Cops Don't Shoot People, Guns Do

Eric Crampton:

I'm a fan of the right to keep and bear arms. But I prefer unarmed police and restricted gun rights to strong gun rights combined with a police force that regularly shoots civilians 'by accident'.

This is in the context of a discussion that uses the U.S. as an example of a country where cops bear arms as a default and New Zealand as an example of a country where they don't. The danger of police carrying guns is readily apparent given recent events and discussions about them in the U.S.: if they have guns, cops might use them all too often. I'm guessing a comparison of death by cop statistics between New Zealand and the U.S. would support that view.

But there's another important variable: the availability of guns to citizens. Apparently (based on information in the thread I link to above), it is pretty limited in NZ, whereas in some U.S. states, any Tom, Dick and Harry can buy a gun. Let me submit the theory that this is what really counts. I'm basing this view on a third data point: Germany. Here, cops routinely carry guns. If you play your music too loud at 10.01 p.m., the cops you'll find knocking on your door will be carrying fully loaded pistols. And yet, in 2011, police fired only 85 bullets while on duty (presumably not counting training), of which 49 were warning shots and 36 aimed at people; 15 people were injured and 6 killed. The numbers for 2010 were 96, 59, 37, 17 and 7, respectively.

Let me wildly generalize from that small heap of data and assumptions: When the probability is high that the other person has a gun, police will be quick to shoot. Part of this is split-second rational(ish) decision making, but there is also a wider institutional context in which this occurs - such as police guidelines about when to shoot and where to aim. The way to reduce police killings of citizens is hence to make it hard for citizens to bear arms.

Pebbles, Vol. 41

1. What was it like to be Vladimir Nabokov's research assistant? (Edward Jay Epstein) (via)

2. Ist Gewalt gegen Polizisten wirklich angestiegen? (Friederike Haupt) (HT: Christian)

3. "Accused of being gay, Spanish priest challenges Church to measure his anus" (Barry Duke)

4. The history of Pulp Fiction (Mark Seal) (via)

5. Pictures of the old main library of Cincinnati:

Around the Blogs, Vol. 91

Is openness to experience responsive to environmental conditions? (Gwern)

All hail Wisconsin! (Tyler Cowen)

The Metamorphosis (elevator pitch) (Andrew Hammel)

How much do economists really agree? (Dan Klein)

"The average middle-class American is driven about 90% by a desire for more money, and most of these people will come right out and tell you that. A similarly-situated German will be motivated 40% by money, 20% by job security, and 40% by the desire for officially-bestowed, external signs of high social status -- especially involving education or heredity. However, they will only admit the desire for job security, and will half-heartedly deny or rationalize the other motivations." (Andrew Hammel)

Innovation: Do incentives play a noteworthy role? (Tyler Cowen)

Note to journalists: Asking expert can help get stuff right. Assuming that's what you're after. (Jason Kottke)

How to be persuasive (Eric S. Raymond)

Now that's what I call paternalism! (Jason Kottke/Laura June)

True Scotsmen, All

John Althouse Cohen highlights some portions of the recent report on US drone strikes in Pakistan (which I haven't read in full). Some highlights from the highlights:

[F]rom June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individuals.

The following is particularly nifty:

[T]he US government counts all adult males killed by strikes as “militants,” absent exonerating evidence.

But fear not. Killings are based on The Scientific Method:

When President Bush left office in January 2009, the US had carried out at least 45 drone strikes according to the New America Foundation, or 52 according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), inside Pakistan. Since then, President Obama has reportedly carried out more than five times that number: 292 strikes in just over three and a half years. [...] Under Obama, the program expanded to include far more “profile” or so-called “signature” strikes based on a “pattern of life” analysis. According to US authorities, these strikes target “groups of men who bear certain signatures, or defining characteristics associated with terrorist activity, but whose identities aren’t known.” Just what those “defining characteristics” are has never been made public. In 2012, the New York Times paraphrased a view shared by several officials that “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.”

Four years ago, people in the US wondered why everyone in Europe seemed to love Obama so much. I can't say much about other countries, but for Germany, the case seems quite clear - Obama managed to position himself as the anti-Bush, a winning move given the extreme dislike for Bush in this country. When you look at Obama's actual foreign policy record today, he doesn't seem all that different. But, hey, his looks and diction are much, much more cultured. Oh, and he's black, which means he's one of the good guys, absent damning evidence. So who cares about dead civilians? 

