It's a Right-Handed World

For those of you who are southpaws out there, you understand what I mean when I say that the world we live in is dominated by right-handers. Just because they make up 90-93% percent of the population, they think they have the right to make life as hard as possible for us lefties.

Now I know there are bunch of you right-handers out there who are saying, "What? we've done no such thing." Well it's time to wake up and face your ruthless bigotry. Here is a list of items and tools designed for use with the right hand, with no regard to the idea that some of us preferentially use our left hands:

computer mouses (mice?)
spiral notebooks
ladles
pencil sharpeners
schoolroom desks
scissors (and don't give me that bullshit about left-handed scissors they used to have in kindergarten. they were vastly inferior: I could have cut a cleaner line with my teeth)
hockey sticks
rotary cheese graters

The list goes on and on.

But this post is not about complaining about our plight. I've long since come to terms with that, only getting on my soapbox about it when I absolutely have to. No what this post is about is that the bigotry and prejudice, it seems, is not restricted to people. It appears that the laws of physics and molecular biology share the same right-handed skew. Check it out:

DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic for every living thing on the planet, forms a right-handed helix. Likewise, proteins form a type of secondary structure called an alpha-helix, which, you guessed it, also happens to be right-handed. Shameful...

Now take a look at physics. You'd think that the science at the root of it all would be a little bit more objective, but no. Many physical phenomena, such as torque and magnetic force on a moving charge obey what is called the Right-Hand Rule. This means that the direction of the torque or force can be determined by curling the fingers in the direction of rotation (as is the case for torque) or from the direction of the charges velocity to the direction of the magnetic field.

Last, and perhaps the most insulting, is that the weak force only interacts with one kind of fermion. And what kind of fermion is that? The left-handed kind of course.

The universe hates us.