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I hate flow-restricted faucets. I can adjust the faucet myself, thanks, and sometimes I want that pot or bucket to fill up as quickly as possible, please.

But you can’t buy unrestricted aerators anymore. Federal law mandates that you can’t draw more than 2.2 gallons/minute from your tap.

My old kitchen sink aerator got clogged awhile back, and I couldn’t clean it out, so I had to buy a new one, and just tolerate the restricted flow. Then it got clogged, and I took it apart to clean it:

Restricted flow aerator completely disassembled.

Here’s a close up of the key parts:

Aerator core parts. Flow restrictor plate on the right.

That flat plate on the right, with the hole in the middle? That’s the flow restricter. All the water must flow through that hole.

Turns out, the aerator works just fine without it. I had thought it was glued in place, but it only snaps in; a small hemostat or needle nose pliers will yank it out presto-change-o.

Take that, bureaucratic scum!

[That part in the middle is the mixer, the thing that does the actual aeration. It goes in pin-down, as shown in the first picture.]

There’s a paper floating around [PDF, 935 KB] alleging that Barack Obama is hypnotizing his followers using the techniques of “Neurolinguistic programming”, aka NLP.

You know, it’s tempting. Obama has captured so many otherwise intelligent, educated, sophisticated, well meaning people, and convinced them to believe things that simply do not hold up when examined closely (or even casually). At the same time, he’s managed to keep people, including virtually the entire press corp, from examining closely not only his ideas, but his past associates, words, and actions.

Discredited socialist, central-planner politics aside, I find Obama profoundly creepy, and don’t really understand what people see in him.

I absolutely agree that “this unaccomplished man’s unnatural and irrational rise to the highest office in the world [is] suspicious and frightening”.

However, scanning through this paper — no. I can’t easily identify it, but it has the faint reek of crank to it. The crowded formatting, the lack of a by-line on the first page, the exhortation to read the table of contents….

The command to “READ THIS DOCUMENT IN ORDER, FROM BEGINNING TO END, AS DEFINITIONS ARE BUILT ON TOP OF ONE-ANOTHER, AND UNDERSTANDING OF THESE DEFINITIONS IS NECESSARY TO FOLLOW LATER INTERPRETATIONS AND ANALYSIS”.

Sigh. All-caps, in an extra-large typeface. It might as well have more than three exclamation points at the end, the inarguable sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head!!!!

There’s the desperate footer, “EXPOSING OBAMA’S DECEPTION MAY BE THE ONLY WAY TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY”. Again, note the all-caps.

Then there’s this video:

Here’s the give-away: many, many vaguely threatening clips of Obama, but not one clip of him actually speaking, nothing demonstrating the techniques allegedly in use.

Notice the oddly cadenced narration (”Why, it’s almost as if the narrator wants to hypnotize us to bypass our rational…Oh.”), and the vaguely threatening background music straight from the X-Files.

Oh, yes, Hitler and his rallies put in an extended appearance.

Not proof that this is crackpot work, but there’s simply too many signs to take it seriously.

Obama is indeed a dangerous demagogue, but he is using techniques that have been used for centuries, not some weird modern mind-control.

Via M. Simon’s Classical Values. I do recommend Simon’s article on “The Cult of Personality” at his other blog, Power and Control.

Update:
The Language Log has another skeptical article on Obama and NLP, with excellent comments on the history of NLP.

P.Z. Meyers at Pharyngula has two great biology posts today, in addition to the political humor cited below.

First, Cesarean-Section births may be allowing humans to grow larger brains.

Babies have very big heads that squeeze with only great difficulty through a relatively narrow pelvis, so the relationship in size between head diameter and the diameter of the pelvic opening has been a limitation on human evolution. We know this had to be a factor in our evolution: the average newborn mammal has a cranial capacity that is roughly 50% of the adult size, chimpanzee babies have heads about 40% of the adult size, but human babies have crania that are only 23% of what they will be in adults.

