Nearly two weeks ago paramedics wheeled me out of the Penguins-Flyers game with low blood pressure and lightheadedness. Clearly this was serious — not even missing the opening faceoff on the day the Pens were to sweep their mortal enemy could raise my blood pressure.

It was early stage appendicitis. That evening I had three little slits cut into my belly; the following evening I was sitting at home watching the surgical Jack Bauer do his thing on "24."

I felt lucky. Of the 2,000 body parts that the Lever soap people have identified, I had the good fortune of having the lone useless one go bad.

Appendicitis might be scarier than arthritis — though I'd opt for two days of discomfort and a week of PlayStation II over chronic joint pain — but it's preferable to encephalitis, meningitis, hepatitis and even some afflictions that it doesn't rhyme with.

But not even "Final Fantasy 12" can fully occupy the mind during a week away from work. So I got to wondering if the appendix really is the only body part we can do without.

Clearly it isn't. Last year a niece of mine had her gallbladder removed. Eunuchs have been valued by the opera community as castrati and Flyers management as defensemen. And teeth ... well, just look south to West Virginia, my friend.

But those body parts are useful before their removal. Popular medical opinion holds that the appendix is not. A leftover from our ancestors' herbivore days, the appendix used to help our predecessors digest cellulose but evolution has since rendered it useless.

Has evolution done the same to other body parts? I mean, other than the little toe?

Indeed. And we needn't look any farther than the brain — in particular, its frontal lobe.

For millennia, the frontal lobe served us well. It helped steer our body parts in coordinated movement, gave us a working memory and enabled us to make judgments and solve problems; it was responsible for keeping our reputations intact at company Christmas parties when the tiny angel of inhibition appeared on our shoulders and said, "better not"; it gave our tongues mastery over the alphabet, it helped us make plans and it's where personality and emotion came from.

And its time has passed.

Inhibitions? Who needs them. Ours is a culture that rewards the uninhibited. With a fully functioning frontal lobe, Anna Nicole Smith is working in an office somewhere and MTV has to rely on ... music.

Informed judgments? Making an informed judgment comes with an unspoken understanding that you re-evaluate your stance when more information is presented. That doesn't happen these days. You pick a side — red or blue, PC or Mac, Paris or Lindsay — and you stick with it. Just ask the talking heads on TV.

And as for memory, what use is it if we're too impetuous to learn from our past?

Truth be told, the writing has been on the wall for the frontal lobe for a century and a half.

During a gunpowder tamping accident in 1848, an iron rod was blasted through the head of railroad worker Phineas Gage. The rod passed cleanly through and took with it a chunk of Gage's frontal lobe.

Gage, a man who'd been considered hard-working and responsible before the accident, underwent a dramatic change in personality. His doctor described the new Gage as irreverent, impatient, obstinate, capricious and "indulging at times in the grossest profanity."

Who wouldn’t curse at having an iron rod blown through his head? Still, the stand-up fellow who'd been popular with his co-workers had been transformed into a vulgar, quick-tempered malcontent with "animal passions."

Had photography only been a bit more advanced at the time, the paparazzi would have loved the guy.

But pictures were expensive and hard to come by. So Gage became famous the old-fashioned way — he became a freak-show attraction for P.T. Barnum.

And in doing so, he drafted the blueprint for the 21st century celebrity.