…Left-handed people, that is. Have you hugged one today?
This thread is to enable discussion of an interesting point that commenter Katz raised in another thread, and which deserves a discussion all its own:
“…the question is to what extent are statements inherently ‘raced’ or ‘sexed’ or any number of other past participles?
Is it possible for individuals to escape their identity or is their identity indelibly etched into their consciousness and/or modes of expression?
As a left-hander, for example, a member of a permanent and until recently a deprecated minority, I’m aware that my brain works differently from the general run of right-handers. Other studies have borne out the importance of handedness as a marker for mental process.
Even if I wanted to, could I think like a right-hander?
I’d argue that race is a social construct but that sex and handedness may have some powerful inherent qualities.
The Wikipedia article highlighted by Katz cites a range of sources suggesting that left-handedness is associated with greater cognitive capacity in the realms of (a) multi-tasking, and (b) simultaneous analysis (synthesis) of multiple information streams (as opposed to linear analysis).
As a left-hander, I know I hold up alright on the synthesis part, but I’m a lousy multi-tasker.
Meanwhile, the deeper questions of identity that Katz raised, and which facets of identity are more ‘indelible’ than others, may also be pondered here.
Or, as Katz put it:
What do youse lefties think?
Apparently left-handed people have a shorter life expectancy than right-handed people.
There is no difference in life expectancy between left and right handed people. There was a controversial study done in 1980 by Halpern & Coren that suggested left-handed people had an average life expectancy of 9 years less than right-handed people. However, data was based on second-hand information: surveys from the next-of-kin of recently deceased persons asking about right/left handedness and age of death. They found left-handed average age of death was 66; right-handed average age was 75.
Unfortunately, this study keeps getting quoted even though more recent data has shown their hypothesis is not supported. Second hand survey data is not a sound methodology.
That’s a relief.
Much of this is discussed in RIGHT HAND,LEFT HAND by Chris McManus, 2002. Incidentally, I happen to by bi-handed. Can only use a mouse with my left, but sign with my right (probably happened because I was born with mild cerebral palsy and could only write using two hands. So,there are some accidental aspects to handedness.
Lefties are also more adaptable than righties. It’s more than just adapting to a right-handed world, it’s the exercise of adaptation itself. With multitasking, even as a lefty, as a male I have trouble with that :/ But I am good at some multitasking roles, like bassplaying, where you’re literally the meat in the musical sandwich. So its not all bad!
When you say, “think like a right-hander”, what does that mean? I’m a kinesthetic learner, is that more true of lefties than righties for instance?
Noting the left-handedness of US Presidents, it would be interesting to see, for example, the handedness of other kinds of leaders, religious, military etc, whether handedness has a link to the degree of authoritarian orientation (I’ve always wondered about critics of all the arts myself). My hunch is that it does, but I’d like real numbers.
Mercurius, don’t worry about being a lousy multi-tasker. It seems that multi-tasking is no great skill and leads to poor concentration and generally less effec tiveness. The idea that women and mums in particular are brilliant multi-taskers in the home is true to some extent and caused by necessity. However their perceived efficiency and reputed cleverness in doing a dozen things at once because of all the demands on them doesn’t acknowledge the low level of concentration required for so many of their household tasks, no matter how vital they might be to their families. Attending to a sore knee or rocking and feeding a baby can be done with one eye on the stove. Probably though the child whose reading is being listened to at the same time knows he’s being short changed on attention!
Not surprisingly many women often found it a relief to work outside the home where even in traditionally female occupations in office or factory they had to perform quite differently. Operating a treadle sewing machine requires head down concentration with hands and feet as well as eyes involved. Working in a munitions factory women would be focussing as would any man on their one assigned task. Even in teaching we all know how ineffective are teachers of either sex who try to do their exam paper marking in classroom time.
Still the idea of female multi-tasking has persisted. Most of my working life, particularly in management, I operated under the misconception that I was a very efficient multi-tasker. Now with leisure and the opportunity to watch myself I can see that what I thought was multi-tasking was working very fast under pressure, often switching from one as yet incomplete task to another as various priorities demanded. In retirement I can now complete writing, gardening and other tasks sequentially even if still at a reasonable pace. I see myself doing domestic chores like bed making and cleaning more effectively and enjoyably with focus from start to finish.
Not sure that left handedness has much to do with multi-tasking either!
