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Borderline Personality Disorder | Online Consultation for Mental Health at Behavioral Health Care, P.C
What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships. In 1980, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Third Edition (DSM-III) listed BPD as a diagnosable illness for the first time. Most psychiatrists and other mental health professionals use the DSM to diagnose mental illnesses.
Because some people with severe Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have brief psychotic episodes, experts originally thought of this illness as atypical, or borderline, versions of other mental disorders. While mental health experts now generally agree that the name "borderline personality disorder" is misleading, a more accurate term does not exist yet.
Most people who have BPD suffer from:
- Problems with regulating emotions and thoughts
- Impulsive and reckless behavior
- Unstable relationships with other people.
People with this disorder also have high rates of co-occurring disorders, such as depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and eating disorders, along with self-harm, suicidal behaviors, and completed suicides.
Causes of Borderline Personality Disorder
A Research on the possible causes and risk factors for BPD is still at a very early stage. However, scientists generally agree that genetic and environmental factors are likely to be involved.
Studies on twins with BPD suggest that the illness is strongly inherited. Another study shows that a person can inherit his or her temperament and specific personality traits, particularly impulsiveness and aggression. Scientists are studying genes that help regulate emotions and impulse control for possible links to the disorder.
Social or cultural factors may increase the risk for BPD. For example, being part of a community or culture in which unstable family relationships are common may increase a person's risk for the disorder. Impulsiveness, poor judgment in lifestyle choices, and other consequences of BPD may lead individuals to risky situations. Adults with borderline personality disorder are considerably more likely to be the victim of violence, including rape and other crimes.
Signs & Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder
According to the DSM, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a person must show an enduring pattern of behavior that includes at least five of the following symptoms:
- Extreme reactions—including panic, depression, rage, or frantic actions—to abandonment, whether real or perceived
- A pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often veering from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
- Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self, which can result in sudden changes in feelings, opinions, values, or plans and goals for the future (such as school or career choices)
- Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating
- Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting
- Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
- Chronic feelings of emptiness and/or boredom
- Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
- Having stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms, such as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside the body, or losing touch with reality.
Seemingly mundane events may trigger symptoms. For example, people with BPD may feel angry and distressed over minor separations—such as vacations, business trips, or sudden changes of plans—from people to whom they feel close. Studies show that people with this disorder may see anger in an emotionally neutral face and have a stronger reaction to words with negative meanings than people who do not have the disorder.
Suicide and Self-harm
Self-injurious behavior includes suicide and suicide attempts, as well as self-harming behaviors, described below. As many as 80 percent of people with BPD have suicidal behaviors, and about 4 to 9 percent commit suicide.
Suicide is one of the most tragic outcomes of any mental illness. Some treatments can help reduce suicidal behaviors in people with BPD. For example, one study showed that dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) reduced suicide attempts in women by half compared with other types of psychotherapy, or talk therapy. DBT also reduced use of emergency room and inpatient services and retained more participants in therapy, compared to other approaches to treatment.
Unlike suicide attempts, self-harming behaviors do not stem from a desire to die. However, some self-harming behaviors may be life threatening. Self-harming behaviors linked with BPD include cutting, burning, hitting, head banging, hair pulling, and other harmful acts. People with BPD may self-harm to help regulate their emotions, to punish themselves, or to express their pain. They do not always see these behaviors as harmful.
Who Is At Risk?
According to data from a subsample of participants in a national survey on mental disorders, about 1.6 percent of adults in the United States have BPD in a given year. BPD usually begins during adolescence or early adulthood. Some studies suggest that early symptoms of the illness may occur during childhood.
Unfortunately, BPD is often underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
A mental health professional experienced in diagnosing and treating mental disorders—such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, clinical social worker, or psychiatric nurse—can detect BPD based on a thorough interview and a discussion about symptoms. A careful and thorough medical exam can help rule out other possible causes of symptoms.
The mental health professional may ask about symptoms and personal and family medical histories, including any history of mental illnesses. This information can help the mental health professional decide on the best treatment. In some cases, co-occurring mental illnesses may have symptoms that overlap with BPD, making it difficult to distinguish borderline personality disorder from other mental illnesses. For example, a person may describe feelings of depression but may not bring other symptoms to the mental health professional's attention.
Women with BPD are more likely to have co-occurring disorders such as major depression, anxiety disorders, or eating disorders. In men, BPD is more likely to co-occur with disorders such as substance abuse or antisocial personality disorder. According to the NIMH-funded National Comorbidity Survey Replication—the largest national study to date of mental disorders in U.S. adults—about 85 percent of people with BPD also meet the diagnostic criteria for another mental illness. Other illnesses that often occur with BPD include diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic back pain, arthritis, and fibromyalgia. These conditions are associated with obesity, which is a common side effect of the medications prescribed to treat BPD and other mental disorders.
No single test can diagnose BPD. Scientists funded by NIMH are looking for ways to improve diagnosis of this disorder. One study found that adults with BPD showed excessive emotional reactions when looking at words with unpleasant meanings, compared with healthy people. People with more severe BPD showed a more intense emotional response than people who had less severe BPD.
BPD is often viewed as difficult to treat. However, recent research shows that BPD can be treated effectively, and that many people with this illness improve over time.
BPD can be treated with psychotherapy, or "talk" therapy. In some cases, a mental health professional may also recommend medications to treat specific symptoms. When a person is under more than one professional's care, it is essential for the professionals to coordinate with one another on the treatment plan.
The treatments described below are just some of the options that may be available to a person with BPD. However, the research on treatments is still in very early stages. More studies are needed to determine the effectiveness of these treatments, who may benefit the most, and how best to deliver treatments.
Psychotherapy is usually the first treatment for people with BPD. Current research suggests psychotherapy can relieve some symptoms, but further studies are needed to better understand how well psychotherapy works.
It is important that people in therapy get along with and trust their therapist. The very nature of BPD can make it difficult for people with this disorder to maintain this type of bond with their therapist.
Types of psychotherapy used to treat BPD include the following: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT can help people with BPD identify and change core beliefs and/or behaviors that underlie inaccurate perceptions of themselves and others and problems interacting with others. CBT may help reduce a range of mood and anxiety symptoms and reduce the number of suicidal or self-harming behaviors.
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). This type of therapy focuses on the concept of mindfulness, or being aware of and attentive to the current situation. DBT teaches skills to control intense emotions, reduces self-destructive behaviors, and improves relationships. This therapy differs from CBT in that it seeks a balance between changing and accepting beliefs and behaviors.
- Schema-focused therapy. This type of therapy combines elements of CBT with other forms of psychotherapy that focus on reframing schemas, or the ways people view themselves. This approach is based on the idea that BPD stems from a dysfunctional self-image—possibly brought on by negative childhood experiences—that affects how people react to their environment, interact with others, and cope with problems or stress.
Therapy can be provided one-on-one between the therapist and the patient or in a group setting. Therapist-led group sessions may help teach people with BPD how to interact with others and how to express themselves effectively.
One type of group therapy, Systems Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving (STEPPS), is designed as a relatively brief treatment consisting of 20 two-hour sessions led by an experienced social worker. Scientists funded by NIMH reported that STEPPS, when used with other types of treatment (medications or individual psychotherapy), can help reduce symptoms and problem behaviors of BPD, relieve symptoms of depression, and improve quality of life. The effectiveness of this type of therapy has not been extensively studied.
Families of people with BPD may also benefit from therapy. The challenges of dealing with an ill relative on a daily basis can be very stressful, and family members may unknowingly act in ways that worsen their relative's symptoms.
Some therapies, such as DBT-family skills training (DBT-FST), include family members in treatment sessions. These types of programs help families develop skills to better understand and support a relative with BPD. Other therapies, such as Family Connections, focus on the needs of family members. More research is needed to determine the effectiveness of family therapy in BPD. Studies with other mental disorders suggest that including family members can help in a person's treatment.
Other types of therapy not listed in this booklet may be helpful for some people with BPD. Therapists often adapt psychotherapy to better meet a person's needs. Therapists may switch from one type of therapy to another, mix techniques from different therapies, or use a combination therapy. For more information see the NIMH website section on psychotherapy.
Some symptoms of BPD may come and go, but the core symptoms of highly changeable moods, intense anger, and impulsiveness tend to be more persistent. People whose symptoms improve may continue to face issues related to co-occurring disorders, such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. However, encouraging research suggests that relapse, or the recurrence of full-blown symptoms after remission, is rare. In one study, 6 percent of people with BPD had a relapse after remission.
No medications have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat BPD. Only a few studies show that medications are necessary or effective for people with this illness. However, many people with BPD are treated with medications in addition to psychotherapy. While medications do not cure BPD, some medications may be helpful in managing specific symptoms. For some people, medications can help reduce symptoms such as anxiety, depression, or aggression. Often, people are treated with several medications at the same time, but there is little evidence that this practice is necessary or effective.
Medications can cause different side effects in different people. People who have BPD should talk with their prescribing doctor about what to expect from a particular medication.
Other Treatments
Omega-3 fatty acids. One study done on 30 women with BPD showed that omega-3 fatty acids may help reduce symptoms of aggression and depression. The treatment seemed to be as well tolerated as commonly prescribed mood stabilizers and had few side effects. Fewer women who took omega-3 fatty acids dropped out of the study, compared to women who took a placebo (sugar pill).
With proper treatment, many people experience fewer or less severe symptoms. However, many factors affect the amount of time it takes for symptoms to improve, so it is important for people with BPD to be patient and to receive appropriate support during treatment.
Living With
Some people with BPD experience severe symptoms and require intensive, often inpatient, care. Others may use some outpatient treatments but never need hospitalization or emergency care. Some people who develop this disorder may improve without any treatment.
How can I help a friend or relative who has BPD?
If you know someone who has BPD, it affects you too. The first and most important thing you can do is help your friend or relative get the right diagnosis and treatment. You may need to make an appointment and go with your friend or relative to see the doctor. Encourage him or her to stay in treatment or to seek different treatment if symptoms do not appear to improve with the current treatment.
To help a friend or relative you can:
Offer emotional support, understanding, patience, and encouragement—change can be difficult and frightening to people with BPD, but it is possible for them to get better over time
- Learn about mental disorders, including BPD, so you can understand what your friend or relative is experiencing
- With permission from your friend or relative, talk with his or her therapist to learn about therapies that may involve family members, such as DBT-FST.
Never ignore comments about someone's intent or plan to harm himself or herself or someone else. Report such comments to the person's therapist or doctor. In urgent or potentially life-threatening situations, you may need to call the police.
How can I help myself if I have BPD?
Taking that first step to help yourself may be hard. It is important to realize that, although it may take some time, you can get better with treatment.
To help yourself:
- Talk to your doctor about treatment options and stick with treatment
- Try to maintain a stable schedule of meals and sleep times
- Engage in mild activity or exercise to help reduce stress
- Set realistic goals for yourself
- Break up large tasks into small ones, set some priorities, and do what you can, as you can
- Try to spend time with other people and confide in a trusted friend or family member
- Tell others about events or situations that may trigger symptoms
- Expect your symptoms to improve gradually, not immediately
- Identify and seek out comforting situations, places, and people
- Continue to educate yourself about this disorder.


