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Happy Left-Handers’ Day!

What is wrong with the photo above? No left-handed person would voluntarily write in a spiral notebook like that—it’s horribly uncomfortable on the hand!

About 10% of the population is left-dominant. They prefer to write, toss balls, cut paper, and open cans with their left hands. Often this means they have to overcome obstacles daily by struggling with tools, like spiral notebooks, thoughtlessly designed only for right-handed people.

About twenty years ago, a fed-up group of lefties, the Left-Hander’s Club, started International Left-Handers’ Day, which is now celebrated annually on August 13. According to the official site, the event allows left-handers to “celebrate their sinistrality and increase public awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of being left-handed.”

So, what are some of the Oh, I see advantages of being left-handed? Here are five.

1. Lefties Are in Great Company

Lefties are a rare, but spectacular, group of people. You probably have heard that four of the last five presidents are lefties: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan (who was ambidextrous). Other famous lefties include:

• Leonardo da Vinci
• Henry Ford
• John D. Rockefeller
• Marie Curie
• Albert Einstein
• Jimi Hendrix
• Whoopi Goldberg
• Angelina Jolie
• Babe Ruth
• Ty Cobb
• and more.

This video highlights some other powerful lefties.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6jlsKO62ZU

If the video does not play, watch it here.

2. Lefties Get to Choose Where to Sit at the Table

The best seat is the corner seat. Without hesitation, a lefty deserves to have it. After all, if everyone else eats with their right hands, a lefty doesn’t want to constantly be hitting elbows throughout a meal.

No bumping elbows at the dinner table!
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3. Southpaws Excel in Some Sports

It is well-known that left-handers have an advantage over right-handed competitors in numerous sports like baseball, boxing, and tennis. Left-handed players can position themselves differently and hit or throw from the side opposite of their right-handed counterparts.

For example, according to the Oxford dictionary, the term “southpaw” originated with baseball. Fields were built with home plate in the west so a southpaw pitcher was using the hand that was on the south side of the field.

Throws from left-handed pitchers are actually more difficut for left-handed batters to hit than right-handed batters because of how the ball crosses the plate.
© Thinkstock

Northwestern University professor Daniel M. Abrams and his graduate student Mark J. Panaggio researched the role competition plays in relation to the ratio of left- and right-handed people. Their theory was that the more cooperative an environment is, the more single-handed it is. Conversely, the more competitive an environment is, the more even the split is between right- and left-handers.

Their research results supported their theory: the percentage of lefties in highly competitive sports is higher than the 10% in the rest of society. In fact, more than 50% of top baseball players are lefties.

4. Left Hands Can Type More Words than Right Hands

Using a standard “qwerty” keyboard and following the rules learned in keyboarding class, people can type merely 451 words with only the right hand.

Using only the left hand, however, people can type an astounding  3,403 words.

One theory is that the left-hand-dependent “qwerty” keyboard was developed
with input from telegraph operators.
© Thinkstock

Here’s a list of the awesome all-left-hand words, ranging from “ax” to “sweaterdresses.”

5. Lefties Are Faster at Using the Whole Brain 

The left side of the brain controls the muscles on the right side of the body. The right side of the brain controls the muscles on the left side of the body. As a popular saying goes, “Lefties are in their right mind.”

There are two sides of a human brain. It’s important for the left and right sides to talk to each other.
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In general, information from the senses crosses sides like this, too. What you see or feel on your left is processed through the right side of your brain. Language, however, is an interesting exception. The vast majority of right-handers use the left side of their brain for language; 60–70% of left-handers also use the left side of their brain for language.

Australian National University’s Dr. Nick Cherbuin determined that people who are strongly left-handed are able to process information between the two sides of their brain milliseconds more quickly than those who are right-handed.

In a BBC report about this study, psychologist Dr. Steve Williams is noted as saying, “This seems to go with evidence that left-handers use both sides of the brain for language—that they are more bicerebral. They get faster at it because they’re having to use both sides of the brain more.”

Happy Left-Handers’ Day

More informed now about the advantages of being left-handed, we salute all lefties on Left-Handers’ Day! May this world become more equally-handed so you have fewer obstacles to overcome and more time to celebrate the benefits.

