Some Lefties are Great!? By Brian Simpson

     Brian, have you taken leave of your senses? No, I am referring to left handed people, of which I am one.
     A paper in biology letters, “Left-handedness and time pressure in elite interactive ball games by Florian Loffing,
Published 22 November 2017.DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2017.0446, has affirmed the long observed phenomenon, that left handed people are usually better fighters, and better in fast reaction sports, probably because of different neural wiring. As well, right handers really have difficulty dealing with lefties, while lefties live in a biased right handed world, and come to be great with both hands:

“According to the fighting hypothesis, frequency-dependent selection gives relatively rarer left-handers a competitive edge in duel-like contests and is suggested as one mechanism that ensured the stable maintenance of handedness polymorphism in humans. Over representation of left-handers exclusively in interactive sports seems to support the hypothesis. Here, by referring to data on interactive ball sports, I propose that a left-hander’s advantage is linked to the sports’ underlying time pressure. The prevalence of left-handers listed in elite rankings increased from low (8.7%) to high (30.39%) time pressure sports and a distinct left-hander over representation was only found in the latter (i.e. baseball, cricket and table tennis). This indicates that relative rarity and the interactive nature of a contest are not sufficient per se to evoke a left-hander advantage. Refining the fighting hypothesis is suggested to facilitate prediction and experimental verification of when and why negative frequency-dependent selection may benefit left-handedness.”

     Sorry, it is just a biological fact, left handers like me, and not like right handed people like James Reed, have so much going for them:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2016/12/superiority-left-handed/

     It’s enough to make me want to burst into song, and who better to sing for us in this enlightened same sex Australia, than gay “as a daffodil” singer, the late, great Freddie Mercury:
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04854XqcfCY

 

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Thursday, 28 March 2024

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