in ur presidency using ur scissors: For some reason southpaws keep getting elected president.

While this year's presidential campaign has been marked by historic firsts, the nominations of senators McCain and Obama will renew one surprising trend: For the fifth time in the last 35 years, America will have a lefty in the White House.

...

Both major party candidates are southpaws, contributing to a largely unexplained phenomenon that has vexed researchers and historians — and drawn notice from a federal judge destined for the Supreme Court. Though left-handers comprise just 10% of the population, they are dominating presidential politics.

Their recent success transcends ideology. Since 1974, presidents Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton have all favored their left hands, while President Carter and the current President Bush are righties. The trait is also not exclusive to winning candidates: Vice President Gore is left-handed, as are past presidential contenders Robert Dole, John Edwards, Bill Bradley, and Ross Perot. A prominent New Yorker who flirted with a White House bid, Mayor Bloomberg, is a lefty.

Boing Boing links to a long confessional piece by the L.A. Times's former religion reporter, William Lobdell, about how eight years of covering religion turned him from a born-again Christian to an atheist. It's an interesting story, but not one I necessarily can relate to, as I never really had the "conversion" experience one way or the other.

I've never really understood why mere exposure to the existence of religions other than your own isn't sufficient to turn everyone into agnostics, if not outright atheists. The cognitive dissonance required for such a fundamental failure of reflexivity would seem to be intolerable, and yet the vast majority of people alive appear to have no problem with it. My brain just doesn't work that way.

And this is why I can never be president.