The Human Genome Project will tell us who to support at Eurovision

Later in life, my father used to make bizarre claims of Russian ancestry, which I put down to his Alzheimer's at the time. My dad was ethnically Jewish, while my mother was a sweary Scot with a strong and long family line in an embarrassingly proud clan. Enough to be reaching for a "Waving Away The Midges" emoji on Slack. But …

[Neil Barnes]

Surgically separated five percent?

Boasting? Or just five percent of your one percent?

[b0llchit]

Re: Surgically separated five percent?

You separate that unwanted percentage of your DNA body which is hate-worthy by current standards due to political and social problems in eastern Europe.

The all new CRISPR treatment will allow you to remove any and all DNA traces from lower standing origins and replace them with pur&cleen recycled DNA strands from good standing. Contact us for more information and an affordable offer.

[chivo243]

Re: Surgically separated five percent?

5 percent they're referring to, even though it was surgically separated from me while still an infant.

He's hung like a bear!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Surgically separated five percent?

> He's hung like a bear!!

They say we all have some Neanderthal in us, except in Dabbsy's case it's Homo Erectus.

[jake]

Re: Surgically separated five percent?

"He's hung like a bear!!"

It's possible. I have the baculum[0] of a 200 lb adult American black bear, from California. It is just under 5 inches long. Polar bears, at ~1100 lb typically run just under 7.5 inches.

[0] It's legal, a gift from a tribe here in Northern California when I got married.

[Pascal Monett]

Now that is one hell of a tale

Given that a "simple" paternity test costs €74, the fact that a DNA history test costs less is, to me, rather laughable, but let us pass on that detail.

What is hilarious (from the outside), is police including a swab-packing working in a list of suspects.

Well, it must have been a lot less fun for her the day the cops showed up convinced that she was a serial killer.

Somebody should make a TV film out of that.

[DeathStation 9000]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

There was a episode of CSI were that happened I seem to remember where they were picking up the DNA of a worker in the swab factory. Not that I get all my forensics knowledge from said source :-)

[My other car WAS an IAV Stryker]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

Similar episode: fingerprints from a set of costume gloves originally molded from the company owner's hands. Owner is found not guilty after they find other evidence.

Follow-up episode (probably a season or two later): said owner commits a major crime himself (murder, most likely) thinking that, due to the prior mix-up, he would get away with it. (Spoiler alert: he did not.)

[lglethal]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

The reason the paternity test costs more is simple, it has the "Baby Tax" applied. i.e. any product, no matter how distantly related, but which can be marketed as having anything to do with babies or young children has an immediate price increase of at least 100%, probably more.

As such, if the "paternity" test, which obviously relates to children and babies, was used for something like "adult sibling" testing, then that cost would be probably not much more then €20...

Yes I do have small Children, No I'm not bitter about always having to pay the Baby tax, why do you ask?

[Greybearded old scrote]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

If you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined.

Should have learned to put a hat on it mate.

[ShadowSystems]

At LGLethal, re: baby tax.

*Hands you an extra large tankard & clinks rims in commisseration*

Back when my kid was still in nappies & I was buying baby food for him, I checked the ingredients label on a jar of Gerber banana pudding. I thought they looked familiar so I went to the aisle where the store kept the pre-made snack packs for school lunches & grabbed a container of a different brand of banana pudding.

Sure enough the differences were in the amounts of each ingredient, as in $IngredientX was listed after $IngredientY, but the over all list was the same. Same ingredients, same content weight, just different packaging & price.

Where the school lunch snack package was a six pack for around $2USD, the Gerber baby food was a single jar for the same price.

I put the jar back, bought the snack pack, & fed that to my son instead.

Did the tyke notice? Yes, but only in that he seemed to enjoy creating even bigger messes with the non-Gerber stuff. *Sigh*

I hate the baby tax. It's enough to make you not want to have any more of them just so you can afford to retire sometime in your current lifespan. =-j

[Rusty Nutts]

Re: At LGLethal, re: baby tax.

Seeing mention of "Gerber" always brings back the memory of a friend who entered a slogan competition found next to his daily crossword puzzle in the newspaper many years ago. He was invited to complete the sentence "I use Gerber Baby Foods because....", and duly sent off his entry.

