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So after 10 months of research and analysis here is my final book design all ready for my presentation tomorrow.  

From the last panoramic image you can see that technically the book is giant Jacob's ladder held together with simple magnetic lock.  

The bind works fairly well created from standard everyday paper.  

Try and may your own Jacob's Bind Book!

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Instructions on how I made my Jacob's Bind Book. 

Final Images coming up next.....

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Which one of these cars looks correct? Does one look more aesthetically pleasing than the other. 

Apparently Carlo Bugatti, thought that his cars looked better with a Right Hand Drive only, thats why Bugatti cars only come in RHD.  I wondering if this applies to any other object?

[The first one is correct image]

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Handedness influences thinking

Handedness influences thinking

A research study published this week claims that our handedness is a major subliminal influence in the choices and decisions we make in all aspects our daily lives.

The decision making process of left-handers was studied by Daniel Casasanto whilst a postdoctoral scholar in psychology at Stanford.  Through a series of tasks comparing the preference of left and right handers to objects presented to them from the left or right, he found that righties tend to judge objects on their right side as positive and objects on their left side as negative. Lefties do the opposite, pairing positive things with their left side and negative things with their right.

The tests were quite varied, so as to analyse participants preferences in a number of different situations.  In one test, for example the participants were given a sheet of paper paper with two boxes side by side, and had to draw a zebra in one and a panda in the other. A majority (74 percent) of left-handers drew the “good” animal in the box on the left, while most (67 percent) of the right-handers drew the good animal in the box on the right. Digging deeper into the statistics, it turns out that right-handers were nearly six times more likely than lefties to place the good animal on the right and the bad animal on the left. “Right-handers’ responses were consistent with the mental metaphor Good Is Right, and left-handers’ with the mental metaphor Good Is Left,” says Casasanto.

In another test, 286 students were shown pairs of fictional alien figures called Fribbles, odd animal-like creatures with squiggly appendages. The students were shown two groups of Fribbles, one group on the right side and the other on the left.

Right-handed students were more likely to view the Fribbles on the right side as intelligent, happy, honest and attractive. Lefties judged Fribbles on the left more favorably.

Further to this, Casasanto had 371 volunteers read brief descriptions of products (mattresses, desk chairs, kiddie pools) on the left or right side of a page and then indicate which they’d like to buy. Again, most righties chose the product described on the right side, but most lefties—resisting whatever implicit message the righty culture conveys—chose the item on the left. And when volunteers read about two job candidates whose CV’s (resumes) were printed side-by-side, right-handers tended to choose the person described on the right, but left-handers chose the one on the left, again being unconsciously swayed by their experience of space more than the conventions of language and culture.

Casasanto believes this is because for left-handers, the left side of any space has positive moral, intellectual, and emotional connotations whereas for righties, the right side does. That association could apply in situations ranging from whether we choose one brand of coffee over another simply because of its position on the supermarket shelves to whom we might identify as a criminal suspect because of their position in a police lineup.

“We have this illusion that we base our decisions largely on relevant and sufficient information, yet social psychology over the past decades has shown us that there are lots of other factors that shape our judgments.”  Casasanto said.

This study is likely to spark interesting debate.  Cognitive scientists have long thought that since the regions of the brain that process our perceptions of the physical world are distinct from the regions that process abstract concepts—good and bad, honest and dishonest, smart and stupid—our spatial perceptions would have no effect on abstract thinking. Casasanto’s findings support a competing idea, namely, that neuronal circuits that control concrete perceptions and actions also handle abstract thoughts.

He calls it the Body-Specificity Hypothesis. And it implies that people with different physical characteristics, such as being right- or left-handed, form different abstract concepts, corresponding to those physical traits. For southpaws, the left side of any space has positive moral, intellectual, and emotional connotations; for righties, the right side does. What Casasanto calls “these contrasting mental metaphors” cannot be “attributed to linguistic experience,” he points out, “because idioms in English associate good with right but not with left. But right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive values more strongly with the side of space on which they could act more fluently with their dominant hands.” That influence is stronger than the linguistic cues we get every day about “right-hand man,” “the right side of history,” “out in left field,” or “two left feet.”

