Introduction
Berlin finished voting. Let’s look at some of the interesting facts which have not been excessively talked about in the media. All the data displayed here, even if I talk about them without giving precise numbers, are based upon demographic data that have been published within the last two days, and not on my personal speculation. I have my opinion about politics, but will try to keep it to a minimum and focus on facts.

Sources
Sources are mostly Wahlen-Berlin.de, sueddeutsche.de, spiegel.de and tagesschau.de. A good summary of numbers can be found in this pdf.

Overview

• SPD: 28.3% (-2.5)
• CDU: 23.4% (+2.1)
• GREEN: 17.6% (+4.5)
• LEFT: 11.7% (-1.7)
• PIRATES: 8.9% (+8.9)
• FDP: 1.8% (-5.8)
• OTHERS: 8.3% (-5.4) (among them NDP with 2.1%)
• Voter participation: 60.2% (+2.2)

Interesting details

• SPD: Wowereit (the current mayor) declared himself the winner of the elections. He is not (I will not discuss this in detail here), but he will be able to govern the city for another four years, either with CDU, or with the GREEN party. One third of the SPD voters said they voted because of Wowereit. The SPD lost more than 10% of their voters among young people (18-25).
• CDU: they won votes. Most of them from FDP voters (n=30.000). Many people voted them because of their “economical expertise”, only few people (especially compared to the SPD) because of their “frontman”. CDU voters are older and more religious than other voters, and live in Berlin for quite some time. Obviously, few immigrants vote for the CDU. The correlation-coefficient between young voters (18-30) and the CDU is -0.64. (East) and -0.83 (West). The coefficient for people over 60 is 0.26 (East) and 0.83 (West).
• GREEN: they won less votes than they expected to. Compared to the other recent elections in Germany, they didn’t do remarkably well – then again, +4.5% is nothing to be ashamed of. Main topics for the voters: energy, education, environment, social justice. The correlation-coefficient between middle-aged voters (30-60) and the GREEN party is 0.72 (East) and 0.75 (West), and turns highly negative for voters above 60.
• LEFT: they do not have the majority of votes together with the SPD anymore – they will not be part of the next government. They lost the majority of voters among young people (18-25), and were mostly elected by unemployed people or workers. The correlation-coefficient between old voters (60+) and the LEFT party is 0.83 (East) and -0.85 (West) (wow, that’s interesting). Very few voters are religious. There are many more interesting numbers actually, big differences in voter profile between East and West. Check out the summary-link listed at the top of the post.
• PIRATES: surprise surprise, from zero to nearly 9%. I will comment on that in detail below.
• FDP: project 2% failed. Too bad … not. 30.000 of their 2006 voters voted CDU, 8.000 voted SPD, 16.000 didn’t vote at all. The FDP didn’t get more than 5% in any demographic group whatsoever (job, age, gender). This is the 5th out of 7 elections this year in which they failed to re-enter parliament.
• OTHERS: I didn’t realize that 2006, OTHER parties together had 13.7%. That is, for German standards, remarkably high. Usually the numbers are between 2 and 5%.

Differences between East and West Berlin
The biggest differences are

• LEFT: East 22.6% (-5.5), West 4.3%
• GREEN: East 13.5%, West 20.4%
• CDU: East 14.2%, West 29.5%
• SPD had 28.x in both East and West

Overview of districts:

The German election system is a bit complicated, to summarize: many small districts were won by the GREEN party, but on a large scale, there are 12 districts in Berlin. 11 will be governed by a CDU or SPD, and 1 by a GREEN mayor (Friedrichshain/Kreuzberg).

Pirates
Apart from the fact that the Pirate Party went up to 8.9% from zero, let’s talk about some details:

• Lowest result in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf (considered to be rich and conversative) with 6.9%, highest result in Friedrichhain/Kreuzberg (considered to be hip, cool, square and groovy) with 14.7%. And in case you didn’t get that, let me state this clearly: the Pirates will be in all the district governments, since they reached 5% in every single district. I would have never expected that.
• 8.9% equals 130.000 people.
• The Pirates were able to steal away voters from all parties. Most of the voters came from the GREEN party, (17.000), the SPD (14.000), and the LEFT party (13.000). The majority of their voters, however, are people who voted OTHER parties (22.000) before, or didn’t vote at all (23.000). Especially the last point is something that makes this election special: getting people to vote who didn’t vote before (most probably because they did not feel represented by any party) is a pretty good thing, I guess. This is open to discussion, obviously, and highly speculative. But it is one of the most interesting facts about this election.
• About 50% of the Pirate voters decided within the last week before the elections.
• The Pirates themselves were overwhelmed by their success, and it looks like they do not have enough “politicians” (they didn’t have a single person who was on a salary before the elections) to fill in all the positions that they hold now.
• The correlation-coefficients between both young (18-30) and middle-aged (30-60) voters and the Pirate party are both above 0.50, and only negative for people above 60. Most people expected the Pirate party only to raise votes among very young people.

A friend of mine just said:

“I thought whether there are more children on this planet than people with disabilities. Because, well, everybody is upset about places being unaccessable for people with disabilities, and understandably so, but really: aren’t there way more places and things that are unaccessible for children?”

UPDATE 29.08.2011: Yesterday, Oscar Pistorius qualified for the 400 semi finals at the athletics world championships in Daegu. A sport-court had decided that his artificial carbon legs do not give him an unfair advantage compared to other runners.

UPDATE 17.05.2008: A few hours ago the CAS (basically a court for sports) decided that the prosthetic-limbed runner Oscar Pitorious will to be allowed to start at the “normal” Olympics in Peking this year (and not the Paralympics), if he is able to qualify by beating the time of 45.95 seconds for 400 metres (his record is 46.56 seconds so far). As you can read below, the IAAF decided in January 2008 that he had unfair advantages over other athletes and therefor denied him access to the Olympics; Pistorius appealed the decision and won.

