Author Topic: Happy Left Handers Day  (Read 7832 times)

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
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Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #75 on: 15 August, 2019, 08:07:19 am »
I was never made to write with either hand but then I suspect my teacher gave up after her failed attempts to make me join up my letters. This boy won't do the Devil's Cursive.

I am convinced joining up letters just Does Not Work for some people, of whom I am one.

My joined up writing was never fluid and quick, and joining up just made it scrawly. Unjoined, it was crisp and clear.

 I thought they beat that kind of thing out of you doctors at medical school?
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Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #76 on: 15 August, 2019, 08:58:54 am »
Yes, my writing used to be terrible, and after all those 20+A4 page lectures it got so illegible that I even struggle to read it.
It is simpler than it looks.

ian

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #77 on: 15 August, 2019, 09:30:10 am »
My S's sometimes come our backwards, but only if I try to think about it. Thinking breaks things.

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #78 on: 15 August, 2019, 09:39:14 am »
If it's any consolation, movies always get DNA the wrong bloody way around. It twists to the right.

(There's no known reason why it can't be left-turn, the same for amino acids which, for life on Earth, are all L-)

Brilliant, all life on Earth is made from left handed molecules. Everybody on Earth is left handed.

Apart from DNA, of course. That's D-.


(aslo, pedantry-wise... D-amino acids do actually exist in nature, quite a lot - presumably you meant DNA-encoded proteinogenic amino acids are all L- ;) )

Yes, proteins, you pedantic monkey. If I recall, bacteria use D-amino acids in their cell walls (and glycine is its own enantiomer, so doesn't have D- or L- forms). Excitingly my final foray in the heady heights of academia was nucleic acid-sugar epimerisation.

It's important stuff, the problems with thalidomide, for instance, were down to stereochemistry.


The L and D stereochemistry in molecules is a pretty poor designation of their 'handedness'.  Plenty of L-molecules are dextrotatory to plane polarised light and plenty of D-molecules are laevo...  It was/is a system devised by Fisher in the 19th century and is all based on the handedness of the simple sugar glyceraldehyde.  It also only works for one of the stereo-centres in sugars so to say all 'natural' sugars are D is misleading (certainly the most common ones, ribose, deoxyribose, glucose, fructose, galactose, mannose are for sure).  In fact when Fisher first designated D and L glyceraldehyde according to the way it is drawn devised by him (still called a Fisher projection) - he actually had no idea which enantiomer was which as they hadn't the tools to assign absolute stereochemistry back then.  After about 90 years they found that he'd guessed 'right' (boom 'tish)




Is there no still mileage in the way most babies sit in the womb?  Back when I was a lad, it was the consensus theory that the vast majority have a certain orientation in the womb in their foetal position and that was what defined it.  Probably easily debunked in the days of scans I suppose.


Not sure I should be allowed in here, sorry.  Righty with everything me, even after sever injuries to both my right limbs :(
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

ian

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #79 on: 15 August, 2019, 09:58:39 am »
It's still clever though (and I believe S- and R- are still in vogue as more correct designations, it's been a while he says totting up a lot of years since his last paper, which was incidentally about an epimerisation mechanism, it's how vitamin C is made, fact fans).

To lower the tone (again), one story I read was there's increased pressure on righties, because of having to work the mouse and look at the screen. Honestly chaps, just get a trackpad and put on the other side of your keyboard.

Phil W

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #80 on: 15 August, 2019, 10:19:17 am »
Yes, my writing used to be terrible, and after all those 20+A4 page lectures it got so illegible that I even struggle to read it.

It's a wonder that any University teaching got absorbed all those years ago. How were you meant to take in the subject matter whilst writing manically in the lecture theatre?  One of our lecturers was so bad that a group of us stopped going after a while, we all photocopied the notes of the lecturers pet. This pet would rewrite them to make them legible, for themselves, plus all those who copied them. I guess students get an iPad download  these days with salient points highlighted.

Bumping your left hand into the right hand of the student next to you, as you wrote, didn't help legibility.

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #81 on: 15 August, 2019, 10:44:23 am »
I've heard (apocryphal) stories of classes agreeing which one student would attend the lecture, carrying everyone else's tape recorders. These days of course you could just copy an MP3. Not sure it would work where diagrams on the board are central, but then a camera would be quite easy. In practice I think lecturers make a lot of stuff available electronically anyway?

One of our lecturers had reputedly been excellent some decades before, but unfortunately had descended into near incomprehensibility. Generations of students resorted to selling on to the next year group treasured second-hand copies of the textbook that he had written in his prime, but that was now out of print.

I've no idea whether he was left-handed...

I did find note-taking helpful at university. My writing however descended into straight lines across the page, with occasional upward or downward ticks. Curiously, I could still read it ???