I had planned to tell you how I was trying improve my memory and mental flexiblity by using only my left hand to complete crosswords and the like. Research on the plastic brain suggests that simple transfer from left to right handedness helps
recovery for stroke victims and other brain damaged individuals. Other LP readers may have some experience of this.
Is it just my perception or is there any validity to the argument that sportspeople and artistes (ie actors, singers, visual artists) seem to be disproportionately made up of lefties?
Not that there’s anything wrong with that …
NB Two of the 4 main stars of Seinfeld are lefties.
Natively, I am somewhat ambidextrous, preferring different hands for different tasks, or both for some, and for a few tasks, “handedness” is irrelevant to me, although possibly favouring “right” in instinctive action.
I trained in martial arts for several years, and one of the benefits of such training is a widening of one’s options for action by removing “handedness” through training favouring the less favoured side. This training works a treat, and can be widely applied.
So, at least from my experience, “handedness” is not an “indelible” trait.
I would also suggest that it is not a “binary” trait either, but that “left” and “right” are just the extremes at either end of a spectrum of ambidexterity.
The Simpsons are left handed
ewe2 mentioned US presidents, 5 of the last 6 US Presidents are left handed or left dominated ambidextrous (Reagan). 7 of the last 14 Presidents are if you include Hoover are left handed.
Left-handedness is relatively uncommon; seven to ten percent of the adult population is left-handed.
The answer is yes, but only in some sports. Specifically, sports where there is some sort of ‘duel’ happening, including fencing, tennis, cricket. Because a majority of people are right-handed, people get more practice against right handers, and so being left handed is a slight advantage.
Here’s a one day cricket lefty stat analysis: http://www.anu.edu.au/BoZo/hunt/publications/Hunt20.pdf
I sidestroke ‘southpaw’ – cant even conceive of how one could possibly swim it on the right side, which most people adopt – but am otherwise RH. It used to be an Olympic Sport too, from 1968-84!
I’ve always been confused by stringed instruments and handedness.
Much more fine motor precision (and more coordination of multiple fingers doing different things) is required of the fretboard hand than the picking/strumming/bowing hand, yet both right and left handers use their non-preferred hand for it.
What gives, passing neuroscientist?
“I sidestroke ’southpaw’”
You mean with your right shoulder down?
That’s weird, dude.
I’ve often wondered that too FDB. There’s no doubt in my mind that the non-favoured hand does the more complex tasks in guitar – and even more so in modern era, what with strumming etc.
I’m old enough to have suffered physical coercion from my prep teacher to write right-handed.
After being whacked on my 5-y-o (left) pen-wielding knuckles with a ruler several times, I clearly recall saying to her, “I’m not changing.”
She looked at me sternly. I glared right back. She relented.
It was my first confrontation with external authority, which I won. It was an empowering moment for the young me.
Some things I do right, others left. But ambidextrous is where you can do those things either way, si?
Confused of Les Droites, Left Bank.
Of course, the interesting thing in cricket at the moment are those men who are right handed but bat “left-handed”, i.e. with the dominant hand on top. In other wor, ‘ur doin it wrong.
More seriously, the thing that’s tedious about these sorts of discourses is that they generally fail to recognise that we’re talking about broad statistical correlations across a big distribution. So while it may be true that “women are better at x”, that is irrelevant when talking about any individual. It may be that 55% of women are better than men at something, but the distribution ensures that even if the statement is true, it is trivial. Many women will be better, and many will be worse at the so-calle gender preferrred task. It certainly shouldn’t be relevant in any real sense, that involves considering real people doing real things.
Anecdotally, the Labor party seems somewhat overpopulated with lefties. Not sure if that’s party-specific or not.
Katz, the coercion was gentler, but my story’s not so different.
Are lefties really different, or is it like astrology where everyone gets to feel special about their birthdate? I’ve got no doubt that I think differently to everyone else, but then so does everyone else. If I am unorthodox, is it because I’m left-handed, or because I’m the youngest sibling? Or is it just the B+ talking?
We had a Chinese girl at work who grew up in the PRC, but is a lefty. She got pressure to change, but nothing as dire as you might expect from that society. Got through the national service as a lefty too.
Join us. Join us now.
Not all guitarists, FDB. A left-handed mate of mine picked up a normal guitar the first time and just plays it that way.
OTOH, although I’m nominally right-handed (and play guitar that way), my left hand is actually better for fine motor tasks (but has less strength), and my left eye is dominant.
I’m starting to think this handedness thing is mostly bullshit.
