The target are, I suppose, the rich. We could start a discussion on the welfare state, distribution of wealth within and beyond national borders, economic inequality, or some of Ayn Rand philosophy. Could be interesting but I’m going to keep it simple.

Briefly pause on Timo’s statement. Does it actually tell anything? The obvious difficulty which, in my opinion, partly clears the statement of any real meaning is who exactly defines what ability to pay concretely means. I suppose, the correct answer is the government. As a member of society you typically have the duty to comply with whatever progression your government comes up. If you don’t like it you might have the freedom to leave.

I comply, but not without some thoughts. What is my ability to pay? The government’s answer to me is 23.7%. It is, however, entirely obscure to me why that figure should reflect my ability to pay. To some extent, there is actually no lower bound. Whatever percentage I must pay, I cannot invest otherwise. Thus, if I would like to maximize investing otherwise, my ability to pay (taxes) is zero. Sure, I enjoy a whole range of public services and support for the less fortunate is moral imperative which is why, we are told, the lower bound for government taxation can’t be zero. I suppose, this reasoning resonates with most readers, unless you advocate zero government.

What about the upper bound? Not so clear either. My upper bound currently floats around 80-85% which excludes food, apartment rent, minor things like toilet paper and books. Thus, I could retain as little as 20% of my wage and, aside from my wage, tax and bank statements, I would hardly notice the difference.

So, what is my ability to pay? A very fuzzy concept, indeed. Even if we answer the question who is entitled to collect taxes, the ability to pay of a single individual can technically lie anywhere between 0% and 80% or more and could be as high as 100% in an Utopia where the government entirely cares for subsistence. This fuzziness is the reason why in my opinion arguing that taxes should be set according to an individual’s ability to pay is nonsensical.

I have invested a few hours in prototyping the idea. The result is worth an update here, I think. Given the nature of sensor data, I’m using only GET (at least for now). Thus, the main goal is to define a URL that has all the required parameters (here for a proprietary system) and implement some code for content negotiation. I have been using Restlet (thanks guys, the world would not be as happy without people writing such open source code!). What follows is an example for a URL to request a time series for sensor data (URL is stripped by irrelevant parameters, for the discussion here)

Resense, the RESTful Sensor Server described, executes some code according to the HTTP request and returns some output, depending on the calling agent. Currently, text/plain returns a plot of the time series embedded in HTML code (using Flot, yet another nice library). This is meant for people requesting sensor data through a browser. Accept application/xml will return the same data in, well, XML. This can be tested with a simple shell command, e.g.

I plan to serve also some image representation of the time series, e.g. image/png, which could be used in HTML img tags. The most interesting, however, is application/rdf+xml. What you get back, of course, is RDF/XML encoded data. The following might not surprise the semantic web savvy reader, but perhaps others. The URL, so-called resource, discussed here can be used as RDF sensor data server. Therefore, we can use the served RDF data and process it further, e.g. with SPARQL. For instance, assume you want to filter real sensor measurements and generated (missing data) values in a time series served by Resense. The SPARQL query might look like

Here we query directly Resense (FROM) which will return RDF data that we query for generated observations and return their time stamp and measurement value. An excerpt of the result set may be

There are still many things that can be improved, like proper data typing. More interesting could be designing a proper OWL ontology and classify sensors, e.g. temperature, pressure, humidity, seismic, etc. Data pushed by sensors to, or pulled by, a sensor proxy (data server) and managed, e.g., with a standard RDBMS could be served by Resense and be self-describing according to the ontology. A catalog service could then index Resense data servers while agents (people and software) could formulate queries using the ontology. A SPARQL query could be built dynamically according to the agent’s query formulation, not unlike the example above. Of course, the ontology could provide also some interesting OWL inference and this might be extended with spatial-temporal reasoning and lead to a platform for conceptual-spatial-temporal reasoning and querying for sensor data.

(And increase entropy along the way.)

