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Decision Season

It's Decision Season in academia. Across the country, high-school students are losing sleep at night worrying about where to go to college next year. We've had our annual Accepted Students Open House days (the second was Monday, with the turnout significantly reduced by the bad weather), at which we meet with students who are considering coming to Union, show them around, and try to talk them into coming here next fall. Our chairman desevres a special award of merit for the effort he puts in-- in addition to going to the massive all-campus lunch, and talking to students there, he'll conduct…

What's the Matter With Photons?

Over at Dot Physics, Rhett has just completed a two-part post (Part I, Part II) on quantum physics arguing against the use of photons in teaching quantum physics. Part I gives a very nice introduction to quantum physics, which is why I linked it, but Part II goes a little off the rails. There's not as much physics content, and it ends with a list of phenomena that are able to be described by semi-classical models of light, leading up to a question: So, if there are no photons, why are they in all the textbooks? That is a great question. I am glad I asked it. I really don't have a great answer…

Family Traditions

Tomorrow, Kate and I will be heading off to Scenic Whitney Point to spend a few days with my family. Part of this will be the traditional Christmas Eve dinner with my father's side of the family (described in more detail below the fold). It occurred to me a little while ago that this is the one real tradition that I've never missed. At least, as far as I know-- it's possible that there was some year when I was an infant that we didn't make it to the Christmas Eve dinner, but as far back as I can remember, I've never missed one. Every year, we've gotten together with that side of the family,…

To Whom It May Concern

I am writing this letter in support of J. Randomstudent's application to your graduate or professional program. I have known J. since the fall of 20__, when he was a student in my introductory physics class. From the very first day of that course, J. was a constant presence on my grade roster. I assume he came to class as well, as I have quiz and homework grades for him, though I do not have any specific recollection of him participating in class. I have had many "B" students in my years as a professor, but I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that J. Randomstudent was the most…

Friction, Baby

I'm suffering muscle twinges in my neck and shoulder that are usually linked to excessive typing. As I have a grant proposal to review, a senior thesis to help whip into shape, and a book under contract, this means that blogging will be substantially reduced while I ration my typing to those things that pay the bills. You'll get more linking and less thinking, at least until my shoulder calms down a bit. I don't want to pass up a set of links-- two press releases and a news story-- on some new results regarding friction: If you want to reduce the friction between tiny objects, just increase…

There's More to Science Than Evolution

The National Science Board made a deeply regrettable decision to omit questions on evolution and the Big Bang from the Science and Engineering Indicators report for 2010. As you might expect, this has stirred up some controversy. I wasn't surprised to learn this, as I had already noticed the omission a couple of months ago, when I updated the slides for my talk on public communication of science-- the figure showing survey data in the current talk doesn't include those questions, while the original version has them in there. I noticed it, and thought it was a little odd, but it had no effect…

China and India: Just what should their CO2 responsibilities be?

In the climate debates, I hear it all the time: why should the US do anything when China and India are the fastest growing and largest emitters of greenhouse gases on the planet? Though I make it a personal policy to never discussion mitigation policies with characters who will not even accept the reality of the problem, the question does, on its own merits, deserve a thoughtful answer. Clearly, climate disruption due to accumulating greenhouse gases is a global problem and requires a cooperative and global solution. We all share the same planetary atmosphere, and CO2 is a well mixed gas in…

Squid nuptial dances

Yesterday's [21 November 2005] post about squid had a most unsatisfying conclusion, so I feel compelled to mention two things: squidblog has a brief explanation of squid jet propulsion, and I've dug up another older paper on squid movement. Even better, it's about squid nuptial dances and mating. Here, see? Pretty squid post coitus planting a string of fertilized eggs on the sea floor. Photo of a large male escorting a female squid (Loligo vulgaris reynaudii) as she attaches an "egg finger" of about 100 eggs to an egg bed. This work was motivated by growing demand in the South African squid…

David L. Clarke and Analytical Archaeology (Or, 'The Life of a Graudate Student')