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #82 on: 15 August, 2019, 10:52:21 am »
Yes, my writing used to be terrible, and after all those 20+A4 page lectures it got so illegible that I even struggle to read it.

It's a wonder that any University teaching got absorbed all those years ago. How were you meant to take in the subject matter whilst writing manically in the lecture theatre?  One of our lecturers was so bad that a group of us stopped going after a while, we all photocopied the notes of the lecturers pet. This pet would rewrite them to make them legible, for themselves, plus all those who copied them. I guess students get an iPad download  these days with salient points highlighted.

Bumping your left hand into the right hand of the student next to you, as you wrote, didn't help legibility.


Actually they get a video of us lecturing, a Ppt presentation to look at - so now they don't bother going and try and binge-watch it all in the days before the exams - with predictable results.  University teaching has always been - here's the material - here's the primary sources - go and READ it and learn it properly... here's some example questions and problems to help you understand it.  I think we should go back to the old way frankly, as the more you provide, the more they want and the less work they seem to be prepared to do for themselves.


(generalising a little there, there are still excellent students who are diligent, but the majority who can't be arsed are increasingly self-destructing)
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

ian

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #83 on: 15 August, 2019, 10:57:44 am »
I once borrowed a photocopied set of notes for the lecture I'd missed. Turned out I'd written the originals. That must have been one hell of a hangover. Come on, 9am lectures, the Devil's curriculum.

I find the activity of writing notes means the information has to pass through my brain which the side-effect that some of it sticks. As I only print, I'm a bit slow at writing, so it forces so quick summarization.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #84 on: 15 August, 2019, 11:02:51 am »
Yes, my writing used to be terrible, and after all those 20+A4 page lectures it got so illegible that I even struggle to read it.

It's a wonder that any University teaching got absorbed all those years ago. How were you meant to take in the subject matter whilst writing manically in the lecture theatre?

Fortunately I worked out[1] at some point towards the end of my GCSEs that with my writing speed taking notes was stupid and that I was better off paying attention and actually learning something rather than desperately trying to triage what might later turn out to be important.

Then I got to university and discovered the sort of lectures that were basically an inefficient means of conveying citations.  I bought a Psion 5 and a massive box of NiCad batteries, which tripled my dictation speed, and was just about able to keep up.

(I suspect these days I'd be diagnosed with dysgraphia and allowed to use a computer for exams and stuff.)


Universities have, for the most part, come round to realising that lectures are for teaching, not duplicating notes, and the more progressive ones provide slides in advance and centralised quality A/V recordings of the lectures as a matter of course.  (The less progressive ones will grudgingly arrange to do this on an individual basis for the half a dozen card-carrying disabled students, at greatly inflated cost.)  Which is brilliant for the writing-impaired, the lipreaders and all the other people who can either learn or write, and terrible for the old-school academics who believe that  a) learning happens in the motor cortex  or  b) by withholding teaching material other than through the medium of lecturing, the students will be less lazy.


[1] Helped by my awesome physics teacher telling me that if I wanted to just sit there and pay attention that was absolutely fine, she knew I wasn't slacking off.

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #85 on: 15 August, 2019, 11:50:08 am »
The more important question with the cooker and pans is stirring clockwise or counterclockwise with each hand?

Both, for better mixing...

I wanted to post that!

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #86 on: 15 August, 2019, 12:03:48 pm »
(I cross my 7s too, but this doesn't solve the problem of Other People sometimes doing '4's that look like my '9's (my '4's look like '4's, so are completely unambiguous - I used to provide a sample in the margin of exam papers).)
I cross my zs too, so that they're not confused with 2s

ian

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #87 on: 15 August, 2019, 12:09:07 pm »
When I do a presentation sans presentation aids (as is occasionally my wont), just me and a spectacle of public gesticulation, I see younger people in the audience panic. Are there slides!? No.

They also, as a generalization, scribble and type away like demons from Hell's stenography pool, trying to snatch every word, as though they might miss a word of such crucial importance that their entire comprehension of the presentation be sundered. And sometimes I talk like that, using the big words and ventures into meandering periphrasis and off-piste anecdote, just to make them write more. O sweet, corrupting power!

In other news I cross my 7s too (which seems to perplex Americans more than most), put hooks atop my a's and all my rs are Rs, though I small cap the lower case.

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #88 on: 15 August, 2019, 03:12:39 pm »
Wow, I'm impressed they're not all staring at phones and tablets, surfing t'web or typing on instafacewitter. 


I recently gave a lecture course to allegedly 25 year 3 students - I flipped them and everything - a flipped lecture being you pre-record your lecture going through everything quick-stylee.  Students watch it in advance and you then go through problems during he contact time.  This is actually a *really* effective way of teaching if done right.


My lecture attendance was about six people (the other two lecturers got 4 if you think I'm unpopular ;)).