…

This is the subject of an article by Joseph Walsh in the American Biology Teacher, which suggests that C-sections will have an effect on human evolution.

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” This was the title of an essay by geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky writing in 1973. Many causes have been given for the increased Cesarean section rate in developed countries, but biologic evolution has not been one of them. The C-section rate will continue to rise, because the ability to perform a safe C-section has liberated human childbirth from natural selection directed against too small a maternal pelvis and too large a fetal head. Babies will get bigger and pelves will get smaller because there is nothing to prevent it.

That increasing availability of C-sections might lead to an evolutionary shift towards increasing cranial capacity at birth is a reasonable hypothesis, but I’m not convinced that it has been convincingly demonstrated yet. There are too many variables that effect brain size at birth to make a clean analysis possible; in addition, many of the measures are indirect. Often, we use birth weight as a proxy for cranial capacity, and that means the numbers and correlations are sloppier than they should be. Many of the measurements made are of factors that are readily influenced by the environment, which makes it difficult to imply that these are the product of genetics.

So the idea is weakly supported, but tantalizing. Even as a purely theoretical exercise, though, what it does say is that it is obvious that human culture cannot end human evolution…all it can do is shape the direction in which it can occur.

[Emphasis mine.]

That’s the way science works: even if, especially if, you like an idea, you must remain skeptical, and try your best to disprove it, to falsify it. Science isn’t a collection of eternal, unquestioned truths — it’s a protocol for throwing out the trash. Scientists are janitors, not priests.

===

Scientists are also custodians, in the sense that they care for things.

P.Z. Myers also points out that Old Scientists never clean out their refrigerators; they just keep meticulous notes about the contents.

We all know the story of the Miller-Urey experiment. In 1953, a young graduate student named Stanley Miller ran an off-the-wall experiment: he ran water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in a sealed flask with a pair of electrodes to produce a spark, and from those simple building blocks discovered that more complex compounds, such as amino acids, were spontaneously produced. Stanley Miller died in 2007, and in going through his effects, the original apparatus was discovered, and in addition, several small sealed vials containing the sludge produced in the original experiment were also found.

This isn’t too surprising. I’ve gone through a few old scientists’ labs, and you’d be surprised at all the antiquities they preserved, all with notes documenting exactly what they are. It’s habit to keep this stuff.

Now the cool part, though: the scientists who unearthed the old samples ran them through modern analysis techniques, which are a bit more sensitive than the tools they had in the 1950s. In 1953, Miller reported the recovery of five amino acids from his experiment. The reanalysis found twenty two amino acids and five amines in the vials. He was more successful than he knew!

British bookies have suspended betting on aliens arriving sometime today, 14 October, because they face a seven-figure payout if the aliens do, in fact appear.

Idiots. If the aliens do appear, that’s going to be the least of our concerns. At the very least, we all must learn to play the piano.

Whatever, just don’t feel alone here in the New Age, because there’s a seeker born every minute!

Just remember, avoid eye contact. If there are no eyes, avoid all contact.

Via Steven Den Beste, and have a nice Blue Moss. Or if you prefer, a Bear Whiz Beer.

Congress does its part to increase biodiversity with the Endangered Species Act:

Ferraro, McIntosh, and Ospina (2007) find that the ESA has, in fact, failed to protect endangered species. Indeed, their evidence indicates that for a large majority of the species studied, listing under the ESA has actually harmed the species’ chances of recovery.

Ferraro et al examine two different elements of the ESA’s operation: the impact of listing a species as being endangered, and the effects of species-specific government recovery expenditures. After taking both listing and spending into account, the authors find that the overall effect of the ESA has been to reduce listed species’ chances of recovery, although this negative effect is small. They go on to show that there are quite dramatic differences in outcomes depending on the level of spending on species recovery programs. For the 25 percent of the listed species that garner about 95 percent of all government recovery funding, the ESA seems to have produced improvements in the chances of recovery. But for the other 75 percent of species, those that are largely ignored by the funding process, the ESA has sharply reduced species’ viability, compared to unlisted species that are otherwise similar except for listing status. Thus, for most of the species studied, the ESA has had perverse consequences, reducing rather than enhancing survival chances.

