I am a lefty. I write, eat, and brush my teeth left handed.

About 90% of the adult population is right handed. I am a minority. I am oppressed.

I am an oppressed lefty. In school I struggled to write in notebooks with spirals on the lefthand side. And I could never use scissors very well.

Like many lefties, I am also somewhat ambidextous — I throw a baseball and shoot a basketball with my right hand. Lefties usually develop right-handed preferences to use tools (like scissors) or in response to parental instruction.

I may be oppressed, but I’m damn proud about who I am and where I came from. Consider the following facts about lefthandedness:

• Left-handed people as a group have historically produced an above-average quota of high achievers.
• Left-handers’ brains are structured differently in a way that widens their range of abilities, and the genes that determine left-handedness also govern development of the language centres of the brain.
• In 2006, researchers at Lafayette College and Johns Hopkins University in a study found that left-handed men are 15 percent richer than right-handed men for those who attended college, and 26 percent richer if they graduated. The wage difference is still unexplainable and does not appear to apply to women.
• Handedness researchers Coren and Clare Porac have shown that left-handed university students are more likely to major in visually-based, as opposed to language-based subjects. Another sample of 103 art students found an astounding 47 percent were left- or mixed-handed.
• One out of seven left-handers processes language using both sides of the brain, compared with just one out of twenty in the general (predominantly right-handed) population, perhaps because of a relationship between dexterity and language. With both halves involved in language, this may lead to better verbal ability and an easier time processing complex concepts.

Political success and lefthandedness are also linked. Six out of the last twelve presidents of the United States have been lefties. All the major candidates the 1992, 1996, and 2008 presidential elections were lefties (H.W Bush, Clinton, Dole, Perot, McCain, Obama).

There are various theories about why lefties outperform. Some have to do with dexterity and the brain. Others have to do with the resilience that’s accumulated when lefties grow up in a society that’s built for righties.

What made me look up these data?

The other week the great, eminent economist Tyler Cowen watched me sign a piece of paper. “Are you left-handed?” he asked. I said yes. I asked if he was too, and he said yes. Seth Roberts, the great, eminent psychologist, walked up and joined the conversation and noted that he as well was left-handed, and he remarked upon the above-cited studies. There was a pause. I stared deeply into each of their eyes. The air was pregnant with a felt understanding that there was at that very moment a connection. A divine connection. A transcendent connection. Our childhood discrimination — the scissors, the notebooks, people next to us at dinner tables hitting us with their elbows — had more than been made up by our adult super-powered-hybrid-equipped-right-brain-left-brain cognitive fireworks. We may be supremely confident in our abilities at present, I told them in not so many words, but we can never forget where we came from. Tyler whispered something very softly, something I shall not repeat on this blog, and the three of us finished our conversation with a simultaneous left eye-wink.

Bottom Line: My left-handed brothers and sisters: We got to stick together. Strength in numbers. Pound it up. Come in for the real thing.

Congressman Peter Stark (D – California) represents all that is great about American politicians: humility, wide-ranging and mature vocabulary, and a genuine warm-heartedness towards those interested in political issues.

Take his must-watch interview with libertarian Socratic Dialogue devotee Jan Helfeld discussing the national debt. Congressman Stark, tripped up after saying that a country's wealth increases as its national debt increases, tells the interviewer to "shut up." He then tries to end the interview by telling Helfeld to "get the fuck out of here or I'll throw you out the window." See the clip below.

Stark has quite a record. In a 2001 debate, he falsely stated that all of the children of Congressman J. C. Watts of Oklahoma were "born out of wedlock." In another debate, he called Congresswoman Nancy Johnson of Connecticut a "whore for the insurance industry" and suggested that her knowledge of health care came solely from "pillow talk" with her husband, a physician.

Elsewhere on the web, here are the Top 10 Most Disastrous David Letterman interviews ever. #10 is Joaquin Phoenix. The Madonna one is pretty funny. Here is a news release about heroic efforts to create braille pornography for blind people.

I thank Andy McKenzie, David Lee, and Chris Yeh for sending the above links. I'm sitting in this Hilton hotel room in South Carolina laughing my ass off, by the way. You know when you're laughing so hard that your muscles become weak? That's me. I can't get the damn bar of soap out of the little hotel package due to muscle weakness.

With guests Tavis Smiley and Bob Woodward discussing the historic nature of an Obama presidency, Larry King revealed the other day that his 8 year-old son "wants to be black" because "black is in."

Since when did white kids not want to be black? Since when have white males not wallowed in lonely, lonely identity crises?!

Bottom Line: Black is the new black.

Rob and I had just finished a long, expensive lunch. The bill came and sat in the middle of the table. Neither of us looked at it. Our conversation was clearly over but we kept stalling to see who would reach for the bill. Rob said something about the economy really taking a toll on his net worth.

I ignored the implication and pushed the rectangular, black tray holding the tab towards him, and smiled assertively.

Rob said: "Hey, look Ben, I got a wife and family and…"

I interrupted him. "You got a dick," I said.

"What?

"I said you got a dick. You do have a dick, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Ok, the dick lines up straight like that right? To the right of it and to the left of it are pockets, right?" I said.

"Yeah," he said.

"In those pockets are money. Look in either one of 'em – pay the bill," I said.

For a moment, Rob looked stunned. When he proceeded to pull out his wallet, I got up from the table. An older, black man was sitting in the corner with what looked like his grandson. They had been watching us the whole time. The older man leaned over to the wide-eyed teenager, pointed in my direction, and whispered, "True playa."

I nodded knowingly at the elder, then the youngin', and exited through the side door of the restaurant.

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The above is a fictionalized story inspired by a scene from the movie Training Day, hat tip to Massimo for pointing it out to me when we were in Prague last May. About time I tried writing a short story!