An image of obsolescence
An image of obsolescence: Four empty telephone booths.
(As seen on a hotel in Crete)Caught red-and-white-handed
Denmark is on the front page of English Wikipedia today as it is constitution day (5 June). In connection with writing on Wikipedia I ran into paragraph 57. It reads “No member of parliament can without its consent be prosecuted or subjected to imprisonment of any kind, unless he is caught in flagrante dilicto”. There are a number of strangenesses in the Danish constitution and this sentence is among them. Why should there be a condition on “caught in flagrante dilicto” (red-handed)? And when are you red-handed? What exactly does it mean? Do you need to be in the process of stealing to be red-handed or is it enough to just be in the process of publishing information which are illegal to publish? Or drunk-driving? Former minister of justice Lene Espersen once had a traffic accident. As she herself contacted the police I suppose you could say that she caught herself red-handed… Nevertheless the parliament was involved to release her parliamentary immunity. Another thing that bothers me a bit with the sentence is the possesive adjective “its”: it refers to “parliament”, but could be confused with with a reference to “member”.
(Photo by Per Palmkvist Knudsen, CC-BY-SA)
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(Photo by Per Palmkvist Knudsen, CC-BY-SA)
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Eurovision Song Contest and DK Intelligentsia tweets #ESCdk
Eurovision Song Contest 2012 is live from Baku in the country east of
Armenia that is difficult to spell, and the development is followed
closely by the Danish Intelligentsia. Here - besides me -
Socialdemocrat IT spokesperson former member of parliament Yildiz and
leading Twitter journalist Kaare all commenting on the Udmurt
grannies.
My elevator talk video
I was surprised to find that not all know my 225-view famous perhaps semi-humorous elevator talk video. So here it is. Please note the matched timing of the speech and the elevator. It took me some time to get the match right: Several times up and down the elevator. :-)
probability, DNA and court
I recently initiated the Wikipedia article about the Court here in Lyngby and surfed a bit round on the homepage of the court. I
stumbled upon an interesting case from 2011 about acquittal with a DNA match. Here the case is with my translation and editing: A 31 year old man from the western suburbs of Copenhagen was acquitted
from accusations of theft totalling 200,000 Danish kroner from a villa
in Gentofte. The evidence against the accused was alone a DNA match
which meant that there were more than 1,000,000 times larger
probability for, that blood found on the site came from the accused
than from another random person in the Danish population. The accused which was first interrogated ca. 4 months after the crime,
was not previously convicted for theft, had a well-paid job, own
house, girlfriend and 2 kids and refused any knowledge of the theft. The police did not perform any other investigations and the court
found that the accused lived approximately 11.7 kilometers from the
site of theft - like approximately 1,000,000 other person. The court noted that the police could have performed a search at the
house of the accused, could have obtained mobil phone records and
looked for scars on the accused. —- This is indeed a very interesting case of probabilities. A probability
of 1 against 1,000,000 is probably not right. Unfortunate errors such
as contaminations or paper work errors change the probability perhaps
to as low a 1 against 1,000. When such errors are taken into account
they work in favor of the accused. One may ask how they obtained the accused and his DNA in the first
place. Was he suspected? Prior non-theft convictions? If he was
suspected prior to the DNA test then even 1 against 1,000 is serious
odds. It is much less serious if the man was routinely entered into a
DNA register and the match appeared after a search in the database
containing perhaps several 100,000 people. It would be really interesting if the police appealed the decision and
made more through investigations, e.g., are they able to track the
mobil phone of the accused. It is important to know how such big odds
should be interpreted and trusted.