The pot was placed on the cooking stove shortly after noon with the brief announcement by NZZ that at 2pm CEST the Swiss justice minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf will announce the decision regarding the U.S. request to extradite Polanski. Since, some French rejoice «Merci la Suisse! Bravo la Suisse!» while some U.S. comments iterate around anger, Washington is disappointed and I won’t comment the decision. You are entitled to your opinion.

As I wrote, it began shortly after noon. Later in the afternoon, NZZ reported “Der Regisseur ist wieder ein freier Mann” and various online news sites followed, including the NYT with the headline “Swiss Reject U.S. Request to Extradite Polanski” and commentary at a separate article. While reading through some comments I ended up thinking @nytimes should add an option ‘bullshit’ under “Report as Inappropriate.” (And I have nothing against what reads like a sound argument on why the ruling is wrong.)

It didn’t take long for ‘Roman Polanski’ to get to trending topic status on Twitter — stay there for the better part of six hours — and spammer to ride the wave and link to all kinds of dubious sites. The Swiss were confused with the Swedes, the cuckoo of the German clock was put to guillotine and Swiss law equated to Swiss cheese. Granted, at least the cheese is more accurate w.r.t. geographic context.

I think, the most hilarious gaffe was cooked by CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) and CNN (@CNN), “The Worldwide Leader in News.” The former with the tweet “France will not extradite Roman Polanski to the U.S. to face child-sex charges. http://on.cnn.com/b9HxzP” — which later was replaced with “Correction: Switzerland will not …” — the latter with a retweet @cnnbrk without reading (emphasis added).

Sunday evening I was home with the feeling a friend and I long ago termed The Bubble of being light that you could lie inside a levitating bubble. I read through my inbox which reliably displays upon click. The better part of its content was clicked to trash, unread. I read through Twitter when, suddenly, I recalled a recent tweet by @kendall telling “Twitter is not the world.”

I suppose, there are a number of possible interpretations for the tweet, a characteristic that is, incidentally, of many tweets. Literally, for instance, take the world as you and I know it — trees, birds, mountains, summer cottages — and Twitter and you conclude “Twitter is not the world,” obviously. Figuratively, you may interpret it as “there is more to the world than Twitter.”

From within The Bubble, the lists of messages pushed up the screen looked not much afar an expression of collective madness. I outright corrected my thinking. After all, chances are that it is not the twitters out there who use Twitter in ever more creative ways to be mad but rather me suggesting they are. With the words of Michael Allingham [1] choice “cannot, by itself, be irrational.” He writes, “reasonableness is a property of patterns of choices, not of individual choices.” There is nothing irrational in choosing to tweet but the choice would look odd if someone also chooses, for instance, to avoid Twitter.

[1] Michael Allingham. Choice Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 2002.

A solution could be to expose the data in the repository using a RESTful framework, e.g. Restlet. Part of the elegance of this approach lies in URI templates. For the purpose discussed here, we could route the following URI template to a specific resource,

and replace the templates for sensorId, t1 and t2 with values for a specific request, being t1 and t2 points in time representing an interval. The approach is also elegant because content negotiation allows us to serve multiple representations of the resource, i.e. serve different representations of the time-series depending on the user agent. Notably, a user calling the resource within a browser may want to see a plot of the time-series while an application calling the same resource would be better served with an RDF/XML representation of the time-series, e.g.

Naturally, XML or SensorML may be served also, possibly as a separate representation.

This is a note to a recent thread on one of the personal blogs I follow. The enthusiasm conveyed in an answer to my two cents to the original post motivated me to write this note. The author writes in Italian. To make it easier for you to follow I’m going to translate the main thoughts.

At least partially based on some recent setbacks and on events not too far in the future one of the questions raised in the post is why can’t everything be perfect? In my comment, I wrote that I don’t think experiencing a situation to be not perfect, or for that matter perfect, is a reflection of a quality of the situation but, rather, result of nurturing a distance between ourselves and that particular situation. It is our unwillingness to embrace it, rejecting it.

