Is it still Hump Day when it’s a short week?  Well, close enough.

Here’s an interesting science-ey tidbit:  On The Other Hand.  Excerpt:

With almost complete certainty, I can predict that you, dear reader, are right-handed. If I were a betting man, I’d put money on it. I’d make the same bet if you were reading this in India or Iowa, Kansas or Kathmandu. And a hundred years from now, I’d make the same bet again.

I can be so sure of myself not because I am some prodigious prognosticator, but because about 90 percent of humans are right-handed. That phenotypic ratio—nine right-handed people for every lefty—is relatively stable, not just across cultures and geographic regions, but perhaps across the span of human evolution. The archaeological record suggests that hominins were predominantly right-handed as far back as 2 million years ago, and a 2010 study of the wear patterns on 32,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth found that this extinct cousin of Homo sapiens was likely about 88 percent right-handed.

Apparently since the right-to-left ratio holds up in antipodal locations like Australia, the Coriolis Effect is not responsible for the great skew in human handedness.  Go figure.

How about you, True Believers?  Yr. obdt. is among the aforementioned 90%, but loyal sidekick and hunting partner Rat is a southpaw, and I suspect he occasionally finds his right-handed 700 Remington awkward to handle in a hurry.

But there are occasional silver linings to everything.  Some years back I found a nicely sporterized 1903 Springfield sitting on a gun show table, priced at the rather unbelievable $250, and finding no takers.   It even had a rather old but perfectly clear Weaver 3X scope mounted.

“The damn thing has that left-handed stock on it,” the seller told me, “so nobody looks twice at it.”  Sure enough, it had a nice blonde walnut stock with a cheekpiece – on what for me, was the wrong side of the stock.

I offered the seller $150.  He accepted.  I took the rifle home, took it apart, took a big cabinet rasp and scraped every hint of that cheekpiece off.  After sanding the stock smooth and refinishing it with a nice linseed oil finish, I took the gun to the range and discovered it was a great shooter, easily putting five shots into an inch and a half with Federal 180-grain factory loads, with the old Weaver still in place.

Eventually I took the rifle back to a show along with the targets I’d shot with it and sold it for $375.

Opportunities are where you find them.