Appendectomy, Step 1: Remove Appendix

A man is suing his hospital for not removing his appendix during his appendectomy in 2013. This should have been the first sign:

“We have an operative report from Lawrence Hospital saying that the appendix was removed. Most importantly, we have the pathology report from Lawrence Hospital after the first operation which says what was presented to the pathology department was not the appendix.”

The man has since had another appendectomy, this time removing his appendix.

Talk about unnecessary medical interventions...

Doctors with too much time on their hands diagnose and surgically repair Rodin’s sculptures of human hands.

There is so much wrong with our health-care system.

California’s Affordable Care Act Health Exchange web site listed a phone number to call to sign up for health insurance…but it was a phone sex line.

How old is "grown up"?

I know there are age requirements for certain things: you must be 16 to drive, 18 to vote, and 21 to drink alcohol, etc. But this woman is 85. I think she has earned the right to stuff dollar bills in a dancer’s pants if she wants to.

This has got to be the worst form of birth control ever...

A woman from Pleasant Grove, Utah, is facing six counts of murder for strangulating and suffocating six babies immediately after she gave birth to them (over a period of ten years). She individually wrapped each baby (and a seventh still-born baby) in towels and plastic and stored them in cardboard boxes in her garage. Then she left them there when she moved out of the house. And she looks so surprised in her mug shot, as if she figured that no one would ever clean out the garage.

Or maybe she's surprised because someone told her that there are other forms of birth control.

The Brady Bunch meets Psycho

The Pennsylvania high school stabber’s lawyer says the stabber’s family is “like the Brady Bunch.” Sure, if the Brady Bunch were homicidal ax-wielding maniacs. 

What is with people? The kid must be mentally unstable. How else could he violently stab 21 people before being tackled to the ground? Are we going to blame this on cell phones again? Or are we going to admit that there’s a real problem here?

Correlation is Not Causation

CBS reports that a man with body dysmorphic disorder grew suicidal after spending 10 hours a day taking 200 selfies a day, trying to take the “right” selfie. The man’s doctor warns that “taking too many selfies may cause mental illness.”

If you don’t like the way you look in pictures, stop taking 200 selfies a day! This is not rocket science.

But seriously, mental illness should not be taken lightly. My problem with this article is that the doctors (including the man’s parents, who are both “mental health professionals”) are blaming the mental illness on the technology. If the selfies are causing the problem, then can’t it be solved by taking away the guy’s cell phone and digital camera? Did none of the “mental health professionals” think of that? Or does anyone think that maybe the problem is a little deeper than the technology? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the man was already mentally ill, and that is what caused him to waste 10 hours a day taking pictures of himself. Even if you like what you look like, you would have to be mentally ill in the first place to spend that much time taking selfies. This brings us to the critical thinking lesson of the day: Correlation is not causation, no matter how convenient it would be for two mental health professionals to blame a cell phone for their son’s mental problems.