Sunday Review: The Imitation Game

Barely an imitation

By Chuck Smythe

I finished watching The Imitation Game (2014, directed by Morten Tyldum) with mixed feelings. [The film is a biographical drama about mathematician Alan Turing and the World War II cracking of the Nazis’ Enigma code.]

Second Monday Music: Influential rhythms

The significance of musical entrainment

By André Duvall

[Adapted from a paper in the Psychology of Music]

We have all had the experience of listening to a piece of music, enjoying it, and finding ourselves tapping our feet to the beat, sometimes without consciously deciding to do so. Likewise, as we walk down the sidewalk at a comfortable pace, our arms naturally tend to sway in some form of regular motion directly related to the rhythmic motion of our legs. Musicians are aware of the importance during rehearsal and performance situations of synchronizing our internal rhythmic pulse with those of the conductor or other performers. All of these situations illustrate the concept of human rhythmic entrainment. While these examples may seem to be obvious everyday phenomena, the idea of entrainment has significant implications for understanding how humans experience music, and how music can influence human health.

"Most Recently Read Books" expanded

As a convenience to my readers, I've expanded my "Most Recently Read Books" feature page to include a description of each book and, for most entries, a link to a review.

Most links are to a New York Times book review.

1. 

   Christopher Hitchens

   Hitch-22: A Memoir (2010: Christopher Hitchens) [Over the course of his 60 years, Christopher Hitchens has been a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom. He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has been both a foreign correspondent in some of the world's most dangerous places and a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature. He is a fervent atheist, raised as a Christian, by a mother whose Jewish heritage was not revealed to him until her suicide. In other words, Christopher Hitchens contains multitudes. He sees all sides of an argument. And he believes the personal is political. This is the story of his life, lived large] 8-2011
2. The Grand Design (2010: Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow) [This book gets into the deepest questions of modern cosmology without a single equation. The reader will be able to get through it without bogging down in a lot of technical detail and might have his or her appetite whetted for books with a deeper technical content. And who knows? Maybe in the end the whole multiverse idea will actually turn out to be right] 7-2011



Jonathan Franzen

3. Freedom (2010: Jonathan Franzen) [St. Paul, Minnesota. Liberal environmentalists Walter and Patty Berglund pioneer the gentrification of their neighborhood. But their seemingly perfect life disintegrates when their son moves in with Republican neighbors and Walter assists the coal industry. Walter's musician friend Richard and Patty's estranged family further complicate matters] 6&7-2011
4. Room: A Novel (2010: Emma Donoghue) [To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years] 7-2011
5. God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer (2008: Bart D. Ehrman) [Former minister and author of Misquoting Jesus examines the Old and New Testaments for answers to the problem of suffering in the world. Ehrman finds the Bible offers different viewpoints—suffering as punishment, as a redemptive process, and as a test of faith—and analyzes the answers] 5,6&7-2011

6. 

   Antonio R. Damasio

   Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2010: Antonio R. Damasio) [Goes against the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, presenting compelling new scientific evidence that consciousness—what we think of as a mind with a self—is to begin with a biological process created by a living organism. Besides the three traditional perspectives used to study the mind (the introspective, the behavioral, and the neurological), Damasio introduces an evolutionary perspective that entails a radical change in the way the history of conscious minds is viewed and told] 5&6-2011
7. Rescue (2010: Anita Shreve) [Webster is raising his teenage daughter as a single parent; his wife and the daughter's mother left years ago when she couldn't conquer her alcoholism. Explores the story of how Webster and his wife met, when he was an EMT and she the victim of a drunk driver—herself] 6-2011
8. American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work (2006: Susan Cheever) [Novelist explores the relationships among five writers of the transcendentalist movement who clustered around the home of wealthy Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord, Massachusetts, during 1840-1868. Highlights their intertwined families and the love affairs that contributed to the creation of their literary masterpieces] 5&6-2011
9. Stalin's Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel (2007 Martin Cruz Smith) [Moscow detective Arkady Renko investigates mysterious nightly sightings of Stalin at metro stops. He also uncovers crimes committed by two colleagues, former members of the Black Berets who operated in Chechnya, one of whom is running for office and knows Renko's lover Eva] 5-2011