Our left preference extends far beyond the hand we write with.  Lefties instinctively choose the left side in many social situations where the right side is the convention, such as social kissing left cheek first, drinking from the left wine glass at formal dinners, and guiding their partner anti-clockwise around the dancefloor, until the tide of other dancers forces them to conform.   It is interesting to consider though, whether this extends to our subconscious choices made throughout our lives.

One possible benefit of understanding how physical experiences influence our preferences could be an improved education system.  “If righties write the textbook and create the exercises and set up the classrooms, they’re likely to arrange things according to this implicit ‘right is good’ preference,” Casasanto said. “Maybe that’s going to make learning math or going to school and sitting in the classroom just a little bit less pleasant or more disconcerting for lefties. Potentially, sensitivity to this could create better learning environments for lefties.

Casasanto’s paper is in the August 2009 edition of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Article on the study by Christine Blackman,  Stanford University News

Read anecdotes from left-handers about instinctively left-handed actions in everyday life

Daniel Casasanto is now based at the  Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands

- See more at: http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/research/think-differently.html#sthash.ibGZyHK6.dpuf

  Source : http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/research/think-differently.html#

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Beginnings of designing a book cover. The grey segments are where the bind would sit. 

I like the staircase sculpture called 'Umschreibung' by Olafur Eliasson in the entrance to the KPMG Building in Munich, Germany. There are slight links between the idea of a Jacob's ladder being the infinite stairway to heaven and the infinite staircase.  On the other hand.... which direction do you choose left or right?

So far the title I have come up with is - 

'Jacob's Story

              - The world of left-handedness'

What do you think?

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 Book II

So here is my next mock up 'ambidextrous' book, with the binds adjusted to create a larger space for text.  The book works quite well and holds itself together nicely, however next I need to test how it works with more pages, and perhaps with different thickness paper. 

At the moment I am testing out the bind with masking tape doubled up however I will next try with another material maybe a ribbon for aesthetic and strength purposes.  Hopefully with ribbon will hold the same amount of tension over the book to hold it together. 

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Here are some test books I have create using the 'Jacobs Ladder' technique as the bind.  The problem with this bind is the tape that runs through the middle of the book, interfers with the space for text.  Next I will create a mock up that places the tape in a different place. 

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Jacob's Ladder Toy!

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Post-Crit Review_Jacob's Ladder

So last week I had a critique on my development of my ISP project on left handedness.  I pitched to the panel that I would like to create a book which is effectively 'ambidextrous' comfortable to lefties and righties and non discriminitive. 

The first idea I had was to create a double book where it was mirrored and could be opened back and front, but this is kind of a waste of paper, un-environmentally friendly.  So we discussed the idea of creating a book with a special bind, that perhaps plays tricks.  We decided that the project should be fun and innovative.  

I have made several mock ups of the book, images will be uploaded soon, along with a few precedence from the ancient toy a Jacob's ladder.  

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Doors not to be opened with your left hand...!

If you are a lefty you already know what I”m talking about. For those right handed people next time you go home, or encounter a door knob open it with your left hand. WARNING: Be careful not to smash your knuckles against the surrounding wall and make sure you don’t turn yourself completely around and be facing the outside again in our attempt to open the door all the way. Household doors are designed to be opened with the right hand. From the way they open to the location of the door knob.

Being left handed I naturally reach out my left hand to do things. When it comes to double doors, the ones that you pull to enter and push to leave and are found in places of business, I always find myself using the opposite side of everyone else. Sometimes doing this causes a traffic jam with all the other people coming and leaving. I do this because when I enter a store I reach for the door’s handle and grab the one on the left, I swing it open away from my body. That door I come in from is the same one that all the right handed people exit from because they use their right hand to open the door in front of them.

Opening a door is another task left handed have to learn to use with their right hand.

Source - http://lefthanded.cdf-design.com/weblog/

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Wedding Rings...

