The Surplus of Evil in Welfare Society: Contemporary Scandinavian Crime Fiction

The best-selling Scandinavian crime fiction of the last ten years extensively deals with the problem of remaining evil in a peaceful and just welfare society. It develops a view of "secular theodicy" which aims at explaining the presence of radical evil in a secular late modern society. In this explanation it employs the Lutheran imagery of "hidden God" (Deus absconditus). The paper reviews recent novels by Henning Mankell, Anne Holt, Sven Westerberg, Helena von Zweigbergk and Anna Jansson.     

Self-organized formation of colour maps in a model cortex

A report is presented of computer simulations which demonstrate the applicability of self-organization principles to the formation of a cortical colour map. A two-dimensional array of cortical units can be shown to become selectively sensitive to different colour stimuli in an orderly fashion. The precortical part of the simulation model contains three wavelength-sensitive receptors with overlapping sensitivity distributions, and a simple opponent processing stage. Each cortical unit receives the same activity from the precortical stage by adaptive connections. Initially the connections are arbitrary; during self-organization they are changed so that different way. Self-organization of the connections can be shown to take place even when the stimulation of the receptors is totally random, ie the wavelength and purity (and in some simulations the distribution) of each stimulus are selected randomly.