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General discussion

Something Sinister

Mar 16, 2018 4:34PM PDT

Old data, but interesting -
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/29/left-handed-facts-lefties_n_2005864.html

I'm of the generation that was punished and or "trained" at an early age to write with the right hand. As a mechanic, I'm 'almost' ambidextrous and sometimes switch to left in difficult pool shots, though it would be a stretch to actually call myself ambi. I often wonder what I would have gravitated to if "left" to my own nature... (sorry, could not resist!)

Rick

Discussion is locked

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I'd cut my right arm off to be ambidextrous.
Mar 16, 2018 4:37PM PDT

Dafydd. Wink

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loss of such "dexterity"
Mar 16, 2018 4:44PM PDT
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As you know, Mr Peripatetic,
Mar 16, 2018 5:07PM PDT

it's also from dexter, right, as opposed to simister, left. A southpaw is automatically condemed, while a right-hander can call himself dextrous. In heraldry, the bend sinister is a diagonal bar that slants in the 'wrong' direction, to indicate offspring from an illegitimate son. And, FitzRoy is a made-up surname for a son who was reluctantly recognized as a "natural" one by the king.
AND, levo- and dextro- are prefixes for isomers in chemistry, especially in sugars in biology.
Well, there's the bell. Remember, quiz on the first three chapters Monday.

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(NT) condemned
Mar 16, 2018 5:08PM PDT
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LOL!
Mar 16, 2018 5:16PM PDT

Which, I used to tell my students, is not a sentence.

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HAHAHA !!!
Mar 16, 2018 5:29PM PDT

Your'e one sick individual Daf ! Shocked

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The "problem" comes from pedantry.
Mar 16, 2018 5:15PM PDT

One's script is "supposed to" slant downward from upper right to lower left. Lefties can do that usually only by bringing the left hand awkwardly 'over the top'. [Looks painful.] Pedants don't like assymetry as they gaze over the room, so they waterboard lefties until they surrender. [In Catholic schools, as all non-Catholics know, they use the lash.]

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For me it was a ruler "spank"
Mar 16, 2018 5:34PM PDT

on the left wrist, of course. Caning in the sixties was reserved for harsher or more recalcitrant "offenders". This was in a suburb of London, circa 1964/5. The 'psychological' mistreatment was worse,
but that's probably because I was a "Yank" in a British public school and so 'deserved' all manner of ridicule. Adults can sometimes be as cruel as children, amazingly. Plain

Rick

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I had the "ruler" and the "cane" in the 60s&70s.
Mar 16, 2018 5:39PM PDT

But the "ruler" was on the knuckles. The teachers were brutal then.
Dafydd. (Wales).

Post was last edited on March 16, 2018 5:41 PM PDT

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this was used then in the states
Mar 16, 2018 5:44PM PDT
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Ahh yes !
Mar 16, 2018 5:52PM PDT

Had a few run-ins with one of those in my youth from phys.ed teacher, OUCH !
Had holes drilled in it though . Coach called it a cheese paddle lol

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Same here
Mar 16, 2018 6:12PM PDT

Shop teacher in 1974 - Texas - had a Lexan number with about 1/2" holes. Hardly anyone actually got whacked, a few jokers in my class did, though. Wicked looking instrument, can still picture it in my mind's eye!

Rick

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LOL, and the result was
Mar 16, 2018 6:14PM PDT

"pimple butt" in the showers.

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Oh Yeah ! LOL
Mar 16, 2018 6:19PM PDT

Looked like a bunch of hickeys Cry
Hurt for a week, The dude came up from the floor like a golf club . Everyone in that class watched Blush ROFL

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Youch!
Mar 16, 2018 6:06PM PDT

As I recall I was only caned twice in around five years, and probably earned it both times. "Six of the best" was what I remember the colloquial term...

Rick

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Six of The best.
Mar 16, 2018 6:49PM PDT

Had many of those. In my school, Cane was a thick strip of Willow, which came down very hard. I now have fingers bent up from ligament damage.
Dafydd.

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Attention to detail
Mar 17, 2018 2:25AM PDT

IMO, there should be more of it. While it may not affect the usability of a "product", it reflects a lot about the producer of that product. When I was in elementary school, I recall a change in the grading system that added an "E" in every category. It stood for "Effort Shown". I didn't think much of it then but I do now.