As usual, also this thought isn’t original to my mind and some attribution is in order. It is rooted in Buddhist philosophy or at least I think so based on how I interpret some of the readings. For a pleasant read in plain English I suggest Charlotte Joko Beck [1].

Di cuore auguri a te, a voi, carissima!

[1] Charlotte Joko Beck. Everyday Zen: Love and Work. San Francisco, Harper & Row. (LCCN Permalink)

I graduated from the University of Zurich — which I recently discovered to be #2 in Environmental Economics, according to RePEc — with, therefore, university exams à la Suisse. (More accurately, I should probably say university exams à la Institut für Informatik.) What follows is a curiosity that adds to the recent one on Finnish grading.

There are at least two rather distinct differences in exams à la Suomalainen vs. à la Suisse. In Switzerland I was used to 90 minutes examinations; in Finland the standard seems to be four hours. In Switzerland, time is a scarce resource and one has to regurgitate as fast as possible the answers to a long list of detailed questions. In Finland, time is abundant, at least at first sight. The second, and more important, difference is the examination form. In Switzerland, at least in my experience, exams were composed of lots of questions, some multiple choice, and most required a few words or sentences for a complete answer. In Finland, the exams I had up to now all had four or five questions. The answer is an essay.

Now, at first the Finnish way seems to be all the more easy. Perhaps it is. However, I believe there is a huge difference. While the Swiss way is testing knowledge for depth, the Finnish way tests depth as well as breadth. While you need to know the details an essay also shows whether or not you connect the dots and understand how things relate.

I must say, I am still adapting to this form of examination after a career of exams à la Suisse and my current belief is that exams à la Suomalainen are at worst a curious variation but most likely a lot smarter.

I’m sure Mr. Schäuble is a reasonable man and I respect his opinion. Cross-border tax cheats as well as banks that resort to illegal practices are a problem that likely contributes to the financial destabilization of countries [1] and is probably pronounced in our ever more global world and in times of recession. However, I’m not sure if stating that “we will disestablish the bank secrecy in Europe” (Wolfgang Schäuble, interview with NZZ) is the most sensible approach.

What Mr. Schäuble does not appreciate is the core idea of the Swiss bank client confidentiality, namely, the freedom of financial privacy. Disestablishing the “bank secrecy” equals to giving up individual freedom and move power into the hands of a few, the likes of Mr. Schäuble or government at large, a dynamic that is inherently problematic. Homo sapiens with power has yet to evolve into knowing and wise.

Freedom never comes for free. With respect to bank client confidentiality, Swiss law sets decisional power into the hands of each individual. You, as holder of a Swiss bank account, are free and responsible to do the right thing, a privilege that comes with a price tag, i.e. to file a tax return faithfully knowing you could do differently. In the interview with NZZ, Mr. Schäuble argues that “he wants to assure the people of Germany that nobody can withdraw from tax liability.” I quote,

Er [Herr Schäuble] wolle vor allem den Menschen in Deutschland das Gefühl geben, dass sich niemand seiner Steuerpflicht entziehen könne. (NZZ)

Do we really trust an anonymous, transient, non-transparent, government made of people more than our neighbor or, for that matter, a random person, that it will not abuse of power? To me, Mr. Schäuble’s parental-like authority sounds more like the irate voice of a teacher who feels the urge to castigate students because (s)he has lost the attention of a few. My voice goes more along Pink Floyd’s lines “We don’t need no education//We don’t need no thought control,” Mr. Schäuble.

On the contrary, I wonder what speaks against introducing bank client confidentiality everywhere.

