by Peter | Jul 22, 2026 | back - behind, left-right, social standing
Right back and left behind There is a strange asymmetry between the way we use left and right with the words back and behind. On the one hand, right back and left back are generally ‘value-free’ . They are labels for two positions on a field of play, so in...
by Peter | May 27, 2026 | brain, education, hand, left-right, write
Saying “I know which is my left hand because I write with it!” is is not an expected justification for knowing the left from the right hand. More typically one hears “I know my right hand because I write with it!” And as such, the left / write...
by Peter | Apr 17, 2026 | ADHD, Big Pharma, brain, handedness, left-right
There at least three answers to the question of what is ADHD: It is a ‘medical condition, first described in symptom terms in 1798 by the Scottish physician Sir Alexander Crichton as “the incapacity of attending with a necessary degree of constancy to any one...
by Peter | Apr 4, 2025 | confusion, left-right, neuro-divergent
“This is when I began to understand neurodiversity, because I couldn’t tell my left from my right.” [BBC Sounds R4 April 3rd 2025 This Cultural Life – Abi Morgan about 3’20” into interview] Once upon stating that you couldn’t tell...
by Peter | May 23, 2024 | devotion, India, left-right, religeous
I had noticed stories – countless bizarre, baffling and intense stories- of India’s religious devotion. The fact that someone was a ‘secularist’ by no means implied they were a rationalist; Nehru’s sometimes contemptuous dismissal of superstition was not a trait...
by Peter | Jan 27, 2024 | good-bad, left-right, live-die, Nazi
In her account of life in a Nazi concentration camp Isabel Lowy said that Josef Mengele chose who was to live or die by directing prisoners to the left (to die) or the right (to live). Another dreadful instance of ‘right’ being positive and...
