This diary's title is a tribute to neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat chronicles ways in which brain damage can affect our perceptions in odd ways. But our brains can also lead us astray when they are working normally, in everyday life. A case in point is the now-infamous New Yorker cover that features false views of Barack and Michelle Obama taken by their fiercest opponents.

In today's Washington Post we have a piece on left-handed presidents. The next president will be left-handed, since Barack Obama and John McCain are both southpaws. Since 1945, 5 of 12 presidents have been left-handed: Truman, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton. Since only 10 percent of the general population is left-handed, we wrote about whether there's something about the brains of left-handers that qualifies them for leadership. The answer is maybe - and in a way that may help explain Barack Obama's gift for language.

I posted a previous op-ed from the New York Times here on DailyKos, giving literature support for key scientific points. That piece was based on our book, Welcome To Your Brain. In this case the published article was condensed, partly to accommodate a picture of Ned Flanders's Leftorium. And now, a more detailed version...

First off, I apologize for not getting this out on time on Thursday. Two things intervened. One, I've been sick as a dog this week, and have no voice left. Two, I finished my BA and graduated from college, and the ceremony really wiped me out more than the virus could.

Anyhow, based on ideas suggested to me by Kossack Texas Revolutionary and by Gaian 2jane, I'd like to talk about interfaces. Specifically, interfaces between human brains and mechanical devices outside of them.

Yesterday, I read on here another in the series of recommended diaries under the strangely xenophobic title of "The Anglo Disease". My heart sank as commentator after commentator propounded economic theory in the tired rhetoric of the extreme left-wing that I last heard in the UK in the 1970’s. Throwing off the yoke of this enabled the British economy to become the largest in Europe, to the chagrin of many of its continental competitors.

What this language of socialist economics does is promote the real and unreal virtues of its philosophy whilst ignoring the fact that we progressive capitalists equally recognise not just the benefits of our system but also the abuses that can, and have, brought it into unwarranted disrepute..

Having a swipe at Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher doesn’t bother me in what was written. Only partly satirically, but certainly with some satire, I admit that what really bugged me about hearing the attacks on even a Democratic president like Clinton, in that thread, is that the thoughts on which these were based seemed so utterly dreary,  uninviting and ...well, unexciting.

CBS News is out with a new poll once again showing a huge gulf between Republicans and both Democrats and independents on seemingly non-political questions like the state of the economy. For example, 24% of Republicans think the economy is worsening while 61% of both Democrats and independents hold the same view.

So why do liberals and conservatives view the world so differently?

The answer may reside in our different brain chemistries.

Yesterday when I was out and about I heard a very intriguing report on NPR about the ingrained notion of ‘Us vs. Them’. According to neuroscientist Robert Sopolsky, our tendency to create a monolithic, scary THEM could be hard-wired into our brains. If this is fact true, it goes a long way to explaining the most disturbing behavior of humankind...the desire to hate and wage war.

By conducting experiments that presented people with the faces of people from other races, Dr. Sopolsky found the following discouraging reaction occurring in the brain:

more

Every year early in october, tens of thousands of neuroscience researchers migrate to some major city to spend 13 hours a day in a monsterous conference center to hear and be heard.  Almost all of them focus on a narrow area inside the boiling cauldron that is neuroscience.  In some cases, we barely share a common language, let alone interests.

 This year its in Atlanta, and I have to say I'm kind of feeling out of place in the South.  Are any other Kossacks here in Atlanta for SFN (Society for Neuroscience). I'd be interested in putting together a liberal social.

Between the hate crimes, dispossessed elderly, and general feeling that the only hope we've got is an electoral system   proven time and time again to be circumventable, I feel like drinking.  Anyone else?

[first diary.  please be kind]