Sam Harris

10. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010: Sam Harris) [Promotes a science of morality and argues that many thinkers have long confused the relationship between morality, facts, and science. Aims to carve a third path between secularists who say morality is subjective (e.g., moral relativists), and religionists who say that morality is given by God and scripture. Harris contends that the only moral framework worth talking about is one where "morally good" things pertain to increases in the "well-being of conscious creatures"] 4&5-2011
11. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know about Them) (2009: Bart D. Ehrman) [In this companion to Misquoting Jesus, biblical historian Ehrman reveals the divergent views of scholars concerning the true nature of Jesus and the concept of salvation. Discusses the historical Jesus, the writers of the Bible, and the origins of Christianity] 4&5-2011

12. 

    Jonathan Safran Foer

    Eating Animals (2009: Jonathan Safron Foer) [Author of the novel Everything Is Illuminated investigates the meat production industry and his own family's food choices. Examines factory farming and aquaculture and exposes their connections to global warming and environmental degradation. Explores the philosophical and ethical issues of carnivorism while advocating a vegetarian diet] 3&4-2011
13. Worth Winning (1985: Dan Lewandowski) [A rollicking story about one man’s search for his ideal mate. Set in Washington DC. The hero, Taylor Worth, is a well-to-do, good-looking 30-something computer programmer. He is actively courted and pursued by women, but can’t seem to find that ideal girl] 2&3-2011
14. Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (2005: Temple Grandin) [Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures, theorizes that autistic individuals experience the world as animals do—through direct sensory perception rather than abstract thinking. Grandin, herself autistic, and Johnson combine insights about autistic people with animal facts and anecdotes to reinterpret the capabilities and strengths of both groups] 2&3-2011

15. 

    Stieg Larsson

    The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (2009: Stieg Larsson) [Sweden. Computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, from The Girl Who Played with Fire, is hospitalized with a bullet in her head, accused of murder. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist investigates Swedish officials protecting Alexander Zalachenko, Lisbeth's attacker—and father] 3-2011
16. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009: Alan Bradley) [England, 1950. Eleven-year-old aspiring chemist Flavia de Luce overhears her father in a heated argument with a stranger, who turns up dead in the garden of the Luces' decaying estate. When Flavia's father is charged with murder, she seeks clues in their village and his past to exonerate him] 2-2011

17. 

    Richard Dawkins

    The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2010: Richard Dawkins) [Author of The God Delusion questions the theory of intelligent design and explains the scientific evidence for the theory of evolution. Discusses selective breeding, genetics, fossils, new species, land mass changes, and more] 1-2011
18. City of Tranquil Light (2010: Bo Caldwell) [Caldwell (The Distant Land of My Father) draws from the biographies of missionaries in northern China during the turbulent first half of the 20th century in this second novel. It traces the story of two young, hopeful Midwesterners—shy, bright Oklahoma farmer Will Kiehn and brave Cleveland deaconess Katherine Friesen—as they journey to the brink of China's civil war in the isolated town of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng: the "City of Tranquil Light"] 12-2010&1-2011
19. The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History (2006: Jonathan Franzen) [Author of National Book Award winner The Corrections reminisces about his conventional Midwestern childhood and New York adulthood. Discusses his participation in a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, bird-watching, and learning German. Provides revelations about his fiction's real-life basis] 12-2010&1-2011



Ayaan Hirsi Ali

20. Nomad: From Islam to America, A Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations (2010: Ayaan Hirsi Ali) [Somalian author discusses events that occurred after those related in Infidel, including her move to America from Holland and relationship with the dysfunctional family she left behind. Analyzes Muslim attitudes toward money, women, and violence and offers suggestions to the West on avoiding radical recruitment of immigrants] 11&12-2010
21. Nothing to Lose: A Jack Reacher Novel (2008: Lee Child) [Hitchhiking through Colorado, ex-military cop Jack Reacher comes upon the unfriendly town of Despair. After being told to leave, Reacher, with the help of a female cop from neighboring Hope, sneaks back in repeatedly to investigate a mysterious factory and missing young men] 12-2010

22. 