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Story highlights
Our energy reserves need regular replenishing, experts say
Use light and build in some time for yourself to get going in the morning
Pay attention to what you eat and try to get in some sunshine
Late-night cravings can mean you're sleepy, not hungry
We're a nation of can-do people: We work, we plan, we organize, we go, fueling ourselves on coffee and pure determination. Until, that is, we fall onto the sofa in a stupor.
More of us are struggling with energy issues, experts say; they point to the weak economy, which has us working harder and plugging in longer, and the belief that we can have it all (so what if we're up till midnight making it happen?).
"I'm seeing so many women who think of themselves as machines that can run nonstop, and they're living with this deep fatigue," says psychologist Michelle Segar, associate director of the Sport, Health, and Activity Research and Policy Center for Women and Girls at the University of Michigan. "Just like houseplants need water, our energy reserves need regular replenishing."
To the rescue: strategies that will keep you humming along – and, happily, don't take much effort.
Stay energized all morning
What works against your a.m. mojo: "We've been essentially in a starvation state all night," says Dr. Gregory Dodell, an endocrinologist in New York.
What's working for you: "At the same time, we experience spikes in cortisol and testosterone, important hormones for energy that help get us moving," Dodell adds. You want to fuel up and max out that hormone high. The plan: Lights! Action! Breakfast!
Health.com: America's healthiest fast-food breakfasts
Don't delay the day. It's so tempting to hit snooze when your alarm goes off in the morning. Problem is, "by falling back asleep, you could be interrupting the hormone cycle, which can make it harder to get going," Dodell says. Better to just set your alarm for 15 minutes later – and keep your clock across the room so you can't reach out and silence it.
Let in light. "Artificial or natural, light helps optimize the body's wake-up processes," says Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.
Roll up the shades or, if it's still dark outside, turn on lights. Terman recommends compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) labeled "cool white" or "daylight." They're not just good for Mother Earth, he says: "CFLs with these color temperatures emit a white light closer to outdoor light than the yellowish kind from incandescents."
Ease into things. "Roll out of bed and into the frenetic pace of getting everybody ready and you're exhausted right out of the gate," says time-management expert Julie Morgenstern, author of the book "Never Check E-mail in the Morning."
Get up 15 minutes before the kids so you can shower and get dressed. And, yes, avoid the siren call of e-mail: "Facing an onslaught of to-dos can be a big drain if you haven't cleared your mind first."
Health.com: How to relax your morning routine
Get moving. Not an a.m. exerciser? Rethink your idea of a workout. In a University of Georgia study, people who did a low-intensity aerobic activity (think a leisurely walk) three times a week had a greater reduction in fatigue levels than folks who did higher intensity workouts (like a faster-paced walk with hills) for the same amount of time.
If you tend to drag in the morning or you're overall exhausted, a tough workout can be more draining than invigorating. "And if you're not in top shape, a high-intensity workout forces you to expend major energy, leaving your body tired," says exercise physiologist Michael Bracko. Motivation to do some activity: The study found regular exercise generally increased energy levels by 20%.
Eat more breakfast. "If you have just a bagel and coffee, you get a quick stimulant from the caffeine and quick energy from the carbs – a recipe for a crash," says Ashley Koff, co-author of the book "Mom Energy: A Simple Plan to Live Fully Charged."
Instead, go for a mix of unrefined carbs (for fast energy) plus lean protein and healthy fat (which take longer to digest, giving you more staying power). Think a scrambled egg in a whole-grain tortilla or oatmeal topped with nuts.
Health.com: The best fat-burning breakfasts
Work in chunks. Don't stay glued to your desk chair – your body needs occasional movement to change channels and get oxygen flowing (so you're alert enough to address request No. 5,739 from the boss).
"Most of us can't stay focused on one task for longer than 90 minutes, anyway," says Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of the Energy Project, a group that boosts business productivity. Get up and talk with people instead of e-mailing – or at least stand while you're on the phone.
Keep your pep up in the afternoon
If your energy level dips between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, it's official: You're human. "The spike of hormones that gets us moving in the morning is leveling off, and many people have a big lunch and then sit at a desk for the rest of the afternoon, all of which can cause a slump," Dodell says. Strategic eating and a bit of movement will help.
Take your multivitamin at lunch. And consider adding a B-complex for extra pep. "We actually get an energy boost from vitamins but we usually don't notice because most of us wash them down with coffee or tea," Koff points out. This is not permission to have a multi and soda for lunch; you need some calories, preferably from a balanced meal, for all-afternoon energy.
Health.com: Vitamins: what to take, what to skip
Don't fear carbs. Salad greens with chicken is lovely, but no carbs means no quick energy. Have a piece of fruit, too, or add black beans for carbs plus additional protein.
Avoid rich foods. You know the Cheeseburger Effect – the haze that sets in after a fatty lunch. Dr. Donald Hensrud, a specialist in preventive medicine and nutrition with the Mayo Clinic says, "When blood samples are analyzed after people eat heavy meals, they almost look creamy, and the fat in this blood may displace oxygen." One word: ugh.
Head outdoors. If you're one of the 34% of employees who eats lunch at her desk, digest this: Sunshine helps boost levels of vitamin D, and research suggests that adequate amounts may play a role in sustaining energy. Experts suspect D helps regulate metabolism and insulin secretion, which both have an impact on energy.
Stretch. "In the middle of the afternoon, stand and do arm circles," Bracko says. "If you're in a cubicle, even ankle circles will do something for circulation."
Health.com: Best and worst workouts for flexibility
Give in to the snack attack. Protein and fiber will help the blood sugar boost last longer. Try Koff's DIY trail mix: nuts, high-fiber cereal, hemp seeds, coconut, and dark chocolate chips.
Beat evening burnout
You're on your last reserves of energizing hormones. Meanwhile, melatonin – which regulates sleep – starts to rise. Thing is, you've got stuff to do! The goal: Stay revved without over-wiring yourself.
Have a work-to-home transition ritual. "It'll give you energy to focus on and enjoy your evening," Morgenstern says. Consider leaving work early once a week to do a run or an interval training class: "You'll get a metabolism boost that will perk you up for 60 to 90 minutes afterward," Bracko says. Other days, switch gears by listening to music as you commute or slipping into comfy clothes pre-dinner.
Down the relaxing glass of wine first. You want to avoid alcohol for two hours before bed: It causes restless sleep, translating to less pep and focus tomorrow.
Health.com: 7 tips for the best sleep ever
Couch potato with a purpose. "Sitting on the sofa and channel-surfing can exacerbate inertia," says Segar. Watch just a favorite show or two; stretch if you get sluggish.
Understand late-night cravings. "They usually mean you're sleepy, not hungry – you've kept your brain awake too long and it needs a glucose hit to stay up!" explains Koff.
Go for something light and easy to digest, like half a plain Greek yogurt with berries or hot chocolate made with almond milk and dark chocolate at least an hour before bed. Experts agree that banking a good night's sleep is the best way to have another energy-tastic day tomorrow.
Copyright Health Magazine 2015