stumbled upon an interesting case from 2011 about acquittal with a DNA match. Here the case is with my translation and editing: A 31 year old man from the western suburbs of Copenhagen was acquitted
from accusations of theft totalling 200,000 Danish kroner from a villa
in Gentofte. The evidence against the accused was alone a DNA match
which meant that there were more than 1,000,000 times larger
probability for, that blood found on the site came from the accused
than from another random person in the Danish population. The accused which was first interrogated ca. 4 months after the crime,
was not previously convicted for theft, had a well-paid job, own
house, girlfriend and 2 kids and refused any knowledge of the theft. The police did not perform any other investigations and the court
found that the accused lived approximately 11.7 kilometers from the
site of theft - like approximately 1,000,000 other person. The court noted that the police could have performed a search at the
house of the accused, could have obtained mobil phone records and
looked for scars on the accused. —- This is indeed a very interesting case of probabilities. A probability
of 1 against 1,000,000 is probably not right. Unfortunate errors such
as contaminations or paper work errors change the probability perhaps
to as low a 1 against 1,000. When such errors are taken into account
they work in favor of the accused. One may ask how they obtained the accused and his DNA in the first
place. Was he suspected? Prior non-theft convictions? If he was
suspected prior to the DNA test then even 1 against 1,000 is serious
odds. It is much less serious if the man was routinely entered into a
DNA register and the match appeared after a search in the database
containing perhaps several 100,000 people. It would be really interesting if the police appealed the decision and
made more through investigations, e.g., are they able to track the
mobil phone of the accused. It is important to know how such big odds
should be interpreted and trusted.
Error in the erratum
One usually needs to take care when writing corrections: An error in
an erratum looks silly. For those with knowledge of Danish would note
that a word in the title has a typo: “Radioavsien” should have been
“Radioavisen”. Somehow the picture of the pig adds some humor to the
typo.
Did Neil Kinnock give correct answer about Stasi spy?
In 2003 German European Parliament member Markus Ferber asked the EU Commission: “Is there any truth in the allegations that Mr Olsen was held in custody in Denmark over alleged activities for the State Security Service of the former GDR?” with Mr. Olsen being Morten Jung-Olsen, Head of Unit and Chief Negotiator for Bulgaria. Mr Kinnock (Neil Kinnock I suppose) replied: “Mr Jung-Olsen has been acquitted of any allegations against him. As the Honourable Member will know, it is a basic rule in democracies that detention does not carry a presumption of guilt and that legal acquittal gives valid proof of the standing of an individual.” Something is rotten in the answer of Kinnock. First of all he doesn’t really answer the question, because yes Mr Olsen was held in custody in Denmark over alleged activities for the State Security Service of the former GDR. He sat in prison for 111 days. There is truth in the allegation that he was held in custody. Second, Jung-Olsen was really not acquitted. He was simply released as the case was deemed to old to go to court. The prosecutor even said that they had the right man. One year later after the discussion in EU, forth came Stasi spy boss Werner Grossmann further supporting the prosecutor’s statement. So EU apparently employs a former Stasi spy.
Recently extending the Wikipedia article on the Danish security service I noticed that not many spys working in Denmark have been put to jail. Another notable case with a sort-of “guilty but not convicted” verdict was for the writer Arne Herløv Petersen.
Recently extending the Wikipedia article on the Danish security service I noticed that not many spys working in Denmark have been put to jail. Another notable case with a sort-of “guilty but not convicted” verdict was for the writer Arne Herløv Petersen.
Neuroinformatics databases with dia graph software
So I was considering GIMP, LaTeXDraw, Inkscape, Xfig, GraphViz - and in a weak and confused movement FSLView - to draw a graph. Then I saw Dia, installed it, and I found it quite suitable. The arrows attach well to the objects and it has a range of output formats.
The unfinished graph displays neuroinformatics databases and web-linkable identifiers between them: My Brede Wiki and Brede Database along with fMRIDC, OpenfMRI, Cognitive Atlas, CogPO, IBVD, SumsDB, BODB, CoCoMac and the more general PubMed. There is an arrow from PubMed to the Brede Database. That is because someone (not me) apparently has defined LinkOut for the Brede Database. Thank you.Poul Thorsen III
Ulla Danielsen seems to be the only one updating on the case of Poul Thorsen and now reports that the tax evasion case against Poul Thorsen has been dismissed. It has been dismissed because of technical deficits in the indictment. The court case has apparently been postponed multiple times, Danielsen writes. Jens Ramskov seems to be the only other in Denmark reporting about the case lately. He had an article in December 2011. If I understand it correctly the tax evasion court case is just one aspect of the Thorsen case.
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