Earthquakes around the globe on the week of the 11th of March

I wish I would not have to use this example… But I just hit it this morning via a tweet of Jim Hendler. RPI has an example on how can one combine public gov data (in this case, a Data.gov dataset on Earthquakes), its RDF version with a SPARQL query, and a visualization tool like Exhibit. The result is an interactive map on Earthquakes of the last week. Running the demo today reveals an incredible amount (over 160) of events on the coast of Honshu, Japan, which led to the earthquake and tsunami disaster on the 11th of March. I do not know how much time it took for Li Ding to prepare the original demo, but I suspect it was not a big deal once the tools were in place.

The demo is dynamic, in the sense that in a week it will probably show some other data than today. So I have made a screen dump for memento (I hope it is all right with Jim and Din). If you are looking at it now, it is worth zooming into the area around Japan to gain some more insight into the sheer dimensions of the disaster: there were  325 quakes (out of 411 around the globe) in that area during the week! I must admit I did not know that…

I have the, hopefully not too naïve, belief that tools like this may not only increase our factual knowledge, but would also help, in future, to help those who are now struggling in coping with the aftermath of this disaster. Yes, having open data, and tools to handle them and integrate them, is really important.

Two photos of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin; the left one represents the outer part of the grid, whereas the right one in the middle

A few years ago I was in Berlin and I also visited the Holocaust Memorial. It is a fascinating site, though it took a certain time to understand the intention of the artist. But, suddenly, I think I got it. The memorial consists of a set of gray blocks arranged on a grid; one can walk among the blocks along the grid lines although there is barely enough place for two persons at a time. On the outer parts of the grid the blocks are small; however, by getting closer to the center they become suddenly and unexpectedly high and oppressing (the extra trick is that the ground is also going down, but this is barely visible from the side, so the effect is surprising). And I mean really oppressing. The photos are just an an attempt to show the effects.

In some ways, the memorial is a representation of the poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Why do I speak about this now? Because, the last week-end, a liberal and a center-right party in the Netherlands have signed an agreement with a guy called Geert Wilders to form a minority government: the set up is that those two parties form the government but they can count on the votes of Wilders’ party in the parliament. Of course, this has not been done by the kindness of Wilders’ heart: the government has to adopt many of his ideas. And those are, in many respect, simple: his party is one of the toughest anti-muslim parties in Europe at the moment, whose fundamental approach is that anything that has even remotely something to do with Islam is evil and to be fought against with all legal (?) means. In other words, a party that takes one part of the population, declares it collectively to be the enemy and responsible for most of the woes in the country. Familiar?

One could say that, although I am a foreigner living in the Netherlands, I am not directly affected, so why bother? And that is true; after all, I am an atheist and a “European”, not a Turk or Moroccan that form the majority of the muslim population in the country. But I am also the descendent of Holocaust victims, so I cannot stop asking myself: is this just the first step Pastor Martin Niemöller is talking about? Maybe East-Europeans are next?  (After all Wilder’s party took a fairly strong anti-Rumanian and anti-Bulgarian attitude at the time of the European elections). Maybe any foreigner? Maybe the Jews?

Maybe it is time for me of thinking packing my stuff and move away from here?

That is whole idea. Simple but great; of course, many people enter the room at various places and various times, some of the jets are not yet in full force, etc, so it gives the fountain and ever changing aspect. When I saw it (yesterday) it was fairly cold outside, but I see in advance that in summer heat this will really be great fun!

As a techie: I tried to find and see the sensors that are, obviously, under your feet both inside and outside the water wall somewhere under your feet. I guess the trick is to have these sensors placed in a way that you do not see them at all to make it all really feel like magic. And indeed, though I tried, I did not see them…

Nice stuff!

However: what will I show to my son when I reach my mother’s age? I actually did write a some letters to my wife; after all, our relationship precedes the e-mail era. But we certainly do not do it any more. And my son’s generation clearly does not even know what it means to write handwritten letters to friends or family. It is all skype and facebook and email: although these can be archived, these messages are nevertheless inherently ephemeral.  What will he show to his children? We seem to loose something essential… and I am not sure what to put in its place.