He later received a reply from Gerber stating "Thanks for your entry. You will understand that it cannot be accepted as a winner, but the office staff would like to express how much entertainment it gave us in the office."

"I use Gerber Baby Foods because there's a shade to match every carpet."

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: At LGLethal, re: baby tax.

"I hate the baby tax. It's enough to make you not want to have any more of them just so you can afford to retire sometime in your current lifespan. =-j"

In some parts of the world, "investing" in more babies is how you can afford to retire. If they are successful, they'll keep daddy in the style he'd like to become accustomed to :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: At LGLethal, re: baby tax.

Contract manufacturing at work!

My company manufactured and sold own-branded Paracetamol tablets.

The thing is, all Paracetamol BP tablets (unless they're Paracetamol with caffeine, or Paracetamol with Avocado extract, or Paracetamol with a hint of citrus and sprinkles*) are exactly the same. They have to be. It's the 'BP' part.

One time at a corporate event, we were asked for ideas to improve sales.

I pointed out that a lot of people bought Paracetamol, and since the generic items could be bought for as little as 16p a pack (and we manufactured them), reducing our (then) price of 80p per branded pack would improve sales of our own brand.

I was told by a senior manager that we supplied a 'premium product'.

I said: 'but how can it be a 'premium product' when it is - by Law - exactly the same as the generic ones? I got chewed out for arguing.

From memory, Paracetamol BP tablets consist of 500mg of Paracetamol, pre-gelled starch, and a bit of lubricant for the compressing process. I think the total weight of each tablet is around 600 or 650mg. You can't make that 'premium' unless you're ripping people off.

* I made those up.

[NATTtrash]

Re: At LGLethal, re: baby tax.

Well, we can always introduce a premium "slow release"!¹ Or a "quick release"!² And a "super quick release"!³ Or a "multi release"!⁴ And what about differentiated for only those very specific indications where this formulation is claimed to work best!⁵ You know, ranging from headaches to menstrual pains specifically?!⁶ In their own dedicated package!⁷ In varying package size amounts for user convenience!⁸ In a quick and easy application!⁹

^1-9 Data on file

[Warm Braw]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

I was "kindly" given one of these DNA-testing kits for a Christmas present some time back - costing roughly the same amount as the paternity test you linked.

I'm not keen on the idea of having my DNA on someone's database for their ultimate commercial exploitation, but you can't easily put that on a thank-you note so I submitted a sample. Registering online I was bombarded with options to "upgrade" the service at enormous additional cost to include searches for unwanted additionallost relatives and estimations of my likelihood of dying from myriad gruesome diseases, all of which I declined.

About 6 months later - fortunately it wasn't a paternity test - I was told the results were ready. Not particularly eagerly, I logged on to find out that ... I'm British. No further detail. Which I could have found out by looking in my passport which, coincidentally, cost around the same amount.

The genius of these "service" providers is that they're getting people to pay for the privilege of guilting their friends and relatives into providing free DNA samples for their commercial medical ambitions, generating more income from up-selling information that in retrospect people might find they would have preferred not to have known and offering almost nothing of value for the headline cost.

[Filippo]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

Maybe I'm a bad person, but If I got one of those as a gift, I'd just throw it away and then lie.

[yetanotheraoc]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

Just use Mr. Dabs's results, he even provided graphics.

[ShadowSystems]

At Warm Braw, re: the DNA test.

I couldn't write "You wasted your money, you wanker" on the thank you card, so I promised to submit a sample.

I just didn't say I would submit a sample of *MY* DNA. So I picked up my furry overlord, scratched her until she started purring, & swabbed her tongue.

The Ancestry.com results came back & gave me "my" DNA results. I was rather amused to discover I had Persian (Purrsian?) ancestry.

*Hands you a pint & clinks rims in toast*

Here's to fekkin' with their heads! =-D

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

Given that a "simple" paternity test costs €74, the fact that a DNA history test costs less is, to me, rather laughable

The paternity testing is basically "Could be and that applies to x% of the populations" or "Couldn't be" so, yes, fairly simple but if need be the lab would have to be prepared to stand over its results in court. It might also have to offer counselling. x should now be a lot smaller than when we used to do this with a selection of immune reactions and blood enzymes.