Well, at least he's a more worthy Nobel Peace Prize winner than Henry Kissinger.

Hansi Mourinho-Tajfel

So, the festivities have begun, and Hansi Flick gave journalists something to write about:

The Germany assistant coach Hansi Flick has apologised for saying his players would need steel helmets for protection against Cristiano Ronaldo's free-kicks.

The comment made earlier on Friday before the team's departure for Lviv caused a stir in Germany due to its military connotations.

[...]

Flick had replied "I think just steel helmets and to make themselves big" when asked how Germany planned to deal with free-kicks from Portugal's Ronaldo in their opening Group B game in Lviv on Saturday.

Ugh, and this year's championships are held in Poland and Ukraine. Yeah, I know, the German army ran riot almost everywhere you could hold a European championship, but I guess in Poland and Ukraine such a statement is a little trickier than in, say, France or Belgium.

So, why? One answer is that, yes, that Ronaldo guy has an eminently hard shot and you might wish for a helmet should the ball come your way. Couple that with the fact that this whole fashion of being sensitive towards other people's feelings never really caught on in football - a dressing room's not a sociology seminar - and you can see how Flick might spontaneously come up with a wording that turns out to be not all that wise. (As you might have guessed, he has already apologized.)

On the other hand, the way the role is interpreted in the current German national team setup, talking to the press is one of the main responsibilities of the "assistant coach". And Flick, while not a major player in German intellectual life, doesn't strike me as an idiot. Are we really supposed to believe that was a gaffe?

Here's a more interesting theory. Ever since 2006, everybody's been saying what a likable, multicultural, attractively playing team Germany are. Also, Germany have won absolutely nothing since 1996, despite being among the favourites due to the quality of the players in recent years. There's a feeling that it's about time.

What to do? Look to the past! Between 1980 and 1996, everybody in world football associated the following terms with the German national team: great stamina, ruthless, never-say-die, efficient, destructive, The Tanks. They won two European and on World Cup. 

Which is better, being liked and losing or being hated and winning? Decisions, decisions!

So I say Flick's comment is an attempt to use Mourniho's favourite public relations tactic: conjure up some hatred for the team, which, in turn, may be expected to cause the players to circle the wagons and put in that extra little bit of nitty-gritty which comes in handy when the other side are also excellent in terms of technical abilities and tactics.

Will it work? In a few hours, we'll know a little more.

Around the Blogs, Vol. 80

1. Weird views traced to the idea that an object's value is inherent in the object (Katja Grace) 


2. Towards a theory of external validity (Christian Jarrett/Gregory Mitchell) 


3. Economics in ten sentences (David Henderson) 


4. The hypothesis that sonograms may cause autism: one, two (Seth Roberts) 


5. Netflix never implemented the algorithm that won the Netflix challenge (Mike Masnick) 


6. "It is just a handy cheat sheet to use when a certain (blessedly rare) kind of pompous, overbearing German launches into an anti-American tirade." (Andrew Hammel)

Around the Blogs, Vol. 77: Fun & Numbers

1. It appears Pauline Kael was not as ignorant about sampling as is commonly stated. (Charles Murray)

2. Germans out-Germaning themselves (Davin O'Dwyer)

3. The world's most informative pie chart, brought to us by Kaiser Fung. The whole blog's quite infotaining, if this is your type of thing.

4. DIYization fosters innovation (Seth Roberts). You could build a research programme on this idea.

5. Fun fact about WWII (Greg Chochran)

Pebbles, Vol. 35

1. "The asymmetric nature of the bonus (an incentive for success without a corresponding disincentive for failure) causes hidden risks to accumulate in the financial system and become a catalyst for disaster."

2. Is Julian Assange a force for freedom?

3. Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world?

4. For those who think Germans don't have a sense of humour. (via)

5. "It's Time to End the War on Salt?"

6. South African football team misses out on the African Cup of Nations due to misreading the qualifiers rules. Coach: "Africa is a jungle, my friend." Uh-oh.