subset: commoncrawl


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A newly minted PhD in the hot field of data analytics, Adam Marcus could have walked away from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with his pick of lucrative jobs from any of the computing titans, from Google Inc. to Microsoft Corp.
But like a growing number of his peers from MIT, and scores of other new graduates at top universities, he's eschewing corporate America for the unpredictable world of scrappy Internet start-ups. Never mind that statistics show most start-ups fail.
Marcus, 28, won't even be at his commencement on Friday. He'll be in San Francisco at the new offices of Locu Inc., a start-up founded by other MIT grads to help merchants and restaurateurs manage their online presence.
"I'd rather be working anyway," he said. "My work is my research."
This spring's generation of graduates grew up with the Internet, when entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were publicly acclaimed, and their more immediate role models were the youthful founders of Facebook Inc., who made their fortunes before turning 30. Now, they too want to follow recent grads before them, such as the founders of the photo-sharing app Instagram, who become overnight multimillionaires selling their upstart companies.
"They are just starting businesses in droves," said Donna Fenn, author of "Upstarts," a book tracking the Generation Y start-up phenomenon. "This is going to be a generation of serial entrepreneurs."
There are other factors beyond an early fortune driving the surge in start-ups. One is the lack of job security at big companies, the fraying of the "corporate safety net," as Fenn said, in which downsizing and layoffs are routine.
But the barriers to starting your own company these days are much fewer, Fenn said. Many graduates simply need a few laptops, a respectable Internet connection, and some seed money to get started.
"It's now faster, cheaper, and easier to start a business than ever before," Fenn said, "so there's very little to risk."
And finding money doesn't seem to problem, either. Even the rawest of entrepreneurs are able to persuade veteran venture capitalists to finance their start-ups. The company Marcus went to work for, Locu, has raised $4.6 million from such seasoned firms as General Catalyst Partners in Cambridge.
Last year, investors made 1,749 seed investments, which are typically less than $1.5 million, in early-stage tech companies, a 64 percent increase over the previous year, according to CB Insights, a New York firm that tracks start-up funding. Those types of start-ups include the typical Web business making apps for smartphones or writing software, but many young founders are starting non-tech businesses, such as running a food truck or developing ways to recycle garbage.
"There's so many start-ups, and so many are getting funded," said 24-year-old John Melas-Kyriazi, who graduated with a master's degree from Stanford University this week and will be working with StartX, a nonprofit accelerator program for start-ups connected to Stanford.
A native of Brookline, Melas-Kyriazi found himself swept up in the start-up culture on and off campus, the constant buzz no doubt fueled by the success of Kevin Systrom, a Stanford grad who at 28 sold his company, Instagram, to Facebook in 2012 for around $700 million.
"Literally at every coffee shop, at every restaurant you walk into, people are talking about something they want to build," he said.
But Melas-Kyriazi insists he and other young entrepreneurs aren't motivated solely by money; they want to be in control of their futures and create something that has lasting impact or is as transformative as the iPhone.
"You get to be the person in the driver's seat making decisions," said Melas-Kyriazi, chief financial officer at StartX.
That's what compelled Harvard College graduate Emily Breslow, 22, to turn down three job offers from big health care firms to work at Bobo Analytics, a start-up developing fitness and health monitoring for athletes, where she is, for all practical purposes, the company's research department.
"I'm running the department," Breslow said. "The ability to have a lot of control, as opposed to doing what I was told to do, was incredibly appealing."
Colleges are making it much easier for students such as Breslow to create a start-up or work at one. Every top American college and university offers classes in entrepreneurship or sets aside facilities where students can hone their ideas with input from outside investors and mentors from the business world.
Breslow's company, for example, is located at the Harvard iLab, which the university created in November 2011 to help start-ups developed on campus. It now serves as a kind of clubhouse for entrepreneurial-minded students and others in the Boston area.
The number of these innovation centers at universities quadrupled between 1975 and 2006, from 104 to more than 500, and the number of faculty teaching entrepreneurship is now more than 9,000, according to the Kauffman Foundation, based in Kansas City, Mo., which supports entrepreneurship.
Most young people leaving college still pursue traditional career paths at large companies. The start-up spirit seems strongest — not surprisingly — at schools known for their business and technology curriculums, and that have booming industries nearby.
And it's not just confined to the two tech zones on the East and West coasts. It's happening in Austin, which has a vibrant young tech industry and the University of Texas, and in North Carolina, where the Research Triangle exerts a strong pull on nearby schools.
In New Haven, the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute reported a 20 percent increase in the number of students applying this year for its start-up accelerator program; some 20 percent of all Yale freshman said in a school survey that they wanted to pursue entrepreneurship.
"Nothing compares to the growth around enrollment in entrepreneurship programs," said Paul Magelli, senior director of the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, another locus of start-up activity due to its standing as a computing powerhouse. "It's certainly the fastest growing field of study in American higher education."
At Northeastern, Sean Casto said students from across the campus —
Casto, 23, is well aware the odds are against him. But in the world of start-ups, failure is often synonymous with experience and could lead to the founding of another business or a job in a similar company.
In the long run, he said, "you can't succeed without failing."
Michael B. Farrell can be reached at michael.farrell
Correction: Because of an editing error, the name of PreApps CEO Sean Casto was misspelled in a caption accompanying an earlier version of this story.


text: This page lists, for the perusal of the public, some of the spam (bulk junk email, unsolicited commercial email, etc.) received here. Spammers steal other people's resources for their advertising, so please don't do business with them. This is page 2; page 1 is here, page 3 is here, page 4 is here, and page 5 is here.


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Unit Tests Don't Find Bugs: the Death of QA
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Unit tests don't find bugs. They find regressions. This is a painful lesson I learned when I first started doing TDD (test-driven development), and it's well known among most TDD circles.
TDD's goal is to prevent programmers from introducing new bugs into working code. However, when you're writing code from scratch, your tests won't help you find all the bugs in your code. That's because you can't possibly write tests for all the ways your software will be used (or abused). When I first started doing TDD, I had really good tests, but I was too tired to do much exploratory QA. However, my boss wasn't, and I was very embarrassed to find that my software had lots of bugs. Simply put, he used my software in ways that I hadn't intended.
I've seen a lot of companies that don't bother writing any tests or doing any QA. They just let their users find all the bugs. Needless to say, I've never had respect for those companies.
However, it's growing more and more popular to destaff the QA department and just require engineers to write lots and lots of tests. Often, these are in the form of unit tests. Even though integration tests can conceivably catch more bugs, they take much longer to run. Hence, even integration tests are often deprioritized.
What I'm discovering is that a lot of projects have both lots of unit tests and lots of bugs. These are bugs that could have been found manually by a QA engineer, but it seems that manual QA testing (i.e. exploratory testing) has gone out of vogue.
I used to think that code that was well-documented, well-styled, well-tested, and code reviewed would rarely have bugs. Sadly, I no longer believe that to be the case. I think we need to go back to the days when we had decently-sized QA departments, perhaps in addition to all the other things we do.
To tweak what Knuth said, "Beware of the above code. I have only tested that it works. I haven't actually tried it."
Published at DZone with permission of Shannon Behrens, DZone MVB. See the original article here.
Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.


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Who are the Tech Scouts?
Tech Scouts are student teams who develop computer- related and workforce preparation skills in service to the school community. Tech scouts:
- Work with teachers, peers and mentors to identify the IT skills they will develop and master as individuals, supported by online learning, mini-lessons and progressively complex tasks.
- Refine and extend their technical skills in hardware configuration and troubleshooting, software application, graphic design and many other areas.
- Apply these skills in interdependent work groups to meet the real needs of their school and community through a "job shop" and long term projects.
- Practice and master the management and interpersonal skills required to function in the workplace.
"Tech Scouts" are high-tech (but not necessarily high-performing) students whose motivation to achieve in school is enhanced by the program. Through Tech Scouts, students make connections to other students in other schools, IT companies, higher education institutions, and service coordination to develop and apply computer technology skills to work on authentic projects for real environments.
Through interagency relationships and shared tele-communications infrastructure (including video- conferencing), students work with state-of-the-art applications in IT workplaces, and obtain specialized training through distance learning courses informed by current IT workplace needs (such as LINUX support). Through these and other experiences, students build connections to regional schools of higher education and leading IT companies, and begin their careers through these relationships.


