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Vitamin C: 6 Different Forms, Their Benefits, + How to Use Them
This blog does not intend to provide diagnosis...
In this article:
- How Common Is Vitamin C Deficiency?
- How To Measure Vitamin C In The Body
- Risks Factors Of Vitamin C Deficiency
- Symptoms Of Vitamin C Deficiency
- Fruits Sources Of Vitamin C
- Vegetable Sources Of Vitamin C
- Health Benefits Of Vitamin C
- 1. Ascorbic Acid
- 2. Ascorbate and Vitamin C Metabolites (Ester-C®)
- 3. Vitamin C with Bioflavonoids
- 4. Liposomal Vitamin C
- 5. Ascorbyl Palmitate
- 6. Vitamin C with Rose Hips
- Is Vitamin C Safe?
Vitamin C, also referred to as ascorbic acid or ascorbate, has been one of the most researched vitamins over the last 50 years. A search of the scientific literature reveals that over 65,000 studies have been conducted on vitamin C in the past century.
Many scientists believe that at one time the human body had the ability to make vitamin C, but due to a genetic mutation (in the L-gulonolactone oxidase gene), we lost this capacity over time. Essentially, all species of animals, including most mammals, can make vitamin C—the exceptions are humans, monkeys, and guinea pigs as well as some bats, birds, and fish species. As a result, we humans must consume vitamin C in our diets.
Currently, the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin C is 90 mg per day for men and 75 mg per day for women. Smokers, who are 400 percent more likely to be deficient than non-smokers due to the excess oxidation caused by the cigarettes, require more to maintain healthy levels of the vitamin. The brain and adrenal glands have the highest concentrations of vitamin C at 15 to 50 times higher than those found in the blood. Vitamin C, which has antioxidant properties, is also an enzyme "co-factor" for at least eight important biochemical reactions.
While the standard Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) amount is sufficient to avoid conditions like scurvy, which is caused by severe vitamin C deficiencies, they are insufficient to achieve other presumed health benefits, including promoting a stronger immune system and cardiovascular, brain, and skin health. Some have suggested that this minimum vitamin C intake should be at least 200 mg per day to optimize the full benefits of vitamin C.
How Common Is Vitamin C Deficiency?
According to a 2004 study of Americans, 14 percent of males and 10 percent of females were vitamin C deficient. In addition, up to six percent of kids ages 12 to 17 had insufficient levels. Seventeen percent of males between ages 25 to 64 were deficient while 12 percent of females in that demographic had low blood levels. A 1999 study in Britain found that 33 percent of those 65 years of age consumed insufficient amounts of vitamin C.
A 2009 study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that over seven percent of people age six and older were vitamin C deficient when their blood was tested. More than half of those surveyed consumed too low amounts of vitamin C-rich foods.
I've seen it in my practice as well. In the last five years, I diagnosed at least four patients with scurvy, a disease that was traditionally diagnosed in British sailors who had limited access to fresh fruit. My first patient with scurvy was a 40-year-old woman who smoked and admitted to a poor diet. She was concerned about her bleeding gums and easy skin bruising, and after her dentist confirmed the absence of gum disease, I ordered a blood test which confirmed a vitamin C deficiency, leading to the diagnosis of scurvy. Her bleeding gums and bruising symptoms improved after a few weeks of vitamin C supplementation. The other three patients also had significant bruising and bleeding gums as their initial symptoms.
How To Measure Vitamin C In The Body
There are two main ways vitamin C can be measured in the body. The first is a blood serum level. For women, normal levels are between 0.3-2.7 mg/dL while normal for men is 0.2-2.1 mg/dL. The second is checking vitamin C levels in white blood cells, or leukocytes. The reference range depends on the lab.
Risks Factors Of Vitamin C Deficiency
- Poor diet, including low consumption of fruits and vegetables
- Tobacco smoking (each cigarette oxidizes about 40-60 mg of vitamin C)
- Air pollution exposure
- Heavy metal exposure (lead, mercury)
Symptoms Of Vitamin C Deficiency
- Bruising
- Fatigue
- Depression
- Bleeding gums
- Joint pain
- Bone pain
- Muscle aches
- Swelling
Fruits Sources Of Vitamin C
- Acerola cherries
- Avocado
- Guava
- Papaya
- Mangos
- Oranges
- Pineapple
- Cantaloupe
- Kiwi
- Strawberries
Vegetable Sources Of Vitamin C
- Bell peppers
- Bok choy
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Kale
- Brussel sprouts
- Potato
Health Benefits Of Vitamin C
- Helps treat anemia by increasing iron absorption
- Collagen and skin health
- Heart health
- Immune support
- Memory health
- Helps prevent periodontal disease
- Helps prevent upper respiratory infections/colds
- Helps prevent seizure disorders
- Helps prevent sepsis (blood infections)
In addition to the benefits discussed above, vitamin C appears to be beneficial for those admitted to a hospital, specifically, the intensive care unit. A 2019 meta-analysis study in Nutrients, which looked at more than 18 studies and over 2,000 patients, noted that hospital patients who supplemented with vitamin C reduced their ICU stay by 8 to 18 percent compared to those who were not given vitamin C.
Various formulations are available to consumers.
1. Ascorbic Acid
Ascorbic acid is the most commonly consumed and also the least expensive form of vitamin C available. However, its slight acidic component can make it hard on the digestive system for some, especially those with stomach acid issues. Many studies use this formulation of vitamin C. While ascorbic acid is synthetically made, it is identical to the formulations found in nature. Since studies show only 30 percent of a given dose is actually absorbed, researchers have also sought other formulations that may be better absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract. Ascorbic acid is available in tablets, capsules, or as a powder. The following are mineral ascorbates.
- Calcium Ascorbate – This formulation contains both calcium (at 100 mg) and ascorbate (at 900 mg) and should be considered by those who want to improve bone health while also preventing osteopenia and osteoporosis. One of its advantages is that it causes less gastric irritation than the ascorbic acid formation while maintaining equal antioxidant capacity, according to a 2018 study.
- Magnesium Ascorbate – This formulation contains both magnesium (50 to 100 mg) and 900 mg of ascorbate. This may be a great option for those on magnesium-lowering medications (i.e. acid reducers and diuretics), those with chronic headaches, or those with frequent leg cramps. Since magnesium deficiency can also increase the risk for heart palpitations or arrhythmias, magnesium ascorbate can be considered in those at risk.
- Sodium Ascorbate – This formulation contains both sodium (~100 mg) and 900 mg of ascorbate. Those who are on a low-salt diet should avoid this formulation. While most people on a low-salt diet should keep their daily total to less than 2,000 mg, even small amounts can add up over time.
2. Ascorbate and Vitamin C Metabolites (Ester-C®)
Ascorbate and Vitamin C Metabolites (Ester-C®) is a patented formulation of calcium-ascorbate that was discovered in the 1980s. It contains a small amount of vitamin C metabolites such as calcium threonate, xylonate, and lyxonate, as well as dehydroascorbic acid. The manufacturer claims it helps improve absorption and results in higher vitamin C blood levels compared to regular ascorbic acid.
A 2008 study evaluated blood serum and leukocytes levels after ingestion of calcium ascorbate versus regular ascorbic acid. The blood serum ascorbic acid levels were equal in both groups. However, those who took the calcium ascorbate formulation had higher vitamin C leukocyte (white blood cell) levels.
3. Vitamin C with Bioflavonoids
Vitamin C is also combined with antioxidants known as bioflavonoids. Proponents of this formulation are drawn to the fact that vitamin C with bioflavonoids may be better absorbed. A 1988 study showed this might be the case. In the study, it was shown that vitamin C with bioflavonoids was 35 percent better absorbed when compared to the regular ascorbic acid formulation. It is also a better option for those who may develop gastric symptoms from ascorbic acid.
4. Liposomal Vitamin C
Liposomal vitamin C is a formulation that appears to have improved bioavailability or absorption properties. To help increase absorption, scientists have developed liposomal vitamin C, a fat-soluble covering that helps the ascorbic acid molecule pass through the digestive tract more easily. The data indicates that oral delivery of vitamin C encapsulated in liposomes results in blood concentrations of vitamin C that are greater than un-encapsulated oral formulations, such as ascorbic acid, but less than intravenous administration.
Further, a 2020 study showed that liposomal vitamin C could lower blood pressure at a lower dosage than regular vitamin C in laboratory rats.
5. Ascorbyl Palmitate
This formulation allows vitamin C, which is normally water-soluble, to become fat-soluble. It is usually added to topical vitamin C preparations so that it can be absorbed in the skin. It is also used in suppositories and as food preservatives. It is sometimes marketed as a vitamin C ester but should not be confused with Ester-C.
6. Vitamin C with Rose Hips
Formulations of vitamin C with rose hips normally contain regular ascorbic acid. Rose hips are the fruits of rose plants and contain a high amount of vitamin C, which is well absorbed. Rose hips also contain many antioxidants, including lycopene, phenols, flavonoids, ellagic acid, and vitamin E.
Is Vitamin C Safe?
Vitamin C, in all formulations, has a great safety profile. Doses up to 2,000 mg per day are commonly taken and well-tolerated. Diarrhea or loose stool is not likely unless 3,000 mg per day is exceeded. However, if a large daily dose is spread out and taken up to three times per day, digestive issues are less likely to occur.
- Hampl JS, Taylor CA, Johnston CS. Vitamin C deficiency and depletion in the United States: the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988 to 1994. Am J Public Health. 2004;94(5):870‐875. doi:10.2105/ajph.94.5.870
- Gaby, Alan. Nutritional Medicine , Second Edition April 2017
- Harrison FE, May JM. Vitamin C function in the brain: vital role of the ascorbate transporter SVCT2. Free Radic Biol Med. 2009;46(6):719–30. doi: 10.1016/j.freeradbiomed.2008.12.018.
