So half a brain isn't half-bad

Half-baked.  Half a loaf.  Half-assed. Half-hearted. Half-empty. Half-pint. Halfway house.  Half asleep.

Face it, there are a lot of phrases starting with "half-" that aren't exactly complimentary or encouraging.

There are exceptions:  halftime, half dollar, half price, half life -- that aren't bad, or are at least neutral.

But let's face it, half-a-brain or half-brained isn't something anybody wants to be called.  Or actually have.

Except this guy:

Doctors are stunned to discover that 60-year-old ex-soldier has lived all his life 'with only HALF a brain'

Let's grab a quote:

'Radiologists performed a computer tomography of his head and were puzzled for some time – the part of the brain of the retired man where the ischemia attack was supposed to have happened was not there at all.

'Instead of the left side of the brain there was a black "hole" in computer images.'

Specialists concluded that all his life the remaining right hemisphere of the brain had performed all the brain functions.

Well, I don't recommend doing things half-hearted or half-assed, but I guess we'll have to rethink the half-brained insult.