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I received a little bit more of my new fabric line 'Love to Garden' in the post last week, so thought it would be fun to give some of it away!!
For your chance to win a fat eighth bundle of the range (18 pieces measuring 10"x21") plus a panel, all you have to do is let me know your favourite project that I have designed. Whether it is something small like a pincushion, or one of my larger designs, I would love to hear from you.
On Tuesday 9th October I will draw the name of the lucky winner out of a hat.
Good luck everyone!!!!


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Privacy Policy
Capital Relocation Services, operating as CapRelo ("us", "we", or "our"), runs www.caprelo.com (the "Site"). This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information we receive from users of the Site.
We use your Personal Information only for providing information to you and improving the Site. By using the Site, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.
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Certified in dermatology by the American Board of Dermatology
Special Proprietary Notice and Disclaimer
"Find a Dermatologist" is produced by the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) as references of professional information on individual dermatologists. It is intended to provide the public with quick access to information on dermatologists who are members of the AAD. Neither the database, nor any part of the data, listings, profiles, or other constituent elements may be downloaded, republished, or duplicated, in whole or in part, for commercial purposes, purposes of compiling a mailing list or any other list of dermatologists, or for any other purposes without the prior express written permission of the AAD.
Although the AAD undertakes reasonable efforts to keep the information in "Find a Dermatologist" up to date, the AAD does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or in any way endorse the individuals described therein. In no event shall the AAD be liable for any decision made or action taken in reliance on the information contained therein.


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SmartAsset, a Y Combinator-backed startup offering interactive tools to help homebuyers understand the financial ramifications of their decisions, has raised $1.5 million in new funding.
The round was led by Javelin Venture Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, with participation from YC, Peterson Ventures, Quotidian Ventures, and Identified CEO Brendan Wallace. SmartAsset actually announced funding just two months ago — in the intervening months, SmartAsset took the stage at YC Demo Day, which probably attracted some new investors. With the new money, the company has raised a total of $2.4 million, and Javelin Managing Director Jed Katz is joining SmartAsset's board of directors.
Co-founder and CEO Michael Carvin has said that SmartAsset emerged from his own experience buying a home. When he looked for help online, all he could find was general advice and simplistic financial calculators. SmartAsset tries to go deeper, taking your basic financial information and offering insight like how much money you can afford to borrow and put down, as well as the long-term cost of renting versus buying. The company's calculations are tailored to a specific location, so it can also tell you about the tax implications of a home purchase.
Moving forward, Carvin wants to turn SmartAsset into a broader financial tool that users turn to for a number of difficult financial decisions. Over the next three months, the company plans to add new features to its home buying guide, then Carvin said it will launch similar tools for college and further education.
SmartAsset isn't disclosing its current user numbers, but last month, it said it had more than 20,000. And again, these are people who are at least considering a home purchase, so they're much more valuable to advertisers than a random web visitor.
As a side project, the company also released a tool to help entrepreneurs calculate the impact of their fundraising terms on their ultimate financial outcome. I assume Carvin has been putting that calculator to good use.
SmartAsset Introduction from SmartAsset on Vimeo.


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Bernie Sanders: "Guess Which 10 Companies Aren't Paying Their Share"
Bernie Sanders on The Ten Worst Corporate Tax Avoiders: It's Time for Them to Pay up and Share the Sacrifice
The following is a news release from the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont-I)
By theChild, DailyKos
Posted on August 22, 2011, Printed on August 22, 2011
Bernie Sanders on The Ten Worst Corporate Tax Avoiders: It\'s Time for Them to Pay up and Share the Sacrifice
The following is a news release from the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont-I)
While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding U.S. taxes altogether.
With Congress returning to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit.
Sanders renewed his call for shared sacrifice after it was reported that General Electric and other major corporations paid no U.S. taxes after posting huge profits. Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes.
Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders:
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He also introduced legislation to impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion a year. The senator has said that spending cuts must be paired with new revenue so the federal budget is not balanced solely on the backs of working families.
"We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed," Sanders said, "but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We\'ve got to talk about shared sacrifice."


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Washington (CNN/Dan Merica) – A group of conservative black pastors are responding to President Barack Obama's support of same-sex marriage with what they say will be a national campaign aimed at rallying black Americans to rethink their overwhelming support of the President, though the group's leader is offering few specifics about the effort.
The Rev. Williams Owens, who is president and founder of the Coalition of African-Americans Pastors and the leader of the campaign, has highlighted opposition to same-sex marriage among African-Americans. He calls this campaign "an effort to save the family."
"The time has come for a broad-based assault against the powers that be that want to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women," said Owens, in an interview Tuesday after the launch event at the National Press Club. "I am ashamed that the first black president chose this road, a disgraceful road."
At the press conference, Owens was joined by five other black regional pastors and said there were 3,742 African-American pastors on board for the anti-Obama campaign.
When asked at the press conference for specifics about the campaign – funding, planned events and goals – Owens said only that the group's first fundraiser will be on August 16 in Memphis, Tennessee. But Owens insisted that "we are going to go nationwide with our agenda just like the president has gone to Hollywood."
In May, Obama announced on ABC News that he thought "same sex couples should be able to get married." The president had previously said that he opposed gay marriage, but said in May that his views were personal and did not represent a policy change.
In a fiery Tuesday press conference at the press club, Owens said Obama was taking the black vote for granted and decried the idea of similarities between the gay rights movement and the civil rights movement, an assertion made by the NAACP following Obama's same-sex marriage support.
Owens has long been an opponent of gay marriage and consults with the National Organization for Marriage as a liaison to the black churches.
At the press conference, Owens said that Obama's support of same-sex marriage tantamount to supporting child molestation.
"If you watch the men who have been caught having sex with little boys, you will note that all of them will say that they were molested as a child…" Owens said. "For the president to condone this type of thing is irresponsible."
Owens later walked about those comments back, saying he didn't think the president was condoning molestation.
Earlier this year, memos obtained by The Human Rights Campaign in a Maine civil actions suit revealed that NOM aims at making gay marriage a wedge issued "between gays and blacks,"according to the released confidential plans.
"The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key Democratic constituencies," one NOM memo states. In light of the release, Brian Brown, president of NOM, said that he is proud of the group's "strong record" on minority partnerships.
A Pew Research Center poll conducted in April found that 49% of African-Americans oppose legalized same-sex marriage, compared with 39% who support it. But that shows a softening on the position in recent years; In 2008, only 26% of blacks were in favor of same sex marriage, according to the same Pew poll.
At the same time, black voters overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008, while more recent polling shows a nearly equal level of support for the president's 2012 reelection.
In a Public Religion Research Institute poll released last week, 18% of black Americans surveyed said they see same-sex marriage a "critical issue," putting it behind the economy, education, deficit, a growing wealth gap and immigration.
According to Robert P. Jones, the CEO of the polling company, there is no evidence that same-sex marriage is something African-Americans will bring to the ballot box in November.
"Among African-Americans, I think same-sex marriage will be a nonissue in the election," Jones told CNN. "We just have no evidence what so ever in slippage of support for Obama, even after his announcement in support of same sex marriage."
The reaction of black pastors to the president's support for gay marriage has been as varied as their congregations, ranging from condemnation to congratulations.
"We may disagree with our president on this one issue," Rev. Wallace Charles Smith said from the pulpit of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington on the Sunday after Obama announced his support for legalized gay unions. "But we will keep him lifted up in prayer. … pray for President Barack Obama."


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Panda now offers free antivirus and is banking on the "cloud computing" trend of late in the process:
Panda Security, a leading provider of IT security solutions, today announced the global beta release of Panda Cloud Antivirus, the industry's first and only free cloud-based antivirus thin-client with 50 percent less impact on PC performance compared to the industry average. Consumers can download the free product from http://www.cloudantivirus.com.
With Panda Cloud Antivirus, Panda Security is introducing a new protection model that utilizes a thin-client agent and server architecture which processes and blocks malware more efficiently than locally installed signature-based products. By moving the entire malware scanning and determination process to the cloud and applying non-intrusive interception techniques on the client architecture, Panda Cloud Antivirus is able to provide advanced protection against new and unknown viruses with a lightweight thin-client agent that barely consumes any PC resources.
Traditional antivirus products for PCs rely on multiple locally installed technologies which intercept each file at different layers (entry vector, file system and execution) and scan them using various techniques (antivirus, heuristics, intrusion prevention, behavioral analysis, etc.). This process results in heavy usage of local PC memory and CPU resources, negatively impacting performance. The Panda Cloud Antivirus thin-client agent introduces a new philosophy for on-access asynchronous cloud-scanning. It combines local detection technologies with real-time cloud-scanning to maximize protection while minimizing resource consumption. This optimized model blocks malicious programs as they attempt to execute, while managing less dangerous operations via non-intrusive background scans.
Panda Cloud Antivirus includes local and remote antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit, heuristics and goodware cache, while only consuming an average of 17 MB of RAM and 50 percent of the PC performance impact as compared to the industry average.
Looks interesting. I wonder if this works in Windows 7. Checking...
Update: This thing only works on 32-bit versions of Windows (!!) Wah-wah-waaaaaahhh.... FAIL.