- Levine M, Conry-Cantilena C, Wang Y, et al. Vitamin C pharmacokinetics in healthy volunteers: evidence for a recommended dietary allowance. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996;93(8):3704‐3709. doi:10.1073/pnas.93.8.3704
- Hampl JS, Taylor CA, Johnston CS. Vitamin C deficiency and depletion in the United States: the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988 to 1994. Am J Public Health. 2004;94(5):870‐875. doi:10.2105/ajph.94.5.870
- Bates CJ, Prentice A, Cole TJ, et al. Micronutrients: highlights and research challenges from the 1994-5 National Diet and Nutrition Survey of people aged 65 years and over. Br J Nutr. 1999;82(1):7‐15. doi:10.1017/s0007114599001063
- American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2009 Nov;90(5):1252-63. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.2008.27016. Epub 2009 Aug 12.
- Staudte H, Sigusch BW, Glockmann E. Grapefruit consumption improves vitamin C status in periodontitis patients. Br Dent J. 2005;199(4):213‐210. doi:10.1038/sj.bdj.4812613
- Hemilä H, Chalker E. Vitamin C Can Shorten the Length of Stay in the ICU: A Meta-Analysis. Nutrients. 2019;11(4):708. Published 2019 Mar 27. doi:10.3390/nu11040708
- Yung S, Mayersohn M, Robinson JB. Ascorbic acid absorption in humans: a comparison among several dosage forms. J Pharm Sci. 1982;71(3):282‐285. doi:10.1002/jps.2600710304
- Lee JK, Jung SH, Lee SE, et al. Alleviation of ascorbic acid-induced gastric high acidity bycalcium ascorbate in vitro and in vivo. Korean J Physiol Pharmacol. 2018;22(1):35‐42. doi:10.4196/kjpp.2018.22.1.35
- Moyad MA, Combs MA, Vrablic AS, Velasquez J, Turner B, Bernal S. Vitamin C metabolites, independent of smoking status, significantly enhance leukocyte, but not plasma ascorbate concentrations. Adv Ther. 2008;25(10):995‐1009. doi:10.1007/s12325-008-0106-y
- Vinson JA, Bose P. Comparative bioavailability to humans of ascorbic acid alone or in a citrus extract. Am J Clin Nutr. 1988;48(3):601‐604. doi:10.1093/ajcn/48.3.601
- Davis JL, Paris HL, Beals JW, et al. Liposomal-encapsulated Ascorbic Acid: Influence on Vitamin C Bioavailability and Capacity to Protect Against Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury. Nutr Metab Insights. 2016;9:25‐30. Published 2016 Jun 20. doi:10.4137/NMI.S39764
- Khalili A, Alipour S, Fathalipour M, et al. Liposomal and Non-Liposomal Formulations of Vitamin C: Comparison of the Antihypertensive and Vascular Modifying Activity in Renovascular Hypertensive Rats. Iran J Med Sci. 2020;45(1):41‐49. doi:10.30476/ijms.2019.45310


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Previous Lesson
Complete and Continue
Get Started with Mindfulness
Start Here
Are you ready to be mindful? (1:53)
Introduction (7:24)
Common Questions
Is mindfulness for everyone? (2:38)
Is mindfulness a relaxation technique? (4:04)
How long should I practice? (4:44)
What is the best practice for me? (2:43)
How do I stop my mind from wandering? (1:47)
How Mindfulness Helps
The science of mindfulness (7:38)
Mindfulness at work (10:59)
Mindfulness for everyday life (6:32)
The habit forming brain
Do you know what makes you happy? (2:42)
How to Sit
The importance of posture (8:07)
Meditating on a cushion (2:12)
Meditating using an office chair (0:44)
Meditating using a meditation bench (1:30)
Guided Meditation Practices
The CALM practice (14:30)
A mindful breathing practice (9:32)
The Three-Minute Breathing Space (4:07)
The STOP practice (4:26)
The counting practice (6:03)
The "what went well?" practice (2:05)
A loving-kindness practice (10:54)
A four-part awareness practice (19:46)
A mindful eating practice (24:04)
A mindful body scan (50:36)
Next Steps
What's next? Gathering tools to continue your practice (10:59)
Forcefulness vs. gentleness (4:53)
Awareness and worldview (1:25)
A four-part awareness practice
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subset: commoncrawl


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Joe Horn responds to Deion Sanders on concussions
At one point during the NFL Network's supersized pregame show for the Super Bowl on Sunday, Deion Sanders addressed the issue of concussions in the NFL and said he thought that he thought people were exaggerating their problems to get involved in lawsuits against the league.
"The game is a safe game, the equipment is better, I don't buy all these guys coming back with these concussions. I'm not buying all that," Sanders said. "Half these guys are trying to make money off the deal. That's real talk. That's really how it is. I wish they'd be honest and tell the truth because it's keeping kids away from our game."
As you'd imagine, Sanders' strong words found some disagreement in the football world. Former NFL receiver Joe Horn, one of the players involved in the lawsuits called them "asinine" during an interview on The David Baumann Show on 1080 The Team and promised to discuss it with Sanders in person.
"Nationally, publicly, he made that comment. I think Junior Seau's family, I think Dave Duerson's, I think some families that had fathers, grandfathers or uncles who died from some of those concussions and diseases that caused that, he should come nationally and apologize to those families, because he don't know," Horn said.
Horn also explained why he was involved in the lawsuit and said that monetary reward wasn't the only way he'd consider the effort a success.
"I'm just upset that it wasn't handled properly when we got concussions the way it's being handled now. I'm glad it's being handled now that way," Horn said. "It needs to be addressed and if the NFL has to pay for that, and hey, it is what is, but if they don't and they're brought to justice and just how to handle better situations, then I'm OK with that too."
We can't know the motivations of all the players taking part in legal action against the NFL, but any suggestion about being honest and telling the truth has to involve the seriousness of concussions. Whoever decides about kids playing the game deserves all the information on the subject.


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Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman addressed the problems surrounding its UP fitness tracking bracelet (some of which had a tendency to die) with a dramatic unconditional guarantee today.
In a post on the company's site today, Rahman announced that Jawbone thinks it has identified the problems with the bands that was causing some to brick, stating that it was an issue with two capacitors in the power system that could cause bracelets to fail to hold a charge. And then he puts his money on the table to back up the product offering a full refund, for any or no reason at all. What's more, customers do not even have to return the bracelets.
This means that for whatever reason, or no reason at all, you can receive a full refund for UP. This is true even if you decide to keep your UP band. We are so committed to this product that we're offering you the option of using it for free.
Any customers who purchased an UP in 2011 can register for a full refund starting December 9. The offer stands until December 31 2012. If you've gotten one as a gift (or if you find one under your tree) you won't even need a receipt.
It also appears the company has stopped all the orders that are in the pipeline until they get the problem solved. The FAQ notes that "[a]ll pending orders from jawbone.com will be cancelled. If your order has not yet shipped, your credit card will not be charged."
Personally, I'm really glad they're getting to the cause of the problems with the band. Until mine went dead, it was one of my favorite products of the year. But I'm even happier to see the company standing behind its users and community in such dramatic fashion. It's a bold move, and a commendable one.


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Product Description Jett 136 Wakeboard:
OK...since she landed a 720, we figured we'd give Amber a wakeboard of her own. Actually, we'd been working on this with her beforehand, but we're stoked she landed the 7... Since riding her new wakeboard and the prototypes, her riding has stepped up another notch once again. The bigger board with the bigger sweet spot has allowed her to go bigger and land softer. The Jett wakeboard is the ultimate ride for the girl looking to rip on a 3 stage board.
Product Features Jett 136 Wakeboard:
Product Specs:


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|A ragu made from tomatoes and leftover brisket and tossed with rigatoni pasta.
Leftover Brisket Meat Sauce with RigatoniI made this dish using the last of the leftover oven-braised brisket that I made for New Years. I'm actually surprised there was any brisket at all leftover because while it was a huge brisket, it was a dish The Cajun totally loved and devoured, but I'm glad we did have some leftovers because this pasta dish was excellent!
Any leftover roast you have on hand will work well for this meat sauce and you can use whatever pasta you have in the pantry. I liked it with the rigatoni because it allows for the meat sauce to get all up in those big ole tubes of pasta.
Here's how to make it.
Recipe: Leftover Brisket Meat Sauce with Rigatoni©From the Kitchen of Deep South Dish
Prep time: 10 min |Cook time: 40 min | Yield: About 4 to 6 servings
- 1 pound of rigatoni pasta, cooked
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 of a large onion, chopped
- 1 stalk (rib) of celery, chopped
- 1 medium carrot, chopped
- 1 large garlic clove, chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoons of freshly cracked black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon of Cajun seasoning (like Slap Ya Mama)
- 3 to 4 cups of leftover, cooked brisket, chopped
- 1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar
- 1 large bay leaf
- 2 teaspoons of dried parsley flakes
- Red pepper flakes, to taste
- Grated Parmesan cheese
Cook the rigatoni in well salted water al dente, just until done. Start the sauce. When pasta is done, reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water, drain the pasta and set aside.
For the sauce, in a skillet over medium high heat, saute the onion, celery and carrot in the olive oil until soft. Add the garlic and cook a bit longer; stir in the salt, pepper, Cajun seasoning, and brisket. Cook and stir to warm the brisket through. Add the tomatoes, sugar and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the pasta to the sauce and stir to toss, adding some of the reserved pasta water if needed. Stir in the parsley and red pepper flakes, taste and adjust seasonings. Top individual servings with some grated Parmesan.
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The Palo Alto Sea Scouts' days of rebuilding decks and maintaining four ship engines is about to walk the gang plank.