The story is simple. You find some service on the Web which looks nice and helpful. There are various options: you may take a minimal service, which is free of charge, or you can also choose extra services for a fee. It sounds like a decent choice: if the minimal service fits your needs, you are happy, if you need more, you pay something. I presume we all use services like that.

But then… if you take the free option, you may get a mail after 2-3 years’ of  usage saying that sorry, the free service is discontinued next month; you are welcome to upgrade for the paying service, otherwise, well, good bye. As I said I got this type of mail twice in a week: one from a service giving a minimal synchronization of my phone’s calendar with Google’s, the other providing a simple email certificate for signing my mails. On a matter of principle I will not upgrade; I do not find this approach really acceptable.

So… will Gmail, WordPress, or other similar services decide that they have attracted enough customers, they can now start charging? As I said, I hope this was just a coincidence and not some sort of a general direction…

I have already blogged a few weeks ago on the sad success of right wing extremist parties in Europe. One of the toughests and, in my view, most frightening one among those is the Hungarian “Jobbik” party, with its openly racist, anti-Semitic message. Being Hungarian, I feel embarrassed and saddened by their success… However, a new Facebook group, set up recently to fight against this Hungarian phenomenon, has made me realize a sad irony, too.

One of the historical figures of Hungary is St Stephen I of Hungary, the first king of Hungary. He established the Kingdom of Hungary more than a 1000 years ago, ensuring the future of his nation. As such, he has become, among others, the reference point for all nationalists and, of course, racist movements in Hungary.

St Stephen had a son, Prince Emeric (Imre); and St Stephen wrote a text to prepare his son to play his a role as a king. This old text, known as “Saint Stephen’s admonitions to his son Emeric”, is available on the Web thanks to the National Library of Hungary (sorry, only in Hungarian, I could not find an English translation). It consists of 10 general admonitions, the 6th being on the role of foreigners (the text actually uses the word “guests”) in the country. It would be a bit long to translate, but the title of this blog may be the most important sentence of the paragraph:

Because a country using only one language and having only one custom is weak and frail

(If you are interested by the original: “Mert az egy nyelvű és egy szokású ország gyenge és esendő.”)

Wise words coming from the “dark” middle ages! Worth for a number of people, from the Netherlands to Hungary, to think about…

The right-wing extremists on the move—in Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Denmark, the Netherlands. It is a shame— for the large people’s parties and for the voters, which did not participate in the elections.

This is a quote from a blog published on the Web site of the German ZDF television (see the German original). I couldn’t agree more. I live in the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders’ rasist party became one of the strongest parties in the country; I carry a French passport and the Front National will still send representatives to the EU Parliament in the name of France; and I also carry a Hungarian passport and the local right wing “Jobbik” party of Hungary has made a breakthrough yesterday evening. This is not a good day…

(Somme “nuggets” from the declarations of the EU representative of Jobbik: “I would be glad if the so-called proud Hungarian Jews would go back to playing with their tiny little circumcised tail rather than vilifying me”,…“We had a dream that we would not become a second Palestina. This dream has just come true…”. Wonderful…)

One can of course be optimistic: these movements come and go, they are in a minority. And I hope optimism is till o.k. But when I see these people marching on the streets of Budapest where I grew up, or when, as a foreigner in the Netherlands, I am indirectly accused by an official party of stealing the job of locals, then, well, it is not easy to keep up my optimism…

I realized the other day that some of the political and economical discussions these days provide nice analogies. As we all know, the economical turmoils of the past few months force all governments around the globe to do something. But there is no agreement on what this “something” is; all governments are frenetically trying to give it some shape. This is also true in the country where I happen to live, namely the Netherlands. A few weeks ago the government made some dramatic announcements on the possible effects of the crisis, and also declared that major changes have to be done in the economic and social fabric of the country. And since then? Well, enter the typical Dutch approach: consensus building.

