It still itches like crazy but at least the swelling seems to be going down noticeably.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Swollen Paw
What looks like horrible eagle claws here are actually my hands. Okay, so the perspective is somewhat screwed up so that my fingers look longer than they really are. But what I'm actually trying to show is how my left hand is so much bigger than my right.
It was caused by a tiny little sting and a completely freak accident. I was doing laps at the pool in school, when my left palm brushed against something thin and hard (kind of like insect legs) when it entered the water. My first thought was, oh, that's another insect that fell into the water. A split second later, a piercing pain went right through my palm. Having been stung by sea urchins, jellyfish and stinging plankton before, I didn't think much of it and kept on swimming. But the pain got worse, not better, and by the time I thought the better of it, I could barely hang onto the ladder as I climbed out of the water.
Turned out that it was a paper wasp, about 3-4 centimeters long (I made the lifeguards fish it out so I could at least know what it was). I have been stung by bees and wasps before without any problem, so I decided to ignore it. Which was a bad mistake because the swelling got worse, not better -- it's been more than 24 hours and my left hand is so swollen that it's a little frozen at this point. I can't even see my knuckles on my left hand right now.
I went to the doctor this afternoon and to the hospital this evening. Both times they told me that it looked like a hypersensitivity reaction and not an infection. Let's hope they're right. I am just glad that I'm a human and not a caterpillar!
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Loss of Control == Faith in God?
In a recent blog posting on the NYTimes.com site, the author posited a correlation between a tendency to see patterns where none existed, and the perceived level of control (or lack thereof). His hypothesis was that when people are feeling out of control, they tend to see patterns where there is none, which is why people who are working in dangerous professions such as deep-sea fishing tend to have more superstitions than people who work run-of-the-mill jobs.
(He has an experiment that you can try out on the blog as well. Try it. It's interesting.)
Among the comments on his blog posting was one in which the reader pointed out that people of low income, who, by nature, have less control over their finances, are more likely to be superstitious or do irrational things like buy lottery tickets, etc.
Which then made me think: people of low income and those who don't have much control over life's events also tend to believe in God more readily. What does that mean? To a statistician, it might mean that "seeing God's hand at work" is seeing patterns where there were none, and faith in God is simply superstition.
What do you think?
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