It is not coincidence I think, that when it came to marking their exams there were about 6-8 excellent papers and a whole bunch of dross otherwise.  There is still a direct correlation between engaging with teaching contact and actually passing in my experience.
That said, I certainly agree that visual lecture capture is a superb resource for people who find our mother tongue challenging, and others who struggle to note it all down at the time etc.



It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #89 on: 15 August, 2019, 03:14:28 pm »
As for scribbling and typing away like Hell's stenographers, there's the old university lecturer joke: Lecturer walks into room in Moscow University (it was always Moscow for some reason) and says, "Good morning." The students write down, "Lecturer said Good morning." Lecturer walks into room in New York and says, "Good morning." The students say "Hello Professor". Lecturer walks into room in <your university here> and says, "Good morning." The students sit there blankly.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #90 on: 15 August, 2019, 03:16:43 pm »
(I cross my 7s too, but this doesn't solve the problem of Other People sometimes doing '4's that look like my '9's (my '4's look like '4's, so are completely unambiguous - I used to provide a sample in the margin of exam papers).)
I cross my zs too, so that they're not confused with 2s
Sehr kontinental. Probably a thought crime.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #91 on: 15 August, 2019, 03:30:47 pm »
I would have done them like a ʒ, except, well, y'know...

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #92 on: 15 August, 2019, 03:47:11 pm »
I was never made to write with either hand but then I suspect my teacher gave up after her failed attempts to make me join up my letters. This boy won't do the Devil's Cursive.

I am convinced joining up letters just Does Not Work for some people, of whom I am one.

My joined up writing was never fluid and quick, and joining up just made it scrawly. Unjoined, it was crisp and clear.

 I thought they beat that kind of thing out of you doctors at medical school?

I could not take useful lecture notes, so mostly did not.

I was a conscientious doctor who thought it Important to write Unambiguous and Legible Certificates and Prescriptions. Dropping work whilst answering queries from those who can't read your scrawl is a frustrating PITA and waste of time.

ian

Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #93 on: 15 August, 2019, 03:56:01 pm »
Wow, I'm impressed they're not all staring at phones and tablets, surfing t'web or typing on instafacewitter. 


Well, these are 'industry professionals' and academics rather than students. To be honest, it depends on the audience and seniority level, I'm more likely to do a simple stand-up in front of senior management, something more prepared for juniors or people who aren't fluent in English.

What I don't do, because it's the killer, is just read through dense slides. Put that crap in a reference document or similar and distribute it separately.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #94 on: 15 August, 2019, 04:08:32 pm »
I would have done them like a ʒ, except, well, y'know...
We know that your chain oil is z in i.  :)
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Woofage

  • Tofu-eating Wokerati
  • Ain't no hooves on my bike.
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #95 on: 15 August, 2019, 04:21:11 pm »
(I cross my 7s too, but this doesn't solve the problem of Other People sometimes doing '4's that look like my '9's (my '4's look like '4's, so are completely unambiguous - I used to provide a sample in the margin of exam papers).)
I cross my zs too, so that they're not confused with 2s

I do that too. I think it may have started at university (lots of hard sums).
Pen Pusher

Woofage

  • Tofu-eating Wokerati
  • Ain't no hooves on my bike.
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #96 on: 15 August, 2019, 04:21:58 pm »
Ok, so how about cooking? Say you have 4 pans on the hob. To avoid overlapping handles, the 2 pans on the right side have handles sticking off the the right. The 2 on the left have handles sticking out to the left. You want to stir the contents of the pans. Surely for the 2 pans on the right side, you hold the pans with your right hand, and stir with the left; but for the pans on the left side, you hold the handle with the left hand, swap the spoon over and stir with the right hand?

I avoid that by cooking simpler dishes  8).
Pen Pusher

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #97 on: 15 August, 2019, 08:27:36 pm »
I am sceptical about lecture capture, not least cos the accessibility for deaf students is very poor and they're very rarely captioned.

While I do know of exceptions to the high attendance = high grades, that's cos I work with disabled students, and those exceptions usually have a good reason for not being able to attend and do EPIC amounts of other work to make up for it.

I wonder if they still correlate handedness with specific learning difficulties and neurodiverse conditions... Former colleagues used to say many dyslexics are also lefties...

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #98 on: 15 August, 2019, 08:40:22 pm »
AIUI more lefties are neurodiverse, possibly indicating some damage to the left hemisphere.

Several recent USA presidents have been lefties, make of that what you like!

JennyB

  • Old enough to know better
Re: Happy Left Handers Day
« Reply #99 on: 16 August, 2019, 12:45:05 am »
AIUI more lefties are neurodiverse, possibly indicating some damage to the left hemisphere.

Several recent USA presidents have been lefties, make of that what you like!


From Ford to Obama, only Carter and Dubya were righties.
Jennifer - Walker of hills