Travesty of justice and statistics

In a development that boggles my mind, the U.S. court system is completely ignoring a basic tenet of statistics and (wrongly?) convicting people because of it. Police are running partial DNA samples through databases of millions of people, and claiming that the chances of anyone in the database matching is the same as the chance of one person matching. That's like saying that the chance that someone has hazel eyes is 1 in 20, so the chance that anyone in the world has hazel eyes is 1 in 20. A man was recently convicted of a 38-year-old rape-murder in San Francisco based on a degraded DNA sample. The jury was told only that the chance of a match was 1 in 1.1 million, and not that, given the size of the database, the chance of a random match was 1 in 3. The judge prevented the defense from challenging this number, and even from saying that the defendant was a suspect only because of this match. The Washington Monthly and LA Times have articles on it. The SF Chronicle apparently couldn't be bothered to do any research, just putting out the prosecutor's line. The Washington Monthly article even points out that someone was fingered using this technique for a crime she could not have committed, since she was in prison at the time. How the courts could so willfully misunderstand statistics, and how the FBI's scientists can have the gall to testify to false odds, really baffles and enrages me.

Lyon->Saint-Louis->BSL->SXF->TXL->CDG->ITM->KOJ

My friend suffers from being Russian. Mainly this manifests itself in soulful depression and occasional bouts of invading Georgia, but it's now causing him massive travel problems. He's currently on his way to Japan, via the above itinerary. His plan was to go to Berlin, settle some issues with his old landlord, then fly Berlin-Paris-Osaka-Kagoshima for a conference. Unfortunately, his Japanese visa only came through today, and his flight is tomorrow. From Berlin. As is bastardly policy, if you miss one leg of the trip, everything is canceled. So, while it's easy to get to Paris from Lyon, he had to get to Berlin. Moreover, while it's not clear, it seems possible that the university, which bought this ticket, might ask for its money from him if he misses the flight. There are no direct flights from Lyon to Berlin. He found a pretty cheap solution: take the train to Basel, fly Easyjet to Berlin, spend the night, and take his flight the next day. Unfortunately, the Basel airport is actually in French territory, and French air traffic controllers are on strike because there is a proposal to centralize European air traffic control. So his flight tonight was canceled. There's a flight early tomorrow morning, getting into Berlin at 8:40 am. His flight is at 9:55 from a different airport at least half an hour away. Online check-in not possible. The current plan is for his girlfriend (who lives in Berlin) to go to the other airport before him and attempt to check in at a kiosk, so that his boarding pass is ready even if the 9:25 check-in deadline has passed. He may also have to ditch his luggage, at the first airport if it's slow off the carousel, and probably at the second airport with his girlfriend in any case. Oh, and his phone is dead. And the flight to Berlin may be canceled. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion tomorrow!

Dreaming in French

I had a dream in French a few nights ago. This was supposed to be a big achievement. Thing is, though, there are different kinds of dreams. There are those weird dreams in which nothing makes much sense and it's clear that your brain is inventing everything. And there are stress dreams in which you dream about a situation before it happens because you're stressing about it. In this case, I hadn't yet made an appointment to see the doctor about my non-improving knee, so I dreamt that I was seeing her, and that I was reproaching her for not telling me to put my knee in a brace. Unfortunately, I didn't know the word for brace (attelle), and I wasn't thinking of the word for wrap, so my brain substituted "accrocher" (to hang) for "wrapping." Not what I think people mean when they talk about "dreaming in French." Things were slightly better a night or two later when I dreamt of saying "tu" to someone and then correcting myself and saying "vous." At least that was some weird dream. But I'm still making obvious grammatical errors, even in my own world.

Lyon taxis

Because of my knee, I've been taking a lot of taxis. I've learned recently that taxis in Lyon have a "minimum fare" of 6.10. I didn't believe it initially, but it's been confirmed by independent cabbies. However, 6.10 is not the initial fare on the meter, which makes the initial fare on the meter kind of silly. Why not just start with 6.10 and keep the meter constant for a while?

should i just had said "FIRST!!"?

One advantage of being up much earlier than everyone else is getting to comment before they get a chance. Thus, I was the first commenter for
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/disinflation/
I wrote a complimentary thing about how he was the most depressing voice since Cassandra, and then said "A minor typo -- *weak economy," because I'm anal like that. My comment was moderated for a while, and then when I check it now, I find that "week economy" has been corrected. Fine, I think. My comment was probably moderated out of existence, and he just changed the text. Fine. But then there are multiple comments just saying "weak not week"! All posted hours after mine! I want credit for my blog copy-editing!

security

It now takes a passport to go between Canada and the United States. This must cost an insane amount, in money and time. Wouldn't it be more efficient to establish a visa clearinghouse, where each country can screen the other's visa applications? Then anyone living in Canada would have a right to visit the U.S., and vice versa. No passport requirements anymore. It doesn't seem likely that it's easier to illegally immigrate into Canada, and since Canadian citizens can already legally enter the U.S. without a visa, requiring them to show a passport doesn't accomplish anything. The only reason for keeping the passport requirement is because the U.S. knows that its visa procedures are inadequate, so it might as well add on an extra layer of security where it can, even at the cost of millions of man-hours and dollars lost every year.

Unprofessional

From a New York Times article about the Michael Jackson doctor: "He is allowed to practice medicine, but cannot use anesthetics or otherwise put people under." And: "At least 24 television trucks and journalists yammering in a multitude of languages were awaiting his arrival . . ."

Put people under? Yammering? And this article already has a correction, so it's been mildly proofread. Standards, people!

nameplate

When I got back from my U.S. trip, I discovered that my crappy little pieces of paper with my name that were badly attached to my front door and my mailbox had been replaced by nice, standard plaques saying "J. RAMAKRISHNAN." This was supposed to happen shortly after I moved in, but it never did, and I never called the company in charge because from what I had understood, I would be charged for the name plate, and I figured why not let sleeping charges lie.

My two theories for this are that (a) the company finally put the name plates up, 1.5 years late, and I misunderstood that there was a charge, or (b) my downstairs neighbor, in an apology for having the fire department break my window, got me these plates during my absence and before her departure. Any other guesses?

Stealing

I saw that there were some grapes in the store today "sans pepins." I tried one (not allowed) -- not great, but I feel that I have to support seedless grapes in France, so I bought some. I tried some other grapes, also 5€/kilo, which were delicious. I shoved them all in the same plastic bag, and went to the register. The woman looked at the grapes and started to take one bunch out. I told her they were the same price, but she said she needed to ring them up separately. Then she informed me that the good grapes were 20€/kilo. I'm pretty sure she thought I was trying to steal them, as opposed to just being a dumb-ass who doesn't read the right sign.

Calling me for free (from the U.S.)

Because I signed up for an unreliable program called VoxOx, it appears that you can dial 818-495-2767 (an ordinary LA number), which will ring my cell phone in France. It appears to cost me $.02 per call, which is nothing. You can also send text messages to it, although I probably won't respond unless I'm near a computer, in which case why not gchat. You can also try calling my 415-680-3612 number, but it appears to have some problems forwarding to the 818 number. Go to it! But only between the hours of 5 am and 6 pm EST.