I read the column about lefties, and noticed that an interesting fact was not included. Left handed fencers have a distinct advantage over righties because it is just too unusual to swordfight against a lefty for most fencers. Seems to me that in a certain day and age, being left handed may have allowed you to live longer. 
Hey Dex, I’m interested in your take on this one.
As Cecil noted, if there was a statistically significant difference between righties and lefties, the life insurance industry would have been aware of it. Are you aware of any studies comparing handedness and mortality? Do any companies underwrite based on handedness. Clearly, a two year difference between the dexters and the sinisters is significant enough to affect underwriting.
(Aside – may we assume from your name that you are right-handed?)
Intuitively, I have no trouble believing in this effect. The world is designed for right-handers. Lefties have to adjust – occasionally to their disadvantage. For instance, it would seem that a lefty would have a slightly harder time driving a stick-shift car. This could result in a slightly impaired reaction time, and therefore a higher incidence of collisions.
Been here so long he’s got to calling it Home.
Well, all you leftlies, here comes the really bad news - if you hadn’t evolved you’d be better off right now.
ABSTRACT: The right:left ratio of handedness is 90:10 in humans and 50:50 in chimpanzees. Handedness is hereditary both in humans and
chimpanzees: Why did this lead to the selection of right handedness in humans? Perhaps in a gestural stage of the evolution of language it was an advantage for signers to share the same signing hand for learning and understanding one other’s gestures.
I saw the article quoted on a newsgroup, try this to see the whole article:
PSYCOLOQUY is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA) Copyright 2000 John R. Skoyles
GESTURE, LANGUAGE ORIGINS, AND RIGHT HANDEDNESS
Commentary on Place on Language-Gesture
evolutionary-psychology@egroups.com
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
What portion of the population is ambidextrous?
Haven’t seen that percentage mentioned! I would think the lefties would consider the ambis righties - since they can use the righties’ stuff painlessly!
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Lots of people in countries such as Great Britain and Australia still shift with their left hands. As far as I know, there is no evidence that this causes a higher accident rate. And it’s not because they have all switched to automatic transmissions; the US has a higher usage rate of automatics than just about anywhere else. The use of standard transmissions in New Zealand, for example, is quite high.
Shifting, with either hand, is a matter of training. As far as I can tell, either hand can be trained to shift as well as the other.
Dan Tilque
I think that the percentage of true ambidextrous people must be very small, (guessing less than 0.1%). The best test I’ve heard for ‘proving’ that someone is ambidextrous is in handwriting. If a person can write just as well with either hand, then I consider them to be ambidextrous. I’ve met a lot of people who claim to be ambidextrous, but so far, nobody that really is. (I’m not saying there aren’t any, just that I’ve never met one.) This may be an improper test, but I also don’t count the ones who can’t write with either hand, legibly that is.
What do you want for Christmas, Crow? I want to decide who lives and who dies!
Well, I have weird-looking but legible handwriting with both my left and my right hands. It seems like you could train both hands to have legible writing, but I didn’t think you could train yourself to ambidexterity… I don’t know for sure, since I don’t have any actual facts on ambidexterity.
Am I reading Hippocrates right?
He’s not just a big box for storing large semi-aquatic mammals, is he?
Tried writing with my left hand recently (I’m right-handed); it came out as a somewhat illegible mirror image of my normal writing. It seems when I try to write with my left hand, I reflexively write from right to left.
Lefties dying young?
Karl Marx - 65
Friedrich Engles - 75
Joseph Stalin - 74
Mao Tse-Tung - 83
Eugene Debs - 71
Pete Seeger - 81+
Fidel Castro - 74+
Why, that settles it, a handful of famous people is all we need. Is there anything the famous can’t do?
It’s a joke son! (boy’s about as sharp as a bag of wet mice…)
Ursa, Ursa, Ursa. I’m disappointed in you. How could a poster as renowned as yourself think that the denizens of this board would accept mere anecdotal evidence to support a claim. You might just as easily have cited:
Che Guevara – 39
Leon Trotsky – 60
Jean-Paul Marat – 50
V.I. Lenin – 54
Sergei Kirov – 46
Lefties. Riiigggght.
Been here so long he’s got to calling it Home.