The ancestry type test is based on whatever percentage of the genome they managed to analyse. This is less than complete which explains why siblings, even identical twins, can end up with different "ancestries". It's then compared with the geographical areas most closely associated with various bits of the subset actually analysed. But a moment's thought will show that if people in N Europe can show up with various percentages of "Mediterranean" or whatever there isn't a clear cut Mediterranean genotype. "Mediterranean", "Baltic", "Celtic" or whatever are ill-defined results of human settlement and migration over thousands of years. There's also the issue of what percentage of the subject's genome is part of the geographical variation - the 98% gorilla isn't going to do so.

I suppose it's a good bit better than Madame Xavier with a crystal ball, a pendulum and a shrewd understanding of facial features and colouring can manage but on the whole I think the paternity test is better value for money, especially if they keep the results more confidential than the "ancestry" labs might be wont to do.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

"Mediterranean", "Baltic", "Celtic" or whatever are ill-defined results of human settlement and migration over thousands of years."

Brother in Law did one. Interestingly, it did pick up on the approximately correct %age of North American Native Peoples which we know of through the family history research my wife has done. Ditto on both the French and Italian ancestry we know about, ie added together as "Mediterranean".

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

How "simple" is that paternity test though?

To start with, let's talk about the sex chromosome, starting with the Y chromosome, which is pretty much conserved father to son (but not daughter, obviously). This will tell you the male family line, but how many individual DNA markers is it looking at on that chromosome? For a decent reliability, I'd expect it to be a fair number. After all, if you're only looking at one or two points on the Y chromosome, you could reasonably expect a large amount of the male population in an area to share those markers.

For daughters' you're talking about one two X chromosomes, passed from the father from their mother's line. Again, this is largely conserved down the maternal line, so isn't very diagnostic.

The other 22 pairs of chromosomes are "mix and match" with bits from both father and mother (not one chromosome from one and one from the other, or you'd be a clone of your siblings). A paternity (or maternity) test involves looking at specific markers which typically have a high level of variation between individuals, which will have two copies (one from the mother, and one from the father), and then matching them (or not) to the suspect sample. Whilst this might only look at a few dozen points in the DNA (markers), this will involve amplifying and analysing at least two (and preferably three) samples - the child's, the suspected parent, and the known parent (to eliminate their DNA, otherwise the statistical confidence of any match are correspondingly lower).

DNA ancestry kits, on the other hand, look at a number of specific points in the genome where genes are typically well conserved, but where there are variations in individual codons that are diagnostic enough to place them within broad populations. They'll typically be looking at dozens to a few hundred markers in every sample. They are only performing the amplification on one sample though.

When I did one of these a few years back, I think it cost around £90, and that was during a sale, so I'd question the assertion that paternity tests are more expensive. I suspect the cost of ancestry tests goes up as the number of markers they look at increases. The "cheap" ones are probably only looking at a handful of markers to give a very broad picture.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Now that is one hell of a tale

"Given that a "simple" paternity test costs €74, the fact that a DNA history test costs less is, to me, rather laughable, but let us pass on that detail."

Nope, I can't pass on it. I have to stick my oar in. A paternity test has legal implications and is done to a higher standard, possibly including "chain of evidence" handling, as compared to a "fun" ancestral check where the margin of error is probably much greater.

[Howard Sway]

For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

There are always the stats about how much they share with other species :

Gorilla 98.4%

Cat 90%

Slug 70%

Banana 60%

Bee 44%

Daffodil 25%

I mean, how can we be more like a banana than a bee?

[Neil Barnes]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

I mean, how can we be more like a banana than a bee?

Easy. We're not stripy.

[b0llchit]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

I mean, how can we be more like a banana than a bee?

A bee can fly, we cannot. A banana is never straight, so are we. A bee has stripes and a banana has one color, just like us. See, this superficial in depth comparison confirms our stronger relation with the banana than the bee.

[Dr_N]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

b0llchit> A banana is never straight

Did the Uk not have a big vote on the need for straight bananas?!

[b0llchit]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

Didn't most of you just bend over?

[Norman Nescio]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

Just try and send the item by international mail:

Bees: allowed ( Live creatures, insects and invertebrates )

Bananas: not allowed ( Perishable items (including flowers, fresh fruit, vegetables and frozen or chilled foodstuffs))

Humans: not allowed (although some have succeeded), probably comes under (Live animals and reptiles (including snakes, mice and rodents))

Therefore humans are like bananas: not allowed in international mail.