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The tax laws are the same, no matter what size the corporate taxpayer. The difference is the ability of the large business firms to use legal technicalities and interpretations to their advantage, in contrast to the probability that the small business simply follows the tax rules and regulations. Our services help small businesses to arrange their operations for best to take advantage of strategies that would result in a lower tax bill.
True strategic tax planning produces a sizable bill for customers. Certain small businesses are interested in securing simple tax compliance at the lowest possible fee, but it seems logical to pay slightly higher professional fee that would assure your tax savings. Now a day's most of the entrepreneurs are realizing that paying slightly higher professional fees, tax savings would far outweigh the initial expenditure. All entrepreneurs must accept that a positive balance sheet is better than remitting more money in taxes .It is important for business owners not to rely on inadequate tax advice simply. It is better to take the services of professionals.
You do work hard and take too much risk and end of the year pay a large percentage of your profits to the government more than you are required to do. So the best choice is to seek tax planning advice that is thorough and strategic that you will be able to reap the benefits of sophisticated tax planning. It pays for itself many times over. Advanced tax planning does not break any laws or regulations. You just take the services of experienced Tax consultant who can help you to use the laws and regulations to your advantage. Not every Advisor and Tax consultant can do this – get one that can.
We understand each client's situation and then apply our knowledge of the changing tax rules to plan the best business and personal decisions. Our experts can efficiently prepare your tax return for filing your taxes correctly and on time. Financial Planning firm's Services can be a great way to be aware of day to day changing in taxation laws.


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OCEAN PINES – Everyone in northern Worcester County wants their piece of the slots pie, and the Ocean Pines Association (OPA) moved to protect its own interests in future slot machine gambling revenue in a letter to state elected officials early this month.
The letter, dated Dec. 5 but released to the public just this week, asks the Lower Shore delegation to "reconsider the present allocation of funds to reflect the true impact of slots, which will fall on Worcester's largest residential community, and on the smaller communities located on Racetrack Rd."
No one has any real, concrete idea of the impacts slot machines at Ocean Downs would have on surrounding communities, OPA President Dave Stevens said.
The impact on the 15,000 people making their homes in Ocean Pines, which is the largest year-round community in Worcester County, could be severe.
Traffic will certainly increase on Route 589, already considered a congested road, which is several years from dualization under current state plans.
"We have four exits and all four exit onto Route 589. Automatically, you have to look at those interactions," Stevens said. "Certainly, we would expect to see the number of emergency service calls for our police and fire department increase."
The Ocean Pines letter, sent before the County Commissioners asked for all slots revenue to be channeled to the county, versus following the split between county and local municipalities laid out in the state legislation, does not ask for a specific percentage.
"It is our hope that we can work together to improve this legislation, which we understand will be revisited in the 2009 [General Assembly] session," the letter reads.
Ocean Pines, as an unincorporated housing development, is not mentioned in the legislation, unlike Berlin and Ocean City, and has no assigned percentage of revenue. Any funding to mitigate the impact of slot machine gambling at Ocean Downs on the Ocean Pines community would be at the discretion of Worcester County, which under the current law, is assigned 70 percent of an unpredictable take.
Stevens said the OPA expects Worcester to follow its usual budget mechanism of granting funds to Ocean Pines for public safety or other impacts from slot machines at Ocean Downs.
Some would rather not see slots come to Ocean Downs at all. Stevens said that Senator Lowell Stolztfus responded to the letter by agreeing that slot machines could have a devastating impact on Ocean Pines.
The county might have the power to use its zoning authority to block slot machines at Ocean Downs, but Stevens doubts that will happen.
OPA Board member Marty Clarke, who worked with Worcester County Citizens Against Slots to prevent passage of the slot machine referendum, would like to see slots blocked. "I wish that we would fight the zoning. I think it's a terrible thing for the community. I think the impact is not measurable," Clarke said. "I think the impact is beyond measurable."
With support for slot machines in Worcester County essentially split, Clarke does not think the commissioners could be persuaded to block slot machines via zoning regulations.
"I don't want slots. We got them. If we have any impacts from them, we're covered. It's in the legislation," Clarke said.
"The important thing is we exercise prudence and have some faith in the officials we're working with, and confidence they'll arrive at some equitable solution," Stevens said.


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- This event has passed.
Bradley Challenge
December 18, 2022 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Get your gift matched and save the lives of Shelter animals this Holiday season! Thanks to Wendy and George Hines, your donation will be DOUBLED.
Take this opportunity to provide twice as much support to the Jackson County Animal Shelter. Go to www.fotas.org/bradley to donate today!
About Bradley>>>> Bradley is a rescued dog and the beloved "child" of Wendy and George Hines. In his honor, the Hines have generously offered to match up to $10,000 donated to Friends of the Animal Shelter, starting with Giving Tuesday on November 29th, and through the end of the year.
"Bradley is the center of our universe, and we could not love him more if we tried. He has literally changed our lives, and he fills our hearts with the most amazing love. In short, we adore him."
From a rescued dog to a beloved companion…let's get more animals into loving homes. Unleash your generosity and double your impact today!
Go to www.fotas.org/bradley to donate.


text: BD-R SL 25GB 6x 5 Pack Jewel Case Product Number: 43715 The advent of Blu-ray technology has led to the introduction of high capacity storage discs to meet the demand cause by the rapid growth of high definition television (HDTV). Blu-ray discs get their name from blue laser technology. The shorter wavelength of the laser is the reason it is blue in colour. The blue laser has a wavelength of 405nm compared with the wavelength of 650nm for DVD which utilises red laser technology. The benefit of having a blue laser with a shorter wavelength means it is possible to write smaller data pits and therefore vastly increase the amount of data on the disc. Blu-ray discs offere 3 to 5 times the storage capacity of a standard recordable DVD disc, enabling the recording, rewriting and playback of high definition video (HD). This disc complies with BD-R Specification Version 1.1 For use only in drives or recorders that support 25GB Blu-ray Discs without cartridge. Features: Laser Wavelength: 205nm. Hard Coat protective layer. Extremely long archival life. Excellent playback performance. BD-R is for use in BD drives and recorders. Longer lifetime with Hard Coat Protection. Specifications: Capacity: 25GB Speed: 6x Pack Style: 5 Pack Jewel Case