For those who aren’t sure, I think the best test to determine handedness is to find out which eye is dominant.
Nope, left shoulder down FDB. My sense has always been that most people sidestroke right shoulder down, as in the example given here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidestroke
Well, if left shoulder down is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
Yours in weirdness,
FDB.
You might be a left shoulder sidey like me! WOot!
Freddie Mercury allegedly taught himself to play the piano upside down.
Funny though, Wikipedia’s lists him as a famous lefty, while YahooAnswers and FunAdvice say no, he was right-handed.
Please folks, check out that wikipedia link. It’s funny as.
And that’s just the beginning. So was that someone round here who wrote that?
Um my bad. It is late.
@rumrebellious,
That’s an Uncyclopedia link (uncyclopedia.wiki.com), not a Wikipedia link (wikipedia.org). It uses the same MediaWiki software, just like thousands of other wikis online. Every wiki has its own particular purpose for the information it aggregates, and really should not be confused with Wikipedia just because the front page looks the same except for the logo (you do look at website logos, don’t you?).
Oops, my bad. You seem to have belatedly caught on to that. It’s early and I need coffee.
Addit: I’ll leave the info about wiki software up anyway. I’ve run into a few people lately who don’t seem to grok that not every wiki is Wikipedia.
Craig Mc – Eye dominance (test by pointing at a distant object and and then closing one eye) does not appear to be related to hand dominance. Also, we all have other side dominances -which side of your mouth do you chew with? Which ear do you listen with when you use your phone?
Yes, that’s the interesting meta-question.
With several different essentialisms creeping back into discourse (I looking at you, Strocchers) this question of innateness needs to have some defensible boundaries built around it.
But on the other hand, adjusting for correlation and co-variance, etc., it does seem that left-handedness is a marker for a few identifiable traits (in addition to being superspecial, of course).
Rex: Now I actually google that it seems there is a relationship, but it’s not a simple one.
Another left hander here, southpaw in martial arts (comes in very handy) and also left-handed guitarist and cricketer. However I am also lousy at multi-tasking, so the lefty-ness didn’t help there at all. I also received some pressure to change as a kid, but nothing like Katz’s experience. My jacket was hanging over the back of my chair and I had a teacher tell me to stick my left hand in the pocket and use my right. She didn’t police it, though, and I just went back to being left-handed. (That was late 70s, btw, and shows my age).
Going by how awkward and weird people writing with the right hand seem to my eyes, I can understand how the general feeling about left-handedness being sinister comes about. Actually, gettign back to the issue Katz raised, does anyone know whether handedness is a strong concept in oral cultures too? Wouldn’t surprise me if it matters so much to us because writing matters a lot to us.
It’s only been the last decade or so that you could cheaply and easily buy pens that didn’t smudge when you wrote fast. Until the uniball type pens appeared I always had a greasy blue or black smear down the outer edge of my left hand, and the page usually looked equally gross, especially with biros and soft lead pencils. Many left-handers hold the pen in a contorted way to avoid rubbing the hand over the writing.
I was taught to play guitar with it strung right-handed and it seems perfectly normal that way. The real differences I notice have to do with sewing and needlework, which I have always done a lot of.
In the early 90s I got a job doing invisible mending at a tailor’s in the Melbourne CBD. I only lasted two days because the tailor insisted I do all the needlework with my right hand. This initiated one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had in my life.
Sewing machines seem to me to favour left-handed people because the open side is on the left and it’s much easier to get in there with the left hand. Two or three times in my life I have taken in a pair of dressmaking shears (which have one straight and one serrated blade) to be sharpened, and the person has ruined them by grinding the serrated edge, despite being my telling them the blades are reversed from the normal positions.
Not the Good Scissors!!!
That’s tragic Laura.
Proper tragedy really – your fatal flaws being lefthandedness and hubris or something.
Sorry to go on about this. I just remembered that I’ve always suspected my fairly severe left-right confusion is somehow related to being left-handed. My hunch is that it’s not a hardwiring issue, rather, that I’ve grown up unconsciously ignoring or failing to come to terms with most of the more subtle cues to handedness in the built environment, and so the directions ‘left’ and ‘right’ don’t seem very meaningful to me.
Actually you’re lucky the sharpening dude(/-ette) didn’t use the Good Scissors to scratch the paintwork of a Lambourghini, creating a vast web of complicity that threatens to swallow us all.
Actually it always meant a brand new free pair of scissors for me. What can you do?