    John Le Carré

    Our Kind of Traitor (2010: John Le Carré) [After teacher Perry Makepiece and his lawyer girlfriend Gail Perkins meet Russian money launderer Dmitri "Dima" Krasnov at an Antigua tennis resort, Dima asks for help defecting. British agents Hector Meredith and Luke Weaver get the case, and all players reunite in Paris] 12-2010
23. The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam (2006: Ayaan Hirsi Ali) [Somali-born Muslim author who fled to Holland advocates women's rights in Islamic cultures and condemns such practices as forced marriages, genital mutilation, and honor killings. Describes her 2002 election to the Dutch Parliament and her controversial film Submission that led to the 2004 murder of filmmaker theo van Gogh] 11-2010

24. 

    Philip Roth

    Nemesis (2010: Philip Roth) [Set mostly in 1944 Newark, it tells the story of Bucky Cantor, at 23 a freshly minted phys ed teacher and summertime playground director. Life’s dealt him some blows: his mother died in childbirth; his father, a thief, exited the picture long ago. Worse, to his anguish and disgrace, Bucky’s poor vision keeps him from going to fight the Germans alongside his best buddies—alongside, for that matter, “all the able-bodied men his age”] 11-2010
25. The Lion (2010: Nelson DeMille) [2003. Asad "the Lion" Khalil, from The Lion's Game, returns to America seeking revenge for the 1986 air raid that killed his family in Libya. His targets: antiterrorist agent John Corey and Corey's wife, FBI investigator Kate Mayfield] 10&11-2010
     

26. 

    Martin Cruz Smith

    Three Stations (1010: Martin Cruz Smith) [Moscow senior investigator Arkady Renko labels a young woman's death a murder and continues searching for clues even after he's suspended from duty. Meanwhile, Renko's unofficially adopted son Zhenya befriends a runaway whose baby was snatched at the Three Stations railroad hub] 10-2010
27. Crossfire (2010: Dick Francis & Felix Francis) [After losing his foot during an explosion in Afghanistan, British captain Tom Forsyth returns home to Berkshire only to discover that someone is blackmailing his mother, Josephine Kauri, a famous horse trainer. Tom investigates to find the culprits] 10-2010
28. The Girl Who Played with Fire (2008: Stieg Larsson) [Stockholm. Computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, from The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, stands accused of murdering two journalists who were researching sex trafficking. Lisbeth's former lover, magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist, investigates to exonerate her. Violence, strong language, and explicit descriptions of sex] 9&10-2010
29. The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (2007: Christopher Hitchens) [Author of god Is Not Great selects and introduces writings that refute the concept and existence of God. Features works by notables from science, literature, and philosophy, including Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and Mark Twain] 9&10-2010

30. 

    Daniel C. Dennett

    Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006: Daniel C. Dennett) [Argues for a scientific analysis of religion in order to predict the future of this phenomenon. Dennett implies that the spell he hopes to break is not religious belief itself, but the conviction that religion is off-limits to scientific inquiry] 8&9-2010

Temple Grandin's rationale for eating animals

On Valentine's Day, I withheld judgment on "Temple Grandin's dilemma," pending further information.
    Further information I now have, from her wonderful book (a must read for anyone interested in other animals and our relationship with them), Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior:

