begin rant

Yes, it does look like a ten-penny nail, and yes - not to sound too terribly blasphemous, but having one of those driven through your wrist can hurt a bit. Not quite sure about the downstream bruising, but it looks like the good news is that the Harry-Potter scar is there to stay. Yes, I already removed my own stitches, as they weren't really holding things together, and they itched besides. You will also be thrilled to know that spending nearly three months in a cast is enough to give the back of your hand a mild sunburn merely whilst one skates for two or three hours in the afternoon. No matter - I needed the sunlight and the fresh air, and now my 'cast-line' is slowly fading from that right arm - into a cherry-red glow. Whatever. Ten years have passed, and many things have changed, but some things stay the same. I look forward to the allegedly agonizing pain of physical therapy on Monday, as I suspect it really will help restore the full function of my wrist which can not quite bend all the way forwards or back on its own right now.

Posted by Derksen at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, I offer entertainment. They asked me if I wanted to keep my supportive little friend - and I did. This thin sliver of metal has been with me for three months - how can I let that kind of relationship go overnight? I guess we're going through a trial separation period. It lives in that little tube, and I live out here in an enormous cotton mitten that will come off sometime on either Thursday or Friday.

Posted by Derksen at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The cast came off today, but the pin has not yet been removed from my hand. According to the doctor, it is possible that I may need to spend another month immobilized in a fixed cast before he is confident that there has been sufficient bone growth to merit moving me to a firm splint. We will confirm or deny this bone growth by sending me to get my hand CAT-scanned tomorrow during lunch. In the meantime, I wear the firm splint, as they would have just had to cut the cast off for the CAT scan anyhow. I also get a neat new jagged lightning-bolt of a scar (sigh... yes, I suppose it is like Harry Potter's scar, but not nearly as nice) to keep. If you look carefully at the first curve in the scarline, you can also see the protruding lump of the pin submerged just beneath the surface flesh...
 

Posted by Derksen at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the NYT Science section:

Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Scientists found evidence of limbs in the making in the 375-million-year-old fish's forward fins.

The funny thing is that in an interview I listened to on NPR yesterday, one of the scientists mentioned that he hated hearing finds such as this described as "the missing link", because it is merely one missing piece in a long chain of missing pieces, and furthermore, it does not actually represent an ancestral state within a linear progression towards tetrapody and eventually humanity. It is unquestionably a branch that shares ancestors with the line that would lead to amphibians, but its large size, developed neck, and the migration of eyeballs to the top of its head imply that the process towards terrestrialization had already been underway for some evolutionary time.

The other funny bits come later in the article when discussing the relevance of 'transitional forms' to Creation-"Science". There is an argument lifted reducto ad absurdum about how finding this fossil only proves the need to find intermediaries between this 'half-way point' and the next... or to point out that even if amphibians are descended from fish, you still can't demonstrate that fish are descendants of invertebrates, but I suppose that they haven't heard of Pikia...

Last but not least, the idea of giant killer salamanders always brings a smile to my face.
Then I think about the vicious and voracious tiger salamanders I had as a kid, and suddenly I am maybe not smiling so much anymore...

Posted by Derksen at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)