7. Return of the Jedi never made any profit

8. "Bread and Peace": A very simple model of U.S. presidential elections

Some Speculation on Supermarkets

The US grocery chain Trader Joe's stocks only few items, according to this article by Beth Kowitt on the CNN Money site. Eric Crampton links and suggests - he's not quite explicit about it - that this is in reaction to the purported fact that too much choice can make people worse off, which is sometimes referred to as The Paradox of Choice. (I seem to recall recent research calling the earlier findings on this in question.)

The article also mentions that concentrating on a few items keeps costs for logistics down, which sounds like a more straightforward reason. But there's a third candidate. As the article mentions, Trader Joe's is owned by German supermarket giant Aldi Nord, and the piece makes the business model sound very much like a decidedly upscale version of Aldi. Their original discount stores here in Germany have a smaller selection of products than even the other discount supermarket chains (Penny Markt and Lidl). Long ago, I read an article which explained this as follows: What's Aldi known for? Low prices. How can you make money while selling at low prices? Mainly by buying at low prices. How do you put pressure on companies to give you low prices? Threaten to kick their products off your shelves. How do you make that threat credible? By acting on it from time to time. Basic game theory, really.

Result: There are some very popular products you just can't get at Aldi. Like the markets' unappealing looks and the long queues, nonavailability of these products is the nonfinancial price you pay for the low pecuniary prices. Many people are happy to make that tradeoff. Apparently, Germans are known in the international industry as being extremely price sensitive specifically when buying in supermarkets. If you have a kiloton of bruised peaches just mark 'em down and send 'em to the Krauts; they'll eat anything. (Anecdotal evidence confirms this.)*

This, while I'm at it, brings me to my one-factor theory of why Wal-Mart didn't make it in Germany. Apparently there are some complex managerial-organizational reasons, but as a consumer, let me say the following: They came over here trumpeting their low-low prices in each of their rather numerous ads. Then I went to one of their supermarkets and the prices weren't actually low, not by German standards. Meanwhile, the place looked like they should have been.

That's it. That's the theory. Good night.
______
*I have a feeling that somehow came out wrong. Did I say "came"? Oh god!

You Can See Where Freud Was Coming from

Hey, I've got a very learned post coming up about gender differences, causality and scientific methods. Once I get round to it. In the meantime, more weird videos.

So, here's what a friend of mine got for her birthday yesterday. It's called the Kackel-Dackel:



Before anyone gets funny ideas, no, I don't have underage "friends", it's just that people I know are very immature.

Anyway, Andrew Hammel, an American in Germany, might see this as another piece of evidence for his view that there is a "harrowing frankness about bodily functions displayed in Germany." However, the Dutch have the same thing; there it's called Takkie Kakkie:



Plus, there's Snotty Snotter:



I don't think I'll be rushing over the German-Dutch border to get my Snotty any time soon, but it certainly seems preferrable to the American alternative.

The German Idea of Fun

Pointer: Drek

Stille Post

At Language Log, Geoffrey Pullum points out that the headline's thesis of Jason Wire's article "20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World" is pretty much defeated by the body of his text. Pullum provides a handy table of the words, including "in each case a translation (derived from what Jason himself supplies in his article)" and points out that the term translatable does not imply using the exact same number of words. Let me note in passing that every language, just like Yagan, should have a single word for "meaningful look between two people each reluctant to be the initiator" and move on to criticize Pullum's two entries from German, Torschlusspanik and the inevitable Schadenfreude.

Pullum translates Schadenfreude as "glee at another's misfortune". That's fine as a paraphrase, but in my humble experience, the English term for Schadenfreude is schadenfreude (335,000 Google results for English-language pages only). Sure, you might object that English simply imported the German term, but certainly a linguist like Pullum wouldn't want to argue that Germans don't have a single term for e-mail? (My attempts, inspired by Finnish, to replace the English-based term with the properly Teutonic Blitzbrief for a specific e-mail and Blitzpost for the phenomenon more generally were met by the community of German speakers with blank indifference.)

According to the table, Torschlusspanik translates as "gate-closing panic as age begins to close off opportunities". You may or may not accept this as an accurate paraphrase of the meaning as given in Pullum's source, which is: 'Translated literally, this word means “gate-closing panic,” but its contextual meaning refers to “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages.” (Altalang.com)' Both of these strike me as inaccurately specific - Torschlusspanik refers to worries due to any type of situation in which time is running out. If we click on the link given, we find a less incorrect description:'this word literally means “gate-closing panic” and is used to describe the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages. This word is most frequently applied to women who race the “biological clock” to wed and bear children.' The phrase "is used to describe" is literally correct, but probably the source of the inaccurate paraphrases on the other pages. And I'm not sure about the "most frequently applied" bit.