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Wednesday, 28 July 2010
sound comparisons
This is the showcase for a research project conducted at the University of Edinburgh in 2005–2007. The website offers you 'sound comparisons' for about a hundred English words pronounced in fifty or so different native-speaker accents, mainly but not exclusively British. They are presented in narrowish IPA transcription, and for many (but not all) there are sound clips. There's no connected speech.
Unusually, there are also a dozen or so 'historical' accents/varieties covered, ranging from Proto-Germanic to Shakespearean. Strangely, no native speakers of these varieties seem to have been available to offer recordings.
There are also a dozen or so 'other Germanic' varieties, giving the cognates in the relevant languages of the items in the English word list. If you've always wanted to listen to the Frisian word for ear, this is where to find it. (It's iˑər, which you could easily take as some kind of postGaelic Scottish.)
With my browser at least the sound clips are rather flaky: you tend to get two plays (perhaps overlapping) of the word you ask for, followed shortly or indeed after quite a time by other words seemingly chosen at random.
Presumably because the research money was not renewed, the website now gives the impression of having been abandoned. I hope this is not the case: it would be nice to have the missing sound files, e.g. for London or Norwich. It would be nice to have some connected speech. It would be nice to have more accents represented.
Perhaps Warren Maguire's ongoing research will fill some of these gaps.
17 comments:
The trouble seems to be that the files play when one hovers the cursor over the transcription, no need to click on it.ReplyDelete
I see the Danish 'soft d' is transcribed as [lʔ]. I keep hearing that it supposedly sounds like an /l/ to foreigners, but I cannot for the life of me hear it.
Something also seems odd about the vowel qualities. Unless my English pronunciation is completely lopsided of course.
The speaker sounds native at least.
I must speak up for the site. For a while I got poor quality and slow speed onSafari and had to use my unpreferrred Firefox. But then they improved it hugely.ReplyDelete
As Sili says, the trick is to hover rather than click, and to be careful where the cursor goes immediately after.
I agree with you, John - that was an appalling design decision, to have the sound files play when you roll the mouse over the link.ReplyDelete
Some of the transcriptions are pretty flaky too. Looking at the Boston sample, for instance, the transcriber hasn't done a good job at all in distinguishing rhotic and non-rhotic instances of the vowel at the end of brother etc.
None the less, a useful resource just for being able to hear the sound clips. I hope they get to finish the site.
Something that confused me at first was the discrepancy between the transcriptions and the recordings in a few cases. Here is the explanation:ReplyDelete
A few of the transcriptions are based on the speech of more than one speaker from the given location, so that not all transcriptions correspond exactly to the associated recording.
Thanks John for your discussion of our website, and for all the useful comments submitted. Regarding the current state of play with it, well it is still being managed (by Paul Heggarty, who created it and who is best placed to answer questions about functionality), but we've not been adding to it for the reason John has suggested. I think it would be great to expand it, but it would be quite a job, requiring funds we don't currently have, to collect the data, transcribe them, segment the soundfiles, and code the website.ReplyDelete
Regarding the issue of the mismatch between the soundfiles and the transcriptions, there's a number of reasons:
1) Undoubtedly there are some transcriber errors and idiosyncrasies (I did all the transcriptions), most likely in varieties I am not at all familiar with (e.g. Danish); but hopefully that's not the main problem;
2) The phonetic transcription was done a particular way so that it could be fed into a similarity measurement algorithm, so that there are some idiosyncratic features of it; but that's essentially an issue of representation;
3) Some of the speakers, especially the ones giving the traditional dialect forms, gave more than one pronunciation of each word. Only one is given on the website, and since the transcriptions and the soundfile segmentation were done by different people, there's a chance of mismatch;
4) The most important issue is, as Jongseong points out, that the soundfiles and the transcriptions don't necessarily refer to the same thing. This is a result of the transcription procedure, which wasn't initially done with a website in mind. For many of the localities, a number of speakers were recorded. For our dialect similarity study, we wanted a representative transcription from each location; sometimes this was the transcription for one typical speaker, other times it was a composite transcription which included the most common variants across a range of speakers. So, for example, in Boston I recorded about 12 or 13 people reading our wordlist. Three or four of these were older with very local accents, and we made a composite transcription of their most common variants which we labelled 'Boston Traditional'. Likewise, we made a composite transcription based on the speech of the other Boston speakers (who were almost all male, middle-aged and upper working-class) which we labelled 'Boston Typical'. These composite transcriptions are 'averages' of the speakers sampled so to speak. Towards the end of the project we felt it would be a nice idea to make a selection of our data available on the internet, and, with limited time and money, we matched up each of the transcriptions we used in our algorithm with one of the recordings it was based on. Which means they don't always match exactly (so for example the Boston soundfiles have some obviously non-rhotic pronunciations matched with transcriptions indicating rhoticity and vice versa), so it is best to think of the soundfiles and recordings as two different sets of data from a given location.
I did also collect conversational data at quite a few of the locations, and at some point I may put samples of this up on my own website.
Anyway, for further details of the research which gave rise to the Sound Comparisons website, the elicitation techniques and some details of the transcription procedure, have a look at this paper: Warren Maguire, April McMahon, Paul Heggarty and Dan Dediu (2010)
"The past, present, and future of English dialects: Quantifying convergence, divergence, and dynamic equilibrium", Language Variation and Change, 22(1), pp 69-104. Comments and questions welcome!
- Anonymous28 July 2010 at 23:03
Very cool! I also noticed in the Boston sample that the speaker used his PALM-START vowel in BATH which is quite exceptional coming from a North American. The transcription there is wrong too, but that's fine.ReplyDelete
I also remember being surprised to hear a university lecturer, a Boston resident, consistently using a PALM vowel for can't. I don't remember hearing it from any other Bostonian, so it might be just him.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous28 July 2010 at 23:37
Well you don't hear the so-called "Broad A" in (a few) BATH words from many Bostonians these days. Especially not younger ones, as far as I know. You just have to find the right people.ReplyDelete
I object to Standard Canadian [ˈdɔ ̞ˑɾɹ ̩] for 'daughter' and to my ears it doesn't even match the voice sample which is nonetheless authentically Canadian. How can it be [ɔ]?? I'm pronouncing it as I could have sworn most Canadians pronounce it... with [ɑ], just like many Americans. I'm sure that's a typo, even more sure because Australia:Perth 'daughter' is written with a flap but pronounced in the voice sample clearly as an aspirate alveolar stop.ReplyDelete
And having designed sites myself, I confirm that voice samples triggered by simple mouse hovering are just plain irritating, not only because merely moving the mouse causes an audial spray of garbage inadvertantly by the user (hence user confusion) but because these hover areas look exactly like links (more user confusion), causing a two-fold problem of echo (and predictable user anger). Some mistakes are honest mistakes but this is so horrible that it could only be by incompetence I'm afraid. That this obvious design flaw is funded by a grant makes me more irritated. Give me a grant and I'll fix it then. Bah.
Nonetheless, the content could be highly useful if there was more content, more organized and regularly updated. I hate abandoned university sites because it makes it look like academics are only in it for fame and cheap grant money rather than to reach outside of their ivory tower and provide helpful educational services to the public. Grrr. Oh why oh why did you show me that dysfunctional site, lol! Now my day is ruined.
Well to be fair it does mark the ɔ as lowered: [ˈdɔ̞ˑɾɹ̩], though I agree with you it is bizarre to think of it as any sort of ɔ. Some time ago I was told off by a US NS on here for using ɒ for NAm speakers who don't merge it with ɑ, and several of us agreed that that symbol would be a better choice for it acoustically and impressionistically speaking, and not only from the point of view of BrE speakers, but from the point of the IPA norms, though obviously not for NAm speakers who are used to seeing the unmerged phoneme represented as ɔ. More recently JW himself has said here that he considered using the phonetically more appropriate ɒ for it in LPD, but decided against it. I think he argued then that one should not multiply such superficial transcriptional distinctions, but I still think it's more of a heritage issue, like AmE oʊ vs BrE əʊ, although there are realizations on both sides of the Atlantic that overlap, and əʊ itself replaced the oʊ that was used to represent the old RP pronunciation.
So I might have gone along with [ˈdɒˑɾɹ ̩], and that's what that sound file sounds like to me, but I am not a Canadian. However I have heard enough Canadian English to believe you when you say most Canadians pronounce it with [ɑ]. In fact I could have sworn a more tendentious oath than you: that I had never heard a Canadian in Canada or out of it who did not have the LOT-THOUGHT merger realized with something more closely resembling [ɑ] than [ɒ]. Perhaps I have now, or perhaps this sound file is of a posh Canadian who pronounces all his [ɑ]s like that!
But I will concede that it's not very confidence-inspiring that the transcriptions of the test sound files of the word "right" on the home page of soundcomparisons, even if we only take the realizations of the final /t/, are a bit erratic: [rəit] for one that is strongly aspirated (aspiration, though not assibilation, is conscientiously shown on the others), and [ɹäˑɪt] for one with no [t] at all, barely even a gesture in the direction of a glottal stop.
Here in Canada, I will bet my life and the life of my entire family that unrounded [ɑ] is the standard, not [ɒ] in words like "law", "lot" and "thought". My perception is that [ɒ] sounds British-influenced (even snooty if put on for airs), although perhaps it exists in Newfoundland English which deviates quite a bit from the rest of Canada and has a strong Irish lilt.
But [ɔ] is from some extra-terrestrial dialect that I don't recognize. ET phone home, people! ;o)
I gather that the site's audio/transcription mismatch must be because people from representative dialect and language areas were simply told to pronounce the words naturally while the transcriptions had been written out and matched to the audio files separately. The less moronic way of doing this would be to collect the audio files and properly transcribe each one after actually listening to them.
Okay, I'm not crazy. Hooray! The Cambridge History of the English Language: English in North America (2001), p.428 confirms that the vowel in question is either [ɑ] or [ɒ] in Canadian English, although I just never hear [ɒ] from any native Manitoban. Perhaps this is because we freeze in the winter time and we can't be bothered to round our lips in minus 40 degree weather, hehe.ReplyDelete
One last message, following up on my uncertainty about the speech of our fellow Newfies. If we check the audio files of three Newfoundlanders, there is no perceptible rounding of this vowel in question whatsoever. In fact, I would transcribe the pronunciation of "modern" of the 1st and 3rd speakers as [ˈmaɾɚn] with a very fronted [a] while the 2nd speakers sounds as if he's been mostly assimilated into the mainstream Canadian accent and uses [ɑ]. By comparison, I say [ˈmɑɾɚn].ReplyDelete
Oxford Canadian Dictionary uses [ɒ] for the Cot/Caught vowel(s).ReplyDelete
Furthermore, this speech sample has a lot of cot/caught vowel rounding:ReplyDelete
Superb Article...ReplyDelete
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Kotchman takes part in simulated game
VIERA, Fla. -- Before the Marlins faced the Nationals in Viera on Sunday, several players remained back at the Roger Dean Stadium complex to take part in simulated games.
First baseman Casey Kotchman was one of them.
Kotchman, who received four stitches to his left ring finger last Monday, took some at-bats for the first time in six days.
The veteran first baseman sliced his finger after colliding with the machine that flipped infield pop ups in a drill.
"Kotchman, he's progressing," manager Mike Redmond said. "He threw and he hit. He had a couple of at-bats in a simulated game today. He swung the bat. It's kind of on him when he feels ready to go out and play in a game. He's [moving] pretty quickly for a guy who had four stitches in his hand.
Redmond expects Kotchman could be in games soon.


