Lefty or Righty Monkeys?

I had a guy come up to the teller line today and after watching me scribble something on a piece of paper said: "You know, we're all born left handed - its only after we commit our first sin that we become right handed."

I know - its not any funnier with me putting it up here then it is when the old guy said it but I thought I'd give it a shot.

The reason that this comment even strikes me as mildly ironic is that my favorite news site ever, CNN.com is making a big deal out of the fact that scientist finally came to the conclusion that apes, like humans, have a hand they favor more then the other. This idea was proposed almost 2 years ago by Jaqueline Donohoe and backed by much of the same research that has made this statement a concrete fact in todays news.

What I'm getting at is that with everything going on today somebody out there is using way too much grant money on something that had been resolved years ago. It's great that it can now be put into high school science textbooks and all - but what real benifit has this given us?

According to these researchers they are trying to draw parellels of understanding to preferances seen in humans, (in some backward sorta way). But while one study says that most humans are right-handed by nature and apes left-handed by nature, the other says while this is true, it is shown that apes that learn from humans from birth have a much greater likelyhood of being right-handed.

The answer seems pretty easy to me! This is a nature vs. nurture argument all over again. Why the big fuse? There may be slightly more to it but who really cares? I am the first person to crave the next scientific discovery. I love hearing about the advancements being made by leaps and bounds everyday. But why people write with one hand or the other? Heck - one argument of this monkey business says that some sort of genetic shift from apes to man caused the right hand preferance. Now, I'm the only person in my nuclear family that writes with my left hand. Does this mean that I have somehow mutated back to the original ape state? Doubt it. I ultimately think that science should stop trying to explain everything down to the genetics of a person. I mean with everything else going on is it really that important?