If I had my druthers humans would have evolved to be plant eaters, so we wouldn't have to kill other animals for food. But we didn't, and I don't see the human race converting to vegetarianism anytime soon. I've tried to eat vegetarian myself, and I haven't been able to manage it physically. I get the same feeling you get with hypoglycemia; I get dizzy and light-headed, and I can't think straight. My mother is exactly the same way, and a lot of people with processing problems have told me they have this reaction, too, so I've always wondered if there's a connection. If there's something different about your sensory processing, is there something different about your metabolism, too?
    There could be. It's possible that a brain difference could also involve a metabolic difference, because the same genes can do different things in different parts of the body. A gene that contributed to autism might contribute to a metabolic difference, or any other kind of difference. Parents have always said that their autistic children have lots of physical problems, too, usually involving the gut, and mainstream researchers haven't paid a lot of attention to this.
    So until someone proves otherwise I'm operating from the hypothesis that at least some people are genetically built so that they have to eat meat to function. Even if that's not so, the fact that humans evolved as both plant and meat eaters means that the vast majority of human beings are going to continue to eat both. Humans are animals, too, and we do what our animal natures tell us to do.
    That means we are going to continue to have feedlots and slaughterhouses, so the question is: what should a humane feedlot and slaughterhouse be like?
    Everyone concerned with animal welfare has the basic answer to that: the animal shouldn't suffer. He should feel as little pain as possible, and he should die as quickly as possible.

...But eliminating pain isn't enough. We have to think about animals' emotional lives, not just their physical lives. We're responsible for slaughterhouse animals; they wouldn't even exist if it weren't for us. So we have to do more than just take away physical pain.
    The single worst thing you can do to an animal emotionally is to make it feel afraid.... [pp. 179-80, 189]

So, what judgment am I now prepared to make?
    An observation or too first. In the first sentence quoted, Ms. Grandin says that because we evolved a certain way, we must eat animals. Clearly that is not so; many people are vegetarians.
    She also says that, because "humans are animals...we do what our animal natures tell us to do." Not entirely. Human animals are also moral animals; the aforementioned vegetarians have chosen not to eat meat, either because they think they ought not [morality as a set of principles for avoiding evil and doing good) or because they judge that avoiding meat affords a better (because healthier) life [morality as a set of principles for attaining the good life].
    That said, I still can't bring myself to judge Temple Grandin. Who would I be to judge someone who has done far more for animals than I could ever hope to do?

A subtler, perhaps deeper read when it comes to the morality of eating animals seems to be on offer in Jonathan Safran Foer's 2009 book, uneuphemistically titled Eating Animals, which I've just begun to read, along with entering freshmen at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It's their assigned reading for book discussion their first week on campus this fall.

The squeeze machine

One of the most fascinating things portrayed in the movie Temple Grandin was Temple's noticing the calming effect on cattle of their being constricted in a chute in order to be vaccinated, and her being led by that observation to construct a "squeeze machine" for herself, to see whether it would have the same effect on her, who as an autistic person often felt anything but calm.
    She writes about it in Animals in Translation, which I introduced here the other day:

When I saw the cattle in their squeeze chute and got inspired to build a squeeze machine for myself, at first I was thinking only about the calming effects of deep pressure. So I built it with just two hard plywood boards, without any padding or cushions. All autistic children and adults like deep pressure. Some of them will put on really tight belts and hats to feel the pressure, and lots of autistic children like to lie underneath sofa cushions and even have a person sit on top of the cushions. I used to like to go under the sofa cushions when I was little. The pressure relaxed me.
    Then gradually I started to improve my squeeze machine by adding soft padding...The pads gave me feelings of kindness and gentleness toward other people—social feelings....
    I think the squeeze machine probably also helped me have more empathy, or at least more empathy for animals. When I first started using the soft version of the machine, in my late teens, I didn't know how to pet our cats so they really liked it. I always wanted to squeeze them too tight....
    Autistic children never know how to pet animals the right way, so you have to teach them....
    Even a lot of normal people don't realize that you have to stroke animals, not pet them. They don't like to be petted. You have to stroke them the way the mother's tongue licks them.
    There have been two experiments on squeeze machines for animals....
    This research is important for people with autism. A lot of autistic children can't stand to be touched. I was like that when I was a little kid. I wanted to feel the nice social feeling of being held, but it was just too overwhelming....
    Being touched by another person was so intense it was intolerable. I would start to panic and I had to pull away.[pp. 114-117]

The squeeze machine is fascinating, especially when you've just learned of it. But what affected me the most about the chapter from which those excerpts are taken was its many examples of our being at one with other animals. Like this paragraph:

A dog's attachment to his owner is like a baby animal's attachment to his mother, or a human child's attachment to his mom or dad. Pet dogs act the exact same way children do in the strange situation test. In the strange situation test the researcher watches how a very young child reacts to a strange new environment when his mother is there with him, and when she's not. Most children will confidently explore a strange environment as long as their mother is with them, but when she leaves the room they'll stop exploring and wait anxiously for her to come back. Dogs do exactly the same thing. This has been tested formally in fifty-one dogs and owners. Most dogs stop exploring and act anxious when their owner leaves the room. Then they relax and start exploring again when their owner returns. When humans say dogs are like children, they're right. [p. 111]

    Other examples deal with clinical research into brain anatomy and chemistry. They'd be difficult to excerpt briefly. Read the book!

Temple Grandin's dilemma

Temple Grandin (born 1947) came to my attention only recently. I discovered the movie first, with Claire Danes in the title role. At the time, I thought that the name sounded familiar, and I finally remembered that a lecturer I'd heard at UNC (Dr. John Ratey, on exercise and the brain) had dedicated one of his books to her (A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain, 2002).
    And now I'm reading one of her books, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior, 2005. Much more even than the books of Karen Pryor (e.g., Reaching the Animal Mind, 2009), Grandin's book thrills me on a subject that reaches to the very bottom of me.

It is a terrible irony for me, then, that Temple Grandin is a consultant to the livestock industry and well-known in those circles for her innovations in the design of slaughter systems. While I can approve taking steps to avoid alarming animals as they're herded to be killed, the whole enterprise is repugnant to me.
    I googled on "temple grandin moral dilemma" and found (on the Vegan Soapbox website) that

Temple Grandin’s reply to those who have identified the inherent contradiction in the statement “I design slaughter houses and I love animals,” is: “some people think death is the most terrible thing that can happen to an animal.” It follows according to Ms. Grandin that “the most important thing for an animal is the quality of its life.”

    Whoever's on the soapbox for the website immediately retorts:

Ms. Grandin’s argument is derived from an underlying ontological worldview that assumes a dualism between “human” and “animal.” This is a factual inaccuracy. Biological “animality” exists on a continuum: a human animal is a member of a species of bipedal primates in the family Hominidae—“higher primates.” It is from this invalid assumption that Ms. Grandin’s argument tries to follow. Her claim, then, is baseless and open to the challenge of blatant selective reasoning.

I'm not going to take a final position on Grandin's ethics, for I assume I don't know the whole story (yet). But I don't see how her reply quoted in the article could rectify her presumed cognitive dissonance. Just look at how she talks of "animals and humans" to see how closely related she acknowledges that they are:

It turns out that all animals and humans have what researchers call a built-in confirmation bias. Animals and humans are wired to believe that when two things happen closely together in time it's not an accident; instead the first event caused the second thing to happen.
    For example, if you put a pigeon in a case with a key that lights up right before a piece of food appears, pretty soon the pigeon will start pecking the lighted key to get food....
    The pigeon is acting like a person who thinks his team will win the baseball game if he's got his lucky rabbit's foot with him....
    Confirmation bias is built in to animal and human brains, and it helps us learn. We learn because our default assumption is that if Event 1 is followed by Event 2, then Event 1 caused Event 2. Our default assumption isn't that Events 1 and 2 happened at the same time by coincidence. Coincidence is actually a fairly advanced concept both for animals and for people. That's why in statistics courses you have to formally teach students that a correlation isn't automatically a cause. [David Hume argued for coincidence over causality in the eighteenth century.] Our brains are wired to see correlations as causes, period. Since in real life a lot of times Event 1 does cause Event 2, confirmation bias helps us make the connection.
    The downside of having a built-in confirmation bias is that you also make a lot of unfounded causal connections. That's what superstition is....
    ...The same part of the brain that lets us learn what we need to know and find the things we need to stay alive is also the part of the brain that produces delusional thinking and conspiracy theories. [pp. 98-100]

As a matter of fact, humans are animals. We have a common ancestor with every other animal [and life form¹] on the planet.
_______________

1. Thanks to Carolyn for reminding me that I myself had realized this later, but without doing anything about it at the time.