A newer ship supplied by the U.S. Navy will make way for adventures that could include trips to the Sacramento Delta and even on the high seas.
The Sea Scouts will take possession of the 95-foot Olympic Venture on Sunday, April 14, when it arrives from Seattle. Experienced volunteer adult mariners will set sail from the Pacific Northwest city on Wednesday, Joshua Gilliland, a Pacific Skyline Council executive board member said.
The Olympic Venture began its long, complicated journey to Palo Alto in July 2012, when Gregor Harden, a dedicated volunteer, saw the boat was being delisted by the Navy. He and another volunteer, attorney Chris Moropoulos, navigated through the morass of red tape and paperwork to understand federal rules on obtaining surplus, Gilliland said. The paperwork took six months to complete, and in January the boat arrived in Seattle.
The new boat dates to the 1950s. It had a lighter service life than the Scouts' current boat, the Intrepid.
The Intrepid, which is also 95 feet long, "already had a lot of miles on it," Gilliland said. It had a rough service life in Alaska, and it might have been used by the Coast Guard and Navy to retrieve torpedoes, he said.
In contrast, the Olympic Venture served the Coast Guard doing vessel inspections in the Bay Area. The boat was transferred to the Navy in the 1970s, where it was used for personnel transfers from nuclear submarines to ports, Gilliland said.
The Olympic Venture will also be easier to maintain. The older Intrepid had four engines, one of which is irreparable; but the Olympic Venture has two engines, and both are in good shape, he said.
The new boat will enhance the Sea Scouting experience in ways that weren't possible on the Intrepid, he said.
"Our program is supposed to teach skills. If you only replace deck planks, there is no sense of adventure," Gilliland said.
The Sea Scouts can now focus on learning all kinds of sea-faring skills, including mechanics, rowing, navigation, knot-tying. And the Olympic Venture is big enough to travel the Sacramento and San Joaquin deltas and could even make a trip to Catalina Island, he said.
But before the Scouts set off on their big overnight adventures, they'll be making the boat their own. The youths will ready the Olympic Venture with sleeping space for 30 teens, he said.
The boat might also take the name of its predecessor and would be rechristened as the Intrepid. A name change will require a series of old mariners' rituals, however, he said.
"It's bad luck to change a boat's name unless you do a number of things first," Gilliland said.
According to legend, vessels are recorded by name in the Ledger of the Deep, and are known to Poseidon or Neptune, the god of the sea. The boat's old name must be purged by removal of every trace.
Name purging and renaming are carried out during a series of ceremonies. The captain and other officers pour glasses of champagne into the sea, and a another champagne libation is given to the gods of the winds, according to the online boat-safety website BoatSafe.com.
The Sea Scouts will hold an open house on the Olympic Venture at as-yet unspecified date.


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ACCESS Distinguished Lecture Series
Title: The Deep Learning in Physical Layer Communications.
If you cannot make it to KTH, join the live stream of the lecture at www.youtube.com/c/KTHMediaProduction
Also notice that you can view previous ACCESS DLS seminars at https://www.access.kth.se/en/aboutaccess/newsandevents/seminars/dls
Professor Carlo Fischione, EECS / NSE
Time: Thu 2019-04-11 15.00
Location: Lecture room V35, Teknikringen 76, (Väg och vatten), Floor 5, KTH main campus
Participating: Professor Dr. Geoffrey Ye Li School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of
It has been demonstrated recently that deep learning (DL) has great potentials to break the bottleneck of communication systems. In this talk, we introduce our recent work in DL in physical layer communications. DL can improve the performance of each individual (traditional) block in communication systems or jointly optimize the whole transmitter or receiver. Therefore, we can categorize the applications of DL in physical layer communications into with and without block processing structures.
For DL based communication systems with block structures, we present joint channel estimation and signal detection based on a fully connected deep neural network, model-drive DL for signal detection, and some experimental results. For those without block structures, we provide our recent endeavors in developing end-to-end learning communication systems. At the end of the talk, we provide some potential research topics in the area.
Dr. Geoffrey Li is a Professor with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He was with AT&T Labs – Research for five years before joining Georgia Tech in 2000. His general research interests include statistical signal processing and machine learning for wireless communications.
In these areas, he has published around 500 referred journal and conference papers in addition to over 40 granted patents. His publications have cited by 35,000 times and Thomson Reuters almost every year since 2001 have listed him as the World's Most Influential Scientific Mind, also known as a Highly-Cited Researcher. He has been an IEEE Fellow since 2006.
More information
Gerd Franzon


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101 Children's Songs To Play by Debra Wanless
101 Children's Songs To Play by Debra Wanless
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Easy Piano arrangements for all early students
101 Children's Songs to Play is a delightful collection of favourite children's songs for the elementary pianist. This collection of piano/vocal/guitar arrangements are written in big note fashion for quick and easy reading. Students, teachers (private and classroom) and parents will love this collection. Titles include: Camptown Races; She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain; Rock-a-bye Baby; This Old Man and many more familiar songs.
Pages: 100


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Facing weakening support among Hispanics, President Barack Obama expressed deep frustration Wednesday over what he called an inaccurate and damaging perception that he can fix the nation's flawed immigration system on his own.
Facing weakening support among Hispanics, President Barack Obama expressed deep frustration Wednesday over what he called an inaccurate and damaging perception that he can fix the nation's flawed immigration system on his own.
"This notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true," Obama said during a White House roundtable targeting Hispanic voters, a key constituency for the president's re-election campaign.
The president said comprehensive immigration reform continues to be a "top priority" for his administration. But he blamed Republicans in Congress for failing to join Democrats in supporting legislation that would address the flow of foreigners into the U.S. and deal with illegal immigrants already in the U.S.
"Only a few years ago, as I said, you had some Republicans who were willing to recognize that we needed to fix our immigration system," Obama said, noting that his predecessor, George W. Bush, was among them. "Right now you do not have that kind of leadership coming from the Republican Party."
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A strong majority of Hispanics supported Obama's election in 2008. But his support among Hispanics has declined, as it has in the broader population. A recent Gallup survey found 48 percent of Hispanic voters approving of Obama's job performance, compared with 60 percent in January.
While Obama has made little progress on comprehensive immigration legislation, he has pushed Congress to pass the Dream Act, which would provide a route to legal status for college students and service members brought to the country as children. The bill passed the House last year when it was controlled by Democrats but was blocked by Senate Republicans.
"I think there's been a great disservice done to the cause of getting a Dream Act passed and getting comprehensive immigration passed by perpetrating the notion that somehow by myself I can go and do these things," Obama said. "We have to pass bills through the legislature and then I can sign it."
Democrats view Hispanic voters as a voting bloc in 2012 that could help determine the outcome in swing states such as Florida, Colorado and Nevada. The Democratic National Committee has aired Spanish-language ads in those states in the past week to tout the benefits of Obama's jobs bill for small business and workers in the construction industry, which the DNC said employs 2.77 million Hispanics.
Hispanics accounted for more than half of the U.S. population increase over the last decade, exceeding estimates in most states and totaling 50 million.
The burgeoning Hispanic population, Obama said, means it will only be a matter of time before the country sees a strong Latino candidate for president or vice president.
"I am absolutely certain that within my lifetime we will have a Latino candidate for president who is very competitive and may win," Obama said.
The president spent more than 30 minutes taking questions submitted online, covering topics from U.S. policy toward Cuba to the president's $447 billion jobs bill. Obama said the jobs legislation would have a particularly positive impact on the Hispanic community, which has an unemployment rate of 11.3 percent, compared with the national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent.
Obama also said he believed federal courts would rule "fairly soon" on the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, the law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. While the White House backs repealing DOMA through Congress, Obama said Wednesday that he does not believe there are enough votes on Capitol Hill to overturn the law.
The president was also pressed on the status of Puerto Rico, where a statehood referendum is planned for next year. Obama said he believes the island will remain a U.S. commonwealth unless there is a "solid indication" of support for statehood.
"If it split down the middle or 51-49, I think Congress' inclination is going to be not to change but to maintain status quo until there is greater indication there is support for change," he said.
It's unclear whether any Republican presidential candidate can sway Hispanic voters. Several top GOP contenders, including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, have taken a hard line on immigration, calling for a fence and more troops along the border with Mexico to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been the outlier on immigration in the Republican field, and he is hoping his moderate record will appeal to Hispanics. But his rivals believe Perry's stance on immigration could be a weakness with his party's more conservative wing.
Perry insists that a physical border fence is an impractical way to control the flow of immigrants into the U.S. He also supported a 2001 Texas law that allows the children of undocumented immigrants to receive in-state tuition at Texas universities if they meet certain requirements.
Julie Pace can be reached at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
Associated Press writers Ken Thomas, Luis Alonso and Erica Werner contributed to this report.


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Professor Sid Watkins, whose relentless work to improve safety and medical standards saved lives in Formula One and throughout motor racing, has died at the age of 84.
Watkins, who had been suffering from cancer, passed away at a hospital in London on Wednesday.
Affectionately known as 'The Prof', Watkins worked as the medical delegate for Formula One from 1978 to 2004, a period which saw tremendous advances in safety throughout the sport. After stepping down he remained involved in motor racing safety through his work for the FIA Institute until late last year.
Born Eric Sidney Watkins in 1928, Watkins' father was a miner who set up his own engineering company. But from a young age Watkins' ambition was to become a brain surgeon.
He gained his doctorate from the University of Liverpool in 1956. Six years later he became the youngest person to hold the post of professor of neurosurgery, at the State University of New York.
While in Britain he had begun attending race meetings as a medical doctor, a role he continued at New York's Watkins Glen circuit. In 1970 he returned to Britain and became professor of neurosurgery at the London Hospital.
