Some Inscrutable Body Parts

Wrist:

These joints are a lot more complicated than they need to be. *Almost* the only way I ever move my wrists is up and down, in a flapping motion. Notice that the act of twisting your hand, as to turn a doornob, does not happen at the wrist, but rather the elbow.

But there is a second motion that wrists can perform. They can rotate laterally, over a narrow angle. Why should they be able to do this? What do you use that motion for? It is such a narrow angle, you would think we could just as well do without it. All it means is that our wrists have to be packed full of tiny bones, any one of which could break at any minute and torture you for weeks. How is that evolutionarily useful?

All of this goes double for ankles.

Sinuses:

Medical science is still not sure what sinuses are for. The offered explanations mostly have to do with making the head lighter, like some hollow bird bone. This is nonsense of course. The real purpose of sinuses has to do with their likelihood of getting infected, and the handicap principle.

Toenails:

Okay I can understand how it happened that people ended up with toenails. Practically every mammal has nails. Like tails or legs, nails are an evolutionary adaptation that it is hard to shed. And toenails are useful for the "lesser" animals. Useful for fighting. And even fingernails are useful for us. It is very hard to pick up coins without the proper fingernails as I am sure you, you man of the world, are aware.

But toenails? Most of the time we don't even touch anything with our toenails. Occasionally the tops of our shoes, but that is a special occasion. They don't protect the toe from stubbing or smashing -- hitting a bony plate like a toenail would be twice as painful as hitting a soft fleshy toe. In fact, toenails are responsible for the second most common type of toe stub, what I call the Walkover Stub. I am just about done with toenails, myself.

Temple:

Why is this considered an interesting part of the body? Why does it have its own name? The other parts of the skull sure don't. Nothing much happens here, except a little artery that snakes over the surface. And sometimes headaches happen here (but not always). And I guess some jaw muscles are here, but most of them aren't? Think of all the more deserving parts of the body that aren't named.

Elbow vs. Knee:

I was talking just now about the difficulty of just losing certain body parts through evolutionary processes. They seldom just disappear. How is it then that we have kneecaps, but our elbows are left completely bare? Elbow joints work just like knee joints. I hit the nerves in my elbows all the time, and every time I do I wish I had elbow caps. Just think. If we had caps on our elbows, our opportunities for mafia torture would be doubled.