by Peter | Jul 22, 2026 | left-right
Right back, Left back, Right behind, Left behind The other day I was struck by the asymmetry between our uses of left and right. On the one hand, right back and left back are generally ‘value-free’ : they are labels for two positions on a playing field. On...
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 | brain, handedness, left-right
There at least three answers: 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 object.” In 1902, the...
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...