One has to know a little bit how the political system works in this country. There are elections, of course, and various parties make all kinds of promises before those. But after those elections comes the next phase: building a coalition (it never happens to have one party gaining an absolute majority). This coalition is based on building consensus. Future coalition parties come together, and they shape what is called a “government contract” (after all, this country built its wealth on trade!). This is a real contract, that all parties sign, and which reflect the consensus among the parties of what they can achieve together and what they cannot. Each party has to give up some of their electoral promises, but the whole country understands that and, as long as it is clearly stated in that contract, it is perfectly all right. From that point on, the government’s job is to, essentially, fulfil that contract. Of course, creating such a contract is a long process (last time around it took 5-6 months to build a government!). However, the result is that, comparatively, the stability of the Dutch governments, and indeed of society as a whole, is quite remarkable when compared to many countries around. In the 20 years that I have been here I have seen only a few minor strikes (nothing compared to France or Italy…), no major social unrest, and all this coupled with a relatively high living standard.

So to come back to the current state of affairs: the economic turmoils mean that, in fact, a new contract has to be signed because the old one has become, essentially, moot by the bank crisis. So the government parties and the major trade unions are now fiercely negotiating to find a new consensus. This has been going on for weeks and nobody knows what the outcome will be. Maybe I will have to work longer for my pension, maybe I will have tax reductions, maybe I will have to pay a higher tuition fee for my son… all these are on the negotiating table. What is interesting is to see the sharp contrast between this process and the way the crisis is handled in some other countries (like those that I follow more closely, ie, France or Hungary where the governments seem to take fairly one-sided steps without too much consultations with the rest of the society). The Dutch way is certainly way slower and, well, maybe more boring (it is more fun seeing strikes paralysing a whole country like France than just wait for these merchants to finish their negotiations:-) but, maybe, more beneficial on long term. We shall see of course, I may be wrong. But consensus building may prove beneficial again on the long run.

B.t.w., this Dutch way (which is also used in Belgium, actually) has even gained a name: this is the “polder model”, and it even has a Wikipedia page!

Musical improvisation has a strange history in Western classical music. There was a time when it dominated classical music: Bach was considered to be incredible improviser at the keyboard, and so were most of his contemporary musicians like Händel or Telemann. In fact, the tradition claims that some of Bach’s keyboard pieces are just the write down of his improvisations (the best known example is the “The Musical Offering” which includes a three-voice fugue for keyboard and which was probably the improvisation of Bach when he visited Frederick II of Prussia). And, in fact, even when playing “published” music a baroque artist was not only allowed to improvise a little bit here and there, but it was, sort of, expected from him.

But this tradition has disappeared. (I am not talking about jazz here. That is different.) Today a classical musician is supposed to follow the notes, the dynamics, the speed, etc, exactly as written down by the composer. Of course, this is not 100% true, musicians do have a great freedom of expressiveness, otherwise any machine would do. But it is certainly not allowed to deviate from the notes as written down in the music. Improvisation is not expected by the public, rarely practiced by musicians, not taught at conservatories. Actually, if an artist still does it, the “established” community of musicians will very often consider this as not “serious”, not worthy of a real classical musician… It requires a certain guts for a serious performer to do it in public.

Well… and Gabriela Montero has the guts. And that is why it is worth remembering her name. There are a bunch of videos on YouTube; maybe the one I prefer is a baroque style improvisation on Debussy’s Claire de Lune. Quite amazing: improvising counterpoint on the fly… She also has some CD-s where she recorded improvisations she made on Bach tunes (“Bach and Beyond”) or Baroque tunes in general. If you are interested in classical music but you also want to hear something a bit… unusual, then it is worth checking out!

B.t.w., she also has a web site (of course where one can submit her a tune, she would improvise on it and send back the result in MP3. I might check this out sometime…