... or should I say "Archeology." Analytical Archaeology by David Clarke is a medium size blue book about methods in archaeology that, during the 1970s and 1980s was probably required reading in all graduate level method and theory archaeology classes. It may still be in many cases. Clarke was one of the founders of "processual" archaeology. Processual archaeology represented a theoretical shift in archaeology to come into closer alignment with broader anthropological theory extant at the time, in the post Willey and Phillips (1958) period when every tenth paper about archaeological…

Cops

I was all set to do a big post about the police, but then Kevin Drum went and said exactly what I was thinking: It shouldn't be too hard to hold two thoughts in our minds at once. Thought #1: Police officers have an intrinsically tough and violent job. Split-second decisions about the use of force come with the territory. Ditto for decisions about who to stop and who to keep an eye on. This makes individual mistakes inevitable, but as a group, police officers deserve our support and respect regardless. Thought #2: That support shouldn't be blind. Conlin reports that in her group of 25 black…

New York City is Never Boring

I have now reached the last leg of my travels. I was in Philadelphia for several days last week, and was in upstate New York over the weekend. Currently I'm in New York City. Last night I attended Monday Night Magic at the Players Theater in Greenwich Village. All of the acts were very enjoyable, but it was a special thrill to get to see Chris Capehart, who is pretty famous among magicians. If you ever have a chance to see him perform I heartily recommend it. When the show let out I walked around the village a bit. It was jumping with activity. Lots of stuff was still open, and it…

Euler's Identity, Part One

Euler's identity is the equation: \[ e^{i \pi} +1=0. \] If you have any taste for mathematics at all, it is hard not to smile at this. In one equation we have each of five “special” numbers (e, i, pi, 1 and 0), along with one instance of each of three basic arithmetic operations (addition, multiplication and exponentiation.) Not too shabby! But why is the equation true? Well, the first thing to notice is that we have an imaginary number in the exponent. That means that appreciating this equation requires an understanding of how we deal with such things. Towards that end, we have the…

Release the Video!

Update 11/2/11, 11:26pm: John Haught has relented, and the video has now been released. You can find it here. Haught has also provided a lengthy explanation of his initial refusal to allow the tape to be released. Jerry has replied. A few weeks ago, Jerry Coyne and John Haught discussed science/religion compatibility in a forum held at the University of Kentucky. Jerry wrote a brief account of what transpired. It seems that Jerry prepared thoroughly for the debate by reading no less than six of Haught's books and watching all of his presentations on You Tube. Haught, on the other…

HIV-1, HIV Denial, and boxing

HIV(+) status and sports is a big deal. Any time there is a non-negligible risk of a bloody nose (golf or swimming vs soccer or basketball), there is a risk someone is going to get a blood droplet in the eye. Another player, a ref, a coach, a spectator, a beer vendor-- yes, the odds might be fantastic, but whatever the risks are, they arent worth it for entertainment. Kudos to *most* state boxing commissions for recognizing that HIV status is a very, very big deal in their sport, thus require HIV tests before fights. And, if a boxer fails a test, they dont go all "DUDES GOT AIDS!", they…

Egnor Does Math

Two weeks ago I joined the chorus of Science Bloggers bashing Michael Egnor for his posts at the Discovery Institute's blog. I pointed out a fairly straightforward error in one of his posts. At that time I mentioned that I hadn't jumped in earlier because Egnor's arguments revolved around medical practice, which is a subject I know little about. I also wrote this: I figured I would weigh in when he started parroting those insipid probability arguments creationists find so appealing. At the time I was being facetious. I didn't think he would really go there. I mean, really, no one with…

And Harris Replies in Kind

As I mentioned, Sam Harris has already replied to Sullivan's essay. Let's consider some highlights: Contrary to your allegation, I do not “disdain” religious moderates. I do, however, disdain bad ideas and bad arguments--which, I'm afraid, you have begun to manufacture in earnest. I'd like to point out that you have not rebutted any of the substantial challenges I made in my last post. Rather, you have gone on to make other points, most of which I find unsurprising and irrelevant to the case I have made against religious faith. For instance, you claim that many fundamentalists are tolerant…

Sullivan Replies to Harris...

