Whenever it comes to problems with the hip area, me and mine seem doomed to encounter GPs who have no idea how to deal with physical mechanics. Apparently most general practitioners are all about chem and bio, which is fine and dandy except when the problem is mechanical rather than infectious. Lately it's Seesterperson who's been struck down with sciatica-induced agony, probably related to roller derby's determination to have skaters always going widdershins (step 1 to becoming a goddess of the rink: figure out which way widdershins actually is) in a squatting pose. Her GP and a surprising number of online resources are in fits debating whether it's really sciatica if the pain descends below the knee. Here's my feeling: if the pain is related to the (follow the logic closely here) sciatic nerve, the question of whether or not it goes below the point of the nerve's bifurcation is moot, a semantic debate that has nothing to do with the actual mode of treatment, and you shouldn't hassle your poor patient about the fine points of the definition. You won't end up looking any better, because your first fix won't work, and your patient will be uncomfortable for longer. Also her relatives will think about handing you an "ass/elbow: disambiguation" wiki and then smacking you on the noggin.
Ahem. Got a little spleen on the monitor here, excuse the mess. Anyway, in hopefully distracting conversations over the weekend, Seesterperson and I were talking about Neil Gaiman's professed guilty feelings at how much work it took to build a zeppelin pirate ship that collects lightning bolts, relative to the ease of just writing one into Stardust because it sounded cool. Which of course it does and is, it's hard to argue with that, and the screen ship was worth the work (though if they'd tossed De Niro overboard early on, I would have been better pleased). Not before time, someone's actually come up with music for it. You just know that this is how it sounds inside Cory Doctorow's head whenever he writes about steampunk. Especially the propeller.