…

It may seem odd that a law ostensibly designed to protect species could end up harming them. Yet there are at least two mechanisms through which this may occur. First, there is the well-known “shoot, shovel, and shut up” response to the ESA: When species on private land are listed, property owners may attempt to rid themselves of the species to avoid government restrictions on the use of their land.

But there is a more subtle effect that may be at work here. Some species are under threat from other non-human species or from climate-forced habitat change, rather than from assaults by landowners. The best long-term hope for these species may be proactive assistance (e.g., control of exotic species) from the owners of the land on which they reside.

…

This brings us back to the importance of species-specific recovery expenditures. Enforcement activities might well deter active hostility toward listed species on private land. But only spending for programs such as habitat acquisition is likely to boost private efforts to aid maintenancedependent species.

Although Ferraro et al have left some important loose ends, their message is ominous. The ESA does not merely fail to provide widespread species protection; it is positively harmful for most endangered species. Given the widely acknowledged costs of the ESA, perhaps it is time to change the way we think about—and behave toward—species conservation.

[Via Overcoming Bias.]

Three approaches here:

1. Leave it alone.
2. Throw money at private initiatives.
3. Deprive landowners of the full use of their land without compensation.

The first two work. The last actually defeats the stated goal — but does usurp property rights. Ask me if I believe your average congresscritter actually gives a rat’s ass about spotted owls or snail darters. Ask me if I think your average congresscritter can pass up the chance to usurp property rights — or to take your money in service to a cause a handful of whacko activists make a lot of noise about.

Tell me again, tell me exactly, why you think these greedy, powermad sons of bitches need to be anywhere between you and your doctor.

Or between you and your mortgage, for that matter.

Eliezer Yudkowsky at Overcoming Bias says the unsayable:

One of the major surprises I received when I moved out of childhood into the real world, was the degree to which the world is stratified by genuine competence.

Now, yes, Steve Jurvetson is not just a randomly selected big-name venture capitalist.  He is a big-name VC who often shows up at transhumanist conferences.  But I am not drawing a line through just one data point.

I was invited once to a gathering of the mid-level power elite, where around half the attendees were “CEO of something” - mostly technology companies, but occasionally “something” was a public company or a sizable hedge fund.  I was expecting to be the youngest person there, but it turned out that my age wasn’t unusual - there were several accomplished individuals who were younger.  This was the point at which I realized that my child prodigy license had officially completely expired.

Now, admittedly, this was a closed conference run by people clueful enough to think “Let’s invite Eliezer Yudkowsky” even though I’m not a CEO.  So this was an incredibly cherry-picked sample.  Even so…

Even so, these people of the Power Elite were visibly much smarter than average mortals. In conversation they spoke quickly, sensibly, and by and large intelligently. When talk turned to deep and difficult topics, they understood faster, made fewer mistakes, were readier to adopt others’ suggestions.

No, even worse than that, much worse than that: these CEOs and CTOs and hedge-fund traders, these folk of the mid-level power elite, seemed happier and more alive.

This, I suspect, is one of those truths so horrible that you can’t talk about it in public.  This is something that reporters must not write about, when they visit gatherings of the power elite.

Because the last news your readers want to hear, is that this person who is wealthier than you, is also smarter, happier, and not a bad person morally.  Your reader would much rather read about how these folks are overworked to the bone or suffering from existential ennui.  Failing that, your readers want to hear how the upper echelons got there by cheating, or at least smarming their way to the top.  If you said anything as hideous as, “They seem more alive,” you’d get lynched.

I shouldn’t have to quote this, because Overcoming Bias should be one of your daily reads. Everyone should have to start the day with muscle burn from exercising your body, and headache from exercising your brain. But it’s a good headache, honestly it is.