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With tensions continuing to rise with Russia, Ukrainian businesses are looking for opportunities elsewhere.
In the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, near the Russian border, economic change is underway. On a warm summer's day riding the cable cars at an amusement park in Kharkiv, you would never guess there is a war going on next door.
Just a few hundred kilometers from here the Ukrainian military is battling pro-Russian separatists in a months-long conflict that has divided the country.
Kharkiv has remained relatively peaceful despite the conflict in neighboring Donetsk province, but the economy has taken a hit because of tensions with Russia.
So, business owners are looking for opportunities elsewhere.
Industries in places like Kharkiv were built around serving the needs of the former Soviet Union. Ukraine still exports about 25 percent of its products to Russia.
These include agricultural goods like sunflower seed oil, as well as other food and heavy machinery.
But new Russian trade restrictions on Ukrainian products have started to affect local businesses.
Dmytro Kutovyi runs a successful construction business in Kharkiv, his wife owns a popular upscale cafe, and they are active with a leading civil society forum.
"Probably in the short perspective, the Ukrainian economy will suffer losses because cooperation with Russia has lessened and in some fields has stopped," Kutovyi said. "But nothing extremely awful has happened during these months."
Russia has already put restrictions on food imports from Ukraine and exporters have complained about new, prohibitive customs requirements to access Russian markets.
Kutovy says the increased pressure from Moscow has encouraged businesses in Kharkiv to start looking increasingly inward to Ukraine for opportunities.
"No economy can be dependent on one, even a really large, customer," he said. "Even now, companies are slowly starting to work on the domestic market, which is traditionally important for such fields as the defense industry."
One of Kharkiv's biggest industries is the production of military vehicles bought by Russia. Ironically, the rebels fighting against the Ukrainian military are accused of using Russian-supplied equipment.
A new regional administration is focusing on shifting the defense industry to support the local economy, as well as the country's armed forces.
The head of the Kharkiv state authority, Igor Baluta, says the industry was long neglected under the previous government.
"Things for many years have been falling into pieces, say, sabotaged, by the leaders of the Ministry of Defense. We are trying to restore it now," he said.
The new government of President Petro Poroshenko has agreed to trade deals with the European Union to encourage more economic cooperation with the West.
But Russia remains the economic powerhouse in the region, its greatest leverage stemming largely from the supply of natural gas.
In the meantime, as war rages, Kharkiv is optimistic the most promising business horizon is at home.


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Jani Hartikainen has made a few updates to his packageizer script for the Zend Framework to improve its interface.
Now, based on some feedback from users, I've improved the user interface of the tool: You can now select multiple items for inclusion in the package, and I've made it possible to get the packages in .phar format. It also has initial support for different libraries, ie. Zend Framework 1.6 and Zend Framework SVN trunk, but currently only 1.6 stable is available.
The tool allows you to select just the packages out of the Zend Framework that you might want to work with and packages them up, along with their dependencies, into a simple, portable file that can be used anywhere the Framework normally could.


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Paris, Charles De Gaulle airport, 13th October 2001.
The documents were impressive. I had an official letter from Le Directeur des Rencontres, Ministere de la Culture of Mali certifying that a visa was awaiting me in Bamako, a certificate of accreditation and an invitation letter from Olivier Poivre d'Arvor, a well-known personality in France and the director of AFAA/French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Still, I left well in time, knowing there might be problems. I was to do a report for the Prince Claus Foundation in the Netherlands and was on my way to attend the Fourth African
Photography Encounter in Bamako. I also had my yellow fever certificate.
None of what happened at the airport seemed sinister, until you realised what it was leading to. The immigration in Hall B in Terminal 2 at Charles de Gaulle is BEFORE the check-in desk. The questions started well before then. Where was I going, what did I have with me, why was I going. We went over and over the same things.
Lengthy manoeuvres that kept slowing me down. Still, there was almost an hour to go to departure time when I reached the check in desk, and immigration had already been done. I had a confirmed ticket, so I wasn't worried. There were plenty of passengers at the check in desk, but when it came to me, the officer calmly said, "Sorry sir, the flight was closed at 10 o' clock." No degree of persuasion, or my insistence that I had arrived at the designated place in the airport well in time and that the delay was due to airport officials, seemed to matter. The fact that immigration, security and airlines check-in desks operate independently, made it easier for the check-in desk to deny responsibility. I had one of these cheap tickets, non- refundable, non-endorsable, so I was stuck.
Eventually, when I pointed out to the individuals who had delayed me, they did offer me an alternative booking for the outgoing flight. I could leave on a date FOLLOWING my date of return. No doubt they found it funny. I offered to pay to get onto another flight, but that too couldn't apparently be done. By then I had worked out what was going on, and asked them to book me on the date they suggested, AFTER my due date of return. This they did. I could see people were still checking-in, and knew, if I could get through the blockade, I would get on the flight.
So I took a flight out to the nearest airport from which I could get a connecting flight. The idea being, that if I went through the check- in procedure elsewhere, where such barricades might not be present, they would no longer have grounds for refusing to let me fly. I left early in the morning from my hotel in Strasbourg, taking the tram and the bus through the fog at night to be the first person to arrive at the check-in desk. The woman at the desk at this small airport was extremely helpful. When I said I wanted to go to Bamako with a connecting flight, she immediately took my ticket and issued me a
luggage tag to Bamako. Then of course she discovered I was not booked on the flight. She made a tentative booking, issued me a `boarding pass' without a seat number, and put in a note in the computer that I was a passenger bound for Bamako. She even gave my luggage (now tagged for Paris, in place of Bamako) a priority tag, so I would not lose time changing planes.
The luggage arrived early as planned. I rushed across to terminal B, arriving well in time to lay a claim to a seat. People were still checking in. When I approached the officer in charge, she whipped the temporary boarding pass from my hand, tore it to bits, and with a dramatic gesture, let the flimsy flight coupon fall to my hand. "The are no seats" was the terse reply.
This vulgar demonstration of power, reminded me of the article I had been reading on the 13th, the day I was first refused onto the plane, in the Wall Street Journal Europe (October 12-13, 2001, Brussels, page 3). [Lt. Ken, a 28 year old pilot from Washington state was munching on Twizzlers candy at the controls of his jet when the 57- millimeter artillery rounds started exploding below. "I've been peppered before, hunting pheasant, but it doesn't really compare." He said in Vinson's ready room. Vinson's air wing is trying to put all ts pilots through combat flights ? learning the tricks "before the other guys get smart," as Capt. Wright puts it.
Capt. Wright saw two MIGs parked at the end of the runway. He fired a laser-guided bomb at one; the pilot of another F-14 nearby hit the second. "When they blew, they blew big ? you could see they were full of fuel and ammunition." But infrared images indicated that the MIG engines were cold, which means that the jets weren't about to take off ? much to Capt. Wright's annoyance. "We would have had so much fun shooting them down" he said. As Capt. Wright flew back to the ship, chewing on a peanut-butter sandwich and sharing his post-battle emotions with the flight officer sitting behind, they suddenly had to dispense death to a different enemy: a cockroach had crawled up the airman's legs. "We got a little bit of hilarity on that," he said.]
John Wayne might have died, but these Texan-led soldiers could well have been riding into the prairie to `cut em off at the pass'. Five hundred years later, they continue to find new `Indians' to `dispense death to'.
As for the luxuriant growth of hair on my face. I've decided to let it grow longer.
Shahidul Alam
Tue Oct 16, 2001


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A froe is used for the controlled splitting (riving) of green wood. Typical uses are shingle making, splitting saplings for fences, and splitting blanks for furniture making. In earlier days, they were even used to make siding.
The mechanical advantage of a 20" long handle, along with a blade designed for controlled splitting, lets a user do quite accurate work after a bit of practice. The blade is 12" long, 2 1/2" deep and 5/16" thick.
Basic instructions for use, including how to make a riving brake, are included.


