2011 year in review: did I write anything worth reading?

Blogging can take up a lot of time. For an amateur, who doesn't blog as a way of making money/promoting himself, there isn't much justification or rationale for blogging unless the writing is valuable in itself. For most us, this isn't the case. The number of bloggers who benefit the world beyond the satisfying of others' attention deficit problems, like Denise Minger, is very small.

So in this spirit, I review cxlxmxrx over the last year and ask whether I wrote anything that might be worth reading...

• March: genetic testing & FDA regulation: If you can't tell, I actually enjoy arguing.
• April: hospital trash: The amount of trash produced in health care is outrageous. I should have followed up this post by researching the question to see if my estimates are correct.
• July: ancestral responses to ancestral relationship issues: It's one thing to investigate the social and sexual arrangements of our ancestors. But in trying to apply the knowledge to modern times, it's instructive to consider how people closer in time to those ancestors dealt with the issues raised by our sexual and social impulses.
• September: Cepacol & FDA regulation: My first foray into anything like original reporting.
• September: 9/11 Commemoration: This year was the 10th anniversary of the NYC Trade Towers bombing.
• September: Critiquing NR's review of The Bond I & II: Against sentimentalism in vegetarianism.
• December: Better Angels of Our Nature book review: There were a lot of what I thought were pretty crappy reviews of this interesting book written by academics and journalists who didn't really deal with the book's arguments. While my writing may not be the best, I think the question I asked--whether the pacification of man might not have a trade-off--is the only really relevant response to the book.

Well, seven posts is actually more than I would have expected before reviewing my posts from the year. If this list tells me anything, it's that, if I concentrated on producing only one post per month, I would be producing more posts of a higher quality. Also, it turns out I don't actually post very much on healthcare- or hospital-related issues. Probably I should be more pointed in picking on these subjects.