Countdown Begins: On Sunday, there are Seven Days Left

August 13 is International Left Handers Day, for those who don't know.  Left Handers Day is a chance for those born preferring the left hand to stand up and celebrate being who we are.  But it is also a day to point out and criticize right handed privilege and the discrimination that left handed people face every day.

If you read that first paragraph and laugh or sneer, it almost certainly means you have right handed privilege and are uneducated about the issues involved.  It's easy to ignore or pretend a problem doesn't exist when it doesn't affect yourself.

Each day from August 7 until August 13, I will post one topic about the problems left handed people face.  If you claim to fight for social justice and oppose discrimination and abuse, put aside your ignorance and dismissiveness.  Start reading and start thinking.

August 7: Left Handedness and religious discrimination

August 8: Left Handedness and educational discrimination

August 9: Left Handedness and social discrimination

August 10: Left Handedness and economic discrimination

August 11: Left Handedness and technological discrimination

August 12: Left Handedness and ergonomic discrimination

August 13: Left Handedness - Who's Who, and What's What

Water Tabled: Peru's ancient genius wasn't limited to the Nazca plains

Many ancient cultures have disappeared without written records to tell their story or preserve their language.  Often, all we have is their works.

It's easy to arrogantly assume that cultures are "less developed" because they never discovered things like the wheel, written language or metalwork.  We need to put aside our arrogance and chauvinism, and realize that human intelligence is intrinsic to all of us.  Invention and discovery is most often a matter or need and cultures sharing of information via trade. 

The ancient Peruvian mystery solved from space

In one of the most arid regions in the world a series of carefully constructed, spiralling holes form lines across the landscape. Known as puquios, their origin has been a puzzle – one that could only be solved from space.

The holes are from the Nasca region of Peru – an area famous for the Nasca lines, several enormous geometric images carved into the landscape; immaculate archaeological evidence of ceremonial burials; and the rapid decline of this once flourishing society.

What adds to the intrigue in the native ancient people of Nasca is how they were able to survive in an area where droughts can last for years at a time. 

The puquios were a “sophisticated hydraulic system constructed to retrieve water from underground aquifers,” says Rosa Lasaponara of the Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, in Italy. And they transformed this inhospitable region.