The Puzzle of Left-handedness<\/a><\/p>\nLet\u2019s get one thing straight: It\u2019s not weird that 10 percent of the human population is left-handed. It\u2019s weird that 90 percent is right-handed. In all other animals that show handedness (or pawedness or flipperedness), the split is virtually even. So why are humans so lopsided? Nobody really knows.<\/p>\n
Sorry, that last line should have carried a spoiler alert, because it gave away the ending \u2014 and the middle and the beginning \u2014 of \u201cThe Puzzle of Left-Handedness.\u201d<\/p>\n
******<\/p>\n
Turns out it hasn\u2019t always been that bad for lefties. Oh, sure, the left side of things has long been identified with darkness, magic, illness and death. And various cultures associate the left hand with \u2014 let\u2019s just say \u2014 nasty functions. But all in all humans have conducted surprisingly little persecution of left-handed people, according to Smits. (Well, except for designing scissors, spiral notebooks, power tools and lots of other implements for the tyrannical convenience of the right-handed majority.)<\/p>\n
Smits is no artist (unlike lefty all-stars da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael), statesman (unlike the five of seven most recent presidents who were left-handed) or super cool dude (unlike Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney), but he is a clever and thorough researcher. \u201cThe Puzzle of Left-Handedness\u201d can get pedantic but is sprinkled with enough oddball characters and head-scratching factoids to keep you reading. Or at least 10 percent of you.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here's a short review from the Washington Post which I – being mostly lefthanded – enjoyed. I especially liked the first sentence. The Puzzle of Left-handedness Let\u2019s get one thing straight: It\u2019s not weird that 10 percent of the human population is left-handed. It\u2019s weird that 90 percent is right-handed. In all other animals that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5611,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions\/5611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}