“In the race for the White House, lefties seem to have the upper hand. No matter who wins in November, six of the 12 chief executives since the end of World War II will have been left-handed: Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton and either Obama or McCain. That’s a disproportionate number, considering that only one in 10 people in the general population is left-handed.” In the WP, authors Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt explain why all your Oval Offices are belong to us, the lefties. We also swelled the ranks of both my undergraduate and graduate cohorts, whatever that’s worth.
Tag: Left-Handed
If you’re feeling sinister.
By way of Dangerous Meta, a new NBER working paper finds that left-handed men make 13-21% more than their right-handed counterparts (although the same doesn’t apply for women.) “The study is the latest to suggest there’s something special about lefties. Other researchers have found that left-handers are overrepresented on university faculties, as well as among gifted students, artists and musicians.” Update: Slate‘s Joel Waldfogel considers the results.
Sinister Intentions.
Doh…looks like I missed International Left-Hander’s Day…spent the day typing with both hands. Should’ve at least played basketball or (lefty-strung) guitar or something. Ah, well…maybe next year. As a kid, I was a much more militant lefty, but you gotta put up with so much more back then…the kindergarten scissors don’t cut, the Crayola markers smear, yadda yadda yadda. I even had a subscription to Lefthanders Magazine for about a year there around sixth grade. It was bound the wrong way (highly confusing overkill), offered such scintillating articles as “Bruce Willis…left-hander of the year!”, and basically never ventured very far afield from this pic. (Both links via Scratching Post.)