: This graphic shows the functions of the Lexus RX450h's Remote Touch control.
Obama’s a lefty, but products made for lefties are left behind – by lefties By MIKAELA CONLEY
Columbia News Service
NEW YORK –Twelve-year-old Cait-lin Towey swung recklessly with the
right-handed golf clubs her grand-mother bought her as a gift only days before. Towey, a confirmed lefty, looked around, mortified to see all the country clubbers watching her.
“It was so awkward for me to be at a country club to begin with!” said the now 23-year-old youth program-mer for AmeriCorps. “Never mind the fact that I felt completely ridicu-lous using golf clubs that were totally wrong for me.”
Still, Towey continued on with the game of golf throughout childhood and into adulthood. “I ended up be-ing pretty good at the sport,” she said. “Think of how phenomenal I could have been if I had learned with the proper lefty clubs.”
After centuries of discrimination against the left-handed, southpaws can now be proud of their unique-ness. No more believing that lefties are a bunch of cryptics; no more kids getting their knuckles slapped with rulers to force them to use their right hand. Even President Obama re-cently signed documents with his left hand and quipped to reporters, “I’m a lefty, get used to it.”
But does Obama – and the rest of the 1 in 10 lefties of the land – realize they could be signing documents with a fast-drying ink lefty pen? Or cutting coupons with some lefty scis-sors? Oven mitts, watches, mugs, notebooks, pens, knives, vegetable peelers and can openers all exist and are available now on the Internet. At a modest cost (lefty scissors: $12; fast-drying ink pen: $5; left-handed notebook: $5; lefty oven mitt: $7), one would think lefties would snatch up these goods and parade around with their new gear. But it turns out that despite their burgeoning pride, left-ies still rarely use the lefty-specialized products now available. Instead, they choose to struggle and adapt the best they can to a right-handed world, even when there are products available to service their dominant side.
“So many lefties have adapted to righty products throughout the years that it can be awkward for lefties to use left-handed products, especially scissors,” said Kelly Kempczenski, the left-handed manager of San Fran-cisco’s Lefty Store, which calls itself the first store in the United States to cater to left-handers. “It definitely gets some taking used to.”
It turns out that because lefties have gotten so used to adjusting to a right-handed world, most don’t see the point in changing now. Growing up, Alissa Leone tried to keep her computer mouse at home on the left side of the key board. As computers became used more in school, her right hand became shaped to the righty mouse.
“I can’t use lefty products any-more,” said Leone, a 25-year-old in-surance underwriter. “I write with my left hand but I can do almost any-thing else with my right hand. I usu-ally eat with my left hand but occa-sionally will switch to my right hand and not even be aware of it.”
Like most of the lefty community, Leone is more ambidextrous than dominant-handed by forcing herself to adapt to the world with her rare physical trait.
Unlike blond and blue-eyed folks who like to play up their recessive genetics, or those who try to emulate them through dyes and contact lenses, lefties instead give in to their surroundings. Most choose to settle with a frustration-fueled ambidex-trous way of life than play up the un-common feature that claims to be a sign of superior creativity and intelli-gence to the left-handed.
“Righties that come into our store don’t realize the little things that we lefties deal with in this day and age,” said Kempczenski. “From everything like cutting a slice of cheese to measuring something; from opening a bottle of wine to playing cards, left-ies have to do many things in their own way. Most of us are ambidex-trous because we have no choice but to adapt to the ‘right-hand world.”’
Specialty lefty products can’t be found in a Staples and Office Max store. And especially in a harsh eco-nomic environment, most lefty stores have gone online to sell to left-handed customers. While the Inter-net offers several options buy lefty products, the availability and demand still pales in comparison to the hair dye and colored-contacts business.
Sarah Newcomb, who hit the DNA trifecta as a blond, blue-eyed lefty, finds the use of left-handed products more frustrating than fruitful.
“I remember I had a couple lefty notebooks,” said Newcomb, a 22-year-old New Hampshire resident. “But it actually was more difficult for me to write in them I think. I was so used to just having the binding for my left hand to rest on.”
“It seems like more of a hassle, anyway,” Newcomb said, “to have to go out and buy lefty stuff that’s so hard to find.”
And despite Towey’s negative ex-periences with golf clubs, and choos-ing to lead a more difficult life with-out the use of lefty stuff, she’s grown to love her left-handed dominance.
“Even things as simple as noticing someone else is a lefty and exchang-ing high-fives, or noticing someone with ink all over their hand taking notes and nodding with empathy,” said the recent college graduate. “It’s like a secret club that the only lefties are a part of.”
There’s lots to learn at your local libraryfrom RomeNews
In the Gates Computer Lab on the second floor of the Rome-Floyd County Library, students gathered on a recent afternoon around desktops and laptops in preparation for the day’s computer lesson. Among the students arriving was Millie Pellechi, who pulled up a chair next to another student and began taking notes on Chris Hanson’s lesson for the day on Microsoft Excel. Pellechi retired a few years ago along with her husband after living in New York and helping her husband run a small business. But in the midst of the current recession, she’s finding it more difficult to make ends meet.
“Being unemployed and my husband being unemployed, I’m trying to take advantage of the free classes and better myself,” she said.
And while she’s had experience with computers in the past, technology has moved so fast she isn’t as up to date with the advances in programs like Microsoft Office and Web applications. To help those who want to learn about using computers, the library has stepped in with free classes for patrons who want to learn skills like using the Internet or putting together a slideshow in Power Point. Hanson, who has been teaching the computer classes for the past two years, said his classes have been growing over the past months as people are looking to learn basic computer skills to help them find jobs.
“It used to be around 8 to 14 people per class on average, but not its grown to 18 to 25 people on average,” he said.
The classes have helped people like Randy Abrams go from never using a computer to being one of the top students in the class. Before taking computer classes at the library each week, Abrams was a student at Coosa Valley Technical College. When he started off, he said he didn’t even know how to use a computer mouse. But with time and training, he’s been able to improve his skills.
“I think lots of people get something out of it every time they come; they just don’t always realize it,” he said.
Computer classes aren’t the only thing the library has to offer for those who are looking to learn. Partnering with Coosa Valley Tech, the library offers quarterly adult literacy and English-as-a-second-language classes. Before they took time off between the quarterly sessions Barbara Raybon, who works part-time at the Language and Literacy Center, said there were 170 students registered for the first-quarter classes. Registration for summer classes — offered daytime and evening — will be at the end of June.
“The majority of our students are of Spanish-speaking origin, but we have had students from Japan, Russia and Italy,” Raybon said.
The literacy program provided at the library also helps adults with less-than-average reading skills. Volunteers provide one-on-one tutoring. Raybon said volunteers work two-hour shifts one day a week and are partnered with students who are provided with materials that stay at the library when they aren’t working on class work.
“We attempt to turn our students into patrons of the library,” Raybon said.
And in the future, Library Director Susan Cooley hopes to add more classes as additional resources to the community.
“We might add GED and small business resource classes in the future,” she said.
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Kindly Do Not Speak to Me of Writing Pain
from Adventures in Creative Writing
Some people say they have a
high pain tolerance. Mine is certified.
Repetitive strain injuries used to be associated with tennis players and other enthusiastic sports peoples. Back then, it was just becoming known that doing something as simple as using a computer mouse the wrong way could hork the nerves in your arm (and hork is a technical term).
Geek extraordinaire I was, I fell prey to an odd type of nerve problem. I used that mouse eight to ten hours a day, the wrong way.
So, when the going got tough, the tough went to see a neurologist. It was obvious I had an inflamed nerve in my arm. My primary care doctor would poke at it and I would go OUCH MY GOD DON'T DO THAT AGAIN OR I WILL KILL YOU, YOU HACK!
But I digress.
The neurologist spent the appointment frowning. Soon I was on designer anti-inflammatories. This was a code phrase for "expensive as hell". Literally, I would count the pills to double check the pharmacist's work. I had no co-pay, but still, the thought of a $3.24 mistake grated on my nerves. Get it? Nerves? Grated?
Never mind.
ANYWAY, the specialist sends me to yet another specialist. He wants to know if I have a nerve problem or if I am totally screwed with un-repairable nerve damage. Little did I know my neurologist HATED MY GUTS. For he sent me to a man, a man who TORTURES the INNOCENT for a living.
I show up to my appointment to this specialist. I need an ENG. Not an EKG, but an electro-nerve-graph appointment. Boy howdy. I just should have given a Seattle bum a twenty to kick me in the nuts repeatedly. I am sure that would have felt better.
My first inkling something was wrong was a woman being led out of the appointment area by two friends who looked quite angry. This woman was crying. She had also peed her pants. Most of me felt really bad for her, the other part started to finally clue in that my insurance company was just about to pay $450 to have me tortured for an hour.
So in I go. After I tell the receptionist I am stopping by the men's room first. She nods wisely.
This neurologist is a mild-mannered looking fellow. Young and good looking, even. He explains the procedure to me: he is going to attach a probe to one end of my arm, and another probe at the other end. Using electric pulses, the probes will measure the time it takes for the nerves to conduct electricity from one end to another. These graphs then blah blah blah blah. About this point my brain goes:
RUN YOU FOOL YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE ELECTROCUTED!
But, actually, it doesn't sound that bad. To his credit, he mentions some people find the procedure painful. If it got too bad, we could stop, but he did not recommend it. We would have to start over some other day.
Hey, I'm a tough guy. How bad could this be?
My next inkling something was very amiss is when Dr. Young Man Torture Head "attaches" the fist probe to my arm. "Attaches" was "jam a sharp needle with a wire attached to it into my skin until it touched a nerve".
Literally, I about puked my guts out right then. Then oh no he DOES IT AGAIN. The second probe is a couple of inches away from the first.
"You're doing great," he assures me. "We're going to start the test. The shocks will grow in intensity. Don't worry if your arm flops about, the probes won't come out. If you feel faint, just lie down."
Oooookay. Maybe that was the hard part.
Zap.
Well that is not too bad.
Zap Zap.
Ow.
Zap Zap Zap
No, really, ow.
Zap Zap Zap Zap!
Oh, please, no!
ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP!
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I WILL TELL YOU ANYTHING!
"You did really well," he says.
In which I reply: *whimper*
Now he takes the second probe out and, and, he jams it into my arm again, this time a few mere inches away from the OTHER HOLE IN MY ARM WHICH IS NOW BLEEDING.
He puts a band-aid on this wound. Thanks doc, you're all heart, really you are.
This process repeated until the second probe was sticking out of my shoulder. I latch onto the fact this torture session is almost done. I used that to focus. It is my center. Mentally, I am the Master. Ommmmmmm.
"You did really well, most people at this time start crying," he says. "You have a high pain tolerance".
Well fine. Take that damn needle out of my arm, you, you, BAD MAN you.
Ommmmmmm.
He shows me the graphs. I remember nothing of this, of course. They look computerish impressive. Which is nothing to me now, because I am going home and shooting my computer.
Ommmmmmm.
"Okay, now we'll do the baseline."
Omm---ack!
"The what!?"
This does not sound good. Not good at all.
"We need to establish a baseline by running the same test on your other arm."
"But there isn't anything WRONG with the other arm. It feels fine!"
"Right. That's the good part. It lets us compare the blah blah blah blah blah blah with the blah blah blah. Right now your charts look fine, but without a baseline we won't know for certain."
"Fine."
And just like that, I am tortured again. At the end of the session:
"I don't see any damage, but your neurologist and I will go over the results together."
"Okay."
"You did great. You're well beyond the average in pain tolerance."
"Okay."
"Any questions?"
"Okay."
"Uh, you can put on your shirt and go now."
"Okay."
So I walk out. On my own. The reception area is devoid of patients. I remember the other woman and check my pants. They are dry. For now.
I get outside, and no sooner does the sunlight hit my face then I am on my hands and knees puking my guts out. Hurl hurl hurl hurl, goes lunch, breakfast and any meals prior, including the fish sandwich I had three days before, right into a handy bush.
Somehow, I have managed not to puke all over myself. But I can't muster the energy to get up. So I crawl, literally, to the car.
That is when I notice I have an audience. A man is looking at me with deer-in-the-headlights eyes. He turns to a woman next to him.
"I'm not going!"
"Harold! You have to go. You've been complaining about the pain for a month!"
RUN HAROLD RUN!
This comes out as wheeze, wheeze, wheeze.
"Screw this!"
"Harold, Francine was a nine pound baby with a big head and we got to the hospital too late for me to have an epidural. Remember? Huh? Remember that?"
"No!"
"Stop being a baby!"
Somehow, I manage to get into the car. Harold, the poor man, is doomed.
So, do not speak to me about how sometimes it's painful to write. For you know not what you speak, no sir no ma'am. And I never, and I mean never, used the mouse improperly again.
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from PCplus"Do new touch-based systems herald the demise of the mouse? I think not."
The French term for wooden clogs – ‘sabots’ – is where the word ‘sabotage’ comes from. Angry workers would use their sabots to smash power looms in protest. In a similar vein, I’m just short of taking my Timberlands to our washing machine and dishwasher – indeed, any domestic appliance. I’m not angry about the devices robbing me of honest jobs like the laundry or washing up. Rather, I’d like to make a stand against machines that are too cumbersome to use.
To prove the point I’ve done a survey. Each and every machine in our kitchen uses the same sort of system for taking orders from its human master: a knob that clicks around a circular series of hieroglyphs and numbers. Yet each device does a radically different job. It makes no sense. My car and DVD player do totally different jobs and have different interfaces. Imagine if the people who designed dishwasher control mechanisms took over a car manufacturer. The world would be plunged into chaos. Click. Click. Click. Smash. When it comes to interfaces, one size definitely does not fit all.
All that said, I am keen to understand the workings of our new Kenwood food processor. It’s a mightily impressive-looking thing. It includes any number of nasty looking blades, and features a thick glass jug into which you drop the unfortunate foodstuff which is about to be euphemistically ‘processed’. Sure, it has the obligatory clicking interface, but I’m game to learn its ways.
My motivation? I want to take my computer’s mouse – the device’s brand name is withheld for legal reasons – and drop it into the blender. I’d then like to set the machine to its most vigorous and vicious setting and let the thing do its worst. Or best. Either way, I want to make mouse mousse. Using my boots to smash this particular mouse wouldn’t be justice enough. The mouse’s crime? Being so badly designed that it’s given me awful RSI. But maybe I’m being too hard on my mouse. I guess a designer’s lot is never an easy one. Design something like a mouse right and its fleshy user perceives the device as being perfectly natural, so it falls off their sensory radar. A good designer’s efforts are taken absolutely for granted.
It must be the same for chair makers. Sit in a good chair and you feel somehow weightless. The fact that some poor soul has laboured to make the chair so comfortable is, at that particular moment, utterly unimportant. Park yourself in a bad chair and you’ll be all too conscious of the chair’s howling presence and its inherent, moaning tortures. If you’re like me you’ll soon vow to find its maker and make him sit down. And what about the makers of those French sabots? They’d have to make shoes that felt natural to walk in and also didn’t hurt any protestors’ hands. That must have been quite a trick.
With all this in mind, I was fascinated to read the feature, ‘The Mouse’s Story’ in a recent issue. It explores the story of the humble mouse from its blocky beginnings to the smooth, scalloped devices that we use today. It also asks an important question: do new touch-based systems herald the demise of the mouse? Personally, I don’t think so. There’s something just right about using a good mouse. Indeed, a quick look around the PC Plus office confirms we’re all using much the same sort of design. So maybe mouse makers have pulled off the impossible and made an interface where one size really does fit all.
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Arthritis may be exacerbated by computer use
from News MedicalAccording to researchers in the United States using a computer can have an impact on those suffering from arthritis. Even though computers have become increasingly common in daily life, little is known about how their use on a daily basis might affect those with arthritis; it is estimated that as many as 56% percent of the workforce use computers at work and 62% of households own one.
Arthritis is a leading cause of work disability, and those with the disease may have difficulty performing physically demanding jobs, and may opt for jobs that appear less strenuous but require intensive computer use.
Computer use is a known risk factor for pain and musculoskeletal disorders and arthritis sufferers are more at risk because of difficulties performing tasks due to pain, restricted movement, muscle weakness, or fatigue.
A new study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh has examined this topic in people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), osteoarthritis (OA) and fibromyalgia (FM).
The study involved 315 arthritis patients who completed a specially-designed survey that contained questions on computer use, discomfort experienced while using a chair, desk, keyboard, mouse and monitor, and problems associated with each piece of equipment.
The results showed that many people with arthritis experience both discomfort and problems that could lead to work limitations: 84% of respondents reported a problem with computer use attributed to their underlying disorder and 77% reported some discomfort related to computer use.
Of the three categories of disease, significantly more respondents with FM reported severe discomfort, more problems and greater limitations related to computer use than those with RA or OA.
Nancy A. Baker who led the study says because those with arthritis may experience pain and discomfort even under ideal circumstances, it is not surprising that the prevalence of respondents reporting discomfort with computer use is considerably higher than the general population of computer users.
The problems experienced included finding a comfortable position while using the computer and in manipulating the keyboard and mouse.
The researchers say it was expected that those with RA and OA would have more problems manipulating the keyboard and mouse than those with FM because of their restricted movements but in this study those with FM reported more problems.
The researchers suggest this may be due to a number of reasons - people with FM may have increased clumsiness due to abnormalities in sensory processing or fatigue, they have diffuse rather than localized pain that may affect manipulation, or because those with movement limitations, such as RA and OA, have found it easier to adapt their environment than those with unpredictable diffuse pain, such as FM.
The researchers say in recent years, numerous products have been designed to reduce discomfort and problems during computer use, such as adjustable chairs and monitors and adapted keyboards and mice, and providing people with arthritis with appropriate strategies and equipment to prevent computer problems, may significantly reduce work limitations and prevent those with arthritis from discontinuing computer use.
They also suggest that computer use in the home appears to have a greater potential to place people at risk for upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders, since most people do not set up their home computer environment to reduce risk factors - those with arthritis should therefore have both their work and home computer set-ups evaluated to ensure that problems are minimized.
The team point out that as the ability to use a computer is one method of preventing work limitations and eventual disability, as well as a vital tool for both work and home activities, health professionals must work with people with arthritis to identify problems experienced during computer use and implement computer workstation modifications to ensure safe, effective, and comfortable use of all computer equipment.
The study was published in the May issue of Arthritis Care & Research and was funded by the Western Pennsylvania Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation.
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