But before you all go, take a moment and vote. Let’s see how the OIC community compares to the statistics.

[polldaddy poll=7309691]

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

You want facts? Whatever it was, I didn’t do it.
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A Sense of Curiosity About the Facts

Cats. People tend to have a lot of opinions about them.

So my sense of curiosity took over: How do the facts about domestic cats stack up to what we think we know? I tackled some recent cat research to find out, and the interesting cat facts provided many “Oh, I see” moments!

Cats vs. Dogs

Cats are the most popular pets. Or are they?

The U.S. Pet Ownership and Demographic Sourcebook states that there were more than 74 million pet cats in the United States in 2012 and just under 70 million pet dogs.

So the cats win!

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BUT 36.5 percent of U.S. households own dogs, while just 30.4 percent own cats.

The average number of dogs per owner is 1.6; the average number of cats per owner is 2.1.

I think we can call the popularity contest a draw . . .

Cats Are Hunters

We know cats hunt. They remind us of this by lovingly leaving dead lizards or mice for us to step on.

© Sistercja

The University of Georgia and National Geographic collaborated on a study of what cats do in the great outdoors. They fixed tiny cameras, called “kitty cams,” to the feline collars and let the cameras roll.

Just 44% of the cats in the study killed prey. And the hunting felines averaged two captures during seven days outside.

The study revealed that, contrary to popular opinion, these cats did not capture many birds. Most of their victims were lizards, small mammals, and insects.

The researchers—and most lizards, small mammals, and insects—recommend keeping cats indoors to minimize the hunting.

Cats Like to Roam

Outdoor cats seem to wander for miles. Or do they?

The BBC and the Royal Veterinary College in England joined forces for some recent cat research. Like the Georgia study, this British team used small cameras on cats’ collars to reveal what the felines do during the day.

While the study collected footage of cats stalking prey, defending their territories, and getting out of laundry hampers, GPS trackers in the collars tracked how far cats roamed.

A cat defends his territory from another who has roamed too far.
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Researchers found that different cats had a variety of habits—some roamed with clear intention clear across town or deep into the woods; some went no farther than their own yards.

Use this interactive feature to see the roaming maps and videos of some of the British cats. For more interesting cat facts, view the BBC documentary about the research here.

Cats Cheat!

When your cat disappears for a day or so and then casually returns and turns up his nose at dinner, it’s easy to suspect that he has a hidden life—perhaps another family to feed him.

Both of the cat-camera-research teams confirmed this scandalous truth. Four of the cats in the “kitty cam” study actually had adopted a second family to love and feed them.

Cats in the British study would regularly crawl through their neighbors’ cat doors and consume food.

The BBC study also revealed another surprise. One sly feral cat would come into a home for several hours at a time to lounge and consume food without the homeowner’s knowledge!

Even this cat food ad questions your cat’s trustworthiness!
© Kristie Feltner

Cats Rule the Internet

One thing is for sure, cats (or kitteh) rule the Internet.

Ben Huh, creator of the I Can Has Cheezburger network, declares, “We have created weapons of mass cuteness. We’ve been doing it for 10,000 years and everybody’s surprised: ‘Oh my god I can’t believe we love cats!’ We biologically engineer them to be the object of our affections.”

OK, ok. But give me the facts.

Huh reports that people submit ten times as many cat images to his site than dog images.

Blogger Arron Santos devoted a post to calculating the number of cat images on the Internet. He determined there are between 1.5 x 10⁷ and 2.5 x 10¹¹ images of cats online. Since he did this calculation a few years ago, the number has surely gone up.

Kittehs, kittehs, and more kittehs
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Perhaps one of the obvious signs that cats rule the Web is the fact that there is now an Internet Cat Video Festival.

Henri, Le Chat Noir (played by Henry with voice by creator Will Braden) won the People’s Choice Golden Kitty award there for his video.

If the video does not display, watch it here.

The Facts Stack Up

Oh, I see—the facts about cats are just like the animals themselves: familiar with a few surprises. Even with a sense of curiosity and continued research, we may never truly know all the facts about our fuzzy feline friends.

Except that cats do rule the Internet.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.