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I'm getting married in less than two months, and I just can't fathom the concept of changing my name. I've been who I am for nearly 41 years, and I am the same person in marriage. It feels so archaic and punitive to be stripped of your name upon marriage, like women who were forced to leave their families and become part of their husband's family upon marriage.
When my future husband and I were first dating, he assumed I'd take his name upon marriage. I told him no early on - one, because I love my name, and two, because he's been married before so there's already been a Mrs. _____. His sister also shares my first name, so if I changed my last name to his, we'd have identical names. (Sharing first is confusing enough.)
When he became slightly indignant, saying that if we were going to be a family, we ought to have the same last name, I simply suggested that he change his last name to mine. He was flummoxed. Mine is, without doubt, a "better" last name - it's more melodic, easier to spell, and it goes better with his first name. He also likes my family more than his own family of origin. We both agreed that, if we were to share a last name, mine would be a better choice.
In the end, though, he just couldn't fathom changing his own name, either. He's been known by that name for 40 years, too. And that made him suddenly understand how shockingly presumptuous he had been in assuming that I'd naturally just abandon my own name without question.


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Afghan Security Agreement Is Still Unsigned — Who's At Fault?
Afghan Security Agreement Is Still Unsigned — Who's At Fault?
Delays continue to beset a proposed bilateral security agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan. The pact would govern U.S. troops if they remain in Afghanistan past 2014. Deadlines have come and gone, but still no agreement has been signed by the two parties. Now, the situation seems to have deepened into a political standoff between the Pentagon and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. To understand how it got to this point, Robert Siegel turns to Sean Carberry, reporting from Kabul, and Tom Bowman, NPR's Pentagon correspondent.
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
And I'm Robert Siegel. In Afghanistan, the U.S. is in a political standoff with the government of President Hamid Karzai. At issue is what's called a bilateral security agreement that would govern U.S. troops if they stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014. President Obama addressed the issue earlier this week in his State of the Union speech.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If the Afghan government signs a security agreement that we have negotiated, a small force of Americans could remain in Afghanistan with NATO allies to carry out two narrow missions: training and assisting Afghan forces; and counterterrorism operations to pursue any remnants of al-Qaida.
SIEGEL: Here's the problem. That if the president started with, it's a very big if. Karzai has so far refused to sign this agreement, despite U.S. threats to pull out entirely without a deal, and for more on what is happening here or not happening, we're joined by NPR's correspondent in Kabul, Sean Carberry. Hello, Sean.
SEAN CARBERRY, BYLINE: Hi Robert.
SIEGEL: And our Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hello Robert.
SIEGEL: Let's start with Sean Carberry. Many U.S. and Afghan officials say that this agreement is critical to the long-term stability of Afghanistan. Why won't President Karzai sign it?
CARBERRY: Well, that's the question at every dinner table conversation over the last few weeks here, and there are a lot of theories. They seem to be boiling down to two main lines of thought here. One is that he's trying to hold on to power in the waning days of his presidency. There are elections scheduled for April to elect his successor, and as soon as he signs this deal he effectively becomes a lame duck. And people also think he wants to hold this over the election process, to manipulate it so that his favorite successor gets elected.
The second thing is that he's saying he will sign this when a peace process begins with the Taliban, demanding the U.S. start that process. So he appears to think that in his waning days, he can get a peace deal that hasn't happened for the last 12 years, and there's several flaws to this thinking. And the first is that the Taliban have said for years they're not going to talk to Karzai. They don't recognize him as a legitimate ruler.
And secondly, the Taliban oppose this bilateral security agreement. So they have no incentive to talk. They can prevent it from happening by not talking. So Karzai seems to be ceding the power in this situation to the Taliban.
SIEGEL: Well, let's turn from Kabul to here in Washington. Tom Bowman, the U.S. has set several deadlines for Karzai to sign this bilateral security agreement. He's ignored those deadlines. Why is it so important for the U.S. to maintain a force in Afghanistan? Why is it so important that it's led all these deadlines slip?
BOWMAN: Well, the Pentagon will tell you, and commanders in Afghanistan will say the same thing, that, listen, the Afghan forces have come a long way. They still need a lot of help. General Joe Dunford, the top American commander in Afghanistan, will meet with the president on Tuesday. And his argument is going to be listen, you gave me a mission, to train the Afghans, assist the Afghans and to mount a counter-terror mission to go after the remnants of al-Qaida and some Taliban leaders.
If you want me to do that mission, I need 10,000 troops to do that. That's the number. And if you don't want to do that, well maybe we should start pulling out. But there are clearly some within the administration, mainly in the White House, and Vice President Joe Biden for years has basically been saying listen, we've done a lot in Afghanistan, it's time to get out of there.
Members of Congress, some of them are saying the same thing. So that's basically the argument we have now.
SIEGEL: Well, is the U.S. position that they could exercise a zero-option and that if Karzai won't agree to a deal that the U.S. would pull out completely? Is he effectively calling Washington's bluff on this?
BOWMAN: I think he is calling Washington's bluff. There are some who are calling for the zero-option. Some White House officials have basically leaked that over the past year, that we could go down to zero. And I've been told interestingly that American defense contractors over there like DynCorp, who have 10,000 employees in Afghanistan doing everything from feeding soldiers to fixing radar dishes, they've been told just within the last few weeks to at least plan for having no U.S. troops in the country by the end of the year.
Most people don't think it'll happen, but it's still, you know, a possibility, most would say a remote possibility.
SIEGEL: Sean Carberry in Kabul, former U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in an interview here on MORNING EDITION on Thursday said that Karzai, President Karzai, this is a quote, "has been despondent about the situation with Pakistan." I've heard senior U.S. officials say that Karzai blames all of his problems on Pakistan. How does Pakistan figure into his suspicions about the U.S.?
CARBERRY: Well, he believes that Pakistan controls the Taliban. And he believes the U.S. has significant leverage over Pakistan. So all along he's felt that the U.S. could bring this thing to a close by pressuring Pakistan to basically shut down the Taliban. And so this feeds into his belief that the U.S. is not interested in peace here, that it doesn't have, you know, genuine interests in finishing the war. He essentially says, and his security advisor yesterday said, that the U.S. has to choose between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
One thing, if I can, I just want to jump back to a point that Tom just made about the issue of whether or not the BSA will be signed, whether it was calling Karzai's bluff, one thing people here say is that the uncertainty of this period, of not knowing if there will be a post-2015 mission, is doing horrible damage to the economy here, and it's feeding the Taliban, allowing them to get stronger in this period of uncertainty.
And so that's what Western officials here say is most damaging is that as long as this is not signed, money is leaving the country, and the Taliban are getting bolder.
SIEGEL: I just have a question for both of you. We'll start with Sean Carberry. Would some residual U.S. presence, as it's understood there, spell the difference between an Afghan security force that can defend the country and maintain a stable government, and almost certain defeat at the hands of the Taliban?
CARBERRY: Essentially yes. I've talked to some U.S. military commanders here who are very much convinced that the Afghan forces need the continued support and training and that without that, certainly the Taliban wouldn't overrun or come rolling into Kabul, but they could certainly chip away and start turning the balance against the Afghan forces here.
SIEGEL: Tom Bowman?
BOWMAN: And I would agree with that. I was talking with a general when I was over in Afghanistan back in May and June, and I was asking him about the Afghan forces. He said, well, basically the glass is half-full. They need a lot more support. They have problems with attrition, with illiteracy. There's still a lack of good officers and sergeants in the Afghan forces. But most people think they do need the U.S. forces there not only to train them but almost to steel their spine, too, in the next couple of years.
SIEGEL: Tom, is there some obvious timeline to all this? I mean, is there some point at which it's too late to sign a bilateral security agreement?
BOWMAN: Well, one would think once Karzai leaves after the election, it's in April, if the new president doesn't sign the agreement, that probably is the drop-dead time.
SIEGEL: NPR's Tom Bowman, who covers the Pentagon, who was with us here in Washington; and Sean Carberry in Kabul. Thanks to both of you.
BOWMAN: You're welcome, Robert.
CARBERRY: You're welcome.
CORNISH: This is NPR News.
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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.


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SanDisk today announced the newest addition to its wireless storage line - the SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick.
The Connect Wireless Stick ranges in capacity from 16GB to 128GB and in price from $30 to $100.
SanDisk's first Wireless Stick, the Connect Wireless Flash Drive, was released two years ago, came in 16GB and 32GB capacities and was priced at $49.99 and $59.99, respectively.
As its predecessor did, the new wireless thumb drive also uses a USB 2.0 (480Mbps) connection to upload content before being able to stream it over Wi-Fi. SanDisk claims the Connect Wireless Stick has enough bandwidth to stream high-definition movies and music to up to three devices at the same time.
The drive is capable of supporting a single video stream for up to 4.5 hours on a single charge, SanDisk said.
The new flash drive is controlled via the SanDisk Connect app, which is free and downloadable from SanDisk's or or Amazon.com's website.
The Connect Wireless Stick is compatible with iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, Android devices, Windows PCs and Apple computers. It works with iOS version 8.0 or higher, Android 4.2 or higher, Windows Vista/7/8, Mac OS 10.6 or higher, and via web browser for other Wi-Fi enabled devices, according to SanDisk.
The thumb drive is 3.03-in x 0.75-in x 0.43 in. in size and comes with a one-year warranty.