It was while in this position he had his first meeting with Bernie Ecclestone, who gave him the brief of "sorting the medical business out" in F1. Watkins' work over the subsequent decades undoubtedly saved the lives of many drivers.
If Watkins judged a circuit's safety facilities to be inadequate, Ecclestone threatened to cancel the race. Very quickly, Grand Prix organisers learned to take their demands seriously.
Together they insisted circuits build medical centres equipped to handle the most serious emergencies. And they instigated the practice of having the medical car following the field around on the first lap, with Watkins in the passenger seat.
Watkins' F1 work went beyond offering assistance to drivers. When Frank Williams was injured in a road accident in France in 1986, Ecclestone chartered a plane to fly the professor to Marseille to oversee the Williams team principle's treatment.
Of the many friendships he developed with racing drivers, Watkins' relationship with Ayrton Senna was especially close.
Early in Senna's career Watkins treated him for a facial nerve condition called Bell's Palsy which Watkins' father had also suffered from. Senna later became more vocal on the subject of safety and paid close attention to Watkins' work.
Following the death of Roland Ratzenberger during qualifying for the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, Senna broke down in tears while talking to Watkins.
Watkins urged Senna to consider retirement, but he refused. The following day Senna crashed violently at Tamburello curve. Watkins arrived at the scene to find his friend had suffered a terminal head injury.
The two fatalities of Imola 1994, F1's first for eight years, shocked the sport to its core. Within days the FIA established a new Expert Advisory Group for Formula One to look into raising safety standards and appointed Watkins to chair it.
The work to make the sport safe resumed with renewed vigour. Wheels were tethered, survival cells strengthened, run-off areas improved and far more besides.
Watkins oversaw the first ten driver fatality-free years after Imola before handing over the role of medical delegate to Gary Hartstein in January 2005.
One year earlier he had been invited by FIA president Max Mosley to head its new Institute for Motor Sport Safety, an umbrella group for research into improving safety in different branches of motor sport. Watkins remained president of the institute until December last year and was awarded an FIA Gold Medal for his work.
Watkins established the Brain and Spine foundation in 1992, and his work led to major improvements in the treatment of conditions such as Parkinson's disease and cerebral palsy. He was awarded an OBE in 2002.
He had already written two books on his time in F1: Life at the Limit (1996) and Beyond the Limit (2001), and was understood to have begun work on his memoirs.
Watkins, who turned 84 last week, is survived by his wife Susan and six children.
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Health data are notable for how many types there are, how complex they are, and how serious it is to get them straight. These data are used for treatment of the patient from whom they derive, but also for other uses. Examples of such secondary use of health data include population health (e.g., who requires more attention), research (e.g., which drug is more effective in practice), quality (e.g., is the institution meeting benchmarks), and translational research (e.g., are new technologies being applied appropriately). By the end of this course, students will recognize the different types of health and healthcare data, will articulate a coherent and complete question, will interpret queries designed for secondary use of EHR data, and will interpret the results of those queries.
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text: Impact on Families Make an Appointment Refer a Patient Ask a Question Reviewed by Jennifer Moyer Darr, LCSW (March 01, 2019) All families, with or without the experience of a child with chronic illness, encounter routine difficulties: finances, sibling relationships, child care, parenting and marital stress, the handling of developmental milestones in their children — all while trying to maintain a normal social life. When a child has a chronic illness, all of the normal tasks of parents and families can be affected. Increased Time Devoted to Help Children Cope Generally, when a child has a chronic illness, one or both parents must increase the attention and time devoted to helping that child cope effectively with his or her illness. These tasks include making sure children take medications promptly and with proper technique; for school-age children, ensuring that they maintain their studies as best they can; and for younger children, fostering stimulating activities and interactions with other children despite their illness. Frequently, parents faced with a chronically ill child feel increased confusion as to whether they should continue to discipline the child as they would their other children, or as they do when the illness is under control. Often, the time the parents devote to the chronically ill child takes them away from their other, healthier children. This can contribute to sibling conflict, attention-seeking behaviors of the healthy children, disagreements between the parents in their approaches to parenting, and lack of quality "fun time" for all family members. Financial Costs and Interruption of Normal Family Life The cost of medications, routine doctor visits, emergency room visits and hospitalizations often can be enormous. Dealing with insurance companies regarding coverage benefits is usually extremely stressful for the parents. Increased tension between parents and health care providers can occur. Planning for family outings, children's overnights, or the ability for parents to go out without their children is often disrupted. Often babysitters or day care cannot be accessed easily, either because the parents are concerned with untrained caretakers taking responsibility for the ill child, or because the caretakers themselves are uneasy with routine medication giving or the potential for emergency situations. These roadblocks to normal family life understandably contribute to increased frustration and even to conflict that further intensifies an already pressured atmosphere. Feelings of Guilt Often, chronically ill children or their parents feel guilty at the existence of this chronic illness. Ill children often feel responsible for the increased financial burden to the family or for the disruption in their planned activities. This further stress may contribute to the child's avoidance of good self-care of the illness, such as not taking medications as prescribed, denying symptoms or not seeking proper medical attention promptly. The child's "well meaning" behaviors to reduce expenses and stress unfortunately further stress the families, often making the medical status and the financial burden worse in the end. For chronically ill children, these increased stressors can make their physical symptoms worse and in some instances actually trigger them. Examples of unhappy contributors to the children's various emotional reactions are: fear about future symptoms, severe steroid side effects, not being allowed to have pets, missing peer activities and recess, extended school absences or a limited diet. Despair and hopelessness in families and children may therefore develop as a result of chronic illness. Remedies to Reduce Impact on the Family There are several helpful interventions for reducing the impact of chronic illness on families. The first is education. Learning what to expect from the illness and how best to control it Knowledge of medications and their side effects Learning appropriate preventive methods for keeping the illness routinely controlled, such as allergens to avoid Education regarding how to intervene when a child's illness reaches emergency proportions is helpful for families and their community caregivers to reduce understandable fear and anxiety and to increase their sense of control. Routine counseling and family and multifamily psychotherapy are other methods for reducing family stress by helping them devise solutions for maintaining normal activities while controlling the illness. Counseling provides chronically ill children, their siblings and their parents an arena in which to express pent-up feelings and secret fears and facilitates working through their stages of grief. This is particularly helpful when there are fears, such as fear of death, fear of divorce or fear of financial disaster. Often, parents feel it is not okay to discuss their stress and concerns with the child. In fact, when done properly, this modeling may provide relief for the entire family. Fostering this type of honest and direct communication is a prime goal of counseling. It often helps chronically ill children realize their family understands how they feel and is there to help them. Families also experience counseling as helping them realize that they are not the only ones feeling these illness-related pressures. Active involvement by the entire family in a course of brief counseling can become a predictable, dependable and safe activity that the child can come to rely on to air important feelings. Helping Your Child Cope With a Medical Condition Clinical Trials For more than 100 years, National Jewish Health has been committed to finding new treatments and cures for diseases. Search our clinical trials.


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A Sea of Possibilities
In search of adventure, the writer found humanity. This is not your typical destination story—but it reveals the lessons that travel can offer.
From the March 2010 issue of National Geographic Traveler
In search of adventure, the writer found humanity. This is not your typical destination story—but it reveals the lessons that travel can offer.
Indonesian Ferry Sinks. Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff. Kenyan Train Attacked by Mobs. Whenever he picked up a newspaper, journalist Carl Hoffman noticed those news bulletins, and wondered what it was like to travel off the grid where most travelers rarely venture. Last year he spent five months circumnavigating the globe on statistically dangerous airlines, crowded ferries, the slowest buses, and risky trains. What he found is that the world is a lot kinder place than he imagined. This is an excerpt from a chapter of The Lunatic Express (Broadway Books, 2010), a journey of escape and a voyage of discovery right into the world's messy heart.
The heat felt thick enough to touch. Sweat dripped from my temples, and I couldn't keep the flies off. Smoke from hundreds of cigarettes hung in the air like faded, yellowed lace curtains. I was three decks down, in ekonomi—steerage—on the Bukit Siguntang, a 479-foot-long steel ferry operated by Pelni, the Indonesian government-owned shipping line. The Siguntang officially carried 2,003 souls, all but 739 in ekonomi, but it seemed like every man, woman, and child in Jakarta was swarming into her belly. There were no beds or bunks—just two open decks full of knee-high linoleum-covered platforms on which we were supposed to lie like hot dogs lined up on a grill. The bulkheads were brown, the ceiling brown, the deck white linoleum covered in ochre cigarette burns. It was an industrial holding pen with the occasional basketball-size porthole that didn't open.
"Nasi, nasi, nasi!" vendors yelled for those seeking rice. Babies cried. Water and chips, noisemakers and rice wrapped in brown paper cones, balloons–it might have been the circus.
"Air, air, air!"—"water" in Bahasa Indonesian.
We hadn't left the dock; I wanted to go on deck but feared leaving my bags. I was the only foreigner, hungry and nervous to be so totally submerged in otherness. Porters in yellow shirts humped boxes wrapped in twine, which increasingly piled higher and higher in the aisles, against the walls. This was no casual, quick hop to Chicago for the weekend. Whole families were on the move, armed with goods and prepared with bedding and enough plastic bins of rice to be marooned on a tropical island for weeks. Indonesia is a world of islands, some 13,000 stretching across 3,100 miles, and without ferries the nation would never hang together; they are its lifeblood, carrying not just people, but cars and refrigerators and anything and everything too big or too expensive to fly. The Siguntang's route was epic: nine days from Jakarta to Sorong, in Indonesian Papua, via Surabaya, Makassar, Baubau, Ambon, Bandanaira, and Fakfak. I was booked through to Ambon in the Molucca Islands, five solid days in steerage with no breaks, no bed, no door to keep acquisitive hands off my stuff, and, it was immediately clear, no way to get out quickly if we hit rough seas.