[1] Werner Vontobel und Viktor Parma. Schurkenstaat Schweiz?: Wie sich der größte Bankenstaat der Welt korrumpiert und andere Länder destabilisiert. C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Januar 2009, ISBN: 978-3-570-01083-9

There are a number of problems with the all-inclusive lease, though. Of course, utility costs have to be covered. I suppose, the property management distributes the expected costs according to the square meters to the individual apartments. You bet, the management won’t underestimate the costs. Further, with this model the frugal typically subsidizes the prodigal.

The bigger problem, however, is that with the all-inclusive model I have no incentive, at least not monetary, to do anything to reduce consumption. An example. In the cold of the northern winter a hot morning shower is even more enjoyable and I think, without having any data, my average time under flowing water increased significantly compared to my standard in warmer climates. Knowing how much my longer showers cost me and shorter showers having a positive effect on my monthly bill are likely the only two conditions that may motivate me to step out of the shower quicker, knowing that outside it is subzero. Even though I’m wasting time and resources, the thought of “just another few minutes” typically wins over all environmental concerns. Knowing magnitudes and the ability to influence spending, however, might trigger my self-interest more effectively. I think, this is perfectly fine and the rationale of most [1] of us wealthy. But to do so I need (a) to know how much my habit is costing me and (b) a lease model that reflects my true consumption — and doesn’t “penalize frugality.”

I think, this holds for a number of resources, not just water. It also holds for waste. The town council where I grew up charges a fixed tax for waste management. Other cities I lived in tax the single trash bag. The incentive not to throw almost everything — from kitchen waste to cans and newspapers — to trash is, to a considerable degree, greater if your trash bag is taxed.

[1] “The vast majority of Americans who have taken steps this year to make their homes more energy efficient, 71%, say they did so mostly to save money rather than to improve the environment.” (GALLUP, December 8, 2009)

This problem shows up when I’m generalizing or categorizing. I must admit, I’m at times guilty of it. Not only I sometimes hear others telling me “you are generalizing,” every now and then I here myself telling me just the same, too. I don’t know exactly why, perhaps out of a wish to find order or perhaps out of intellectual laziness as dumb generalization is easy.

That we are mutually different is in the experience of most. (Does this common experience make us similar?) Just take your parents, your set of friends and your ex-lovers. Whether individually, between groups or within groups, it’s hard to see any pair as similar, isn’t it? I believe, there is no doubt that one can count dozens of detailed features in which the people in our direct experience are mutually different. If you combine intellectual, physical, behavioral, spiritual, moral dimensions you end up with a rather large space of diversity. Thus, generalizing on people seems to be counterintuitive.

However, even chaotic systems show hidden order. Is it really so that in this large space of diversity we are all just dots sticking to the corners unfathomably disconnected to each other? It hardly sounds less counterintuitive.

A few thoughts. “All Men are Created Equal” is arguably Thomas Jefferson’s most famous statement. The focus is on creation and the statement has a Christian connotation. Not leveling off all differences between individual women and men the idea seems to suggest that — grounded in a common moral sense — individuals are equally endowed with rights. In [1] Joseph Margolis concludes that the four traditions of thought — science, religion, tragedy and comedy — “agree on the actual and fundamental equality of human beings.” Human empathy, the capability to share another being’s emotions and feelings, does not seem to suggest remoteness but, instead, a large pool of shared experiences for unlikely it is possible for me to share your emotion if I have no experience of it. Finally, it is perhaps in the experience of most to search for similarities in our analytical assessment whether or not a partner might be a “good fit.” (Today, even computer software works on the same assumption that who matches on a large subset of features might get along well.)

Thinking about what situations people, or myself, note that I’m generalizing I wonder if they are associated with arguments, defensiveness, disconnectedness. In a moment flooded by love it typically seems natural to assume two or more individuals share almost their entire self. Perhaps the beauty rests in our ability to distill diversity into shared knowledge to create a tightly coupled web connecting the dots in the corners of a vast space.

[1] Joseph Margolis. That all Men are Created Equal. The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 52, No. 13 (Jun. 23, 1955), pp. 337-346