[ShadowSystems]

At Howard Sway, re: bananas.

That's easy. We're a-peel-ing! =-D

*Runs like hell*

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: At Howard Sway, re: bananas.

...and immediately does a prat-fall on a banana skin!

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

The figures from DNA tests are talking about how much of the whole genome is the same - this is a common misconception. They look at a relatively small number of very specific points that have a lot of variation amongst populations.

They're not looking at, for example, the highly conserved genes in mitochondria that all eukaryotic life shares, because they wouldn't be diagnostic (and they're looking at nuclear DNA, not mitochondrial DNA anyway, but that's moot).

There are quite a few genes that are concerned with the essential processes of life that are conserved amongst pretty much all complex life. Looking at any of these is not going to be diagnostic in any way, unless you're trying to work out whether you're an invertebrate or a fungus.

[ShadowSystems]

At Loyal Commenter, re: Fungus.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Can I be part fungus, too? I want to be a FunGuy! =-D

*Ducks & runs before you beat me with a clue*

[yetanotheraoc]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

"how can we be more like a banana than a bee?"

Simple. I eat a lot of bananas, I'm probably way more than 60% banana DNA. And I hardly ever eat bees.

[jake]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

"I mean, how can we be more like a banana than a bee?"

Well, bananas and humans are both known for concentrating radioactivity. Bees, not so much.

Bees are also quite cooperative, bananas and humans not so much.

[the Jim bloke]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

Whenever it comes up in conversation - which isnt often, for some reason, the ratios I use are..

98% of our genes are the same as chimpanzees, and 50% the same as lettuce.

I have no basis for these figures.

[Allan George Dyer]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

@the Jim bloke - "and 50% the same as lettuce"

and we know we get half our genes from each parent, so look carefully kids, which is a lettuce, your mother or your father?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

Lettuce/Lettice is a girls name, so most likely it will be mother. Although boys being given girls names at birth isn't unheard of. Eg Evelyn Waugh, Marion Morrison (aka John Wayne), or that well know Boy Named Sue.

Paris, because she's a girl with a boys name. (as in Paris, son of Priam in Troy)

[NATTtrash]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

There are always the stats about how much they share with other species :

You kind of forgot the other one we are extremely closely related to. Some times don't even need stats for that...

Science: The similarities between humans and pigs

So adding to that listing of percentages...

Human 99.9%

Neanderthal 99.7%

Chimps 98.8%

Gorilla 98.4%

Pig 98%

Orangutan 96.9%

[Spiracle]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

This can't be right - according to that first map Dabbs is 50% fish.

[jake]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

Nonsense. If you go back a glaciation event or two, that was all dry land.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

more like ~20%

https://lab.dessimoz.org/blog/2020/12/08/human-banana-orthologs

[Dr_N]

Swabbing cheeks with Finnish DNA contaminated swabs?

Ah well.

At least your turds were uncontaminated, Mr Dabbs.

(Or, were they ...... ?!?)

[Anonymous Coward]

1% finnish

Clearly due to a misunderstood comment in the spec meeting:

"Give the percentage estimated for each region until you're down to 1% or less left and that's the finish"

[tonique]

I can give my alleged one percent Papuan support in Eurovision when Papua New Guinea enters the ESC.

[BenDwire]

American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

USA folk will soon be all too aware of what the Eurovision Song Contest is all about, as for some unfathomable reason they've decided to do their own version.

Being from the UK, I have to admit that I stopped watching it sometime before Terry Wogan stopped being able to do the commentary. I mean, there's literally Nil No Point.

[Martin an gof]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

Thing is that Eurovision, and the Song Contest in particular, were really set up by engineers to encourage innovation and co-operation in broadcasting. Back In The Day getting a TV picture and high quality sound from one corner of Europe to every other corner of Europe was a technical feat, with distance and varying TV systems being just the most obvious of the hurdles to overcome. The singing and the competition aspect were secondary.

And then they solved (mostly) the technical issues by getting rid of analogue systems (boo!) and some people thought it was actually a competition!

M.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

High quality sound in the song contest?

