The Weekly Stripe – 25.01.19
“Man is the most intelligent of animals because he has hands” so said Anaxagoras the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. This week’s links explore the most intriguing and most human of appendages, hands, and what they enable and reveal.

This book is considered the best account of hands: Intended for all readers–including magicians, detectives, musicians, orthopaedic surgeons, and anthropologists.

Trump’s hands have long been considered fair game for his critics. Why is it ok to single out the size of someone’s hands and what’s he doing about it?

There was a time when nonverbal communication was seen as the poor cousin of speech. No longer. Hand gestures are seen as critical in communicating semantic information as this paper outlines.

The OK or ring gesture is older than you think: “If the first finger touch the middle finger of the right-hand edge of the thumb nail with its extremity…we shall have a graceful gesture well suited to express approval” so said Roman scholar Quintilian in the first century AD.

The Rubber Hand Illusion demonstrates neuroplasticity and the mirror neurons that mean we can experience and feel what we see.