One Hand, Other Hand, Gripping Hand

The title of this blog is a tribute to Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's excellent duo of books, The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand. The stars of the book are a charismatic but dangerous race of aliens. When the Moties hear the human expression "on the one hand, on the other hand.." they add, "on the gripping hand", since they have three unequal arms. The gripping hand, then, refers to a third point that supersedes the others. So on the one hand, I'll use this blog to talk about interesting issues in science, and on the other hand, I'll add in my own political commentary, but the gripping hand is, my interests tend to wander around a bit so I may be way out in left field from time to time.

Wikipedia has an article on this idiom.