HOCKEY, SCIENCE, NEUROLOGY, PAUL ABDUL

The June 9th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study which looked at the possibility that increased injuries COULD OCCUR if little league hockey officials allowed body checking. I would advise you to reread that above sentence because, yes, you read that correctly. The researchers wanted to know if body checking, which is when you use your body as a weapon and run into other skaters to throw them off balance, could lead to increased injuries, as opposed to what the number of injuries would be if NO body checking were allowed. I'm so proud of the scientific method. You form a theory (Body checking will cause an increase of body injuries in adolescent hockey leagues). You have to have a control group (Hey! Let those bozos over there body check each other's brains out and then we'll count their body parts and assess their injuries). You have to have a population that doesn't body check (Let's let these nancy-boys play girl hockey and not allow them to body check each other and then make fun of them so that they grow up to be snipers in church towers). And then you assess the data and publish it in beautiful publications like JAMA.

In other news, the American Academy of Neurologists redid the guidelines for what accounts for brain death. This is good news. This should eliminate a lot of gangsta rappers and perhaps Paula Abdul.

I want to be a scientist when I grow up. Oh wait...