[Richard 12]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

Back then there was a live orchestra!

[NATTtrash]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

Back then there was a live orchestra!

What is Lordi then?

...

Sorry...

Never mind...

[Neil Barnes]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

Lordi is a convenient marker, easily found in Wikipedia, to remind me of the date of my wedding.

Saves me having to remember it.

[jake]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

"The singing and the competition aspect were dreadful."

FTFY

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

I think I stopped watching it well before Terry Wogan started presenting it otherwise that would have been the last straw.

[TheProf]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

Not a fan of Wogan? That's at least two of us then.

[jake]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

The one useful thing the eurodrival pap contest did was drive me away from mainstream radio and into the arms of Radio Caroline, which lead me to John Peel and sanity.

[Martin an gof]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

lead me to John Peel and sanity.

John Peel's son has a programme on Radio 6 and his dad's library has recently been opened up, with this rather good article on BBC News.

M.

[BenDwire]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

Ah yes, pirate radio. The soundtrack to my youth.

But did you know that they are still broadcasting on http://radiocaroline.co.uk and they even have delayed streams to that USA folk can have the breakfast show at breakfast.

Do note that due to politics & infighting, radiocaroline.COM is not affiliated, but with them being pirates what should we expect?

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

What about Emma Peel?

[Hero Protagonist]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

Ooh, you’ve just hit on how humans are more like bananas than like bees (per another thread in this comment section) — we both have Peels!

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

"USA folk will soon be all too aware of what the Eurovision Song Contest is all about, as for some unfathomable reason they've decided to do their own version."

OMG! From the outset, you just know it'll be a DEM/REP rivalry fest!! If anyone thinks the European political voting is a mess, just wait until this show starts up LOL.

Fake votes! Dead people voting! Re-count!!! (says Nellie the elephant)

[Potemkine!]

Melting pot

People from the British Isles and from western Europe share some common history, among them Viking invasions between the IX-th and XI-th century. Maybe some of them were coming from Finland?

[jake]

Re: Melting pot

The Finns were traders, and undoubtedly some individuals joined their Scandinavian neighbors on voyages, but as a whole the Finns were mostly homebodies.

The article linked by the OP has far too many inaccuracies to list here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Melting pot

People from the British Isles and from western Europe share some common history

The Scandinavian peoples have a long history of invading or settling in the British Isles - the Anglo-Saxons (Angles, Saxons & Jutes) settled after the Romans left in the 5th century, notoriously the Vikings had a penchant for invasion from the 9th Century onwards, followed even more famously by the Normans in 1066 (who were Vikings granted lands in present day Normandy by the Franks in return for leaving them alone - think 'Norse Man' for the derivation.)

Vikings from eastern Scandinavia tended to head east rather than west - the Rus Vikings (literally 'the rowers') gave their name to the home country of certain Slavic Terror Bastard who seems to be in the news a lot at the moment for some reason.

[Lars]

Re: Melting pot

What you are looking for is the Rurik dynasty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik_dynasty

And.

The Varangians, was the name given by Eastern Romans to Vikings, mostly Swedes. Between the 9th and 11th centuries, Varangians ruled the medieval state of Kievan Rus', settled among many territories of modern Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, and....

[Charlie Clark]

Statistical risks of inverse association

IIRC the geographical indications are associated with the location of people who with similar DNA who have also been sampled. This immediately introduces bias because the survey is not geographically uniform and the bias is probably greater than the margin of error.

Anyway, it's Friday and I can't believe I've taken time off drinking to think about statistics. Kippas!

[Andy A]

Re: Statistical risks of inverse association

Indeed. Note that it is the current locations of those being tested which reaches the databases, not the places the ancestor came from.

Stalin infamously deported entire populations, something that his successor appears to be trying at present.

[Anonymous Coward]

overshot

"every Eurovision entry this year is desperately trying to sound Eastern European in order to win more votes"

Up next: Vladimir Ivanov.

Too far East, too far!

[Lars]

I suppose

Alistair doesn't know about that one Finn who travelled the world then long ago, very successfully.

And as Lordi in 2006 was mentioned perhaps Rasmus and Jezebel this year then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtMfCf3vFbc

[ShadowSystems]

At Doctor Syntax, re: twins.

