Staff has lines and spaces. The Staff has five lines and four spaces. | B. Lecture Teacher’s Activity| Student’s Activity| The staff is the foundation upon which notes are drawn. The modern staff is comprised of five lines and four spaces. When we say Treble Clef it is also called the G Clef. Class, please get your papers and your pens. Because we will draw G-clef. (Teacher Nikki is teaching how to draw the G-clef. )Okay, It seems that everyone knows how to draw it. Good job children And now, on the other piece of paper, draw the staff. Remember, that the staff is consists of 5 lines and four spaces. Everyone, all done drawing their own staff? Now everyone knows how to draw a G-clef and the staff. Let us combine the two. Always remember that the G-clef or any clef is located at the left side of the staff. On your drawn staff. We will add the G-clef. Draw a G-clef sign on your staff. Okay, everyone is done. Children, what do you observe to your drawing? Do you think it is incomplete Ms. /Mr. _____________________? Very Good answer Ms. /Mr. ____________ you may sit down. As Ms. /Mr. ____________ said that staff has Notes on it. We will discuss now the notes in the treble clef or the staff. Treble Clef consists of five lines and four spaces. Each lines and spaces represents a note. Now let us discuss the Names in the Line. There are five lines in the staff, and this notes spell out the word â€Å"E-G-B-D-F†To make you to be more familiar to name of the lines we will call it:â€Å"Every-Good-Boy-Does-Fine†Ms. /Mr. _____________________, what does E-G-B-D-F stands for? Alright Ms. /Mr. ____________ Were done with the lines of the staff, now let’s go with the Spaces. Just like the lines, spaces have names to. We can simply call it the, â€Å"F-A-C-E†What do we call the spaces in the staff Ms. /Mr. _____________. Thank you Ms. Mr. _____________ We are now familiar with the names inside the staff. Now, let us combine the names. As you seen, starting from the first line the next is the space, followed by the another line then space and line again, space and line and final space and the final line. It means that the first line stands for â€Å"E† followed by the space letter â€Å"F†. T hen the line again stands for â€Å"G† and then the space â€Å"A†. Then the line again stands for â€Å"B† then the space letter â€Å"C†. The middle line stands for â€Å"D† for the next space letter â€Å"E† and for the final line stands for â€Å"F†. Or we can simplify this as, â€Å"E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F†| (Students get their papers and pens. )(Students are concentrating in drawing their G-clef. )(Students are drawing their staff. )Yes teacher! (Students are drawing. )(Yes it is incomplete, because every treble clef has Notes on it. )â€Å"Teacher it is, Every-Good-Boy-Does-Fine†(Teacher, we call it F-A-C-E)| C. Application Teacher’s Activity| Student’s Activity| (Random Showing of Musical Flash Cards)For your activity we are going to play, play but just sitting on chair. I am going to show you flash cards and then tell me what note is it. Let us answer all together. But children remember, do not shout Are you ready children? What note is this.. Next.. Finally.. Very Good children! Thank you for your participation. | (Yes we are! )â€Å"E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F†| D. Evaluation Teacher’s Activity| Student’s Activity| For your quiz, get a piece of your paper and then number it from number one to 5. Ready class? Okay let us start. Answer these questions without cheating. I’ll only repeat it twice, so please listen carefully. 1. The Musical staff is consists of ________________ and ________________. 2. There are _____ lines in the staff. 3. There are _____ spaces in the staff. 4. What are the names in the spaces of the staff? 5. What are the names in the lines of the staff? All done? Pens Up! Please pass your papers in front. I’ll give the results tomorrow. And the highest will receive a small prize | (Students get papers) Answer:1. Lines and Spaces2. 5 / five3. 4/ four4. F-A-C-E5. E-G-B-D-F| E. Assignment Teacher’s Activity| Student’s Activity| For your assignment. Please read about Bass clef and Ledgers lines. That’s it for now. Hope you learn something today. God bless. | (Students take notes)Goodbye and Thank you, Ma’am. | How to cite Lesson Plan – 3, Essay examples

The Panama Canal Essays (1187 words) - Macro-engineering

The Panama Canal 1. The panama canal It is the canal across the Isthmus of Panama, in Central America, that allows vessels to travel between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans The waterway measures 82 km (50 mi), including dredged approach channels at each end. The Panama Canal handles a large volume of world shipping and enables vessels to avoid traveling around South America, reducing their voyages by thousands of miles and many days Built by the United States from 1904 to 1914, the Panama Canal posed major engineering challenges The canal consists of artificially created lakes, channels, and a series of locks, or water-filled chambers, that raise and lower ships through the mountainous terrain of central Panama It was the largest and most complex project of this kind ever undertaken at that time, employing tens of thousands of workers and costing $350 million The canal cuts through the central and most populated region of Panama, and it has been a point of dispute between the governments of Panama and the United States through most of its existence. Under a 1903 treaty, the United States controlled both the waterway and a large section of the surrounding land, known as the Panama Canal Zone, riots and international