Laura, your question about sewing machines is fascinating. Sewing machines were among the most important machines of the first industrial revolution and were therefore a pivotal factor in the intensification of labour.
So why do they appear to be made for the dominant use of the left hand?
I think the answer may be here.
Barthélemy Thimonnier patented the first practical mechanical sewing machine. As you can see from the picture, the operator sat at the end of the machine. He drew the material being sewn from right to left. He treadled with his right foot.
In this configuration, the right hand did all of the skilled work of gathering and guiding the material. the left hand simply drew the item being sewn away from the machine.
Eventually, no doubt, the operator moved round to one side. Because the finished work needed to be removed, the only logical place to sit was with the needle on the left.
I never really understood this issue. I always used a cartridge ink pen throughout school/uni and never once had to deal with smudging. My hand remained below the line being written at all times. How did you position your hand?
Great link Katz. Your hypothesis seems right too.
The Latin word for left is sinister.
The left side of the body is also traditionally associated with the feminine or yin aspects of our being. And with the body altogether—the body IS the world too.
Men are rigid and angular. Women are spherical and hence diffuse. If you paint women, you paint the whole universe. Every woman is a particularization of one thing–the “She”, the universal power.
A woman’s body rotating expresses the unity of existence. It is all just “She”.
Altogether I would say that there is enormous prejudice against anything to do with the left. Look at the almost pathological animosity re anything to do with anything remotely leftish in Anglo-sphere politics.
Plus at the “end-time” all the righteous, or those who are “saved” will sit on the right side of the PATRIARCHAL deity.
Being a lefty, I remember the pen issue and all the smudged pages very well. I’m also not a multi-tasker. Just concentrating on one thing at a time works for me.
I knit right-handed, just as my Mum taught me and she was also a lefty. Probably her Mum taught her that way. I’m also so left-eye dominant that I only read with my left eye, which looks weird as I hold books to my left.
Other mammals also have a dominant side. It’s really obvious when you ride a horse, that they’re more comfortable turning in one direction rather than the other.
So Zoolander was right!? He wasn’t an ambi-turner either.
Interesting point Laura @35 whether ‘handedness’ was such a big deal in oral cultures. It could be a sign of where we’re heading, as technology is making handwriting obsolete for almost everything except shopping lists…
I’m mostly right-handed, but I use my knife and fork left-handed, and no-one noticed until it was too late to change. I also have trouble with the left and right thing. It never occurred to me that that might be linked. I’m not ambidextrous in the sense of easily switching to either hand, but I never thought that it could be about different sides for different jobs.
But are you spherical and rotating Anna? lol
‘Zoolander’ is right in everything. Use it as a spiritual guide.
Re preliterate societies:
That’s a very personal question, laura. I’m not sure if I am diffuse, however.
Another uniball fan, Laura! They are the best, and saved me from having to dictate 3 hour handwritten law exams to the nice lady in the Oxford Law Faculty office who has charge of students who write unreadable examination scripts.
Aside from sports that feature a “duel” as Ben@#12 pointed out, true left footers tend to predominate in football in left-sided positions because they’re able to strike the ball to central positions more easily coming at it from the outside. So left-footed left fullbacks, left wingers are prized in soccer for example.
However there’s a complex relationship between footedness and handedness I think. I’m left-handed for writing, throwing and eating, but mouse with my right hand. In football I can pass with either foot but prefer to strike the ball with either the inside front of my right foot or the front of my left.
Right: writing, hockey, football, tennis, bowling (cricket or bowls)
Left: batting (cricket, baseball)
Probably ambispheroidal, in games.
Never dextrous.
Ms LE pointed out to me recently that the desk I grew up using during school years – built by my left-handed Grandfather – is a left handed desk. That is, draws on left, chair space on right, person seated has pelnty of room for a bent left arm when wriiting.
We were trying to renovate for our right handed daughter, but have no abandoned the project.
I wonder if the fact partially account for my cramped and generally bad writing style. As a right hander, my arm was always falling of the table, my entire homework years! Naturally, being congenitally unobservant, I never noticed it.
As a left-hander, I know I hold up alright on the synthesis part, but I’m a lousy multi-tasker. – Mercurius
That’s exactly my experience too. Maybe biology really is destiny!
Ya know, Mercurius, if you were serious about properly empowering the leftyhood you’d have posted in Hebrew or Arabic – the only lefty-friendly languages around. It’s clear evidence that both the Jewish and Muslim gods are lefties.