Note that Yudkowsky is talking about the power elite, the movers and shakers, not just rich people generally. The Hollywood Elite, chameleons who have become fabulously wealthy by pretending to be real people, speaking words written for them by others, often strike me as more than a little dim in person, say on talk shows, or on their own blogs.

Anyone worth talking to knows Hanlon’s Razor:

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

Now I find Beck’s Razor:

n. The practice, on an internet discussion thread, of making substantive comments in a confrontational and insulting manner as a means of sorting the other participants into those who can understand the substance and those who only see the tone and the form.

[I had some formatting problems putting this post together, which was causing some text to disappear. Fixed now.]

Patterico poses a statistical question:

50 standard coins are thrown onto the floor. Before the toss, each had an equal chance of coming up heads or tails. Before you see how they came up, all 50 coins are covered up.

Tom goes and uncovers 25 of them. All are heads.

Joe offers to give you $10 for every remaining coin that came up tails, if you will give him $12 for every remaining coin that came up heads.

1) Do you accept Joe’s offer?

2) Is there any question you would like to ask Tom before you decide?

The “official” answer has not yet been posted.

My answers, slightly edited, behind the spoilers tag:

Show ▼

From Eliezer Yudkowsky at the very challenging and stimulating Overcoming Bias:

This fallacy gets its name from an ancient sci-fi TV show, which I never saw myself, but was reported to me by a reputable source (some guy at an SF convention).  Anyone knows the exact reference, do leave a comment.

So the good guys are battling the evil aliens.  Occasionally, the good guys have to fly through an asteroid belt.  As we all know, asteroid belts are as crowded as a New York parking lot, so their ship has to carefully dodge the asteroids.  The evil aliens, though, can fly right through the asteroid belt because they have amazing technology that dematerializes their ships, and lets them pass through the asteroids.

Eventually, the good guys capture an evil alien ship, and go exploring inside it.  The captain of the good guys finds the alien bridge, and on the bridge is a lever.  “Ah,” says the captain, “this must be the lever that makes the ship dematerialize!”  So he pries up the control lever and carries it back to his ship, after which his ship can also dematerialize.

And from there, Yudkowsky goes on to discuss the quicksand foundations of psychology and Artificial Intelligence. Well worth the time and skull sweat.

One mild demurrer: If you look over at my Categories, you’ll see that I deride psychology as “Witch Doctoring”. This is in response to claims that psychology is in any way a science; it is not, because it lacks underlying mechanisms and testable hypotheses.

However, it’s easy to ridicule the field in hindsight, without viewing it in its historical context.

Imagine, to use the opening metaphor, that you live on a ship, have been raised on a ship, where nobody has ever been in the bridge; indeed, no one even knows the bridge exists. The ship simply flies around the universe, completely out of control. The origins of the ship, and the technology and science underlying its operation, have been forgotten so long ago, no one even remembers the ideas of technology and science. It is not unreasonable that all sorts of bizarre superstitions should arise as to how to direct the flight of the ship.

Then one day an ignorant, superstitious, but curious savage, fellow by the name of Freud, finds this rusted-shut hatch….

Sounds like a great idea for a science fiction story, eh? The idea of a colonial ship carrying crew and passengers who have forgotten their origins is indeed a popular one, although I don’t recall this particular issue being explored.

A couple of the best examples are Alfred Bester’s novel The Stars My Destination, and Gene Wolf’s tetralogy Book of the Long Sun (Actually, a long cycle of novels). There’s another novel (which I read in high school, so pre-1972) about a militaristic religion, with enforcers based on the Spanish Inquisition, deliberately set up to control the population of a colony ship; damned if I can remember its title or author, though. Then there’s The Starlost, a disasterous TV series disowned by its creator, Harlan Ellison.

Trailer for the upcoming Mythbusters episode debunking the myth that the moon missions were a giant hoax:

[link if the embed doesn't work]
[via Bad Astronomy]