If this post gave you a Jieper for "more, more, more", you ought to check out Andrew Hammel's amusing and informative German Word of the Week series, in which he covers the really-tough-to-explain stuff like lichterloh (with discussion), the bizarre & obscure like Touristenblutwurst, as well as the beautiful & evocative like Karteileiche.

P.S.: Stille Post = Chinese whispers

Comfort

As the Daily Mail wrote on the morning of the 1966 World Cup final day:

West Germany may beat us at our national sport today, but that would be only fair. We beat them twice at theirs.

And England won that match, too!

Match Preview: England v Germany, with a Look at the English Tabloids

Yes, I'm looking forward to the match itself, but when I learned that Germany would play England in the World Cup's round of the last sixteen (for which, incidentally, German has a proper word, Achtelfinale), I thought reading the English tabloids ahead of the match might be more fun than watching the actual football. Ever since I can think, these occasions have been greeted by the lowly portions of the English press with superjingoistic war rhetoric. (Their German counterparts, meanwhile, have nothing similar on offer. Which suggests that winning a war and then losing a few football matches leaves your ego more vulnerable and insecure than the opposite sequence of events. One should think it's the other way around. Also see below.)

Alas, if their tabloids are anything to go by, it seems the English are not in good shape ahead of tomorrow's clash. Yes, according to the Guardian, a publication called Daily Star, the existence of which I was not aware of, employed a team of world-class copywriters and poets to come up with this masterpiece: "ROON: I'LL BLITZ FRITZ". For those who don't get the context, the paper helpfully explains: "It's War!"

Yes, The Sun shouts "GERM WARFARE" - a term which, however, the paper seems to apply not exclusively to tomorrow's match, but to Germany's entire campaign, including the booking of a hotel that's nicer than the one England got - which naturally brought back towel-themed memories in the tabloid journalists.

But that's it. Even The Daily Mail has gone all schmoozy on Germany.

This whole war rhethoric is a bit bewildering from a German standpoint, because (a) by and large, we're a bit more cautious with respect to that kind of imagery here, for the obvious reasons, (b) many Germans are surprised to find that the English think there is a major footballing rivalry between the two countries. The reality is that, while England may have a rivalry with Germany, Germany has no rivalry with England. Nor was Mozart obsessed with Salieri.

Mozart, Salieri - I'm referring to the national sides' showings during the last few decades, of course. (Remember that Salieri was a pretty competent composer.) The current sides are about equally average, which suggests a close match. Perhaps it'll go to penalities?

While Germany in general have no footballing rivalry with England, the same is not true of me personally. I watched Germany's defeat to Croatia in the 1998 World Cup quarterfinals in a Cambridge pub (The Locomotive, if I remember correctly), and I've been bitter ever since. So let's hope it'll go to penalties.

My First Model of Resignations

It's a bit like a conspiracy theory, only without the conspiracy

Out of the blue, German President Horst Köhler resigned yesterday (all emphases mine):

President Horst Köhler of Germany resigned Monday amid a barrage of criticism for remarks he made during a visit to Afghanistan.

It was the first time in four decades that a German president has quit the post, the nation’s highest even though it is largely ceremonial.

Mr. Köhler set off the criticism when he said in an interview with Deutschland Radio, the public broadcasting station, that German soldiers serving in Afghanistan or with other peacekeeping missions were deployed to protect German economic interests.

His resignation was another blow for Chancellor Angela Merkel [...]

“I was very surprised,” Mrs. Merkel said. “We had had a very good cooperation. [...]”

In the radio interview, which was conducted on May 22, Mr. Köhler, a former director of the International Monetary Fund, emphasized the importance of the nation’s economy.

“A country of our size,” he said, “with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests, for example, when it comes to trade routes, for example, when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes.”

In a short resignation statement delivered alongside his wife, Eva Luise, he said he regretted his remarks and the way he said they were misunderstood. He said he could not remain in office in the face of such intense criticism and loss of confidence.

