Are all cinematographic actors left handed?

[Sorrano]

Of the left-handed people I have known I really do not see any difference between them and the right-handed people I know. There is a lot of attention from time to time to left-handed people because they happen to be in the public eye, for example, a baseball pitcher who excels in his profession will have the added notoriety that he is left-handed. The media is weird about that sort of thing, anyway.

Perhaps I am just dull-witted, but I think I am beginning to see what it is you are saying. It's the emphasis that is placed upon that, not so much the act or situation itself (be it being left-handed or whatever else).

With the over protection issue it's funny how one thing is heavily emphasized, like seat belts and cigarette smoking and another thing is glossed over, such as consumption of alcoholic beverages. Cigarette ads have been long removed from Television here, but drinking alcoholic beverages is still glorified. Almost daily I read about traffic accidents, in which alcohol was involved. Now do not misunderstand; I am not necessarily condemning these things, but rather pointing out the hypocrisy of the media/government/etc. that goes to such length with certain issues but totally neglects other issues that may be as harmful.

[Enrique]

Perhaps I am just dull-witted, but I think I am beginning to see what it is you are saying. It's the emphasis that is placed upon that, not so much the act or situation itself (be it being left-handed or whatever else).

You have expressed it well. I am not very good at explaining. I can, but in detriment of brevity. A thing that has always puzzled me is what I'd call the two-boxers problem. If one is left handed and the other is right handed, then neither one has an advantage over the other (except that the LH has fight many RH and the RH probably very few LH). But there is no advantage for any of them it the case of both being RH too. So both cases have the property of not producing handicaps, and it is this simmetry which bothers me. I do not know if you've seen a movie by the name of Gattaca, with Uma Thurman. Through all the story, a character, Ethan Hawke, is impersonating another one, and is discovered in the final scene. The character impersonated was left handed, a peculiarity Hawke was not aware of. And there is a human activity which was that that betrayed him. I saw the movie, and I'd swear the movie writer made a mistake there, attributing to the right hand what must be attributed to the left in any right handed man.

I agree a hundred per cent with you about alcohol, specially bear advertising. I do not see why I, a poor smoker, have to contemplate the photograph of a human lung when I fetch a cigarrette from its box, while those who have a glass of scotch aren't bothered at all. In the "centro", the commercial and administrative centre in my city, the streets are very old, I mean, they are very narrow and the buildings walls very high. And hundreds of buses an hour go though them. The combustion gases from the motors, their concentration in the air must be very high. I say if B sits beside a person A at a distance of one meter for five minutes while A finishes his cigarrette, the effect on B will be the same as if B is exposed for one second to the superpolluted air of my centric streets. Of course, with these figures I only try to give an idea of the disproportion. A statistical measure wold throw very different numbers, but they would confirm my idea.

[Sorrano]

In baseball a left-handed pitcher has distinct advantage over a left-handed batter and the same is true with right-handed pitchers and batters. (Again, a symmetrical issue.) In the world that we live in most everything is geared toward right-handed people with some exceptions. With that in mind we can see that left-handed people are forced to learn, to some extent, to be ambidextrous (there is that joke, "I'd give my right hand to be ambidextrous) because of this, so they do have to exert more effort to cope with what is natural to the right-handed person. As far as intelligence and other physical matters I have seen no difference between one and the other.

I have not seen the movie, but that is interesting what you said about the director's error. I take it that you are rather observant. That is a wonderful capability and I do wish I would not be so lazy as I am and watch things more carefully.

The word that you are probably looking for with the advertising, media fixations, etc. is hypocrisy. There is certainly a lot of that in the media and government, sometimes to extreme instances.

[Enrique]

Nothing so far from reality as I being an observant person. You know, I could say exactly as you about watching things more carefully, though for some of them I do have some powers (sorry for my English). So with right-handed pitcher and batter, which is the more usual case, the pitcher has an advantage. This is very interesting. (I know, left and left is the same.) Really, it always seemed to me a very difficult thing to catch the ball with the bate. My mother considered herself ambidextrous but she never was left-handed. One object that is dificult for left-handed people is scissors, and its because operated by us the blades tend to join themselves. They instead cause the opposite effect. But there are who manufacture scissors for them.

What I say is that the scale has gone quite to the other side now and children are allowed to do whatever they want. The ball was started rolling by an American physician, a pediatrician, who changed the parents' behaviour with their kids in an incredibly rapid way. He had a deep influence all over the US. And as what is done in your country exercises, most of all at that time, a great influence in the world, Europe inclusive, parents every where in the West began to modify their conduct in this sense.

This sense is, we all know, maximum freedom for the kid. And this reached the school and the question of whether or not the child should be allowed to use his left hand to write. Well, genes are genes and it's wise not to oppose your very basic structure. But there are many children who were not born left-handed and have ended up being. They should have been guided. He may be disoriented, and use whatever hand (to write at school when he is put a pen in his hand for the first time) comes first to his/her head. I'm not a scholar in child psicology but I'm sure there is something of that. I would like you to expand on what you said about hypocrisy when you have time, Sorrano.