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When I use pedantry, s/w should change it to
Mar 17, 2018 6:33PM PDT

p*******

Happy

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I recall letters from older relatives
Mar 18, 2018 1:54AM PDT

whose handwriting was absolutely beautiful. What they wrote didn't seem to matter as much as how they wrote it. They were giving you their best. Something scrawled on notepad paper with strikeouts and letters of all shapes and sizes doesn't leave one with the same feeling. Maybe these people never had ruler marks on the backs of their hands. Happy

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Could be.
Mar 18, 2018 8:16AM PDT

I print. My script has been declared dangerous to public safety.

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(NT) cursive
Mar 18, 2018 8:16AM PDT
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In Greece, maybe all Europe
Mar 16, 2018 5:33PM PDT

If a baby seemed to favor the left hand, they'd tie it to the waist so to force the baby to start using the right hand instead.

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(NT) And I thought I was joking about waterboards and the lash!
Mar 16, 2018 6:34PM PDT
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My father
Mar 17, 2018 5:23AM PDT

in school in the late 20's thru highschool, as a 'leftie' was beaten often by the nuns for it. I taught myself out of boredom to write words backwards and then upsidedown....my kids still talk about it to their kids at times. The only 'leftie' I have is Derek....as HIS father was also a 'leftie'...but is truly ambi. The only time I see him use his left hand is for writing and playing baseball....everything else is with his right for some reason.

Good to see you back, Rick.........

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Sounds like Leo DaVinci
Mar 17, 2018 6:17PM PDT

Hi Toni,

Thanks for the welcome. Backwards and upside down reminds me of DaVinci's mirror writing, which always struck me as "tre weird" but cool. Mom and V (sister) used to love to do crossword puzzles together and from that V got good at reading text upside down - I can do it sorta but not near as rapidly. I recall from a high school biology class that the image from the retina is actually upside down and reversed as sent to the visual cortex and then our brains "convert" it. But then some psychologists think all reality is an illusion and we 'create' every sensation in our minds. Not sure if I wanna believe that, though... :^)

Regards,

Rick

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Perhaps you are a phantom.
Mar 17, 2018 6:42PM PDT

I've never seen you.
Comic strip "Barnaby" from the Forties. Like Calvin and Hobbes, kid with a fairy godfather, Mr O'Malley, who wasn't playing with a full deck. Barnaby said his Dad called him an imaginary friend, never having seen him. O'Malley had the same belief about the Dad, for the same reason.
I knew an old-timer who had worked on one of our Greek Bibles, on a Linotype. He could read Greek upside down and backwards.

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Eyes are "tre weird" themselves.
Mar 19, 2018 1:04AM PDT

I think the 'upside down' bit is simple ray tracing, like a pinhole camera. Whatever the eye-brain system does afterward, our 'reality' is right side up. Good observation, though.
A weirder ["tre-er weird"?] thing is how light gets from the lens to the retina. On the surface the arrangement seems clumsy to almost all who encounter it for the first time. In fact, it's now seen as a way that preserves visual acuity over time.
As if it was designed that way ... Nah. That's a fairy tale. Happy

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A ten foot pole is too short
Mar 19, 2018 3:27PM PDT

to touch that last sentence... :^)

But, as I recall, historically the human eye structure was once and still is cited as "evidence" for intelligent design/intelligent creator/etc. To me, there's so many strange things that are actually true - waayyy more than fiction could ever hope to match, or even magic/fantasy - that it's impossible to know for sure. Hence, faith, hope and mythology kind-of mashed all together. My fave example would be quantum mechanics - explains so much but is so counter-intuitive it's not funny - then again maybe it *is* funny... intentionally, even, perhaps? :^)

Rick

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Decades ago, but still in the modern era,
Mar 19, 2018 6:25PM PDT

SciAm had an article on vision. I didn't read it, but it must have said something about 'inefficient operation'. A letter to the editor explained why the actual was better than the hypothesized ['If I were God, here's how I would do it...'] You're right, it looks designed. That letter emphasized the long-term benefit to vision. This 2011 article focuses [!] on the operation of the "functionally stupid upside-down orientation", as one scientist called it.
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201101/The-Inverted-Retina/