–

Due to the massive number of doping reports in the last year, I had several discussions with friends about doping, drug-abuse and cyber-limbs in sports.

I think everyone would agree that tournaments (e.g. the Tour de France) should be as fair as possible in order to keep them interesting – which is one of the reasons why female do not compete versus male athletes (at least in disciplines where the body plays a key role), and which is one of the reasons why doping is not allowed in sports; you are not allowed to have an advantage over other athletes, because it makes the whole thing boring.

(Now, of course one could argue that sports per se isn’t fair, because Michael Jordan was born a better sportsman than me, but that’s just life I guess – on a statistical average, talking about sports worldwide here, we will find a bunch of athletes with the same physical conditions.)

A few days back Oscar Pistorius, a double-amputee sprinter, has been denied a shot at the Olympics … for being too fast. The runner — who uses carbon-fiber, prosthetic feet — was reviewed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (or IAAF), a review which found the combination of man and machine to be too much for its purely human competitors. According to the IAAF report, the “mechanical advantage of the blade in relation to the healthy ankle joint of an able bodied athlete is higher than 30-percent.” Additionally, Pistorius uses 25-percent less energy than average runners due to the artificial limbs, therefore giving him an unfair advantage on the track… or so they say. Oscar is expected to appeal the decision, saying a lack of variables explored by the single scientific study calls for deeper investigation into the matter.

The IAAF rule 144.2 prohibits:

(e) Use of any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides the user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device.

Read the rest of this entry »

Link of the day:
Cynical-C.com

A website listing “One star Amazon reviews of classic movies, music and literature.”

Catcher in the Rye:

I am very open minded when it comes to literature (I even read through Mein Kampf without any objection) but I just hated this book! If it wasn’t required reading, I would have stopped on the fourth page! I think Salinger could have done much better!

The old man and the sea:

I couldn’t have cared less what happened to the old man, the fish, the boat, or Ernest Hemmingway. It was a titanic struggle to get through the book–way harder than anything the old man had to face. James Joyce does stream of consciousness a whole lot better–and I hate Joyce’s writing too.

The riots in England continue. What is the reaction of the police, the state, the democracy?

Cameron considers to ban people from social media websites to “stop them communicating” (see also here).
China (!) applauds (see also: here).

“You know your internet censorship plans are too strict when China praises you for it.”
– zeropaid.com

Two young males (20 and 22) without criminal record are going to prison for four years. What did they do?

Jordan Blackshaw, 20, set up an “event” called Smash Down in Northwich Town for the night of 8 August on the social networking site but no one apart from the police, who were monitoring the page, turned up at the pre-arranged meeting point outside a McDonalds restaurant.
[...]
Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan [...] used his Facebook account in the early hours of 9 August to design a web page entitled The Warrington Riots. The court was told it caused a wave of panic in the town. When he woke up the following morning with a hangover, he removed the page and apologised, saying it had been a joke. His message was distributed to 400 Facebook contacts, but no rioting broke out as a result.
– The Guardian

Four years? Really?

There are considerations to introduce a curfew; in Birmingham pictures of rioters are being displayed on vans and driven around by police (“Dou you know this person?”).

Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaaim, Libya, stated:

“Cameron and his government must leave after the popular uprising against them and the violent repression of peaceful demonstrations by police [...]. Cameron and his government have lost all legitimacy. These demonstrations show that the British people reject this government which is trying to impose itself through force.”

Mugabe and several politicians in Iran made similar statements:

“A member of Iran’s parliament, Hossein Ebrahimi, told the semi-official Fars news agency that Britain should allow a delegation of human rights monitors to examine the situation.”

Rioting and stealing and looting is wrong. But there are reasons why you have thousands of people in the streets in England. Acting like China or Libya now will not solve problems, only create more.

EDIT: added the tag “dystopia” to this blog.

Imagine you are an alien race – and you make first contact. A small craft, with the name JUNO. Inside mostly electronics.

And then, suddenly, your exploring team finds three small and most peculiar figures, made of aluminium:

What would you think about these evil aliens?

Can you see the horrible tool the right alien is carrying? And what about the evil biological weapons the same alien has grown in his face? And what happened to the head-part of the left dude (that’s Galileo Galilei, in case you missed that)? Could he try to say “We’re gonna eat your planet for breakfast”? The others are Juno and Juptiter (where the probe is supposed to arrive 2016).

And this is not a joke – LEGO somehow managed to get the contract to model humans for the JUNO mission.

I should simply accept that I will most probably always find these things hilarious and enjoy them even more.

• The world’s most absurd warning signs and disclaimers
• Brilliantly smart-ass responses to completely well-meaning signs
• The 14 most hilariously effective signs supporting gay marriage
• The best obnoxious responses to misspellings on Facebook (not as funny as the others, but some of them are ok).

In the wonderful book “Alice in Wonderland” written by Lewis Carroll the Mad Hatter asks: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied. “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.

People have been speculating about a possible answer since, and if you trust Google, the question is up to day of great significance.

Straightdope collected a few answers that have been repeatedly given:

• Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes. (Puzzle maven Sam Loyd, 1914)
• Because Poe wrote on both. (Loyd again)
• Because there is a B in both and an N in neither. (Get it? Aldous Huxley, 1928)
• Because it slopes with a flap. (Cyril Pearson, undated)

Interestingly, Lewis Carroll himself tried to give an answer in the preface to the 1896 edition of his book:

“Enquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter’s Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, viz: ‘Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!’ This, however, is merely an afterthought; the Riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all.”