Monthly Archive for April, 2007

My God *have you seen Harper’s*? I have, and it is a thing of beauty — every article since the year 1850, a wonderful navigation scheme and site layout, a fabulous building on the (somewhat unrealized) experiment that was their last site redesign. Paul Ford did the work, and his essay on the site launch and what it means to him is something that echoes inside me. I’ve never done a project of that sort of scale, but I know all the feelings he describes.

He says that you do a thing, you pour your life into it, and then you flip a switch, a site goes live, the criticism and knee-jerk reactions come pouring in. Later comes the praise, but never enough to really justify it, then the bug reports and problems, and you have to fix them.

His final words chill me, I don’t know how else to describe it, because I know he speaks truth, and its a bit painful, but then again, its the only possible way it can be:

If you work for a startup you can fool yourself into believing that the reward will be eternal wealth, but I work for a nonprofit, and the reward is: I did a thing, and I doubt I’ll ever do anything like it again. One, two, three: I will never get enough praise; of course I failed; and what I did was not particularly important. The best thing to hope for is that in time and with much more effort the work will become transparent to its users, that it will be taken for granted. That’s life with websites.

“From the studios of Minnessota Public Radio in St. Paul, I’m Kai Ryssdal.” Wait a second, what? Oh no, MPR, no you don’t. Don’t you dare fuck up Marketplace. I stood by while you tweaked Weekend America, firing Barbara Bogaev because she refused to relocate, and the program has been worse for it. Now this? A show about world commerce centered out of New York, or Washington, or, ya know, Los Angeles is neat, but *St. Paul*? Come on! I wonder how much of the staff survived the move…

*Edit* (9:07pm): False alarm or shape of things to come?

*Edit 2* (4/30 3:48pm): Thanks, Kai. I am happy and relieved. Carry on the good work.

Great, great _Times_ article about adolescent health care and how the current medical system fails at treating teenagers. There is pediatric care, geriatric care, and normal adult care, but very little specialization in adolescent care, which has a whole different set of challenges.

The biggest problem, and one I can empathize with completely, is that doctors don’t know how to talk to adolescents. They need to get the parents out of the room, they need to talk about life and lifestyle, family situation, school, behaviors, and give productive, medically-based suggestions that are non-judgemental. They need to treat teenagers like adults and give them the information they need. They need to listen actively to problems and work together to come up with solutions. They need to recognize that adolescene is utterly awkward, that everyone is different, and that we each think our problems are unique and life-defining.

To this day I don’t really know how the medical system is supposed to work for me — who do I call if I have a problem, how much information should I be giving the people at the front desk, how private is it? What does the doctor report about me, what goes in various files, what sorts of things do I need to talk about to make sure I get a good standard of care. Should I ask for more tests? Question why I’m getting them? How do I choose my primary care doctor?

Teenagers need to learn how to become good medical consumers, need to learn about how to make the system work for them, need to know that doctors will be there when they need them. In turn, insurance companies need to provide incentives for adolescent care to be thorough and complete, and for more doctors to become specialized in the field.