Following up on my previous post about the blogalogue between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris, here have now been a few more entries. Picking up where the previous post left off, let's look at Sullivan's reply. Since Harris has replied in turn, I will content myself with a few brief points. Sullivan writes: I also disagree that religious moderates simply have less faith. You write: Religious moderation is the result of not taking scripture all that seriously. Blogger, please. In many ways, the source of much of today's religious moderation is taking scripture more seriously than the…

Jenner on Meyer's Paper

In the course of his lengthy discussion of the report on the Sternberg affair, mentioned in the previous post, Ed Brayton links to this discussion of the ID paper that started all the controversy in the first place. The discussion is by Ronald Jenner, of the Section on Evolution and Ecology at the University of Califronia at Davis. Jenner has many enlightening things to say about the merits, or lack thereof, of the paper in question. But there is one place where he gets it sadly wrong. First, we have this: Let's take a deep breath, sit back in our chair, and calmly take the measure of…

American Physicists and the Under-rating of Experiments

At Scientific American's blog network, Ashutosh Jogalekar muses about the "greatest American physicist", eventually voting for Josiah Willard Gibbs, one of the pioneers of statistical mechanics. As both times I took StatMech (as an undergrad and in grad school), it was at 8:30 in the morning, I retain almost no memory of the subject, and will bow to greater experience in assessing Gibbs's importance. I do, however, want to take issue with one thing in the post. When assessing the historical place of American physics, he writes: Here’s my personal list for the title of greatest American…

The War on Teachers

Writing in The New York Times, Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari bring some blessed common sense to the subject of teacher salaries: WHEN we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers. We don't say, “It's these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That's why we haven't done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren't there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant…

Anand Wins!

Could this fantastic match have ended in any other way than with a tremendous tactical slugfest? The final game of the big chess match took place today, with the score tied and Topalov playing white. Topalov did what Topalov does: he overplayed a slightly better position, allowing Anand to unleash the forces of hell upon him. The game started with one of the stodgiest and most conservative openings, but ended with a breathtaking flurry of tactics. Let's have a look. Position after 7. ... Nf6-e4   This introduces the Lasker Variation of the Orthodox Queen's Gambit Declined, an old…

Bringing Your Kids to Synagogue

Writing in Slate, Marc Oppenheimer has a thoughtful piece about bringing his young daughter to synagogue: I don't kid myself that Rebekah has some unusual, precocious spirituality. She loves ritual, as all children love ritual. Nothing, except milk and maybe Graham crackers, is more comforting to a toddler than a fun routine enjoyed at predictable intervals. Little boys and girls love the sense of mastery that comes with repetition. They're so proud to finish our sentences as we read them a book for the 50th or one 100th time (“old lady who was whispering...” “hush!”). If we skip bath time,…

Service Reform

The Dean Dad and the Tenured Radical are having a really good discussion of service responsibilities, or as TR puts it, the "Just Say No" problem: The Just Say No (to everyone but me) issue is a problem that, frankly, untenured people, adjuncts and visitors are not responsible for managing; and that achieving tenure can make worse, not better. If you belong to the untenured masses, it is not unreasonable -- nor does it represent a failure of maturity -- to choose a senior colleague, even better the department or program chair, to help you manage the demands on your time. How many advisees is…

Links for 2009-09-24

$6/Kg to orbit -- KarlSchroeder.com "The fact is, there is only one problem worth speaking about in space development, and that is the problem of cost-to-orbit. It currently costs around $10,000/kg to launch anything at all. That price will never come down as long as chemical rockets are the only technology we use. " (tags: space economics science technology blogs karl-schroeder) The Real Cost of Medmal | Mother Jones "Unfortunately, the real problem with our medical malpractice system isn't that it costs too much. The real problem is that it's a lottery. Some people get money they…

Gatekeeping vs. Bad Teaching

Much of LiveJournal has been sunk in a sea of suck for the last couple of weeks, but there's a really interesting discussion of science education over at "Faraday's Cage is where you put Schroedinger's Cat." The first post has to do with the idea of "gatekeeping": In my class today, a very brief discussion occurred between the teacher and another student about a topic which has bothered me for a long, long time: gatekeeping. This particular student is a grad student in mechanical engineering, and she was talking about her personal teaching philosophy. She said it bothered her that in the…

