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posted 10-03-2010 06:32
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Dogs, horses, people, cars doesn't matter, it's always counterclockwise, left to right. Is it the cultural visual dynamic based on reading Latin and Greek, or is there a deeper reason?
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posted 10-03-2010 07:53
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Can I just point out: Not in Formula 1. Most races are clockwise.
I do know what you mean, though. I can only imagine it's something to do with it favouring right-handed people, who make up the majority. (Not saying that's morally right or wrong - just saying.)
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posted 10-03-2010 09:08
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Of course, in the Southern Hemisphere they race clockwise. It's something to do with polar magnetism.
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posted 10-03-2010 09:22
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Perhaps it's something to do with chasing stuff down the plughole as the water empties out of the sink?
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posted 10-03-2010 11:34
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Horse racing goes both clockwise and anticlockwise- or, as it's called, right handed and left handed.
Cheltenham is a left handed course. When Desert Orchid won the Gold Cup, I think it was the first time he had won going that way round. He'd won at the right handed Kempton about 10,000 times.
Here's Desert Orchid at Cheltenham:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcCuIVn6egM
and Kempton:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ3OD-sEXSc
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posted 10-03-2010 12:34
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Yeah, I think this rule looks a lot less general when you leave North America.
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posted 10-03-2010 13:50
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evilC wrote:
I can only imagine it's something to do with it favouring right-handed people, who make up the majority. (Not saying that's morally right or wrong - just saying.)
As a clutie, I'm relaxed about this. In many sports, being left-sided gives a real advantage if only because of scarcity value. If only I'd ignored that bastard Thom (headmaster at my primary school) and perfected a Gower-like drive to extra cover.
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posted 10-03-2010 14:33
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Tubby Isaacs wrote:
Horse racing goes both clockwise and anticlockwise- or, as it's called, right handed and left handed.
Cheltenham is a left handed course. When Desert Orchid won the Gold Cup, I think it was the first time he had won going that way round. He'd won at the right handed Kempton about 10,000 times.
Here's Desert Orchid at Cheltenham:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcCuIVn6egM
and Kempton:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ3OD-sEXSc
Ah, I stand corrected.
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posted 10-03-2010 15:04
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Some support for the right-handedness hypothesis.
I've heard a theory that the counter-clockwise nature of US horse racing was a conscious rejection of British models by revolutionary-minded horsey types, but have a sense that is a bit over-egged.
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Last Edit: 10-03-2010 15:11 By ursus arctos.
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posted 10-03-2010 15:10
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Speedway is raced counter clockwise everywhere. As you were.
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posted 10-03-2010 15:31
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I always assumed Americans raced cars turning left (counter-clockwise) so that the driver was sitting to the inside of the track and less likely, maybe, to be killed when they hit the wall.
The driver is sitting on the left because it derives from regular road driving (especially NASCAR) and we usually drive on the right side of the road and it makes sense in that context to be sitting toward the center of the road.
Why we drive on the right side and UK, Australia, Japan and a few others are on the left side, I don't know. Perhaps it was just arbitrary?
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posted 10-03-2010 15:42
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Well, as evry British skoolboy kno, we drive on the right because it leaves your righthand free to deal with the highwaymen galloping along beside the coach. If Wells Fargo had figured out the same thing they wouldn't have had half as many problems with Jesse James and his ilk.
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posted 10-03-2010 17:08
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They raced counter-clockwise in the Sydney olympics.
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posted 10-03-2010 17:12
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Well, as evry British skoolboy kno, we drive on the right because it leaves your righthand free to deal with the highwaymen galloping along beside the coach. If Wells Fargo had figured out the same thing they wouldn't have had half as many problems with Jesse James and his ilk.
That's what the shotgun man was for. Hence the expression "riding shotgun" and the controversial etiquette of calling shotgun.
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posted 10-03-2010 17:25
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Yes but, being British, scrimping on labour is expected. Control the horses, shoot the badguys and blow the posthorn. Why pay two when one man can do all three jobs?
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posted 10-03-2010 17:26
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When people are lost in the desert and lose their bearings, right handed people walk in a clockwise circle, left handed people walk an anti-clockwise circle. Which would tend to discount the handedness theory, I would have thought.
What happens if a left and right handed couple get lost together I can't imagine.
**
It has been suggested that people watching an anti-clockwise race get to see a finish that runs from left to right, which is easier to follow because it's the same way they read.
Now if it turns out that Arabs run races clockwise we could be on to something.
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posted 11-03-2010 14:34
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The Purple Cow wrote:
What happens if a left and right handed couple get lost together I can't imagine.
A bit like when they form a doubles team at the tennis club, I suspect.
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posted 14-03-2010 09:38
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There's something subliminally more pleasing about watching a race arrive at the finish from your left, because we're used to most of our perceptions of time passing (reading, drawing graphs, timelines) "moving" that way. And on most racecourses, American Indycar circuits and all Athletics stadia, the main grandstand is built on the outside of the loop at the finishing post, so for most spectators to have the race arrive at the finish from their left means racing anti-clockwise.
At some places though (like the Monaco GP) most of the fans are on the inside of the track, and there they race clockwise.
Not a hard-and-fast theory this, I expect, but I wonder what you think.
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Last Edit: 14-03-2010 10:36 By Rogin the sunlounger fan.
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