pressure led the United States to negotiate two new treaties, which were signed in 1977 and took effect in 1979. The treaties recognized Panamas ultimate ownership of the canal 1. Traveling through the panama The canal consists of dredged approaches and three sets of sets of locks at each end; The canal employs about 240 highly trained and experienced pilots to handle the complex job of steering ships through the waterway. As soon as the pilot takes over, the ship is under canal jurisdiction. Very large or hard-to-maneuver ships may require two or more pilots and assistance from tugboats. The ship travels south-southeast about 7 miles and enters the first lock at Gat?n Line handlers at the lock attach steel mooring cables that are controlled by powerful electric locomotives, called mules. The mules guide the ship through the locks and steady it while the chambers are filled with water To conserve water, smaller ships often go through the locks together The entire trip through the canal takes between 8 and 10 hours plus waiting time. The canal operates 24 hours a day year-round. Each ship that travels through the canal pays a toll based on its capacity 2. Traffic volume A large volume of the worlds ships, cargo, and passengers travel through the canal every year A wide variety of general cargo vessels and specialized ships pass through the canal The most common are bulk carriers for ore, grain, and liquids; automobile carriers; container ships; refrigerated ships; tankers; liquid-gas carriers; and passenger liners Many naval vessels, fishing boats, barges, dredges, floating drydocks, and ocean-going tugs also use the canal The size of ships using the Panama Canal has steadily increased. About 27 percent of the vessels that use the canal are built to the maximum dimensions that can pass through it (a category called Panamax) However, some of the worlds commercial and military ships are too large for the canal. Since the 1940s, new U.S. battleships and aircraft carriers have been built exceeding the canals dimensions 3. Military uses The canal was built in part for military reasons, to give the U.S. Navy rapid access to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans Many U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force bases were built in the canal zone to defend the vital channel. However, since World War II (1939-1945) the canal has been considered vulnerable to attack A single bomb or a scuttled ship could disrupt canal traffic for a long period, and the jungles along the canal could be used by guerrilla forces Therefore, the canal was considered less valuable as a military asset 4. Canal administration The canal is operated by the Panama Canal Commission, a U.S. government agency under the Department of Defense The commission was established in 1979 to manage the canal during the 20-year transition from U.S. to Panamanian control The commission manages and maintains the canal and all its related functions and equipment Tolls and other canal fees generally pay all the costs of running and

Living Fossil Plants - Ginkgo, Metasequoia, Wollemia

Living Fossil Plants - Ginkgo, Metasequoia, Wollemia A living fossil  is a species that is known from fossils looking just the way it looks today. Among animals, the most famous living fossil is probably the  coelacanth. Here are three living fossils from the plant kingdom. Afterward, we will point out why living fossil is no longer a good term to use. Ginkgo, Ginkgo biloba Ginkgoes are a very old line of plants, their earliest representatives being found in rocks of Permian age  some 280 million years old. At times in the geologic past, they have been widespread and abundant, and the dinosaurs surely fed upon them. The fossil species Ginkgo adiantoides, indistinguishable from the modern ginkgo, is found in rocks as old as Early Cretaceous (140 to 100 million years ago), which appears to have been the ginkgos heyday. Fossils of ginkgo species are found throughout the northern hemisphere in rocks dating from Jurassic to Miocene times. They disappear from North America by the Pliocene and vanish from Europe by the Pleistocene. The ginkgo tree is well-known today as a street tree and ornamental tree, but for centuries it appears to have been extinct in the wild. Only cultivated trees survived, in Buddhist monasteries in China, until they were planted across Asia starting about a thousand years ago. Ginkgo Photo GalleryGrowing GinkgoesLandscaping with Ginkgoes Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides The dawn redwood is a conifer that sheds its leaves every year, unlike its cousins the coast redwood and giant sequoia. Fossils of closely related species date from late in the Cretaceous  and occur all over the northern hemisphere. Their most famous locality is probably on Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian Arctic, where stumps and leaves of Metasequoia sit still unmineralized from the warm Eocene Epoch some 45 million years ago. The fossil species Metasequoia glyptostroboides was first described in 1941. Its fossils were known before that, but they were confused with those of the true redwood genus Sequoia and the swamp cypress genus Taxodium for more than a century. M. glyptostroboides was thought to be long extinct. The latest fossils, from Japan, dated from the early Pleistocene (2 million years ago). But a living specimen in China was found a few years later, and now this critically endangered species is thriving in the horticultural trade. Only about 5000 wild trees remain. Recently, Chinese researchers described a single isolated specimen in Hunan province whose leaf