I’m old enough to not only have been rapped on the knuckles for using a pencil in my left hand, but for having had to learn copperplate using a nibbed pen and an inkwell (admittedly this was old-fashoned even then – adults mostly used fountain pens – but it’s what the NSW curriculum prescribed in the late 50s). The amount of ink that I smeared across the page was incredible.
I’m fairly clumsy with my left hand and foot, but totally dysfunctional if I try using my right. Though I’ve always suspected that my extreme handedness has a lot to do with having got a permanent injury to my left eye when I was a baby.
I am still amazed by how many professional football players are so heavily dominant with one foot or the other.
I would say I am fairly ambi- as I can write legibly with both hands and have relativley good symmetry in skill, strength and coordination in quite a few activities.
Oh, and another preferred left shoulder down sidestroker here as well!
I snap for goal better with the left in footy, and score more goals with the left in indoor soccer (though I suspect the latter is because if I don’t know where it’s going, I can’t telegraph it to the keeper.
I too have dip-pen horror stories, dd (although nothing to do with which hand I used).
In sensible countries cars are driven on the left so why do Europeans and Americans drive on the left? Seems that we can blame Napoleon for that. Up to his reign, everyone kept to the left, first, because that was the side you would mount a horse from, and second, you could defend any oncoming opposition aggression with you right hand. Now, it seem Nap made his army march on the right and this identified anyone who had not accepted his rule. The Americans were a different matter and I will leave you all to figure that out (If anyone can ever figure them out!).
Rex – it obviously came along too late to have been the cause, but operating a gearstick with your better hand has a certain logic to it.
Why wasn’t the abolition of sidestroke as an olympic discipline protested vehemently?
Look at the inequity:
Front of body (ONE) — three strokes: freestyle, breast stroke, butterfly
Back of body (ONE) — one stroke: backstroke
Sides of body (TWO) — ZERO STROKES!
INFAMY!
I quite agree Katz! I wuz personally ‘robbed’ by this – as my sole sporting prowess was in sidestroke. I was extremely fast at sidestroke as a youth, a point noted by my PE teachers.
Famously, once in a 4 x 100 medley race, I held off none other than a future 200m Olympic gold freestyle medallist for the opening sidestroke leg – then, of course, lost about a pool length in the other three.
The above story may be pathetic, I know, but it is also quite true.
I coulda been a contender!
For sheer visionary madness, my favorite theory of leftness is Stan Gooch’s theory that modern Homo sapiens is a hybrid resulting from the mating of Cro-Magnon males with Neanderthal females. The physiologies and cultures of the two protohuman lineages are proposed to have been polar opposites, and we their descendants all contain a mixture of their traits, but the old correlations also persist; individual humans and groups of humans tend to be more one or the other. See the list here of personal traits, and their distribution relative to political affiliation.
Much fun, of course. Some years back, I did some reading from the research literature on handedness (actually, if you go to the literature, it is ‘laterality’).
One thing to remember in any of these ‘lefthanders are better at sports’ (or whatever we’re supposed to be better or worse at) is that it’s for the group averages. Individually, we can be lousy at sports (like me for most, though left-handers as a group are better than average) or art, or … you name it.
A different thing is, handedness is not some binary thing of being either absolutely left handed, or absolutely right handed. Different people have different degrees of handedness. Some here are apparently not terribly biased towards their left. I’m another. While I do most coordinated hand things with my left, some things I do right handed, and for some it doesn’t really matter. One interesting (to me) thing about handedness is that of those people who say they’re left-handed, most are not very biased towards the left. Of those who say they’re right-handed, most are very biased to that side. Then again, it isn’t clear how much of that is just that many tools are biased towards the right, and that cultures are biased to the right.
I’ll also echo many in observing that things which are allegedly right-handed, I think bias towards me as a lefty. I’m in the US and drive a stick shift car. The stick, therefore, is on my right side, so my less-adept hand manages that. My more skilled hand is the one I keep on the wheel to steer. Given how bad most right handers are with their left hand, I hope they’re all in automatic transmission cars! Or, I played clarinet (lefties being more musically talented
. My right hand supported the instrument and hit a few keys, some of the time. Most of the action, and the major action (register shift), was controlled by the left hand.
Oh, back to the art … Most artists draw people in the handedness of the artist. The Simpsons are left-handed because Matt Groening is left-handed.