NYC Trip: Bad and Ugly at the Met

Having done a whirlwind and somewhat disappointing swing through the Museum of Natural History, I strolled across Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to get me some culture. I guessed correctly that it was less likely to be choked with middle-school kids, and I never fail to find something interesting to look at. Of course, art being art, I always find some crap, too, so let's get that out of the way first. Also, it's easier to blog snidely about art I didn't care for than to explain the wonders of the stuff I did like. We'll start off easy, though, with the Gustave Courbet…

Fearless mice are neglectful mothers but social butterflies

We like to idolise fearlessness and we equate it to bravery but there is a fine line between that and stupidity. Immunity to the pangs of fear would leave someone unable to assess threats to themselves and to other people, which means that fear not only has consequences for an individual but for their entire social circle. Guillaume Martel and colleagues from Rutgers University demonstrated these far-reaching consequences by examining a special group of mice which had been genetically engineered to be fearless. Martel's team focused their attention on the amygdalae, a pair of almond-shaped…

Blackburn, Greider, & some dude win 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: a triumph of women in science

The tweet came just about an hour ago announcing the well-deserved and much-predicted award of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak for their work on "how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase." I wrote about this team and their accomplishments three years ago when the won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, considered the "American Nobel." I said then: Most cancer researchers, biochemists, and cell biologists know all three of these outstanding researchers. While I can't claim being…

The problem with family trees

My least favorite story-that's-occupying-too-much-media-attention this week is the Al Sharpton-Strom Thurmond family-ties affair. As a former newspaper editor, I know all too well why the story of the uncovering of the connection between a prominent African-American civil-rights leader and famous white racist senator is irresistible. But should it really be more than a mildly amusing footnote, rather than a front-page feature? And now we hear that Sharpton wants a DNA test? Give it a rest. First of all, we're not talking about blood relations. The story goes that Sharpton's great-grandfather…

When parents let their children die

I used to be dead-set against the idea of letting Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists deny their children conventional treatment for life-threatening illnesses. It still makes me angry to know that there are mothers and fathers out there who love their god more than their sons and daughters. And yet... And yet, there is a case to be made for letting parents determine the fate of their children. The libertarian argument against the state forcing a course of treatment on a child against their parents' wishes is a compelling one. This meditation on the dilemma in Reason magazine hits…

Fast food logos unconsciously trigger fast behaviour

Like it or not, the golden arches of McDonalds are one of the most easily recognised icons of the modern world. The culture they represent is one of instant gratification and saved time, of ready-made food that can be bought cheaply and eaten immediately. Many studies have looked at the effects of these foods on our waistlines, but their symbols and brands are such a pervasive part of our lives that you'd expect them to influence the way we think too. And so they do - Chen-Bo Zhong and Sanford DeVoe have found that fast food can actually induce haste and impatience, in ways that have nothing…

Sweet Jebus, but I hate the HuffPo

It's a woo-infested sewer, a cesspit of inanity and exploitation, and they cheat their writers. There is a strike/boycott in operation. This is what you get when an unprincipled, opportunistic hack like Arianna Huffington runs the show. Guild tells HuffPost writers: 'Don't work for free' The Newspaper Guild is calling on unpaid writers of the Huffington Post to withhold their work in support of a strike launched by Visual Art Source in response to the company's practice of using unpaid labor. In addition, we are asking that our members and all supporters of fair and equitable compensation for…

Sb House Band Needed: My Vote Below

We need a house band. Scienceblogs needs a house band. And I know what you're all thinking: Phish is the obvious choice. Now, while I admire the force of your collective appreciation for Phish - I'm astounded by it, in fact, by all the bloggers' recognition of greatness - I actually have to argue against them as the Sb House Band. A few reasons: Whereas, it is true, they exemplify all that is good about music, the experience of music, the aura of performance, the construction of art, and so on. I can't argue against any of that. They are all that. The very notion of creativity and…

The Speed(s) of a Wave

All right, the answer to yesterday's question about the maximum speed of a stadium wave, as many commenters rightly said, is "as fast as you want." The comments went into some depth on this, and I like the way Zifnab put it: I mean, if you've got two independent agents doing their thing, the "speed" between the two just gets faster the farther apart they are. But if they have no relation to one another... what are we even asking? If our imaginary stadium is the size of the Milky Way Galaxy and the seats are stars and you stand up on Alpha Centari and I stand up on the Sun less than 4 years…

Another Greenlandic Saga: Are we getting a break on global warming?