Right handed people for the most part probabily think that some crazy left handed person decided that people showed wear a ring on the third finger on the left hand. Many left handed people know that there is no way a left handed person created this tradition. Wearing a ring on your dominant hand is cumbersome and hazardous.

If you are a right handed person and never have worn a ring on your dominant hand give it a try. See how much if affects what you are trying to accomplish. Here are a few things to try doing: swing a hammer, throw a ball or grab onto a chain and pull. I”m recently married (almost 2 years) and still I”m finding new ways to lose, or damage my wedding ring. Last winter I was out throwing football as snow flurries were falling. After a couple minutes my hands were as cold as ice. When I went to throw the football my ring went flying off my finger and on to the yard. That is just one of many examples that right handed people don”t have to worry about.

I decided to look up why we wear our wedding rings on our left hands. This tradition turns out to have been started somewhere around 300 BC when people believed that a vein of blood ran directly from the third finger on the left hand to the heart. According to wikipedia “because of the hand-heart connection, people named the putative vein descriptively vena amori, Latin for ”the vein of love”. Due to this tradition, it became acceptable to wear the wedding ring on this finger.” Years later when the circulatory system was discovered this idea was proven wrong but yet the tradition continued on.

Another interesting note about wearing wedding rings on the left hand is that in countries like Chile, Germany, and some other Eastern European countries wear their wedding rings on the right hand.

So for the record, wedding rings were not an idea of a left handed person.

Source - http://lefthanded.cdf-design.com/weblog/

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Lefties are more susceptible to allergies, auto-immune diseases, depression, drug abuse, epilepsy, hypnotism, low birth weight, sleeping disorders, suicide attempts, and certain learning disabilities. Lefties are six times likelier to die in an accident, and four times to likelier to die while driving.

Prejudices against left-handers abound, for throughout history, lefties have been considered inferior. The Catholic Church declared left-handed people to be servants of the Devil. The wedding ring is placed on the left hand in order to chase away evil spirits that may haunt the marriage. In Arab nations, the right hand is used to touch parts of the body above the waist, while the left hand is used for below the navel. African tribes along the Niger river do not allow their women to prepare food with the left hand for fear of poisonous sorcery. Many scientists believe that handedness is genetic. According to this theory, left-handedness is a recessive gene, and right-handedness is dominant. This would explain why left-handedness occurs more frequently in a family where there is a background of left-handedness. A study done shows that the chance for two right-handed parents having a left-handed child is 2%. One parent left-handed and the other right-handed makes it a 17% chance, and two left-handed parents having a lefty is 46%. 

Lefties do have some significant advantages over right-handed people. They tend to be more athletically inclined, to have more spatial awareness and to think more quickly. According to a study, “true” left-handed people—those who favor their whole left side for physical activities—have twice the problem-solving skills and a higher I.Q. than right-handed people.

Left-Handers Day was first celebrated on August 13th, 1976 by Lefthanders International. The purpose of the day is to both celebrate left-handedness and raise awareness of the unnecessary biases against left-handers. The holiday is still proudly observed by lefties every year on August 13th.

Being a lefty isn’t easy but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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What to do next..

So currently, I have been researching all things which are left handed and how much left handed people are at a disadvantage when it comes to particular tools and skill.  

Left handed people have grown up in a right handed world and have been taught to adapt their right hand to use certain items.  For example a computer mouse, they are generally on the right and many lefties will use their right hand to control the mouse, because thats how a computer is 'set up.'

Once I have put my research together I would like to look into the idea what if the world was 50/50 right handers vs left handers.  It think this would make a much more interesting subject that if the roles were reversed as they were today, because everything would just be the same.  Whereas if there was a 50% chance either way, many features in todays life would have to become ambidextrous. What type of things would need to be ambidextrous?

Any comments and suggestions please leave a reply! 

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Left Handed House

First left handed house...

http://www.minbcnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=509731#.UK0PC6WYU_s

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By the way I am Right Handed.....

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Inspiration for binding... designing my report book.