“I regret that my comments in an important and difficult question for our nation were able to lead to misunderstandings,” Mr. Köhler said.

He complained that some critics had suggested he supported military “missions that are not covered by the Constitution.”

“This criticism lacks any basis,” he said. “It also is lacking in the necessary respect for the presidential office.”

He added, “It was an honor to serve Germany as federal president,” then walked off without taking questions.

Everybody goes, "huh?", but I guess this is explained well by my first model of resignations. Here it is: Don't believe what they say.

First, let's distinguish two kinds of resignations: 1. The unforced ones in which an individual resigns because he wants to. Köhler's appears to be an example of this. 2. The forced ones in which an individual "resigns" before s/he is pushed out by those who have the power to do so.

My first model of resignations works for both of those cases.

A German president doesn't just resign. So Köhler can hardly go and say: "You know what, people? I've worked quite a bit throughout my life and I've come to the conclusion that now I'd rather scratch my balls and watch the telly all day long. Oh, we've got a World Cup coming up, you know? I've already ordered my beer supply." Much better to come up with some nonsense about "respect for the presidential office". What I'm trying to say is that the list of reasons considered "proper" for unforced resignations is short and the list of human motivations is long. Go figure.

In the case of forced resignations, things look similar. For example, in the current climate in US academia, it is acceptable for pushing out a president of a university for suggesting there might be biological contributions to differences in average achievements between the sexes. It is not acceptable to push him out for asking popular African-American university employees what they actually do all day to justify their nonmeagre salaries.

My second model of resignations: Believe what they say. That should have everything covered.

The Daily Mail: The Measured Assessment

Warning: Features deviance, ugliness and plain old blasphemy

Pro:

The Daily Mail gives us "Binge Britain 1904: The rogues' gallery that shows war on booze is nothing new"*:

Angry, bewildered and shame-faced these Edwardian drunks stare into the lens of the police camera.

They were 'habitual drunkards' whose offences included being caught while in charge of a horse, carriage and even a steam engine.

Issued a century ago, the drunks were given the equivalent of modern-day Asbos in that they were banned from being served in pubs because of their past behaviour.

Information was compiled by the Watch Committee of the City of Birmingham, which was set up by the police to enforce the Licensing Act of 1902.

The act was passed in an attempt to deal with public drunks, giving police the power to apprehend those found drunk in any public place and unable to take care of themselves.

I recommend the article, featuring lots of photos from the "rogues' gallery", to fans of ugliness, the bizarre, and takíng delight in the misfortune that others brought upon themselves. Features Mick Jagger's grandma, a woodchopper and prostitute.

Con:

Dan and Dan take a Dylanesque look at Daily Mail front page headlines:




P.S.:

How lame is it to simply repost stuff previously featured by other bloggers? Pretty lame. Ah, time constraints! But, believe it or not, I'm actually in the process of reading an academic paper to blog about it for your reading pleasure (though it appears it is not as interesting as I thought it would be, so don't expect too much). Hope to get it out during the four-day near-complete shutdown of Germany that started today. "Near-complete shutdown"? Well, though the ban on dancing and football will be lifted come midnight and there ought to be a thirteen-hour period tomorrow during which it should be possible to buy food, there also seems to be a law that anything resembling a library must be closed for the full four days. Blessed are the udder-exploiting companies, for they will expand. Blessed are the gluttons for they will do likewise. Fucked are the eggheads for they will sit bookless in the ever-expanding shadows of the obese. Thank you, messiah butterboy!

______
*Given the British tabloids' approach to the use of the return key, I find it somewhat ironic that it was Englishmen who tried to teach me the unconditional rule that "a paragraph has more than one sentence".

Around the Blogs, Vol. 42: Funny Stuff

1. A rant against Frankfurt/Main Airport. Before drawing conclusions about Germans in general, be informed that if unfriendliness were a penis, Frankfurt would be Germany's John Holmes.