Robert, I think laterality encompasses the whole side of the body not just hands. I have seen it in a neuroscientific study of metaphor which had nothing to do with handedness but quite a lot about the different hemispheres of the brain.
Fun thread … and great to follow Robert Grumbine’s astute observations.
When I’ve thought about it I’ve always been puzzled about the implications of my left-handedness. The best explanations seem to be as others here have observed, that I do some things with the left and others with the right, without being genuinely ambidextrous.
I’m sure I learned to write from my oldest brother’s example. He was a genuine lefty. My best friend for my first five years of schooling was also left-handed. The teachers in post-war SA had by then abandoned forcing kids to write right-handed, but they did try to bribe us. We’d get ‘good’ stamps for everything we did -no matter how terrible- right-handed. As soon as their backs were turned, however, we were back to left-handed again. Many years later at high school, a teacher told me that I “don’t look like a left-hander”.
It got thoroughly confusing in my sport orientation, which probably explains why I was such a plodder compared to my older brothers who were both talented. Being younger I learnt without much influence from them. I learnt tennis and ping-pong left-handed, football right-footed, and cricket right-handed. Even my lefty oldest brother played tennis right-handed. The theory at the time was that left-handers were never really great singles players – so he was taught to play right-handed, to great effect. The theory was long before the advent of Laver, Connors and McEnroe and obviously needs revision.
The theories I’ve read suggest that lefties use the right (or creative) side of the brain, and righties use the left (or logical, rule-based) side of their brain. How does that apply to someone using a bit of both? When my ego needs stroking I like to think that it encouraged a fuller development. I was the first (and only) one of my generation to get a degree, even if I was 40 at graduation and had done it all part-time. But I doubt if there’s much in that. My older brothers had a much better nouse for business then I ever did.
I think that Craig Mc might have this one right. It’s a fun topic like astrology leading to lots of speculation, but I don’t know just how much reality it has.
I earn double what my left-handed mate earns. Is there any real evidence to support the stats. I would be willing to believe that there are some societal pressures that may lead to more left-handed people being successful but I’m sceptical about the physiological.
But that’s exactly what they WANT you to believe!
Apologies is some one already said this (I only skimmed the posts).
Did you see Tony Abbott on telly signing books? Looks like he’s a lefty.
Assuming this Ian Enting is the Professor Ian Enting who reviewed Ian Plimer’s Heaven & Earth
I am seeking to have University of Adelaide examine the conformance of Ian Plimer to the university’s provisions covering academic misconduct.
Do you have a view on this matter?
“If the left hand side of the body is controlled by the right hand side of the brain:- then only left handed people are in their right minds” !!!
Seriously, as a lefty the biggest problem is using implements and equipment designed for righthandedness – scissors being an excelent example
Ra ra hockey sticks!
Re: the left-handed scissors thing.
Can some practical-minded person offer a general explanation as to why some implements/tools have a definite property of ‘laterality’ (ie. it matters if the users are left- or right-handed) and for others it doesn’t seem to matter a darn?
There’s no such thing as a ‘left-handed’ hammer, keyboard, or mobile phone, because it just doesn’t seem to matter that much. Is this because of good design, or is some higher principle at work?
With scissors, there are 2 things in play – the shape of the holes for your thumb and finger/s, and also the way the blades occlude. A left hander is going to find using right-handed scissors much easier if the thumb/finger holes are just rings with no ‘polarity’, as opposed to the much comfier (for right-handers) moulded, contoured type.
But even then, the way your fingers and thumb travel when opposing means that the top blade should be to the outside – to the right for a right-hander, that is – of the bottom one.
This doesn’t matter much when the scissors have a well (i.e. over-) engineered pivot point. But typically, it’s flimsy and crap and can’t be tightened, so you have to do this odd contortion with your hand to get them to scissor properly.
I know this because I once struggled for ages, in an addled state, to mull up a large bowl at a party. I kept blaming my tools, until the leftie host explained the problem.
Screws are made to be screwed in by a right hander. (Clockwise)
Baseball is full of advantages and disadvantages for left handers. A left handed pitcher, for example, can see easier if a batter on first is trying to steal second.
If batters had to run clockwise rather than anti-clockwise, there would be a significantly different list of baseball champions.
Two other devices that came to mind after my last post.