"Hello," a high-pitched voice said. I turned, and next to me knelt a teenage girl wearing skinny jeans and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that said "Pirate Girl" in sequins. "I am Mrs. Nova," she said. "What is your religion?"
Two women wearing head scarves on the other plank eyed me. The woman to my left clutched a Koran. I was captive, surrounded. I hesitated. "Atheist" seemed too provocative. Thankfully Mrs. Nova, who was clearly not a Mrs., didn't wait for an answer. "Christian?"
I bobbled my head noncommittally.
"My hobbies are singing and billiards," she said in nearly perfect English, as if reading from a conversation book. "Mr. Carl," she continued in the third person, "Mrs. Nova likes Linkin Park and Britney Spears. Mrs. Nova is 17 and she lives in Makassar."
That broke the ice; suddenly the family across from me cut in. Florinda spoke a little English and wore a pink headscarf, and she was with her sister and one of their sons, Kahar. They'd traveled three days from Makassar to Jakarta for a family wedding, stayed a week, and were now making the three-day trip back. Thirteen days, six of them traveling. A ramen seller came by and I flagged him down. Mrs. Nova nearly attacked him, barking a string of Indonesian. She jumped up, fished around in her bag and pulled out a case of ramen. "For two!" she said. "For Mrs. Nova and Mr. Carl!"
A vendor hawking thin cotton mattress pads muscled past. I waved him over; five days on linoleum wasn't going to be easy. This time the woman with the Koran barked, looked at me, shook her head, waggled her finger no. Then she pantomimed picking tiny things off her ankles, and held her nose. The message was clear. The vendor scowled and stomped off.
There was another message, too: Once again, the more I gave myself to the world, the more I made myself vulnerable by putting myself completely at the disposal of people and situations in which I had no control, the more people took care of me, looked out for me. At first I had thought they were taking pity on me. But as my journey unfolded, I started to understand something else, something that had been sinking in gradually over the months. Being a white American conferred on me an automatic status. I represented power. Affluence. And if I could shed my American reserves, phobias, disgusts, they would embrace me. In the weeks ahead I would do whatever my fellow travelers and hosts did. If they drank the tap water of Mumbai and Kolkata and Bangladesh, so would I. If they bought tea from street corner vendors, so would I. If they ate with their fingers, even if I was given utensils, I ate with my fingers. Doing so prompted an outpouring of generosity and curiosity that never ceased to amaze me; it opened the door, made people take me in. That I shared their food, their discomfort, their danger, fascinated and validated them in a powerful way. And as Lena, the woman with the Koran, waved away the cushion man and Mrs. Nova insisted I share her food, I realized I was in good hands, surrounded by women with eagle eyes; I could relax; murder or robbery was the last thing I had to worry about.
Sometime, I don't know when, we pulled away from the dock and headed to sea, and I lay down and tried to sleep—Lena six inches to my left, Mrs. Nova six inches to my right. The fluorescent lights hummed brightly overhead. People coughed. Babies whined and screamed. A kid nearby twirled a noisemaker, the sound like stones grinding in a barrel. The air was still and humid and oppressive. Radios blared. And lying there, so awake, I noticed the roaches. Half an inch long, they scurried up the walls, across the ceiling straight over my head.
I pulled a T-shirt over my eyes, trying to get comfortable. It was midnight, and already my hips, knees, and ankles hurt from the hard surface. I don't know when I finally fell asleep, but at 4 a.m. the PA system blared to the chanting of the muezzin. Dawn; time to pray. I tried to wait it out, shut it out. But all around me people began to move. Lena slid a white dress over her clothing and enveloped her head in a lace headdress, knelt, and bowed up and down, murmuring.
I got up, stiff, and climbed two flights of stairs and out on deck, first light just beginning to illuminate the eastern horizon. Ten-foot-wide decks ran the Siguntang's length, and there was a snack bar in the stern under green corrugated fiberglass. The air felt balmy and fresh, nothing but dark blue calm sea and lightening sky. At 6 a.m., when the snack bar opened, I got a sweet coffee in a thin plastic cup. My ass hurt; there was no place soft to sit anywhere on the ship. I wandered; I stared at the sea; I returned to my platform. "Mr. Carl," said Mrs. Nova, "you must eat breakfast!" With my ticket, it turned out, I was entitled to three meals a day. I stood in a long line that wound past a window; each passenger was handed a plastic foam box and a bottle of water. I opened my box: white rice and a fish tail, and a packet of sambal—hot sauce. There were a lot of bones. Mrs. Nova sang softly to herself and then someone brought out a guitar. She took it, started singing. Lena joined her. It was melodious, beautiful, and I lay down in the heat and dozed off.
That afternoon, sitting on a rail overlooking one of the lifeboats, I met Daoud Genti. He was tiny, five inches shorter than me, dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt that read Illinois State. He spoke English well, part of the army of cheap, semi-skilled laborers dispersed throughout the world keeping their parents and their ancestral villages afloat. He was returning home to Sulawesi after five years, the last six months as a seaman in Dubai. The Siguntang, I soon discovered, was packed with people just like him. "I need a break," he said. "I've been working 12 hours a day, seven days a week for six months straight, and I quit because they weren't paying us enough. We were supposed to have one day a week off, but we didn't." He was a Toraja, a once fierce race of rice growers who lived in stylized wooden houses with upturned roofs, carried out elaborate funeral rituals, and interred their dead in family caves. "All of my family is in a cave," he said, "but we're running out of room. I haven't seen my family in five years."
We reached Surabaya that afternoon, and Mrs. Nova announced that we were going to jalan, jalan—the Indonesian expression for strolling around. She brushed her hair, put on a cap and a pair of oversized sunglasses, and led the way, holding the hand of her five-year-old plank neighbor, as a young man who couldn't speak English brought up the rear. "My family is in Jakarta, and my family is in Makassar, and my family is HUGE!" she said as we wound through the heat, up the stairs and down the gangplank onto the trash-littered wharf. I had never encountered someone so bursting with enthusiasm, so trusting.
We turned down a narrow alley lined with identical wooden carts, each with a two-by-four bench and jars of what looked like bright green-and-white worms. We walked up the alley and down the alley, Mrs. Nova peering at each cart, shaking her head, spitting out questions to the chefs. "This one!" she said, and we straddled the bench. In seconds four bowls appeared full of noodles and meatballs and hot peppers. "Bakso! You like bakso?" she said. I plunged in. Whatever it was, it was good. On some unspoken signal, the silent man paid, even though I whipped out a pile of bills. That would happen over and over again–people far poorer than I insisting that they pay for everything.
When we got back to the ship it looked like it was being attacked by ants. Another thousand people were fighting their way on board. I watched men shimmying up the dock lines, human rats, a dangling, frenetic whirl of limbs that climbed five stories to disappear in the throngs. If the Siguntang seemed crowded before, now it was packed. Every passageway and stairway was staked out with blankets and towels and scraps of newsprint. The decks inside, the decks outside–humanity covered every square inch of space. Children. Old men and women lying on the hard floor. The people outside had it best as long as the weather held. To descend the stairs into ekonomi was to get hit with a wall of heat and humidity and cigarette smoke. You could touch it, feel it on your face and hands. It almost knocked me backward.
Once I was known, grown used to, an endless stream of strangers approached me, waved me over, bought me coffee and tea, called out to me. In my space on my plank I was an old family member. Florinda fed me slices of fishy tempeh. Mrs. Nova made sure I was hydrated. Lena, I suspect, prayed for my soul. One evening I trudged back from up on deck, stepping gingerly past people's sarongs on the floor and hands and heads, and came upon nine ebony-colored men with muscular arms gathered around each other a few planks down from mine. Three of them held crude, homemade ukuleles constructed of fiberboard and nylon, thinly painted in whitewash. Clouds of cigarette smoke rose around them. Perspiration flew from their heads—it was 100 degrees at least, with not a wisp of fresh air. And for two hours they sang in rough, deep, and mad harmony, songs of Papua and work and Indonesian folk songs, other men keeping beat with empty water bottles. They were coming off five months on a gas well in Brunei, heading home to Sorong, a journey from start to finish of almost 12 days. "Sit! Sit!" cried Jacobus. "We want whiskey! Where are you going?" "Ambon," I said, and they broke into song, with a refrain of "Ambon Man" in English. Their singing was spontaneous, organic. The raw energy of lions roaring on the plain, the best of human beauty in the midst of the worst possible place. After two hours they wore themselves out; Jacobus's fingers were bloody, he'd played so long and so hard. I lay down to sleep, the lights bright, my body a series of bruised points on the hard plank.
In the morning I found Daoud gazing out to sea. A pod of porpoises sliced through the royal blue waves, leaped over the ship's wake, sped toward the ship, and cut abruptly away. Flying fish erupted from the sea, sailing across the surface to plunk in 50 yards away. Later that day, in the quickly falling twilight of the tropics, we approached Makassar, a long line of green hills rising out of the blue sea. The PA system crackled and boomed, and I returned to my plank to find Mrs. Nova and Florinda and her family packing, and eight young men, tough guys, sitting on my bed. I climbed up, muscled my way in and they barely moved over, and I realized again how protected I'd been the past three days. That evening about 7 we docked, and the crowds shifted, rose, hoisted, and dispersed. Mrs. Nova grabbed my notepad and wrote her address and phone number under the header "Biodata," and urged me to come visit her family. Florinda and her family trooped off, replaced by the gang of tough guys who stared at me, elbowed each other, and laughed. The ship's crew attacked the refuse, piled and strewn like the aftermath of Woodstock. They mopped and swept and carted, and most of it went right over the side. Thankfully, Lena was still to my right and she grabbed the hand of the little girl who seemed to belong to everyone, beckoned me to follow, and soon we were on shore eating a rich brown-brothed soup made from intestines—a local Makassar specialty.
