Music Appreciation

There are few afflictions that affect as many people and are as severe as left-handedness. However I recently heard of another that is almost as bad, and affirms my genetic superiority. Indeed I am not tune deaf (TD). A recent Science Friday program talks to Dr. Allen Braun who investigates tune deafness. Tune deaf essentially means that you can't really distinguish when notes are played off key. Take the Distorted Tunes Test to see if you are tune deaf (beware Quicktime!). If you failed that test I find it hard to believe that you could ever really appreciate music, but a couple of callers into the science friday program say that despite TD they do enjoy music. Fortunately this affects only 2% of the general population so it is not as prevalent a problem as left-handedness. Unfortunately it is highly heritable.
More interestingly, from ScienceNOW (link added):
As expected, these subjects did not have the typical MMN response to poorly played tunes, the team reports today in PLoS One. But to their surprise, the researchers did detect the P300 response to the incorrect notes. Braun believes these results show that the brain can detect the differences even though tune-deaf people aren't aware.
Thus these subjects possibly have a deficiency in transfer between conscience and unconscience knowledge of incorrect tones. The authors of the paper propose:
In light of this, TD may provide a novel opportunity to study conscious perception. Unlike lesion-based disorders such as blindsight it should be possible to study the process in a brain that is structurally intact, and in a patient population that is far larger. In addition, TD is a highly heritable condition, and investigations currently underway may identify the genetic variants that underlie this condition. The tune deaf population may thus constitute a group in which the problem of consciousness might be approached at the cellular and molecular level using the tools of genetic research.

Paedophiles are left-handed

I can't think of a group of people more despised by society than left handed people. Well, not surprisingly, not only is pedophilia associated with low IQ, they are three times more likely to be left handed. (read the whole article, it's there, along with some interesting information that indicates this awful sexual disorder has a physiological basis.) The corollary of which is left-handed people are three times more likely to be pedophiles. We all must suffer for the existence of left-handedness, even to the extent that a newly proposed law in Manitoba suggests not reporting left-handers to the appropriate authorities could result in up to two years in jail.

The Superiority of Left-Handedness Pt. 2: Lessons from the Snail

I don't know why I even bother. The superiority of left-handedness is not even open to scientific debate. It has been a settled matter for millions of years, ever since the L-amino acids won the out over the D-amino acids and went on to become the building blocks of life and dominate the planet. But for those who need even further evidence that evolution drives multi-cellular organisms toward the ideal of left-handedness, one need only look to the example of the snail.

Yes indeed, for this ancient and highly evolved organism, left-handed shell coiling provides a clear survival advantage, rendering these highly fit individuals immune to attacks from inferior right-handed crabs. As the authors of this excellent study point out, the physical superiority of lefty snails parallels the well-established superiority of left-handed humans in physical competitions:

"This advantage parallels some social interactions in human cultures that result when right and left-handed individuals compete, especially in sports or fights involving dual confrontations (interactive contests such as boxing, tennis, fencing and baseball), where left-handers occasionally enjoy an advantage over their right-handed opponents."

Clearly then, left-handedness confers not only intellectual, but also physical superiority to a diverse range of multi-cellular organisms across phylogenetic taxa.

Further reading on the superiority of left-handedness in the human:

• Do left-handed competitors have an innate superiority in sports? Grouios et al., Percept Motor Skills, 2000.
• Handedness, homicide and negative frequency-dependent selection. Faurie and Raymond, Proceeding of the Royal Society B, 2005.
  

Cell Biology Confirms that Lefties are Superior

Well I've already mentioned the piles of evidence suggesting that left-handed people are more highly evolved and just plain better than right-handers. Now, new evidence has confirmed this fact at the cellular level. Cell biologist Palazzo has a great post on a PNAS paper showing that cells are left-handed. Obviously this is the best way to be.

Left-Handedness is the Pinnacle of Evolution

Enough with the molecular reductionism. We all know it's fun to theorize and hand-wave about the molecular basis of life, but of course real biologists ignore molecules and go right to the in vivo models. And what have we learned about the evolution of left-handedness from these more relevant human studies?

• Left-handed men are worth more to society than right-handers, as evidenced by the fact that their salaries are 26% higher.
• Left-handers get their own special scissors, because they are better at arts and crafts.
• The QWERTY keyboard was designed specifically for lefties, with all the important letters on the left, becuase left-handers are the only ones who have thoughts worth typing.
• Bike helmet straps designed for right-handers, because lefties more co-ordinated and don't need to wear helmets.
  
• The leaders of the most successful empires of human history were left-handed - most of the British Royal family, Alexender the Great, Charlemagne, Julius Caesar and Napoleon were lefties. This obviously contributed to their success and TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION. For example Napoleon taught all his soldiers to be kick-ass left-handed swordsmen and based his military strategy around this special ability...the rest is history.
• George Bush Sr. (the smart one) is left handed. George Bush Jr. (the illiterate one who invaded Iraq) is not.
• In music, Jimi Hendrix was left-handed and the greatest guitar player to ever live.
• The most intelligent two humans ever born were left-handed. Albert Einstein and Leonardo DaVinci.

You might ask, why then, if left-handedness is superior and therefore under positive selection, are there currently much fewer lefties than right-handers around? Actually this has nothing to do with evolution. The true reason for this discrepancy is that God is jealous of left-handers because they are better than him in all ways, which he did not intend when he first began to direct the evolution of humans. He therefore banded with the right-handers, convincing them to form a right-handedness conspiracy in an effort to wipe out the lefties. It is well known that the church persecuted left-handed children as "devil-spawn", and school-masters tried, with significant success, to beat the left-handedness out of young children. The church also refused to marry left-handed "agents of satan", directly leading to diminished reproductive success.

Fortunately, enlightened lefties like Joan of Arc, Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Jack the Ripper, Benjamin Franklin, Fidel Castro, Gandhi, Buzz Aldrin, Ted Koppel, Bart Simpson, Ross Perot, Tom Cruise (in Mission Impossible), Rocky Balboa (especially in part III), Rambo (the original) and Bob Dylan refused to cave to oppression and fought to overthrow the church's dominance of society, establish human rights and develop more just societies. As a result, human evolution has been freed from the reign of the right-handed conspiracy, and the frequency of lefties has been on the rise for the past sixty years (see fig below). Obviously, left-handedness is superior and that is why life evolves to be left-handed, not just at the molecular level, but the important ones too (although there is an outside chance that it may be caused by global warming).





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