It’s funny to see that in a short span of time, a few centimetres can make a difference. This month, Austria authorised Niko Alm to wear a pasta strainer as “religious headgear” on his driving-licence ( BBC). This month too, Belgian law banned women from wearing the full Islamic veil in public ( BBC). Well, the Belgian law doesn’t exactly formally forbid the Islamic veil although it was often named as the “anti-burqa law”. The exact terms are: ...
Although its presence in Belgium is more discreet than China or other European countries (for obvious reasons in the latter case), India has always something to show in Belgium. I decided to put some (most of?) events related to India in Belgium in a calendar so everyone can be aware of them. Here you are: [googleapps domain=“www” dir=“calendar/embed” query=“height=350&wkst=2&hl=en_GB&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&src=09d2i9naunu5fpkm6sdeqsikvs%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%238D6F47&ctz=Europe%2FParis” width=“500” height=“350” /] ...
It doesn’t seem jolly but last Friday, it was the World Cancer Day. About this, the WHO set up a nice website about cancer control. Following my previous post on Jamie Oliver and the top 15 causes of death in the USA, I started to collect similar data from other countries. Linking this to cancers, the annual statistics on cancers in Belgium can be found on the Belgian Cancer Registry. The latest numbers are however from 2006. Here are the top 15 cancers in Belgium in 2006 (all sexes and regions mixed): ...
The October 14th, 2010 issue of Nature is obviously a good one. It had to be a good one! I usually advocate Open Access but it is always nice to reading complimentary issues of Nature which is Closed Access but is also publishing very good articles about science at the same time. In this issue, I was interested in various topics … First, there is a serie of articles about the US midterm elections and what (US) scientists feel about two years of Obama administration. Obama promised total transparency in American science, a new era of integrity and more freedom for scientists. From what I read, this isn’t the case yet. ...
Following this article (French), official phone eavesdroppings again increased in Belgium in 2009: Belgian police listened 5265 times to private conversations. The French transcript is here. One doesn’t get much more than these numbers: nothing about the number of hours spent listening, nothing about the percentage of effectiveness/results, nothing about internet eavesdropping (e-mail e.g.). One thing struck me: all requests for eavesdropping were accepted. Or, at least that what the Minister implied when he wrote “there is no distinction between the number of requests and the number of effective eavesdropping”.
Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights, is under way in India. But if you live in Belgium, there will be at least three occasions to celebrate! In Antwerpen, first, on October 29th, morning. Then in Leuven, on November 1st evening, organised by the association of Indian students in Leuven. Finally in Ghent, on November 3rd evening, organised by the Indo-Belgian Association of Ghent. Edit on November 1st: Bharatiya Samaj is also organising Diwali in Bruxelles on November 8th. ...
If you live in Belgium, you probably noticed a small bu zz about a database police is building about Belgian citizens and, more precisely, about the access control of this database. The “problem” is that this database already exists and it has a legal basis since … 1998 (10 years!). But mainstream media won’t tell you that (or I’m unaware of it). I don’t think there is a conspiracy. It’s just that, sadly, the current economic environment doesn’t leave much space for this kind of information. The Minister of Justice’s website has more info on this database and its content (excerpt of translation below): ...
I was writing the next version of my badge counting the number of days without Belgian government when Laurent added his comment requesting for a vertical version. You can see it on the right. Since the original release, I also added translation of the sentence in Dutch and German (after all, Belgians are speaking 3 official languages). And I approximately centered the text on the vertical version (I personally prefer the text on the right for the horizontal version but you can easily modify this by yourself). ...
Now it’s not a secret anymore: more than 148 days passed since we, Belgians, went to vote (it was on the 10th of June 2007) and we still don’t have any government! If you want to count the numbers of days without Belgian government, it’s easy: just have a look at Belgian newspapers. Or … have a look at the counter below (in French, Vlaams or German) ;-) ...
Quuxlabs is releasing the alpha version of GeoPolis, a web service to gather and show the ongoing police control. More info can be found on the project website and on the Quuxlabs blog. I made some comments regarding the service accuracy, automation, security and independence but I’ll be glad to use the service once I’ll be able to drive again. Btw, in the same topic – watching the watchdogs, my map of cameras in Liege (see announcement and update) is now located on the CCLV website. The database management is also handed over to them. Moreover Christophe Cattelain is now systematically taking photos of those cameras in Liege and he publishes them on Flickr …