Last night, the son and I were playing with one of these toys, an assortment of colored plastic frogs you string like a necklace. My wife wandered over and saw what we were doing.

“You’re supposed to make a pattern with the frogs,” she said.

“I am making a pattern,” I insisted.

“It’s a Fibonacci sequence,” I continued. “They’re Fibonacci frogs.”

“Fibonacci frogs!” the son yelled in agreement, loudly and happily, as two year-olds are wont to do.

At which point she just rolled her eyes and wisely walked away.

When we took the cats to the vet last weekend for their annual vaccinations, this poster for National Pet Wellness Month caught my eye. But then again, it contains two of my interests combine it one: it’s a cat wearing a head mirror dammit (and wearing it incorrectly at that). So of course, I decided it required a blog post.

Lex Luthor to Steel: You have four broken ribs and a ruptured appendix. Your small intestine is leaking fecal matter into your blood stream. Trust me–I have x-ray vision.

Let’s take a closer look at the injuries Lex claims that John Henry Irons has suffered:

broken ribs: Most likely suffered when he was being crushed by Everyman. Broken ribs are painful and will take several weeks to heal, but they are not usually dangerous. Rib fractures can be more serious if several ribs are broken in multiple places resulting in a flail chest, or if the broken ribs are pushed far out of place and are sharp enough to lacerate the lungs, but thankfully both of these injuries are very rare.

ruptured appendix: Most likely injured by the hammer through the abdomen. The appendix may not serve much of a function, but a ruptured one can lead to serious problems such as peritonitis. This will require surgical repair.

small intestine: An injured small intestine may leak intestinal contents into the abdomen, but not into the blood stream. The circulatory system has evolved in such a way that foreign matter doesn’t “leak” into it, even in a trauma situation. An injury leaking intestinal contents into the abdomen is serious and a surgical emergency. The intestinal contents have digestive enzymes that cause inflammation of the peritoneum, and bacteria which infect it. Surgery drainage and repair along with high-dose antibiotics are needed, and the sooner the better.
A nit-pick, but digested food in the intestine is “chyme” and doesn’t become “fecal matter” until well into the large intestine.

Lex is a shrewd businessman and a good scientist, but he’s not a doctor. His descriptions are off in places, and I suspect this is because he’s being his normal condescending self and trying to look like he knows more than he does — he ends up using the wrong terms and describing unlikely injuries. In fact, if you glance at the scene in question, he’s not even looking at Steel when he “diagnoses” him.

I wonder about how good x-ray vision really is. I know it’s been established that x-ray vision better than a regular medical x-ray, but those are some pretty specific injuries Lex is describing. I would need to order a CT scan with oral contrast to diagnose those. But then again, how much is the x-ray vision, and how much is Lex just gloating/bluffing?

• A list of all prior House reviews

I think the rabbit is winning.

• Yard work, and lots of it. Mow the lawn and get the gardens ready for planting.
• Bike riding. Hopefully a nice long ride on both Saturday and Sunday.
• Pick up the in-laws at the local airport Sunday night.
• Wasting time with my new toy: an X-Box 360 (thank you, state income tax refund). Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion here I come!

Power and cable are sporadic, so posting may be a little intermittent for the next day or two.