Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
> You have, if only electronically. I am completely fully obligate sinistral.
Okay, I stand (sit) corrected.
> - Even when I use fork and knife, my way of using them is completely different
> from what right-handed people do. Mainly, I hardly use the knife at all (and
> quite clumsily actually), and do most of the work with the fork, which explains
> why I use the most agile hand for it.
Well, then, why not use the fork in the right hand (to hold things still) and
the knife in the left (to cut)? Even I can do things like hold a phone in
my left hand while I dial it with my right.
> Bad example.
Doubtless.
> I, clumsy as I am, learned to walk on my hands (I lost the ability
> since but I used to be able to do it). Anybody can do it when really wanting
> (and with enough time and training).
I doubt my arms would support me (160 kg).
> My father for instance broke his right arm when he
> was 6. He was thus obliged by necessity to learn to write with his left hand.
At age six, I might have been able to do the same. At age 44, I doubt it.
Young brains are flexible ones.
> The problem here is that your data is distorted because you don't take our
> environment into account. Left-handed people *have* to adapt, so they become
> adaptable.
If that were really true, there would be no left-handed behaviors, since
(as you say) it is much more adaptive to play right-handed. A study of
baseball players shows that left-handers are more short-lived, BTW; they
are one of the few groups for which we have fairly complete vital statistics
and chirality information both (since 1890 or so).
> They seem to adapt very well to writing right-
> to-left, although it's quite clumsy for right-handed people, so why not for the
> rest?
Dextrals usually turn the paper 90 degrees when writing RTL.
> Oh, believe me I understand. But I strongly believe that it's only due to your
> lack of *need* to be flexible in our environment. You are actually as flexible
> as any "non-dextral". You're just losing that flexibility because you don't
> have to use it.
You may be right at that.
> I was specifically referring to the act of peeing while standing up (here, you
> made me actually say it! ;) ),
About time, too.
--
John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan
Promises become binding when there is a meeting of the minds and consideration
is exchanged. So it was at King's Bench in common law England; so it was
under the common law in the American colonies; so it was through more than
two centuries of jurisprudence in this country; and so it is today.
--_Specht v. Netscape_