2. Egalitarianism taken to extremes. What would Greg Mankiw say?

3. Pimp my write

The CoR's Get Rich (But Not Quickly, and You'll Have to Work for It, too) Scheme

Film week post #3

There even is a word for it in German: Ostalgie, a blend of Ost (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia), denoting the sentiment that somehow everything was better back then, when the party told us what to think. It has ebbed off now, but during the late 1990s/early 2000s, there was an outright mainstream fashion surrounding that view. I'm talking saturday night entertainment shows revolving around the eastern-style Ampelmännchen and Rotkäppchen sparkling. (Ironically enough, the GDR-style Ampelmännchen is alive and well in the eastern parts of Germany, as are those traditional east German products people really want. The latter is due to a thing we have called supply and demand.)

This trend didn't go down well with everybody. Some pointed out that, after all, the GDR had been a dictatorship, with well one hundred thousand people employed by the secret police. One commenter remarked that he was looking forward for the TV shows on how swell life was in the Third Reich.

The 1999 comedy Sonnenallee was sometimes seen as a part of the ostalgie fad. From Wikipedia's plot synopsis:

Michael (or 'Micha') is a 17-year-old growing up in communist East Germany (GDR) in the 1970s. He spends his time with his friends listening to banned pop music, partying and trying to win over the heart of Miriam, who is dating a West Berlin boy. Over the course of the movie his best friend Mario, falls for an existentialist, gets kicked out of school and subsequently discovers he is going to be a father. The closing of the movie upsets Micha's thus far idealistic life, as Mario sells out his ideals by signing up for military service to support his girlfriend and the child.

Sonnenallee and Goodbye Lenin, another lighthearted GDR-themed comedy, were criticized for being part of the retrospective glorification of the east German dictatorship, and when Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) was released, many breathed a sigh of relief: The movie, which chronicles secret police employee Gerd Wiesler's second thoughts about the morality of his actions while surveilling a playwright, finally displayed the GDR's ugly side.

But what's wrong with Sonnenallee? Did youths in east Germany have friends? Check. Were they into pop music? Check. Did they fall in love? Check. Did some get kicked out of school? Check. Did some of them become fathers at an early age? Check. The most inaccurate bit about the film is probably the Sonnenallee street's architecture. Why not set a film in a dictatorship but focus on aspects of life other than state oppression?

But I say let's go all the way with this: Let's have a film set in, say, 1935, in which the atrocities of the Hitler regime don't feature. I'm not being sarcastic here. Did youths in Hitler's Germany have friends? Check. Were they into pop music? Check (although they didn't call it pop music back then). Did they fall in love? Check. Did some get kicked out of school? Check. Did some of them become fathers at an early age? Check. If, for convenience's sake, you'd set it in a place where there are no Jews in the first place (rural Bavaria?), you should be able to make a nice coming-of-age comedy without ever lying about life in the Third Reich.

I mean, there's no such thing as bad publicity, is there? And boy, would you stir up a controversy! I'm talking prime time discussion rounds with pundits, film critics and professors of history. Cover stories in Spiegel and Stern. And as a minority but sizeable portion of the German populace likes getting information before forming an opinion, you'd almost be guaranteed a million viewers, even if your film is crap.

When the dosh is in, contact me by mail for bank details.

Höhepunkte des Deutschen Politikjournalismus

[19.55] Und was sagt Barack?

ARD-Mann Ulrich Deppendorf fragt die USA-Korrespondentin Hanni Hüsch, wie denn in Amerika die Kommentare zur deutschen Wahl lauten. "Es gibt noch keine", sagt Hüsch.

Aus dem Wahl-Liveblog von SpOn.

Election Day

1. A few years back, a friend of mine had a job doing part of a survey at a polling station; this also involved reporting the final vote count to headquarters, so she had to stick around until the very end. After the third count had yielded yet another result, the bloke sort of in charge (but with no real authority) announced that it was late and he wanted to go home and why not take the average of the three counts for each party and candidate? This was agreed upon. Democracy in action, baby!

2. Given my recent overwhelming success with a similar prediction, let me guess that these will be the national elections with the lowest participation rate in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. I don't even know what the number to beat is, though I'll guess that anything under 75% should do. Really, I'm too lazy to look this up. Update probably between six and seven CET.

Update 17:39: Just seen that election turnout by two o'clock indeed suggests a new record low; trust me, hadn't seen those numbers when I wrote the first version of this post. The article also informs us that the number to beat is 77.7% (from four years ago).

Update 21:17: The final numbers aren't in yet, but turnout seems to be in the 72% region.

Update 28-09: The official number is 72.2%.