Oh sure, I believe in left and right handed brainness(?), but I don't think it has anything to do with creativity vs logic. I think part of the brain is temporal, and specializes in high speed linear processing, such as language and mathematics and music, while the other concentrates on spatial relationships and geometry and movement in space.

You will note I used the word "linear" in the first clause. In English, "linear" connotes direct, A to B, uncomplicated movement, which of course, must be not as kewl as holistic, creative, multidimensional movement. Therefore, the linear brain must be a geeky nerd, and the spatial brain must be a flower child. But this is a linguistic trap, caused more by the biases inherent in the English language, not by any result of brain organization. In Spanish, this dichotomy would never have arisen.

Another example. I once heard two newscasters reporting on the same breaking incident, an airplane crash. One of them remarked:

"Terrorism cannot be ruled out as a cause of the accident."

The other commented:

"There is no evidence as yet that terrorism was responsible for the accident."

Of course, neither had the slightest clue what had caused the crash,
but both reports carried opposite biases and set up expectations one way or the other. Not only that, they BOTH were phrased in such a way that the audience would subconsciouly feel that the speaker was being very careful with his choice of words, legalistic, almost scientific, giving them a legitimacy they did not deserve. In Spanish, the first reaction to either phrase would be "What is this guy trying to slide past me here? He doesn't know anymore about this accident than I do."

English relies much on metaphor and analogy, which is one of the reasons it is such a versatile and subtle language, but the price you pay for this is it is very easy to use it for pure bullshit. In English, cleverly constructed and articulated speech sounds more truthful and believable than simple, direct phrases. Religions and Marxists are very good at this; they indoctrinate their flocks with the correct language (King James Elizabethan English, or obtuse Marxist jargon) and then use that voice to communicate to their followers. The believers, used to thinking in this dialect, slip into its familiar rhythms and conceits and feel reassured and comfortable. This is what passes for analysis in these communities.

Neocons are perfecting their own jargon too: look out for repeated use of key phrases like "accept personal responsibility", and words like "freedom", "liberty", and "entrepreneur". And there's always "government bureaucracy", as if there were no such thing as a private bureacracy. In Spanish, BTW, "burócrata" means "a boss who works at a desk", just like it used to mean in English. There is nothing wrong with these words, or the concepts they represent, but their use in constellations reveals the construction of a mindset. This is why conservatives rarely use perfectly legitimate and useful words like "bourgeois" or "proletarian", and they NEVER say "bureaucrat" when they mean "executive".

Other examples:

"An chaotic and unruly classroom." vs "A free and unstructured classroom." They both are equivalent linguistically, but they carry totally different connotations.

"President Bush is inflexible and stubborn." vs " President Bush is determined and resolved."

"Rap is street-smart and hard-hitting, it tells it like it is" vs "Rap is violent and misogynistic, and screams in your face"

These phrases can be translated into other languages, but the attempt to influence is more obvious and it is harder to get away with it. In English (and I understand German is this way also) The persuasion can be disguised as articulate and precise discourse.

Or how about this obvious truism from psychology?

"When the mind is under great stress, the stress creates constant pressure which builds up. If not released, this pressure must be relieved somehow, and manifests itself in other ways, as neuroses or in dreams. If this is not successful in managing the pressure, a mental explosion, or pathology, such as a breakdown may result."

Perfectly reasonable? No. Perhaps to Freud, who was working with a model of the mind based on the hydraulic and steam technology of Victorian times. But if your model for the mind is a telephone switchboard, or a computer, these leaking pressures yearning to escape make no sense at all. Minds under stress may indeed undergo breakdowns, but mysterious unvented pressures have nothing to do with it.

Do computers go crazy when given contradictory data, like the ones on Star Trek? Of course not. But our language tells us computers are precise and logical, therefore they should melt down when fed imprecise and illogical data. It worked for Captain Kirk! No, GIGO tells us they process bad data just like they do clear and unambiguous data. A high fidelity sound system does not break down if you play rap and country music on it.

Check out your better posters on this board, they all use these language tricks all the time.