In the aftermath of the assault, some interesting consequences have flowered - not the least of which is my new found appreciation for that most marvelous of evolutionary phenomena: the opposable thumb.
With my right hand in a splint that encases my thumb, wrist, and forearm, I have been left with one working hand; and although one hand is enough to type these words, there are unfortunately a great many vital tasks in the modern world that require the use of two functioning hands. For instance there is the tying of shoelaces and the fastening of pant clasps and shirt buttons, without which the American workforce would be compelled to commute naked or all work from home - with catastrophic consequences for the commercial real estate market and the fashion industry.
How is it that such a small but useful member resulted in the raising of human civilization? For scientists have theorized that the size of the humanoid brain truly increased and developed only after a freakish evolutionary mutation shifted the location of the thumb to become an opposable digit. The ability to grasp things generated all manner of brain activity, which in turn generated more ideas about what else could be grasped and thrown and scraped and pulled and pushed.
And before long, geologically speaking, we were racing across the earth in the form of gigantic empires - razing, pillaging, conquering, assimilating, selling, purchasing - a phenomenon that has changed barely in form and naught in substance over the millennia.
This leads me to reconsider the effect of thumbs on brain size. In fact, just over a week ago that night, a simian brute - clothed and probably employed, too - made a compelling case that the opposable thumb, even if it increased brain size, had no effect whatsoever on brain content.
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