Late in the afternoon of the fifth day, as whales spouted off the bow and their big flukes slapped the sea, we sighted the green hills of Ambon. I was starting to crack; physically this had been my hardest journey yet. I had a hacking cough from the incessant smoke of unfiltered cigarettes. My throat felt like sandpaper rubbing together every time I swallowed. I was constantly hungry, the rice and fish tails and ramen unfulfilling. I was dying for the great riches of life: a long, hot shower and a cold beer and silence.
Two days later I boarded another ferryboat, this one small, half wood, half steel, and headed to Leksula, on Buru Island. I'd never heard of Buru, my guidebook didn't mention it, but I'd spotted the Amboina Star and that's where it was bound. A journey to an unknown island over a tropical sea—what could be more appealing? At 9 p.m. the horn blasted, the lines were thrown, and we slipped out onto the dark water. The ship was crammed—every space on the platforms taken. But big, open windows ran its length and an eight-foot-wide doorway lay open in the waist, just two feet over the sea, and a warm breeze swept through. I sat perched at the doorway for an hour or so watching the sea pass, then crawled up onto my platform, squeezed between two men, put my arm over my eyes, and fell asleep to the thrum of the engines and the roll of the sea.
Movement. Touching. Voices. A baby crying. Wind sweeping across me. It was 4 a.m., still dark, but I crawled off my shelf and drank a burning hot, syrupy-sweet coffee in a plastic cup so thin it was like paper. As dawn came over the ocean, I realized we were motoring just offshore of a hilly green jungle, coconut palms and mountains rising behind. The Star was threading its way to each village along the coast, and for the next four hours we stopped every 10 or 15 minutes, bobbing a few hundred yards off the beach, as goods and people came and went on the Star's beaten up outboard launch.
They were places far off the beaten track, almost out of this world. Just a tightly packed collection of corrugated shacks on a sandy beach, the shimmering dome of a mosque or the steeple of a church poking through the shacks. Blue ocean, cloudless sky stretching far to the horizon; uninterrupted green behind.
The day passed. Mile after mile of deserted green coast, thickly overgrown with palm trees and black sand beaches that became white in places, villages of 50 houses of rust and thatch. The crew cooked meals and fed me: rice and cabbage and bony dried sardines with a fresh, fiery paste of hot peppers ground out in a stone mortar. In the afternoon we hit Leksula, a miniscule village on the coast of Buru. Within minutes of docking Hendro showed up. He was 21, wearing shorts, a camouflage-colored sleeveless T-shirt, flip-flops; and, as the village's known English speaker, he had been quickly summoned. "Let me show you Leksula!" he said, beaming, excited. As we walked down the long concrete pier, crumbling in places, a beached and ancient wooden ferryboat on its side in the shallows, the skies opened, and warm rain came pouring down. Hendro didn't seem to notice as the pier gave way to mud and puddles. The main street paralleled the shore, and we walked between corrugated and concrete houses, people huddling under porches and staring at me under the downpour. Nothing about the place really registered to me, at first. Just a heavy silence and stillness. Hendro tapped my shoulder and pointed to a man in a doorway. "Someone trying to say hello to you," he said. I waved. The man waved back. "Why don't you sleep in the village?" Hendro said. "You can enjoy village life. It is much better, and you will not go up and down like you will on the boat."
"Is there a restaurant or somewhere I can get a cup of coffee?" I asked.
"Closed," he said, "but we can go to my aunt's house." We stopped at a one-story concrete house surrounded by mud and chickens with an open door, took off our flip-flops, and went in; the front room had a wooden and floral print sofa and two matching chairs, their backs covered with antimacassars, and a wooden coffee table. Portraits of stern-looking army officers gazed down from the walls. Hendro went into a back room, and a few minutes later a middle-aged woman came out bearing cookies and two cups of instant coffee. Slowly a gang of children gathered at the door, peering in. Laughing. Calling out, "Hello, mister!"
"When I finished elementary school," Hendro said, "I decided I wanted to go to music school. I like music very much. I want to go to Jakarta, but can't. I have no money. Now I just practice my music in the church; it is a symbol of God."
When we finished the coffee the rain had stopped. Out we went again, and this time people flooded into the streets. Staring at me, waving, calling out hello. They were all in groups. Men held hands with each other, walked with their arms around each other. They squatted on the ground together, sat on walls together. A soccer game broke out on a muddy field. Always, everywhere, people were together; that's why my being alone was always so hard to fathom by the people I met. By now, everyone in town knew I was there, and suddenly I felt like one of the Inuit brought back to New York by Admiral Robert Peary after his polar expedition. Hendro took me back to the ship, where at the dock children were bombing off the pier, throwing each other into the ocean in their shorts and T-shirts, tumbling on the sand on the beach, playing with joy and an abandon long absent from the organized soccer fields and playgrounds of American cities. A crowd had followed us. Young. Old. Children. Men. There must have been 20 or 30 of them. They climbed on board following me, literally stood around me, surrounding me, watching me. I waved. They waved.
I was a freak in a village so far removed from my everyday world it was almost inconceivable. No cell phones. No Internet. No roads to get here, no roads from here to anywhere else, just a big green mass jungle rising behind the village where, a man on the ship had told me, there lived "men without religion."
- Nat Geo Expeditions
The next day Hendro woke me at 6 a.m., knocking on my cabin window, one eye peering through a crack that the sarong covering the window and insulating me from the crowds had failed to cover. "My aunt wants to invite you for coffee, Mister Carl!"
I washed my hair and body in a bucket and headed into town, children in red skirts and white blouses walking to school. There was nothing but the sound of children's voices and laughter. At a big, well-kept house, Santoso—a man I'd met on the Star who spoke English with a careful, old Dutch colonial accent—was drinking coffee on a wide veranda. He rushed out. "You must come and meet my brother. He is the headmaster of the secondary school."
Hendro and I sat down at a table covered with a yellow plastic tablecloth, and sipped coffee with Santoso's brother and sister. With no self-consciousness, Santoso reached over and held my hand. It was a disconcerting sensation, this strange man holding my hand in his. My American instinct wanted to pull it away; it went against everything I knew. But it also felt nice. Warm. Welcoming. It came with no strings attached. It just was; the most elemental of human connection, laden with no expectations. An embrace, and no one else even noticed it. We said goodbye after coffee, and I followed Hendro through town. Birds chirped. The sound of voices on the breeze, since there was no traffic, no sounds of mechanization at all, and we came to a long one-story building with jalousied windows, gardens. This was the high school. Hendro took me into the headmaster's office; the school's English teacher came in; and we visited on a sofa, Hendro and the teacher translating.
"How glad I am you have come to Leksula," the headmaster said, placing a hand on my knee. "What has brought you to our village?"
"I am a journalist, and I want to see the world," I said. "Not just the parts where everybody goes, but the faraway parts."
They took me for a tour; we peeked in tidy, spare classrooms with students sitting at desks in rows and passed two boys standing by a flagpole in the courtyard, each balancing on only one foot. "They're bad," Hendro said. "Always late."
A horn sounded, the Star announcing its departure. I had to go. Again.
The teacher and headmaster shook my hand, thanked me profusely for visiting, and Hendro walked me back, through the tropical heat and stillness and chickens and dogs and little garden plots. I felt embarrassed by my celebrity. To me I was bringing so little to them, offering them nothing. Why show me the high school? Why take time to sit with me? Why hold my hand? Why be so kind to me? I bore no gifts. I could give them nothing. I was just an English-speaking man who had dropped in one afternoon out of nowhere on the Amboina Star.
"You must come back again, for longer," Hendro said, beaming, on deck as we stood surrounded by 20 passengers. "When you come back," he said, "we can find you a house in the village."
Soon we were out on the water again, nothing but sea and sky and crowded ship and village after village. This time a big swell was coursing in toward the beach, and the Star rolled heavily. A child vomited repeatedly, the puke running down the leg and foot of his father, a man with teeth stained the color of old wooden boards from betel-nut chewing, while my fellow passengers stared listlessly in their nausea. Overhead, frigatebirds circled, and flying fish glided over the wave tops. "Up in there," said Alex, the second engineer, pointing to the verdant mountains of Buru, "there are cannibals." He touched his arm knowingly. "They eat you."
Toward dusk, great gray clouds moved overhead, and we left Buru and headed out to sea and rolled and pitched in a darkness without stars, a wood and steel speck in a vast ocean.
Carl Hoffman is a contributing editor to Traveler as well as to Wired and Popular Mechanics. Kuala Lumpur-based photographer Palani Mohan's last assignment for us was on Penang. His latest book is Vanishing Giants: Elephants of Asia.


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Mouse Study Reveals New Secrets of Fertilization
Scientists report they have demystified how a sperm and egg couple, with new research in mice indicating that egg cells carry a special receptor that allows sperm to attach to and fertilize eggs.
The British study, published online April 16 in the journal Nature, may offer new ways to improve both fertility treatments and contraceptives in people, with experts saying that human eggs also have protein receptors crucial to the meeting of sperm and egg.
A similar protein receptor was found on sperm in 2005 by Japanese researchers, who dubbed it Izumo1 after a Japanese marriage shrine. The newly discovered egg receptor has been named Juno after the Roman goddess of fertility and marriage.
"The finding that the interaction between Izumo and Juno is essential for fertilization was, in a way, surprising," said study author Gavin Wright, group leader of the Cell Surface Signalling Laboratory at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a genome research institute in the United Kingdom.
"One might have expected that something as fundamental as fertilization would not rely on a single critical interaction; if there's anything wrong with Izumo in males, or Juno in females, then infertility results," Wright added.
