evolution

This will perk your day right up:

“This is a problem that’s been ongoing for a while. We’ve had women and children (sent) to facilities outside of our community for years now,” Branson said. “We just have to get something done.”

After waiting in the hospital for several hours on Sunday, Branson said, the two victims were told they would have to go to Stormont-Vail Regional Health Center in Topeka to be examined. Two other victims were examined at the hospital.

LMH employs sexual assault nurse examiners who are trained to collect evidence for “rape kits,” which prosecutors and investigators use to help solve the case. Branson claims the hospital doesn’t have enough nurses for the number of sexual assaults that occur in Douglas County.

I’m betting that there’s much more to this story than what appears here. ¹ I have little trouble believing that there are more than a few times when hospitals are maxed out — and this situation will increase if those in power get their way — but…

UPDATE: Here is, according to the Douglas County DA’s office, an enumeration of the times when someone was turned away at LMH and sent elsewhere.

1. However, that really doesn’t make it better. [↩]

The press release says it all, really:

You may know or have probably heard about these dolls for men that are very popular in Sex Shops around the world. There are inflatable ones, full-body, silicone, as well as other models. So now the first doll for dogs has been launched in Brazil. That’s right, a doll for dogs to practice safe sex. The majority of non-neutered dogs spend a good chunk of time looking for something to hump. They try pillows, furry creatures, people’s legs and even other animals.

To put an end to this nonsense and improve the little ones’ lives, the enterprise PetSmiling, headquartered in Miami, United States, and in São Paulo, Brazil, is bringing to the market the DoggieLoverDoll: a female canine manufactured in soft rubber with a silicone vagina and an easy to clean reservoir. The product also comes with a tube of water-based intimate lubricant, to increase the useful life of the doll.

[regretfully inherited from: Insty.]

Alternate title: “There’s a bad kind of crazy in the air”.

BALTIMORE – At one of the nation’s top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient’s bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive.

They are doing Reiki therapy, which claims to heal through invisible energy fields. The anesthesia chief, Dr. Richard Dutton, calls it “mystical mumbo jumbo.” Still, he’s a fan.

“It’s self-hypnosis” that can help patients relax, he said. “If you tell yourself you have less pain, you actually do have less pain.”

Alternative medicine has become mainstream. It is finding wider acceptance by doctors, insurers and hospitals like the shock trauma center at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Consumer spending on it in some cases rivals that of traditional health care.

O what a time to be alive…

Warms your heart, doesn’t it?

Is there any lifelong Kansas resident out there who wants to bet against my feeling that of all the stories about Kansas that may be out there in the next two days, this is the one that is going to get picked up by AP, CNN, et al.?

I guess Thomas Murray is hoping to get Paula Martin and the prosecutorial B-team this time. Hopefully he gets smarter this time if he gets the new trial — jurors said last time that he and his people presented not a shred of evidence that wasn’t contradicted by the evidence.

See ya in 25, pal.