A story on the fate of Greenland's ice sheet published last week in The Guardian attracted the expected level of interest from those who uncritically repeat any scientific tidbit that reminds us we still don't know everything we need to know about climate change. This was because the story, as written, implied the ice sheet isn't as sensitive to global warming as is popularly thought. Something about the story didn't seem exactly right to me, though. For one thing, it was based not on a peer-reviewed paper but a presentation to the recent scientific meeting on climate change in Copenhagen.…

Polar bears in scientific tug of war

It's not just Alaskan governors who have a problem with treating polar bears as a threatened species. For some reason, a lot of people who just can't bring themselves to accept the idea that we're heating up the planet seem to have it in for poor old Ursus maritimus. A year ago, the journal Ecological Complexity published an attack on the theory that the population of polar bears widely considered most at risk from climate change wasn't actually at risk at all. The inevitable rebuttal just appeared, and the exchange raises some questions about the peer-review process. In a "Viewpoint"…

Leaving Academia: Cry or Celebrate?

No, no, I'm not leaving academia (yet :) Pfffffft! That's the sound of me thumbing my nose at the world.) But recently I was thinking about about people who get a Ph.D. in, say, physics, or are a new postdoc, and then are faced with what to do next. As Peter Rhode, writes in a post today (or whatever day it is in the upside down part of the world) entitled "Farewell physics": The academic system has some serious problems. Most notably in my opinion, there is very limited scope for promotion. For every permanent position there are countless postdocs competing for that position. It simply…

Political Interpretations of Quantum Theory

Over at the Optimizer's place, the Optimizer compares libertarians and those who believe in the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory. (Key Ron Paul apologists in three, two, one...) An amusing comparison. So if many worlders are the libertarians of interpretations of quantum theory, what political parties do the other interpretations of quantum theory fall under? Copenhagen Interpretation: The standard interpretation before many-worlds became the standard. Key personality trait: worship of the founders of quantum theory. If Bohr said it, it must be true! Clearly these are…

Framing Science at the BIO 2008 Conference, San Diego

At the BIO 2008 International Convention coming up in June in San Diego, I will be participating in a panel on the communication challenges facing biotechnology. Below are the details on the panel, followed by a 500 word summary of the key points of my presentation. Readers should find the themes familiar. Communication Challenges: Defining the Industry for Policymakers and the Public Conference Breakout Sessions Track Policy Date/Time 6/19/2008 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM Location San Diego Convention Center Room 25 A One of the key mandates offered up by policymakers taking part in a special session…

Ape Culture and Science Culture on the Planet of the Apes

Even in the small theater where I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it was clear that this is, to some degree, a father and son movie - there were several father and son pairs in the audience - more than I've seen in any other movie. "Yes, son, now you will see why our planet eventually will be taken over by apes." "Yes, dad, now you will see how CGI replaces this Roddy McDowell person you keep talking about." Caution: spoilers. Andy Serkis's Caesar and the rest of the ape-men were wonderful, as was slow build of the story. I also loved that the apes' goal was not world domination but to…

The Ecology of Agro-Food Policy

In The Landscape of History, John Lewis Gaddis writes about the difference between reductionist research methods and ecological ones. Gaddis is a well-known and influential Cold War historian at Yale. This accessible and undergrad-suitable book is a brief foray into historiography and the practice of the historian's craft. His discussion of research methods comes along as he questions the social scientists' premise that one can separate dependent from independent variables, that one could hold all variables constant and look to just one to explain the rest. But all variables are…

Wild Speculation about Evolution and Anxiety about Science at Wired

I was distressed to read this at Wired because usually I feel like they are more on top of things. This is by Thomas Hayden: Even worse, those same cortexes that invented science can't really embrace it. Science describes the world with numbers (ratio of circumference to diameter: pi) and abstractions (particles! waves! particles!). But our intractable brains evolved on a diet of campfire tales. Fantastical explanations (angry gods hurling lightning bolts) and rare events with dramatic outcomes (saber-toothed tiger attacks) make more of an impact on us than statistical norms. Evolution gave…