About one in eight American couples suffers from infertility, defined as being unable to conceive after one year of unprotected sex, according to the infertility association RESOLVE. The problem may be due to male or female factors such as low sperm count or ovulation disorders, among other issues.
But even when infertility is treated with measures such as in vitro fertilization, where a couple's sperm and eggs are mixed in a petri dish, fertilization will still sometimes fail to take place unless a sperm cell is injected into the egg in a procedure known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).
Wright said this problem may be due to a faulty or absent receptor on egg or sperm cells, as evidenced by his new research.
"Our results would suggest that by using a simple and noninvasive genetic screening test, infertile women could be tested to see if they have a correct Juno gene," he said. "If they don't, their fertility treatment can be guided by proceeding directly to ICSI, saving them expense and trouble."
Wright and his team built on the Japanese Izumo1 research, creating an artificial version of the Izumo protein and using it to identify binding partners on the surface of mice eggs. Using this method, they learned that Izumo1 on the sperm paired with Juno on the egg to induce fertilization.
The researchers also developed mice that lacked the Juno protein on their egg surface, finding these mice to be infertile and incapable of fusing with normal sperm. Similarly, male mice lacking the Izumo sperm protein are also infertile, highlighting the vital roles of the receptors to fertility.
An interesting feature of the Juno egg receptor, Wright said, is that it disappears within about 40 minutes after an egg is fertilized.
"We believe this is one of the ways in which eggs ensure that they fuse with one and only one sperm," he said. "That is, once the first sperm has fertilized the egg, the egg shuts down its ability to recognize additional sperm, ensuring that the fertilized egg doesn't contain too many chromosomes, which would result in a non-viable embryo."
Dr. Michael Heard, a reproductive endocrinologist at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas, lauded the new research as "very interesting" and said the findings hold promise for future fertility treatments and contraceptives.
"A male contraceptive is still on the back burner. If they could inhibit those [Izumo1 sperm] receptors so they wouldn't fertilize the eggs at all, with a high percentage of reliability, that would be great," said Heard, who wasn't involved in the study.
Scientists note that research involving animals often fails to provide similar results in humans.
More information
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has more about infertility.
Source: HealthDay
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Judging Pittsfield YMCA's Wing Fling
This dancing chicken welcomed nearly 1,000 people to the annual Wing Fling competition.
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Sometimes in life you have to make some sacrifices. On Saturday, this iBerkshires reporter sacrificed his taste buds to help judge the 20th annual Wing Fling.
The fundraiser for the YMCA drew about 1,000 people to the Berkshire Community College campus to meet with friends, listen to a live band and, most importantly, chow down on the best chicken wings in the county.
According to Pittsfield Family YMCA Executive Director Randy Kinnas, the event raises about $40,000 to for youth programs through entrance fees, silent auction and a few raffles.
"We have a $1.7 million budget so it's not a huge portion but it's significant," Kinnas said. "It really helps."
Saturday looked to be no different, when a huge line for the event spanned from BCC's field house all the way back to nearly West Street. And when the gates opened, the hungry crowd was off, filing through the lines of servers from an array of restaurants providing samples.
But for us at the judges tables - things went a little differently. Since Saturday, I have been asked what I thought of each restaurant's wings and my answer is simple - I do not know.
The long judges table was broken into each category and the 17 judges all chose a category to judge. I chose the hot category.
The YMCA numbered various bowls of wings and the judges – spanning for local politicians to people like me – ranked the top three by the numbers. I still do not know if the wings I voted for won.
The one wing whose origins I suspect I know may have come from Halpins Grub and Grog. (It definitely was hot.)
Halpins ranked third in the category and I believe third in mine as well. But it reeled in the people's choice for hottness. While I did like Halpins, I thought it was mostly the heat that made it stand out and we were reminded to judge on the best "flavor."
Bennigans won the hot category and the Skyline Country Club came in second. The judging really came down to a debate – not just with me but with the other judges in the category – between those two.
The one I voted for first I thought had the most full flavor. It was not about the wing, it was not about the sauce, it was the whole package. It was not super-hot but it had its kick and it tingled on the tongue in a few different ways. It was a great wing to eat all the way through.
My second-place vote went to a great sauce. That sauce was fantastic. It had a great flavor of barbecue, sweetness and then the kick at the end. However, just as I voted Halpins third for hotness due to our instructions to judge on flavor, I put this one in second. However, it really could have gone either way. Even after casting the vote I was second-guessing my decision for first and second.
In the other categories, there were some new winners. Best traditional wings went to Liberty Pizza; best original wings went to The Well; best barbecue ribs went to The Olde Forge and best original ribs went to Flavors.
While not all of the 23 restaurants took homes plaques, bragging rights and new patrons, I think they all deserve high praise for participating. They are the main attraction and they help raise money for the county's youth.
Kinnas said one of the biggest programs the YMCA is involved in is the child care voucher system. The state recently froze issuing new vouchers and the YMCA now subsidizes $120 of the $220 cost. The organization also is adding youth football and gymnastics programs. So for all the people who got fat on chicken wings and the restaurants that showed off their chefs, there is a real benefit to the community.
The YMCA also worked out some of the kinks from last year's event. Last year, all the food was gone in a hurry but this year, there was a limit on how many wings (12) a person could take at a time. But that does not mean you couldn't got back for seconds. A friend of mine ate 35 on Saturday.
So with the sun setting, people dancing and nearly 1,000 people enjoying spending time with one another, I would consider the 20th annual Wing Fling a flying success.
More photos are available here.
|Tags: Wing Fling, YMCA, BCC


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NEW YORK (CNN) -- Prodding Israel and the Palestinian Authority to restart talks aimed at a permanent resolution of their decades-old conflict, President Obama dropped a demand for an Israeli settlement freeze, U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials said.
Benjamin Netanyahu, left, President Obama and Mahmoud Abbas.
"Simply put, it is past time to talk about starting negotiations. It is time to move forward," Obama told reporters before a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"It is time to show the flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise that is necessary to achieve our goals," Obama said.
Obama first met separately with Netanyahu and Abbas on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in what he called "frank and productive" talks. The session was the first among the three leaders since Obama took office in January.
George Mitchell, Obama's envoy for the Middle East, attended Tuesday's talks. He said the talks were "at all times cordial," but "direct" and sometimes "blunt."
Obama told Abbas and Netanyahu that, "The only reason to hold public office is to get things done," and that everyone "must take risks for peace," Mitchell said.
Mitchell told reporters the U.S. is "not identifying any issue as being a precondition or an impediment to negotiation."
But the United States and Israel have publicly disagreed on Israeli plans to build more housing on land the Palestinians regard as theirs. Previous Obama administration demands for a freeze have been ignored by the Netanyahu government. Watch Netanyahu address peace, settlements »
Abbas has so far rejected resuming talks with Israel until the Jewish state halts all settlement building in the occupied West Bank and in predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem. Arab states also have balked at the U.S. request to take confidence-building measures toward Israel until Israel freezes settlement construction.
Sitting with Netanyahu and Abbas, Obama softened his regular language on a settlement "freeze," saying that Israel has had meaningful discussions about "restraining" settlement activity.
"But they need to translate these discussions into real action on this and other issues," he said.
"Obama told Abbas that he couldn't get the settlement freeze and promised to keep trying, but that it shouldn't be a condition for talks and it was time to move on," one Palestinian aide to Abbas said.
Several U.S. officials said that Obama told Abbas that although the U.S. believe a settlement freeze would create a better atmosphere for talks to begin, the lack of one should not be used an as excuse not to talk.
"Let's not have the perfect be the enemy of the good," Obama told Abbas, according to the officials. Watch Obama: 'We have to find a way forward' »
"It's been apparent for some time that the Israelis were going to fall short of what is necessary on the settlement freeze," one senior U.S. official said. "But our view is let's get to negotiations and settlements will be addressed within those final status issues"
A senior Israeli diplomat said Israel agreed to not building any new settlements, no outward expansion of existing growth and to only build for "natural" growth within existing settlements. He said Israel also agreed not to encourage Israelis to move to settlements, which would increase the population.
"A complete settlement freeze wasn't physically or politically possible, especially in the absence of any Arab or Palestinian concessions," the Israeli diplomat said. "There was a time the gaps had significantly narrowed, but now they were starting to widen. The administration recognized, rather than have them widen further, we should start negotiating."
The Palestinian aide to Abbas said Obama's failure to secure a settlement freeze has weakened him in the eyes of the Palestinian delegation, because it casts doubt on his ability to move Israel during final status negotiations.
The Palestinians did win an important point, however, with Obama making clear that the peace talks would not start from scratch, which Netanyahu had favored. Rather the talks would take into account progress made in previous negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, the sources said.
The Israeli diplomat said that Israel would "take into account" the previous negotiations, but stressed his country's longstanding position that "nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to."
Obama also addressed Abbas' desire to have the terms for negotiations more clearly defined, asking Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to come to Washington next week for further talks.
Next week's talks, to be led by George Mitchell, will center on what issues will be addressed at negotiations, which will present the U.S. with its next big challenge. Palestinians want negotiations to resolve the "final status" issues of the conflict, such as borders, Jerusalem and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Israel wants to begin with talks on a "provisional" Palestinian state.
All About Barack Obama • Benjamin Netanyahu • Mahmoud Abbas


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Proving without a shadow of a doubt that simply downsizing everyday items makes them instantly adorable, Anna Hrachovec has created an overnight sensation with her ongoing series of tiny objects. Ranging from animals to edibles to computer equipment, you name it and there's a good chance that Anna has a yarn-and-fiberfill replica that could fit in the palm of you hand. After slowly doling out a few tiny patterns in irresistible sets for the past year or so, her latest book, Teeny-Tiny MochiMochi: More Than 40 Itty-Bitty Minis to Knit, Wear, and Give has finally been unleashed upon the world, bundling together scores of quick, cute knits.
