It's all in the mind, or is it all in the brain?

This is a NY Times review of a book about differences in the brains of males and females called Delusions of Gender, by Cordelia Fine, an English cognitive neuroscientist.

Her summary: “Nonexistent sex differences in language lateralization, mediated by nonexistent sex differences in corpus callosum structure, are widely believed to explain nonexistent sex differences in language skills.”

I'm confused. I'm happy to believe that there are no differences in the brains of men and women not directly related to attracting men vs attracting women, because it fits my liberal prejudices so well. 

And it's easy to believe that a previous generation of scientists believed something that grew out of their own prejudices and that has become an urban myth.

She apparently dismantles some studies showing sex differences, but I thought there were lots and lots of studies that showed different behaviors among men and women. Okay, these could be learned, even by the time they're toddlers, and most studies are done on college students. But how about the studies showing men navigate using vectors and women using landmarks? Is the use of landmarks something we teach girls at the same time we tell them they are not good at math? 

And the study of the frontal lobe of the hypothalamus, which I'm pretty sure I think I remember is bigger in boys and men than in girls and women, both in number of cells and size of cells, and somewhere in between for gay men, which mediates sex drive in rats. Did that study turn out to be flawed?

I'm sitting here looking at the clock, thinking I have to get ready to go to work, and my mind is whirling with vague recollections of studies I've read about showing differences, both physiological and behavioral.

She seems to be saying that's all either wrong or cultural (sort of a cultural epigenetics, where what happens to you changes your brain). I guess I have to read the book.

Alice in Wonderland

I saw Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland last night. It was Tim Burton doing Disney. It had all the details of a Tim Burton movie but not the gestalt. Characters were either good or bad (except maybe the white queen; she might have something hidden in there), and nothing really bad happened except to bad creatures and people. And even if you were as evil as the bandersnatch, you become all good after Alice befriends you.

Visually it was spectacular. I understand it was filmed in 2D and changed by computer into 3D, but it impressed me. I saw it in Imax.

What mostly made it a Disney movie more than a Burton movie was the plot, which is a years-later sequel to  the first Alice. I don't mean to give it away, but it's predictable from the time you see the Disney logo. It even ends with frolicking puppies rescued from the evil Red Queen's clutches.

The lesser characters and details are typically wonderful. We all liked the Cheshire Cat and Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee, and we thought the March Hare was appropriately gonzo. People with me thought the Doormouse was over the top, but I liked her.

Depp was Depp. I sighed once or twice.

All in all, I'm glad I went. I'll see his next one, too. But it's not his best.

Where the Wild Things Are

I saw Where the Wild Things Are last night and enjoyed it a great deal. At first I thought it was taking a long time for Max to get to the good part, as we went through Max's family problems, which are that his sister and mom have their own lives in addition to their one with him, and sometimes they just want to play kissy-face with their boyfriend, so when he gets rejected, he lashes out and runs away. You know where.

But I should have trusted Jonze, for all this turned out to be time well spent as King Max has to navigate the personal politics of his wild subjects.

It is an adult film in the sense that it deals with issues in ways that little kids won't understand, but they don't understand most of the movies their parents take them to. But there is nothing in here that should scare or traumatize a normal little kid, and while dealt with in adult ways, the issues are kid issues: how do you fit into your family, and how do you act when things go crappy for you? There is a lot of fighting and knocking of holes in trees, but the wild things and Max are laughing as they jump on top of each other. The sadness comes mostly during slow scenes. The movie has a nice blend of wild rumpus and sit and chat, though that may say more about me than the movie, as I understand some others have said the monsters sit around and talk too much. I didn't think so.

Nor will I have any truck with a reviewer who claims any of this is not true to the spirit of the book. It exactly is. Yes, they added a sister and her friends, and they added mom's singleness and boyfriend, and they added all those scenes at the beginning where Max felt neglected, but all these pulled out the theme of the book and showed it to us. They did use the best line in the book, "Let the wild rumpus begin!" and the one about "I love you; I'll eat you up."

I also like the decisions to give the wild things real voices and personalities, rather than just having them run around and grunt, and to alter Max's wolf costume so he can use his fingers. It all made the movie better.

The technology was as good as I'd hoped. Jim Henson's creature workshop created heads that showed emotion.

All in all I enjoyed it very much.

Stephen Colbert interviews Alison Gopnik

Stephen Colbert interviews Alison Gopnik, who was flogging her new book, The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. Her thesis will be no surprise to anyone reading this blog: Babies are active learners and have a moral sense very early. She presents it well and stands up to Colbert well. I haven 't read any of her books, but I think I will. The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind looks interesting.

Alison Gopnik

Best politician nominee: Henry Waxman

Henry Waxman is one of the two best members of the House of Representatives. (The other is Barney Frank.) It should be enough to say that he was one of a couple of people most responsible for mandatory nutrition labeling on food products and for smoking bans in airplanes and federal buildings, which led to smoking bans nationwide.