I don’t know, if I was one of the doctors referred to in this story, I’d be a bit miffed:

The head of the Colorado Lutheran High School Association says two teen boys are doing well, after an accident that partially severed their hands.

Doctors performed surgery on the two teens over the weekend. Helfer was the most severely injured, having hurt his arm as well.

“We praise the Lord that he’s doing well,” says Randy Lowe, CEO of the Colorado Lutheran High School Association.

“The surgery was extremely successful. The good Lord worked through those surgeons to reattach the tendons, and all the things you need.”

So when surgeons screw up, was Jesus busy with something else or was it… hmmm, I don’t know…. Satan?

Amazing, not a single word of thanks to the surgeons, the ones who spent years of their lives learning to save others, the ones who toiled hours upon hours while others got barely passing degrees in Marketing*.

But wait, it gets even sillier!

Students who witnessed the accident have had counselors available to them. Lowe says, immediately following the accident, students took off their shirts to wrap up the boys’ hands. They also prayed over the teens.

“I think that’s a hallmark of what this school is about,” said Lowe, “A deep faith our kids have and willingness to stop, drop and pray whenever they need to.”

Two young men with terrible injuries to their hands and arms, and the best these other kids can offer is prayer? How about calling 911? How about some compression on the wounds? How about going to get the school nurse?

How sad it is to think that it’s an honor when the kids in your school, rather than at least attempting to find something useful to do, do absolutely nothing but talk to the sky! If I were laying there with mangled hands, gushing blood, and I looked up to see everyone kneeling in prayer, I think I’d be slapping some heads about with my crimson-soaked lumps of formerly-fisty flesh.

Mr. Lowe, I’m not sure that a willingness to do nothing is a sign of great strength.

Here’s hoping those two young men, through the hard work of multiple medical professionals, and the teens’ own dedication to recovery, heal well in the weeks ahead.

* Not me. International Management with a minor in Spanish, summa baby.

Today at work, I caught part of a conversation being had by the two women in the next row of cubes. Given how loud and often one of them talks, I often catch parts (or wholes) of conversations coming from over there. Usually the topic is something banal: a television show, this or that pain in this or that body part, last night’s date at a crap restaurant that inexplicably left one of them very impressed by choice of dining establishment.

That sort of thing.

However, this morning was to be different. The topic? How one of them had a brother who was all into that science stuff.

I, sadly, did not catch everything, but a couple of key phrases told me all I needed to know:

Woman 1: “He’s more into the whole Darwinian idea of how the universe got here, and I’m more like ‘God created everything - bam!’”

Woman 2: “I’d like to ask him, if evolution is true, what happened to all the other monkeys and apes? Why didn’t they evolve too?”

…and from there it moved on, but the bit I did hear confirmed for me that one reason evolution is not more commonly accepted (in this country, and - say - Turkey) is that the populace is largely ignorant of what the science behind it actually says.

It’s easy to defiantly state you don’t believe in something when all you have in your head is a sad caricature of the actual concepts. I mean, if someone told me scientists think that one day a fish woke up and decided to be a monkey in some bizarre Kafka-esque self-experiment, I might laugh at such idiocy too.

(However, a man living inside of a whale? Speak the truth, sisters!)

I was tempted to pipe up over the wall and educate them, but I doubt it would have been well-received and I’d rather not have the HR folks on my back for creating a hostile work environment. What a nutty world where science education may be considered hostile!

In the end, I just went back to my work and waited to unwillingly overhear the next bit of conversation (which was about how a flu shot made them so sick they couldn’t even clean the house, yet again evidence of how evil science can be).

I’m not sure what we can do to resolve this problem (both loud coworkers and scientific ignorance). I’m pretty sure these women had access to educational systems that covered the sciences, just like I did. They seem intelligent enough and nice enough too.

So what’s the problem?

I can only guess that (a) we get religious belief beat into our brains from a very young age, (b) religious figures lie about science, and (b) science is, like, you know, hard and stuff.

How do we solve this problem? You got me.

(Also, PZ Myers is discussing something similar today).

Join us, won’t you?

Update: As always, a good time was had by all. And I even woke up with no hangover, which is surprising after an RMBB.

Sucks, doesn’t it?

For those of you inexplicably using Internet Explorer, I apologize for the site being all craptastic the last couple of days, with everything centered on the screen.

Seems I forgot to close a tag on the Dogs Die in Hot Cars post down below.

Everything looked fine in my instance of Firefox, so I guess it’s smart enough to close open tags when rendering the page.

Because it’s not Microsoft.

Thanks for the heads up in the comments!

…ever.

Personal Effects: One yellow metal ring intact on left ring finger, one dildo

That it was the autopsy report of the Rev. Gary Aldridge, formerly of Thorington Road Baptist Church in my old hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, is just a bonus.

Not to speak ill of the dead, of course.

Note: He must have been doing this for some time, given that dildos were deemed penetrata non grata in Alabama in 1998.

Bobby Brown has stepped up to the microphone and assured us all that his own representatives are full of crazy talk.

Bobby Brown denied Wednesday that he had a mild heart attack, something his attorney said earlier he had suffered this week in Los Angeles. The 38-year-old singer told Associated Press Radio that he is feeling fine and went to the hospital just for a checkup.

“None of it’s true,” Brown said. “I went in for a checkup. The doc gave me a clean bill of health.”

His account differed from that of his Atlanta attorney, Phaedra Parks, who earlier in the day told The Associated Press that Brown had severe chest pains Tuesday night and was taken to two hospitals.

Because when I want a general checkup, I go to the hospital. At night. With severe pains.

That’s what I do!

Me and Bobby Brown, we’re like twins. Horribly discolored and temporally divergent twins.

Word.

In other news, Bobby’s reps also said there were indications of people working to revive his career.

They proved unfounded (for real, yo).

Exercises in futility and such. Word.

That was a lot of videos in that previous post.

I think I should probably get a hobby.

Completely Unrelated: “mild-mannered MILF.” I like it.

Also Unrelated: Hey, why not join in the Retropolitan’s Halloween writing thing-a-ma-booby? It’s rather like choose your own adventure, albeit two lines at a time. And nary a mention of MILF.

Since I’m on a video kick, let’s explore YouTube for videos that represent almost all of the tapes - single artist and compilations - sitting in the tape rack on top of my computer desk. For you kids out there, long ago, we recorded our music on things called “cassettes” and listened to them in machines called “tape decks.” We also had to crank them by hand.

Anyway, lots of video tunes below the fold…

(more…)

That would be the band Dogs Die in Hot Cars for most of you, the unwashed masses (whom I still love dearly, especially when you slink into the room in that sexy cocktail dress - ROWR! - after a good shower and scrubdown anyway).

I kind of wondered why their second album was taking, oh, years and years to finally release. Seems they scrapped it.

I’d reprimand them for this oversight, but shouting at a dead dog in a hot car is just silly and futile.

So, let’s have a video instead:

Note: Since I’m perusing YouTube for videos, how about a classic (to me anyway)? OK, good idea, Andy of the WWR. Here it is, a little D’n'C from 1989: