Laeotropic Things

You have no idea what 'laeotropic' means, do you?

'Laeotropic' means turning towards the left, sinistral, or anti-clockwise. It is most commonly used when talking about things from the ocean, such as egg-sacs and occasionally shells. Mostly egg-sacs. What I mean by it is that I, too, am a left-turning creature, a long time from the ocean.

Other things that turn towards the left include:

• Bats, when exiting caves.
• Most planets in our solar system.
• Dakshinavarti Shankh, a Vedic symbol represented by a rare left-handed conch.
• Lightning Whelks, a far more commonly left-handed shell.
• Some other shell examples.
• The egg cases of Acanthodoris pilosa. (I may be incorrect about this.)
• The stairwell in Ferniehirst (Kerr) Castle, Scotland, ascending, turns towards the left. It is said that they, like I, were left-handed and would have had an advantage defending the castle if the stairwells were built that way.

There are many things in nature and art which turn anticlockwise, or laeotropically. I had a hard time representing this in my logo. I chose instead to make a point that the laeotropic aspect of the wave, that is, the left side, was aberrant. This is very often true; many things which are left-dominant are historically, and even still in science sometimes, seen as faulty.

The current theories for handedness are favoring a theory that sinistral people are *lacking* a gene, rather than having a specific one, or that there was damage to our DNA. At the same time we have some natural defenses; arguably we are more naturally ambidextrous, which I see as an advantage. It has been argued that the sides of our brains communicate better because of this. As for that 'left-handed people are more creative' crock, I give you no look at my artwork. As I once said to someone that I consider important, in a massive blunder, "I can't paint." There is a much better lot of information on handed-ness at Lorin's Left-handedness site. For your interest, in my immediate family going up to my great-grandmother, on both sides, about half of us are left-handed.

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