Happy Fourth, everyone!

That said, watching it had me in stitches.  And I say that knowing I clicked the mouse every five minutes all day on June 15th so I could be one of the first to get an iPhone 4.  It worked.  I got mine a day before the official release date.  And I don’t regret it one bit.

(h/t Goldblog)

Although health care reform is far from over as a policy issue, it seems that it is no longer consuming everyone’s lives as it was a few short months ago.  As people’s interest in hearng about the ins and outs of research and policy as it pertains to health care systems wanes, I’ve found myself with less and less to write.

It’s not that I don’t feel like I have anything to say.  It’s that I started this journey by focusing on health care reform because I felt like I had some credibility on the issue.  I have opinions on lots of topics, of course, but at least in that domain I thought I had earned a place in the discussion.  Maybe that’s why I haven’t been posting as much in the last few weeks.

The last week changed that, however, because of two posts.  First, there was my post on vaccines and autism.  It amazes me how much that topic can set people off.  To some, it’s like questioning religion.  I am simply astounded at how many of the emails I received were from people who admitted up front that they knew vaccines caused autism by faith and faith alone.  It’s no longer a matter of science.  The second was my post on my troubles with my prescription and my insurance company.  I didn’t receive any email, but I was surprised (and a little touched) by the people who retweeted it and commented on it in their own blogs.

I sometimes wonder, as I’m sure every blogger does, if what I’m writing makes any difference.  I wonder if anyone reads it.  I see the big league blogs, many of which I list on the right side of the page, and wonder if mine might ever have even a fraction of the impact I’m sure theirs do.  This week has given me renewed hope, mostly because of a string of strange links and common threads.  It’s made me think that the blogging world may be smaller than I assumed.

It started with an email I received from a friend of mine.  I know David (and his wife) back from my days in Seattle.  At the time he was a newspaper reporter and an author.  I still remember reading a draft of his book while I was on call as a resident, where I somehow managed to think I was qualified to make notes and comments on it.  Anyway, David saw my blog post on vaccines and autism and send me a link to this comic on the Andrew Wakefield situation.  You should go check it out, as it shows the situation to be even worse than I made it out to be.  I love getting emails like that because (1) they expand on what I was trying to say and (2) show me people I respect are reading what I write.

But the week got better, when I read Austin Frakt posting about my rant against my insurance company.  I admire Austin’s blog immensely, and have linked to it many times (as have many of the big blogs).  Just a few minutes later, I read a post by David (again) on his own blog, where it turns out one of his emails was excerpted on The Daily Dish.  Turns out it’s his favorite, blog, too.  I was even more surprised to read David’s full email, where it turns out he mentions me, in part because of some of my posts about Megan McArdle’s writings.  Not long after, I was reading The Daily Dish myself, and saw David quoted directly, with attribution this time, on an entirely different subject, as he talked about his guidelines for journalists.

It’s a big week for him, I imagine.  He deserves it.  You should read his blog.

It feels like a big week for me, too.

I’ve written any number of scientific papers.  I’ve written months of blog entries.  I’ve even written a book.  And yet I still have trouble thinking of myself as a writer.  Maybe it’s because English was my least favorite subject in school.  Maybe it’s because I feel like writing is a skill I have forced myself to learn with repetition and not something I’ve been formally trained to do, or a gift, or something that comes easy to me.  Or maybe it’s because I admire some writers so much I just can’t lump myself in with them.  But, as my agent once shouted at me in surprise when I said I said something along these lines, I am a “real” writer.  So maybe I should feel free to write about more than merely health care policy.

I think I just might.

At some point, and it’s hard specifically to say when, your toddlers become actual people.  They start revealing knowledge you know didn’t come from you.  They start talking to their friends about things you don’t understand.  And they start asking real questions.

When they were very little, I decided – for better or worse – to answer their questions honestly, no matter how hard they were.  So far I’ve been doing a pretty decent job.  My wife gives me strange looks when I’m going on about how refraction of light makes the sky blue.  But I feel a particular sense of pride when my kids debate the ability of water to remain suspended in the air to create clouds.

My oldest loves to quiz me about the past.  My youngest loves to ask me questions about my day.  But it’s my middle child who asks the stumpers.

He wants to know about death.  He wants to know about God.  He wants to know why people look different.  Why bad things happen.  Why people act the way they do.

I like to think I’m answering those questions well.  I like to think I’m doing right by him.  Most of the time, I think I am.  But I recognize that harder questions are coming.

I saw this video over at The Daily Dish.

StoryCorps, “an independent nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives,” makes its first animation:

Joshua Littman, a 12-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome, interviews his mother, Sarah. Joshua’s unique questions and Sarah’s loving, unguarded answers reveal a beautiful relationship that reminds us of the best—and the most challenging—parts of being a parent.

I am simply in awe of this mother.  Her ability to answer very difficult questions with complete candor, and the obviously strong relationship that allows her to do so, is inspiring.

It makes me want to be a better parent.

UPDATE:  Seems many of you liked this as much as I did.  Here’s a link to Sarah Littman’s blog post about it.

After getting back home late last night, I had to get up at 6 AM this morning to give a talk on the ACA.  Since I was on PST still, that felt like 3 AM.

Needless to say, I spent the day a bit grumpy.  But then I saw this:

My love for this video is intensified because I have this and this and this and this and this in my office.  No joke.  It’s quite a show in my office.  And my wife doesn’t want them at home.

(h/t Sullivan)

Besides health policy and health services research, I also have an interest in medical myths (see the book down there on the right of this page).  CNN Headline News does a series called “Beyond the Surface” and they taped Rachel and I for a number of pieces on medical myths.  Here’s the latest one:

That said, even a successful book doesn’t sell that many copies.  It doesn’t make you a ton of money, and it doesn’t make you famous.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to say, “No, Oprah hasn’t called yet.”

On Wednesday, Rachel and I trekked all the way over to Bloomington to do a book signing.  We’ve had a number of really good ones.  But this time, not one person showed up.  We signed no books.  Zero.  A few people picked a copy up – right in front of us – and then put it back down and scurried away.  It doesn’t matter how much you’ve succeeded; that hurts.

Which is why this piece by Robert Draper made me so happy:

the author shows up at the bookstore just before seven in the evening. He is a lanky young fellow, with shirtsleeves rolled up and no tie. The store’s two owners greet him with the usual congratulations. One of them has in fact read the book all the way through. The other has not: He found it too long, especially all that stuff about the author’s time as a community organizer in Chicago.

Their store, Eso Won Books, is the leading African-American book vendor in Los Angeles. The owners serve wine and cheese when famous writers such as Maya Angelou and Walter Mosley come by to read. Tonight they hand Barack Obama a glass of water and bring him to the back of the bookstore, where his audience awaits him. All nine of them. None of his former classmates from Occidental College have shown up. He is getting used to this. The reading at his neighborhood bookstore in Chicago—57th Street Books, a Hyde Park co-operative of which he was a member—drew at most thirty, including only one colleague from the University of Chicago, where he teaches constitutional law. The tiny gathering at his book-signing party in Chicago consisted largely of folks whom the hostess, Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s friend and one of the Chicago mayor’s top advisers, had personally begged to drop by.

I feel your pain, President Obama.  I really do.

Bonus: This guy has obviously written a book.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

(h/t The Daily Dish)