cuticle differs from all other dawn redwoods and exactly resembles the fossil species. They suggest that this tree is truly the living fossil and that the other dawn redwoods have evolved from it by mutation. The science, along with much human detail, is presented by Qin Leng in a recent issue of Arnoldia. Qin also reports vigorous conservation efforts in Chinas Metasequoia Valley. Wollemi Pine, Wollemia nobilis The ancient conifers of the southern hemisphere are in the araucaria plant family, named for the Arauco region of Chile where the monkey-puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) lives. It has 41 species today (including the Norfolk Island pine, kauri pine and bunya-bunya), all of them scattered among the continental fragments of Gondwana: South America, Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and New Caledonia. Ancient araucarians forested the globe in Jurassic times. In late 1994, a ranger in Australias Wollemi National Park in the Blue Hills found a strange tree in a small, remote canyon. It was found to match fossil leaves going back 120 million years in Australia. Its pollen grains were an exact match to the fossil pollen species ​Dilwynites, found in Antarctica, Australia, and New Zealand in rocks as old as Jurassic. The Wollemi pine is known in three small groves, and all specimens today are as genetically alike as twins. Hard-core gardeners and plant fanciers are very interested in the Wollemi pine, not just for its rarity but because it has beautiful foliage. Look for it at your local progressive arboretum. Why Living Fossil Is a Poor Term The name living fossil is unfortunate in some ways. The dawn redwood and Wollemi pine present the best case for the term: recent fossils that appear identical, not just similar, to a living representative. And the survivors were so few that we may not have enough genetic information to explore their evolutionary history in depth. But most living fossils dont match that story. The plant group of cycads is an example that used to be in the textbooks (and may still be). The typical cycad in yards and gardens is the sago palm, and it had supposedly been unchanged since Paleozoic time. But today there are about 300 species of cycad, and genetic studies show that most are only a few million years old. Besides genetic evidence, most living fossil species differ in small details from todays species: shell ornamentation, numbers of teeth, configuration of bones and joints. Although the line of organisms had a stable body plan that succeeded in a certain habitat and lifeway, its evolution never stopped. The idea that the species became evolutionarily stuck is the main thing wrong about the notion of living fossils. There is a similar term used by paleontologists for fossil types that disappear from the rock record, sometimes for millions of years, and then appear again: Lazarus taxa, named for the man that Jesus raised from the dead. A Lazarus taxon is not literally the same species, found in rocks millions of years apart. Taxon refers to any level of taxonomy, from the species through the genus and family up to the kingdom. The typical Lazarus taxon is a genus- a group of species- so that matches what we now understand about living fossils.

A Brief History of the KGB and Its Origins

A Brief History of the KGB and Its Origins If you grafted the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), added a few hefty tablespoons of paranoia and repression, and translated the whole megillah into Russian, you might wind up with something like the KGB. The Soviet Unions main internal and external security agency from 1954 until the breakup of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, the KGB wasnt created from scratch, but rather inherited much of its techniques, personnel, and political orientation from the greatly feared agencies that preceded it. Before the KGB: The Cheka, the OGPU  and the NKVD In the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin, the head of the newly formed U.S.S.R., needed a way to keep the population (and his fellow revolutionaries) in check. His answer was to create the Cheka, an abbreviation of The All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. During the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920, the Cheka - led by the one-time Polish aristocrat Felix - arrested, tortured, and executed thousands of citizens. In the course of this Red Terror, the Cheka perfected the system of summary execution used by subsequent Russian intelligence agencies: a single shot to the back of the victims neck, preferably in a dark dungeon. In 1923, the Cheka, still under Dzerzhinsky, mutated into the OGPU (the Joint State Political Directorate Under the  Council of Peoples Commissars  of the U.S.S.R. - Russians have never been good at catchy names). The OGPU operated during a relatively uneventful period in Soviet history (no massive purges, no internal deportations of millions of ethnic minorities), but this agency did preside over the creation of the first Soviet gulags. The OGPU also viciously persecuted religious organizations (including the Russian Orthodox Church) in addition to its usual duties of rooting out dissenters and saboteurs. Unusually for a director of a Soviet intelligence agency, Felix Dzerzhinsky died of natural causes, dropping dead of a heart attack after denouncing leftists to the Central Committee. Unlike these earlier agencies, the NKVD (The Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs) was purely the brainchild of Joseph Stalin. The NKVD was chartered around the same time Stalin orchestrated the murder of Sergei Kirov, an