I enjoy cooking and have a number of “wooden spoons” that I use. Most have one edge elongated, a little like a paddle, such that when used by a righthander the elongated edge makes contact with a much larger part of the base of the pot. When I use them it is only the point of the elongation that touches unless I use the spoon back to front. For you righties try ti stir anything with the spoon backwards, it doesn’t feel right as well as being much less effective stirring.
The second does not seem to be the problem it was a couple of decades ago, but that might be that since the intrduction of battery powered tools I no longer have an electric drill. But, at the time most drills came with a locking button operated by a slight but definite movement of the right thumb (when used by a right hander) this button was designed to lock the power trigger in the on position. A slight pressure on the trigger released the lock. I think the purpose was for when the drill was used in (on) a drill stand. Notwithstanding, when used by a left hander this locking button lines up perfectly with the pad on the palm of the hand at the base of the fore-finger such that when the triger is activated so is the locking button. I have lost count of the number of times the drill jammed on something. Now from Newton’s law on motion – The drill bit once travelling in a clockwise direction stops, forcing the drill to travel in an anticlockwise direction – basically pulling it out of the left hand. Because the trigger is locked on, the drill continues to rotate, clouting the nuckles of said left hand and effectively turning the drill into a spool, wrapping the power cord around it until it eventually pulls the plug out of the wall socket, or someone gets to the wall socket and turns off the switch, NOT FUN
Apart from the dominant hand and dominant eye, we apparently have a dominant leg.
When you overbalance, which foot goes forward to break the fall? When you climb or decend steps, or steep hillsides, do you preferentially lead with one foot?
The other question, is how is the handedness related to the ratio of index to ring finger? Supposedly, left-dominance and a shorter index finger are somewhat related to prenatal exposure to high testosterone levels, and somewhat correlated with right brain dominance.
The HBDI profile supposedly determines your brain dominance:
http://www.herrmann.com.au/hbdi-profile.html
I mostly fit this profile: left-dominance (hand and eye), short index finger, strong right-brain dominance on HBDI profiling.
However, I play squash and hockey right-handed, cut bread right-handed, use the mouse on the RHS, use scissors right-handed, etc.
Use my left hand for writing, painting (badly) and using a spoon. Hold the wine glass with whichever hand is nearest at the time…
Incidentally, why is the pilot of a plane on one side, and the pilot of a chopper on the other? Were their controls developed by different handed people?
Bolt-action firearms are very inconvenient for left handers.
Boomerangs are carved for a counter-clockwise spin. When a leftie throws one (clockwise spin) it dives into the ground.
I **really** hope they make parachute ripcords on the right (that is, left,) side.
You can get left-handed bolt action rifles, Katz.
I bought one recently because of my left eye dominance.
Katz and DI (nr): What is with this sudden urge of lefties to own firearms?
Do you guys feel under some kind of threat?
The insecurity of a minority group in society?
From my cold, dead hand, Elise …
automatic rifles even more so than bolt-action. the cartridge ejection is always position such that it must be used on the right shoulder, unless you want a face full of hot ejected cartridges.
on the matter of laterality, research done by gisela kaplan at UNE shows that chickens exhibit laterality in the brains and response to stimulus on either eye. however it is sort-of environmental. when in the egg, one of the chicken’s eyes (consistently) is pressed against the shell, the other covered with a wing. the shell being translucent, one of the embryo’s eyes is stimulated with light from before hatching, and the chicks have a large dominant neural pathway and exhibit significant laterality (left eye – sex and violence, right eye – food). however if you incubate the eggs in darkness, this laterality is significantly diminished and there is no dominant neural pathway.
I’m right handed. but i’m a goofy footer. also i can kick right or left leg. my father is a right handed bowler but a left handed batsman (I’m right in both).
DI(nr) @83, Isn’t that a bit too melodramic of you…?
Oops, typo!
Melodramatic. Melodramatic. Melodramatic. I’ll get it eventually.
A joke, Elise. I was temporarily channeling
GodCharlton Heston.Actually, Tyro Rex @ 84, that’s not necessarily the case. The Steyr (the Australian Army’s personal weapon) can be set up with the ejection port on either side of the receiver. We used to make the left-handers shoot at the extreme left end of the firing line, though. (The SLR was a different matter entirely, of course. Even though I’m left-eye dominant, it was a hell of a lot simpler to shoot right-handed.)
@David Irving – my experience with automatic weapons ended before the Steyr was introduced, so I’ll have to defer to you on that one. Other than to say … sacrilege!
It stopped a fair bit of whining, Tyro. (It’d still be a bastard cocking it left-handed, though.)