Sunday, October 24, 2010
ACROSTIC, Puzzle by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon
The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture by Matt Ridley provides the quotation for this Sunday’s excellent acrostic. From the Amazon.com editorial review: …Matt Ridley takes on a centuries-old question: is it nature or nurture that makes us who we are? Ridley asserts that the question itself is a "false dichotomy." Using copious examples from human and animal behavior, he presents the notion that our environment affects the way our genes express themselves.
The quotation: JANE GOODALLS ACCOUNT OF LIFE AMONG THE CHIMPS READS LIKE A SOAP OPERA ABOUT THE WARS OF THE ROSES WRITTEN BY JANE AUSTEN WE FEEL THE AMBITION THE JEALOUSY THE AFFECTION WE SENSE MOTIVES WE CANNOT HELP EMPATHIZING
The author’s name and the title of the work: MATT RIDLEY THE AGILE GENE
The defined words:
A. Saskatchewan city that is home to an annual Festival of Words (2 wds.), MOOSE JAW
B. Creative impulse or inspiration, AFFLATUS
C. Class kind of sandwich (2 wds.), TUNA FISH
D. Item in a first-aid kit or vanity case, TWEEZERS
E. Brownstone, typically (2 wds.), ROW HOUSE
F. 2006 film about Truman Capote, INFAMOUS
G. Container similar to a carboy, DEMIJOHN
H. Venue for Letterman since 1993 (2 wds.), LATE SHOW
I. Trumpeter with no horn, ELEPHANT
J. Site of Cornwallis’s surrender, YORKTOWN
K. Singer whose female fans often toss undergarments onstage (2 wds.), TOM JONES
L. Sacrifice of 100 oxen, HECATOMB
M. Device for correcting amblyopic, EYEPATCH
N. Albert Einstein philosophically, AGNOSTIC
O. Dame Edna’s signature blooms, GLADIOLI
P. Virtually; active (2 wds.), IN EFFECT
Q. Steal, slangily; free, LIBERATE
R. Like much popular reading, ESCAPIST
S. Kin of King Kong (2 wds.), GREAT APE
T. Avenue adjacent to New York’s Chelsea Piers, ELEVENTH
U. “Pay close attention,” in a book (2 wds.), NOTA BENE
V. Heraclitus, by birth, EPHESIAN
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The expanded quotation with full paragraph:
…a young woman virtually untrained in science began to watch chimpanzees on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. As she later wrote:
“How naïve I was. As I had not had an undergraduate science education I didn’t realise that animals were not supposed to have personalities, or to think, or to feel emotions or pain. … Not knowing, I freely made use of all those forbidden terms and concepts in my initial attempts to describe, to the best of my ability, the amazing things I had observed at Gombe.“
As a result, Jane Goodall’s account of life among the chimps of Gombe reads like a soap opera about the Wars of the Roses written by Jane Austen — all conflict and character. We feel the ambition, the jealousy, the deception, and the affection; we distinguish personalities; we sense motives; we cannot help empathizing.
Though few realized it until later, Goodall’s anthropomorphism had driven a stake through the heart of human exceptionalism. Apes were revealed not as blundering, primitive automatons, who were bad at being people, but as beings with social lives as complex and subtle as ours. Either human beings must be more instinctive, or animals must be more conscious than we had previously suspected. The similarities, not the differences, were what caught the attention.
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Click on image to enlarge.
Puzzle available on the internet at THE NEW YORK TIMES — Crossword Puzzles and Games.
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