event he used as an excuse to purge the upper ranks of the Communist Party and strike terror into the populace. In the 12  years of its existence, from 1934 to 1946, the NKVD arrested and executed literally millions of people, stocked the gulags with millions more miserable souls, and relocated entire ethnic populations within the vast expanse of the U.S.S.R. Being an NKVD head was a dangerous occupation: Genrikh Yagoda was arrested and executed in 1938, Nikolai Yezhov in 1940, and Lavrenty Beria in 1953 (during the power struggle that followed the death of Stalin). The Ascension  of the KGB After the end of World War II  and before his execution, Lavrenty Beria presided over the Soviet security apparatus, which remained in a somewhat fluid state of multiple acronyms and organizational structures. Most of the time, this body was known as the MGB (The Ministry for State Security), sometimes as the NKGB (The Peoples Commissariat for State Security), and once, during the war, as the vaguely comical-sounding SMERSH (short for the Russian phrase smert shpionom, or death to spies). Only after the death of Stalin did the KGB, or Commissariat for State Security, formally come into being. Despite its fearsome reputation in the west, the KGB was actually more effective in policing the U.S.S.R. and its eastern European satellite states than in fomenting revolution in western Europe or stealing military secrets from the U.S. (The golden age of Russian espionage was in the years immediately following World War II, before the formation of the KGB, when the U.S.S.R. subverted western scientists in order to advance its own development of nuclear weapons.) The major foreign accomplishments of the KGB included suppressing the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968, as well as installing a Communist government in Afghanistan in the late 1970s; however, the agencys luck ran out in early 1980s Poland, where the anti-Communist Solidarity movement emerged victorious. All during this time, of course, the CIA and the KGB engaged in an elaborate international dance (often in third-world countries like Angola and Nicaragua),  involving agents, double agents, propaganda, disinformation, under-the-table arms sales, interference with elections, and nighttime exchanges of suitcases filled with rubles or hundred-dollar bills. The exact details of what transpired, and where, may never come to light; many of the agents and controllers from both sides are dead, and the current Russian government has not been forthcoming in declassifying the KGB archives. Inside the U.S.S.R., the attitude of the KGB toward suppressing dissent was largely dictated by government policy. During the reign of Nikita Khrushchev, from 1954 to 1964, a certain amount of openness was tolerated, as witnessed in the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyns Gulag-era memoir One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (an event that would have been unthinkable under the Stalin regime). The pendulum swung the other way with the ascension of Leonid Brezhnev in 1964, and, especially, the appointment of Yuri Andropov as the head of the KGB in 1967. Andropovs KGB hounded Solzhenitsyn out of the U.S.S.R. in 1974, turned the screws on the dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov, and generally made life miserable for any prominent figure even slightly dissatisfied with Soviet power. The Death (And Resurrection?) of the KGB In the late 1980s - partly because of the disastrous war in Afghanistan and partly because of an increasingly costly arms race with the U.S. - the U.S.S.R. began to fall apart at the seams, with rampant inflation, shortages of factory goods, and agitation by ethnic minorities. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev had already implemented perestroika (a restructuring of the economy and political structure of the Soviet Union) and glasnost (a policy of openness toward dissidents), but while this placated some of the population, it enraged hard-line Soviet bureaucrats who had grown accustomed to their privileges. As might have been predicted, the KGB was at the forefront of the counter-revolution. In late 1990,  then-KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov recruited high-ranking members of the Soviet elite into a  tight-knit conspiratorial cell, which sprang into action the following  August after failing to convince Gorbachev to either resign in favor of its preferred candidate or declare a state of emergency. Armed combatants, some of them in tanks, stormed the Russian parliament building in Moscow, but Soviet President Boris Yeltsin held firm and the coup quickly fizzled out. Four months later, the U.S.S.R. officially disbanded, granting autonomy to the Soviet Socialist Republics along its western and southern borders and dissolving the KGB (along with all other Soviet governmental bodies). However, institutions like the KGB never really go away; they just assume different guises. Today, Russia is dominated by two security agencies, the FSB (The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) and the SVR (The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation), which broadly correspond to the FBI and the CIA, respectively. More worrisome, though, is the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin spent 15 years in the KGB, from 1975 to 1990, and his increasingly autocratic rule shows that he has taken to heart the lessons he learned there. Its unlikely that Russia will ever again see a security agency as vicious as the NKVD, but a return to the darkest days of the KGB is clearly not out of the question.