I have a set of cousins whom are fraternal twins. Their father is related to me, their mother is not. That entire family did the Ancestry.com geneology thing (and were the givers of the DNA test in my post to Warm Braw).

It was a bit odd when the results came back & claimed that the twins, whom we're completely sure have the exact same parents given that they are, you know, *twins*, were of different genelogical family trees. One twin (the boy) was supposedly of African descent, the other (his sister) of East Indian. Yet their parents correctly came back as NorthEastern European.

O.o? *Shakes head as if to clear water from the ears* o.O? WTF?

It's "results" like that which made me glad I didn't submit my own DNA for testing, they probably would have tried to claim I came from Elbonian ancestors or some other bollocks. =-/

[Tom 7]

My dad was an arch racist

and spent a lot of his time tracing his family line back the the 13thC (probably Norman) and my mums back far enough to discover some sheep stealing which pleased him far to much. He also devote a huge amount of time to the Geneology of the British people and alas died before he finished a rather comprehensive book covering blood groups, place names and a huge amount of historical facts thrown in. I've got the text but not the associated maps and pictures to go with it.

What I can say is its very likely the author does have Finish ancestry - they were part of the Vikings invasion, and introduced not only their genes but ones they imported from all over Europe, Turkey and North Africa. Its also worth remembering the Normans were in fact Vikings who settled Normandy and it seems it was only when they came to the UK that they decided to try and avoid breeding with the locals for a couple of hundred years or so and establish the poisonous class system which still infests the place.

[Lars]

Re: My dad was an arch racist

@Tom 7

You must be kidding, I am sure you know that more or less every country was able to get rid of the class system but the British. And that, no doubt, is your own fault as you have created a political system so perfect to preserve it. World leading in that respect indeed. A two party system kept in place with fptp for ever.

No, I think you can, for once, take the credit yourself without blushing.

And then you claim the Vikings tried to avoid breeding with the locals, but what you clearly have omitted is that the local girls did not.

Learn about the "British Burned the Danes on Saint Brice's Day in a Church" from this very academic and straightforward narrative. Having a bath once a week was lethal in England.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaGKdkgTGRs

I don't think anything has much changed, is not the goal of Brexit also to preserve the British cunt from any contact with a foreign penis.

Michael Moore made an interesting program "Where to Invade Next" where he looks at different European countries including Norway and how they treat prisoners in a very humane way.

Norwegian Prison - Michael Moore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IepJqxRCZY

But in an introduction he ponders about how that bloodthirsty Viking has changed like this, but I am fully convinced the Nordics were more democratic and decent than Britain more than a thousand years ago, like today.

I have used this icon as I am a very polite Nordic and I think you should have used it too if for other reasons.

[Manolo]

Identified, but not "cornered"

"eventually cornering the suspect"

No, that didn't happen according to the article you link to.

Sounds more exciting though.

https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article3574740/Phantom-DNA-stammt-von-71-jaehriger-Polin.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love the tale of the DNA swabs and the factory worker. Police work at it's finest, and only at a cost of how much over how many years?

I guess even the police can be subject to following fads and the ever popular "silver bullet" theory that this Latest and Greatest Technology will Solve All Our Woes!

Happens all the time in computing, but after enough time in the trenches, you realize all the "silver bullets" are just plain copper-clad lead and still don't do squat if you can't aim your computing weapons.

[John Brown (no body)]

ISTR an anti-virus package back in the DOS days called Silver Bullet. (Dr Solomans Silver Bullet seems to ring a bell)

[KBeee]

Bit like the police in Ireland looking for the Worlds Worst driver, Prawo Jazdy, who'd commited hundreds of driving offences all over Ireland.

Untill it was pointed out to them that Prawo Jazdy is Polish for Driving License.

[Zolko]

Gotta love the tale of the DNA swabs and the factory worker

this is the same story as the photomaton repair man in the film "Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain ". Apparently based on a true story by Michel Folco.

Where is the romantic rainbow-colored unicorn logo ?

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Je t'aime...

How about a cover version featuring Mme Dabbs with Monsieur Dabbs picking up Jane Birkin's vocals?

[jake]

Re: Je t'aime...

Out of curiosity, would you expect it to be better or worse than the original?

Personally, my answer to that question would be an unequivocal "Mu!".