For any knitter that has been disappointed by the crocheted amigurumi craze, unable to create such adorable stuffed toys, this is the book for you! Containing such a wide variety of items that there's bound to be something that everyone will love, one of my favorite aspects of these mini knits is how quick they are to make. Small size means small time commitment, so you can churn these cuties out in no time– A particularly useful fact if you're stuck for last-minute gifts.
As one of Anna's devoted test-knitters, I can't claim an unbiased opinion here, but I can tell you that I would have purchased this compilation of cuteness anyway. I mean honestly, how could you resist patterns for…
…A tiny cupcake, complete with rainbow seed bead sprinkles?
How about a plump, green pear, almost realistic enough to imagine out in the orchards?
Don't forget about the starches; a baked potato topped off with beaded chives and a generous pat of sewn in "butter" would sure hit the spot!
Anna has even managed to create the ever-elusive vegan fried egg! I must admit though, it was a bit fibrous for my tastes.
I did slightly modify my knits to exclude the eyes, but only because this vegan prefers not to have food that can look back at me. Still, the adorable factor hasn't suffered in the least, if I do say so myself. While the section of tiny foods was clearly my focus, there's still a whole world of tiny knits to explore far beyond the faux edibles. The miniature lion is next up on my knit list.
For all you eager crafters out there, you're in luck- Ever generous, Anna and her publisher have offered to giveaway a second copy of Teeny-Tiny MochiMochi to one lucky blog reader! To secure your copy, all you need to do is leave me a comment, using correct contact info, telling me what item you'd like to see as a tiny knit next. Anna is still hard at work on this series, so who knows, you may see your suggestion show up on her blog some day soon! Be sure to comment before Wednesday, August 24th at midnight EST, at which point I'll choose a winner via random number generator. Open to residents of the US only. So ready your double-pointed needles and start thinking small; there's a whole tiny world to explore!


text: The U.S. House of Representatives has narrowly rejected an effort to stop the National Security Agency from collecting millions of U.S. residents' telephone records.Late Wednesday, the House rejected a bipartisan amendment, with more than 30 co-sponsors, that would have prohibited the NSA from bulk collection of phone records from U.S. carriers and cut off funding for the phone records collection program as currently designed.The amendment, considered as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, would have allowed the NSA to continue collecting phone records of suspects, but only when relevant to an antiterrorism investigation. The NSA is part of the Defense Department.House members who supported the amendment voted to "oppose the suspicionless collection of every American's phone records," said Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican and chief sponsor of the amendment.President Barack Obama's administration opposed the Amash amendment, saying it would take away a valuable antiterrorism tool, but libertarian-leaning Republicans and liberal Democrats teamed up to make the vote close. The final vote on the Amash amendment was 205 for and 217 against.Opponents to the amendment argued it would kill a program the NSA has used to stop dozens of terrorist attacks. The amendment would "handcuff America and our allies," Representative Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, said.The amendment would have ended the phone records collection program, added Representative Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican. "It blows it up," he said.Supporters argued the amendment would allow the phone records collection program to continue on a more limited basis. Before collecting phone records, the NSA should get a specific court-ordered warrant, or "stay out of our lives," said Representative Ted Poe, a Texas Republican.The House also voted overwhelmingly to approve another NSA amendment, from RepresentativeA Richard Nugent, a Florida Republican, that would largely restate the rules under which the NSA currently operates. The Nugent amendment would bar the NSA from using funds to target U.S. residents in an Internet surveillance program that currently focuses on foreign suspects.Nugent's amendment would also prohibit the NSA from storing the content of communications in the telephone records collection program, but the NSA has said it is not collecting the contents of telephone calls under the program.Groups on both sides of the NSA debate lobbied heavily before the vote on the Amash amendment. Digital rights groups Fight for the Future and Demand Progress asked members to contact their lawmakers and ask them to vote in favor of the amendment. Several conservative groups also voiced support.Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's e-mail address is firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Updated Oct. 5 at 11:00 a.m. with information on the bill's passage
The House voted unanimously Saturday morning to approve a bipartisan bill ensuring furloughed federal workers receive backpay once the government shutdown ends.
The vote on the Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act was 407-0. Twenty-five members didn't vote.
The measure now moves to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) had introduced a Senate version of the bill earlier this week.
New to civil service? Check out Federal News Network's New Hire Guide, brought to you by United Healthcare, to provide insights and pointers to first-time feds. (Pssst: It includes health and life insurance cheat sheets, too!)
Also boosting the bill's prospects for passage into law is support from the Obama administration. In a statement of administration policy issued Friday afternoon, the White House said it "strongly supports" passage of the House bill — a rare moment of bipartisan agreement since the government entered a partial shutdown on Tuesday.
Moran: Bill is about fairness
The bill, introduced Wednesday by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.), would guarantee both those employees required to work through the shutdown and those placed on unpaid leave receive backpay once Congress restores funding.
The House Rules Committee late Thursday evening fast-tracked the measure for a vote.
Some 800,000 federal employees have been furloughed while the government shutdown continues.
"It does provide these federal employees some peace of mind that they will get paid," Moran said. Although pay for both groups of employees would be delayed until after the shutdown lifts.
"Fairness is the most compelling reason for doing this," Moran said. "These folks didn't bring this about. They're trying to do their job; they want to do their job. They're coming in to work every day."
Wolf said Congress would be breaking with historical precedent if it failed to pay furloughed employees.
Read more: Congress
Following the 21-day shutdown in the mid-1990s, lawmakers eventually approved retroactive pay for furloughed federal workers.
"The federal workforce should not be punished because the administration and Congress and have been unable to reach an agreement on funding for the new fiscal year. … Ensuring that all federal employees receive pay when the government reopens has always been done — in both the Reagan and Clinton administrations," Wolf said.
Backpay gaining bipartisan support
In the run-up to the shutdown, many federal-employee unions were girding themselves for a potential fight over backpay, fearing deficit-conscious conservative lawmakers would tighten the purse strings.
But opposition to retroactive pay may be weaker than the unions thought.
"No one can actually complain about this cost of this because, obviously, this is what we would be spending had there not been a shutdown," said Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), during the committee hearing. "So, there is no real unexpected cost or increased cost, which is why I think this is a brilliant piece of legislation."
The House Rules Committee has lumped the backpay measure in with a series of small stopgap funding measures that would reopen particular agencies. Democrats have derided the measure as a "piecemeal" approach to ending the shutdown.
Sign up for our daily newsletter so you never miss a beat on all things federal
While the President supports the retroactive-pay bill, he called on the House to pass the "clean" continuing resolution adopted by the Senate.
"This bill alone, however, will not address the serious consequences of the funding lapse, nor will a piecemeal approach to appropriations bills," the statement of administration policy read.
House bill ensures backpay for furloughed feds
Government shutdown: 4 things feds should know
Feds learn furlough status as shutdown looms
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After helping to bring several startups to market including Dropbox, LogMeIn and Lookout, I found that the key to sustaining rapid growth is understanding your "must have" experience and then aligning the entire business around that experience. This includes aligning the product roadmap, funnel optimization, and messaging.
Process for Uncovering Your Must Have Experience
With each new startup, I immediately started working to uncover the "must have" experience before I formed preconceptions about how and why a product would be useful. This involved a rigorous process for identifying the most passionate users and then getting their unstructured feedback about how they were getting value. With each new cohort of users that I engaged, I began to get more structured feedback to converge on a signal of the "must have" experience. Once I had a clear signal, I could work with the team to start aligning the business around the "must have" experience.
I also found that it was important to monitor this "must have" experience over time. Each new product update can change it. Shifts in the competitive landscape can also affect it. For an experience to be a "must have" it should be both valuable and unique. The emergence of a new competitor can instantly turn your "must have" experience into a "nice-to-have" experience.
MustHaveScore Makes it Much Easier
Working with the team of engineers at CatchFree, we've been able to not only productize the approach but also improve it. The result is MustHaveScore.com. Our feedback widget requires no customization and intelligently evolves as more users provide feedback. The user input is simple and requires less than a minute of their time. While the backend data processing is complex, the output is simple and easy to understand. We provide a comparative overview of all use cases that shows the relative popularity and passion around each use case, and then we segment user feedback to give you the context to understand why the use case is a "must have."
Given my background with freemium, it's not surprising that we decided to offer the most valuable analysis for free (everything described in the previous paragraph). Over time we plan to offer additional premium services to help with positioning, targeting and eventually customer acquisition.
This is not a pivot. MustHaveScore is part of our broader goal of helping people get more value out of innovative technology solutions. After we help you identify your must have use cases, we want to eventually work with you (optionally) to help expose these use cases to prospective customers.
Not a Replacement for Customer Development
This toolset is really for transitioning to growth and then maintaining a strong growth rate after you have achieved product/market fit. It is not a replacement for early stage customer development, which is all about "getting out of the building" to reach product/market fit. In the early days, it is essential to meet face-to-face with existing and prospective customers. There a couple key reasons why early stage startups must meet face-to-face with existing and prospective customers:
- They help you form insights that you could never get through structured, automated feedback.
- A startup generally doesn't have enough users to automate the customer feedback function via surveys.
And even when you do have enough users to automate it, face-to-face interviews should always complement surveys. My best epiphanies that led to big boosts in growth have always followed concentrated face-to-face engagements with customers.
Benefits for Early Users
We've been slowly rolling out MustHaveScore over the last couple months and now have about 50 companies on the service. This slow rollout has been mutually beneficial since early companies have gotten hands on help interpreting and acting on the data, and we've gotten direct feedback to help us improve the service.
Note: MustHaveScore.com is now in private beta while we focus on our recent acquisition of KISSinsights.