Ask Mr. Smartypants

The appendix is back.

Medical science always told us it was useless, the Jerry Springer of internal organs. Humans, we were told, evolved past needing whatever service it once provided. The appendix became like the NordicTrack in the basement, ignored except for those rare occasions when it caused an injury.

It's an imperfect analogy: NordicTracks don't rupture, and people don't trip over their appendix in darkened basements while drunkenly searching for their old Nitty Gritty Dirt Band albums, but still.

Recently, though, something happened to the appendix that won't be happening to Springer or the NordicTrack. Dr. Bill Parker and his cronies at Duke University Medical Center figured out what it's for.

I read about the breakthrough and thought, "Here's an immunologist whose research might someday save millions of lives. I should pull him away from all that so he can help me write my column."

Parker said the appendix is a place where good bacteria can be stored until they are called on to go to work in the stomach, often after a bad case of diarrhea. Why did that take so long to figure out?

"The fact is the appendix serves no purpose for people who have good sewer systems and clean drinking water," Parker said. "That's why people in the industrialized world can have them taken out and not suffer any ill effects."

This was fascinating, but I wanted to talk to Parker about the authoritative voice.

Always, there is the authoritative voice. It tells us in no uncertain terms that the sun circles the Earth. Then it tells us in deep, sonorous tones that the Earth circles the sun. The voice that delivers the wrong information is no less certain, no less scornful of those who disagree, than the voice that delivers the right information.

The authoritative voice tells us there are 100 gods, of hearth and home and star and sky, of trees and grass and rivers and mountains. The authoritative voice tells us there is but one god and his name is Jehovah, or Allah, or that there is a trinity, one God in three guises: father, son and Holy Ghost. The authoritative voice tells us there is no god.

The authoritative voice says the free market solves all ills and causes them, that the economy is on the edge of a recovery and a depression.

The authoritative voice told us it's OK to own slaves. The authoritative voice told us women do not deserve to vote.

Parker said he believes in absolute scientific truths. I think as our methods of observation improve, our observations inevitably change.

The authoritative voice sounds exactly the same when it's wrong as when it's right, exactly the same when it's saying the appendix is useless as when it's saying it's not.

I doubt the authoritative voice and I hope you will, too.

Unless you hear an authoritative voice instructing you to buy my NordicTrack and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band albums. That voice, you should obey.

Today, I expose my dirty little secret, or rather dirty little secret No. 2,193, knowing many of you share this shame.

Thanks to working nights, an inability to force our daughter to sleep in her own room and very different snoozing and viewing habits for myself and my wife, I live in a sparsely furnished dorm room.

And thanks to Charter cable, I have reached the end of my badly frayed rope.

When Quinn was born, I was working two jobs, mild-mannered reporter by day, world's angriest waiter by night. When I got home at 1 a.m., Quinn would be in bed with Angela. I would pick her up and, when Angela stirred, say, "The baby is restless, I'll take her downstairs."

We would watch ESPN or a movie together for a couple of hours, each of us enjoying our respective bottles, then I would put her back in bed with Angela and catch a few hours' sleep in the guest room. Quinn was the size of a baking potato and I was the size of Idaho, so I did not want to risk "mashing the spud."

We would redecorate Quinn's room every few months, and she would say, "Mommy, that's beautiful," then refuse to sleep in it. In four different homes, Quinn managed to own five separate beds situated in seven rooms, all the while spending pretty much every night "in the big bed."

Quinn would say, "I love mommy, and I get scared when I sleep alone." This meant, "I am addicted to television like it's heroin and there is not one in my room. If you want me to go eight hours without TV, think rehab."

At one point, when I was working only days, we did move Quinn into her room for about a month. This was long enough to trade the comfy bed I slept in to my mother-in-law for a futon, at which point I went back on nights, Quinn went back to Angela, and I was suddenly sleeping on a futon.

When we finally got Quinn into her bed for good (with the lights on, the protection of 117 stuffed animals and, possibly, cloves of garlic), Angela and I had become incompatible. I get home at 1 a.m. and like to watch "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," but turn the TV off and go to bed as soon as I get sleepy.

Angela wakes up when I switch the TV to Comedy Central, then wants to keep it tuned to "CSI: Miami" all night long. I don't sleep well with the TV on, and David Caruso gives me a fierce set of the jeebies.

Additionally, Angela and I do not think romance is enhanced by living in close quarters or hearing each other's sleep noises. We believe real passion springs from separate bathrooms, alone time, adequate rest, scented candles, extinguished lights and bargaining.

So I sleep on a rock-hard futon in a room equipped with a 13-inch Sylvania and a scarred night table. It's like the room the guys in "Shawshank Redemption" live in when they get out of jail, but it provides cable, and solitude, which is what men really need.

But 25-year-old TVs only get so many channels. Mine gets 60. Charter moved Comedy Central to 67 this week.

So there it is, my secret life. I'm now just an exhausted man on a futon weeping bitterly at an ancient TV that no longer receives Jon Stewart.

Honestly, it's enough to make a guy break down and sleep with his wife.

Attending the town hall meetings of Rep. Bob Inglis and Sen. Jim DeMint on Thursday helped me see the issue clearly: We must stop listening to people, on either side, who engage in only half of the American conversation.

Inglis made this point beautifully. Asked whether he believes health care is a right, he said it is not, but he immediately addressed the other half of the conversation, saying he has "an obligation to care for the least of these among us, helping them with food, clothing and shelter."

Exactly. No one has any right to demand anything from me, but I have an obligation to provide for the less fortunate.

If you think it's OK for broken bones to go unset in America, then you're not part of the real conversation. If you would deny a poor person with an infection three bucks worth of penicillin, then you're not part of the real conversation.

You have a right to your opinion, but we're trying to have a civilization here. The greatest, richest, most philanthropic country in history doesn't let people die from easily treated problems.

But if you think the health insurance companies should be shut down, the doctors should all work for the government and no one should have better care than anyone else, you're not part of the conversation. We're trying to have a free nation here, and I'll buy ritzy health care if I want to.

And when we get the selfish, racist and xenophobic folks shushed, and we get the leftist, wealth-hating big-government loving freaks quiet, we can have the real conversation.

The real conversation is about levels of care, and delivery systems. The health care that needs to be available to all people should be about as good as government cheese and must be delivered via a cheaper method than emergency rooms.

Ban the dispensing of non-critical care in emergency rooms and set up government-run doc-in-a-boxes, urgent care centers open very long hours, one per county. Set up specialty offices, for cancer and the like, every 10 counties. Staff them with physicians paying off their student loans via a few years of service.

The lines would be long, the drugs generic, the service grumpy, the decor horrid. I wouldn't go there, because I have great health insurance. My company wouldn't cancel my insurance because poor people were allowed to get generic blood pressure medicine or an X-ray at a clinic. It would be cheaper than emergency rooms flooded with the uninsured seeking painkillers, stitches and antibiotics.

Health insurance carriers won't be destroyed by the public health insurance option because there won't be one.

Poor people dying for lack of a reasonable amount of medical treatment is not an acceptable option in America. We have the responsibility to do better. Single-payer health care is not an option in America. We have the right to ask for, and buy, more.

I pay taxes, and I say if someone's poor and hungry, give them a big, cheap hunk of cheese. If they're poor and sick, get them basic treatment.

Not because they deserve it, but because it's my obligation.

America is at its best when citizens and government pay attention to rights and responsibilities in equal measure.