Elsewhere on the Interweb (8/29/07)

Gene Expression has 10 Questions with Gregory Clark, author of A Farewell to Alms: Clark also provides archival evidence that in medieval Britain (and to a lesser extent in China and Japan) the wealthy-who presumably had those "middle class" skills in abundance-raised more children than the average person. If you put these pieces together-a system that rewards a new set of abilities, plus greater reproductive success for those who have those abilities-then all you need to get some form of selection is one more link: A transmission mechanism. On the nature of the mechanism, Clark leaves the…

Jeffrey Rosen on the Neuro-law revolution

Jeffrey Rosen has an excellent piece in the NYTimes magazine about the increasing use of neurological arguments in the courts: One important question raised by the Roper case was the question of where to draw the line in considering neuroscience evidence as a legal mitigation or excuse. Should courts be in the business of deciding when to mitigate someone's criminal responsibility because his brain functions improperly, whether because of age, in-born defects or trauma? As we learn more about criminals' brains, will we have to redefine our most basic ideas of justice? Two of the most ardent…

New Type of Antibiotics Designed Not to Cause Resistance

If you work in infectious diseases in a hospital -- or frankly if you work anywhere in a hospital -- the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria is a serious problem. You have to be constantly aware of what the right drug is to prescribe to ensure its maximum effectiveness, and -- though rare -- there are some bacterial infections for which we have no good drugs. This is why I was very intrigued about researchers trying to design antibiotics that would not create resistant bacteria: Vern L. Schramm, Ph.D., professor and Ruth Merns Chair of Biochemistry at Einstein and senior author of the…

Fertility and Gender Equity in Europe

New York Magazine has an interesting article about fertility in Europe. Most European countries have a huge fertility problem. Since they have gone through the demographic transition, their populations are actually declining. Many do not have the relatively liberal immigration policies of the US -- which would help because immigrants have more children. (I didn't think that I would ever call the US policies liberal.) They are getting in a financial crunch because many have relatively generous social service programs, and you have a dwindling number of workers paying for an increasing…

Feeling the pain of others

HOW do you react when you see somebody else in pain? Most of us can empathize with someone who has been injured or is sick - we can quite easily put ourselves "in their shoes" and understand, to some extent, what they are feeling. We can share their emotional experience, because observing their pain activates regions of the brain which are involved in processing the emotional aspects of pain. But can seeing somebody else in pain actually cause pain in the observer? People with mirror-touch synaesthesia are known to experience touch sensations when they see others being touched, and this may…

Musical training enhances integration of the senses

Learning to play a musical instrument is known to involve both structural and functional changes in the brain. Studies published in recent years have established, for example, that professional keyboard players have increased gray matter volume in motor, auditory and visual parts of the brain, and that violinists have a larger somatosensory cortical representation of the left hand than do non-musicians. Musical training is a complex process involving simultaneously perceiving the inputs from the senses of hearing, sight and touch, as well as co-ordinating these with the outputs of the motor…

SDB 2011: Stem cells in the morning

Here we go, I'm attending the West Coast Regional Meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology, and I'll be intermittently dumping my notes onto the web, so that's what you'll be getting today -- my sometimes cryptic impressions of a series of developmental biology talks. This is the early morning session. It's late in the day for this Minnesotan, though…but beware, that just means I may start flagging this afternoon. 08:30-10:00 Session 1: Stem Cells in Development and Regeneration (Chair: Monika Ward [Univ. Hawaii]) Hey, speakers get lei'ed at the start of their talk! I guess I…

Woman the Hunter?

There was a time--in the 1960s and 1970s--when the phrase "Man the Hunter" enjoyed a lot of popularity. Some researchers claimed that the evolution of hunting played a key role in the origin of our lineage. That's what we made tools for, and that's how we got all the extra energy to fuel our big brains. Much of our anatomy, according to the Man-the-Hunter theory, was the result of adaptations for hunting. You have to stand tall above the savannah grass, for example, to spot your game. You need to make weapons. And a bloody-minded psychology helped too. In the 1976 book The Hunting Hypothesis…