Photo Speeding Tickets

That's one of the most beautiful pictures of my car I have! Montgomery county (the county where I live in Maryland) offers this service at a "fee" of $40. In the past 4 months or so I have been forced to take advantage of this "service" 4 times. The image on top is just one of the three images they sent with every letter. The photographs were followed with "You were doing 47 MPH on a 35 MPH zone" Ironically that has been the EXACT same violation on 3 occasions. After that I learned and slowed down. So they went ahead and sent 3 more photographs of my car for doing 42 on a 30 zone.

By the fourth time I was quite upset about the added $40 to my monthly credit card bill. (One of my friends suggested setting up a direct debit from my bank account) So I decided to contest this ticket. I went ahead and sent them a "Not Guilty" plea. I wrote them a nice little letter which basically said I don't believe I was speeding and their "automatic" camera is faulty. They sent me back a letter asking me to appear in court at 9.00 am on 6/29/2009. Unfortunately my mom opened that letter and freaked. Her son was going to go to court to fight a losing battle. Then he will be declared a criminal in an alien country.

On the internet I found numerous websites on how people think this is the most ridiculous way the state can think of making money. The state obviously thinks this is a brilliant idea! Citizens are obviously pissed off. The cops on the other hand are not quite sure what to make of it. They are not very happy about people slamming their brakes when they encounter the camera zone to go 10 mph UNDER the prescribed speed limit forcing a subsequent traffic backup. The obvious question is IF people knew where the cameras are, how does the state make money out of it (they are legally bound to put up signs on the road if there is going to be a speeding camera) Infact one of my friends also forwarded me a link which mapped out all the areas where there were speeding cameras in DC and Montgomery county. Apparently 40% of the county's "speeding ticket" revenue still comes from these photo speeding tickets.

In any case I dressed up in a suit for my June 29th court date. I honestly believed that I was NOT speeding on the said day. So I was pretty confident that the camera was faulty and I would be able to argue my way out of this. I had no other defense. And I had no clue how I was going to proove that I was not speeding. As usual I was planning to wing the whole thing and make stuff up along the way. I reached the court at 8.40 for my 9.00 am court appointment. There was a LONG (probably 50-60 odd) list on the notice board of people who were awaiting trial for the photo speeding ticket. Outside the courtroom people were visibly pissed at the concept of the photo ticket. People had a whole sheet of paper filled with things they were going to say to defend themselves. "They reduced the speed limit from 40 to 35 for a 200 yard zone and put a camera in there!"

At about 8.45 a.m. we are told that there is no power in the building so they will have to delay the proceedings indefinitely. I couldn't believe it! No power?? Seriously?? Hearing this one guy goes, "Will you reimburse my parking?". A little later they open the courtroom (without the power and any recording equipment). Inside the courtroom, I am in for a big surprise. I find my BOSS sitting there in the court trying to defend one of his own photo tickets. I found out that he had the exact same story. He paid three earlier tickets and was tired of the 40$ monthly fee. So he decided to take this up in court.

The "judge" shows up and starts his opening speech. He tells us that in the absence of building power, we could either wait for the power to be restored (and place our trust the city electricity board who said it will happen in an hour) or we could request a continuance (reschedule the court date). In either case, if we decide to fight the case the chances of our getting out of the ticket are as low as 5%. This is because all the classic excuses like the "camera was faulty" or "Someone else was driving the car" don't ever work. So we might as well go back home and pay the $40 fine. If we loose the case, we end up having to pay an additional $22.50 in court fees.

I rescheduled my court date and went to work. They promised to send me a letter with a new court date. Now I am in a big dilemma. Should I pay the $40 and lose out on an oppportunity to be entertained in the court? Afterall $22.50 is just a little more than two movie tickets. And the entertainment this experience promises to provide seems to be worth much more than two movies!

Taller the Richer

Should taller people really be taxed more than their shorter counterparts? I heard this idea for the first time a few days ago on NPR. They were talking about the strong corelation between income and height of people. I thought it is quite a fascinating corelation. To give a heads up on what this post is about, let me give a brief overview on what exactly I'm talking about. So there were a couple of people from Harvard who thought it would be a great idea to research this topic (Mankiw and his "graduate student". Obviously Mankiw did nothing but give his "graduate student" the topic and the graduate student wrote the entire paper which NYTimes wrote an article on.)

On NPR, there was this person who was being interviewed who gave a whole lot of arguments on why tall people make more money (The typical 6-foot American earned $5,525 more than a 5-foot-5-inch worker, after correcting for sex, age and weight) She went on to talk about higher confidence/self esteem. The ability to be a leader since people tend to "listen" to them since their childhoold etc. Most importantly she talked about having a more "attractive" personality which automatically fetched them a higher paying job than an equally qualified shorter guy.

I thought the whole idea of higher taxes for higher people was BRILLIANT. (Obviously my being shorter has a big role to play in my opinion formation :D). But someone really needs to think the whole thing through (i.e. if anyone has the guts to even think about implementing it) First off, couples file taxes together. So what if the husband/wife is really tall and the wife/husband is really short? How do we account for the height tax? An obvious solution is that we should consider the mean height of the household. Or is it really?

I think considering the mean height is a hideous idea. It is not uncommon knowledge that most women fall for the taller dudes! I have heard this so many times from so many of my women friends that I have been this close to adding a few platforms under my own shoes! So how about we introduce an additional variable to the entire "dating" equation! The taller guy comes at a price. Literally!

The next obvious question is, if you tax based on height, you should also be taxing on other "self esteem driving qualities" such as beauty. The argument that many people tend to make with this is that height is a much more "objective" variable as compared to "beauty". Although I agree with them to some extent, I am willing to believe that some amount of objectivity can be brought into "beauty" as well. Maybe the research in the world is just insufficient to properly quantify beauty. Infact, some painter said somewhere that all attractive portraits have the exact same geometric ratios between different features on the face. So maybe we can come up with some tax equation which talks about the angle the nose on your face subtends when a couple of rays pass through it!

The point being that taxation based on height is just another way of looking at non-linear taxation. We already have an established practice of people who make more money being taxed more. So it doesn't seem very far fetched for people who have "a tendency to make more money" to be taxed more as well! This is simply because the "tendency" is something they have acquired genetically. Of course there are youngsters who are encouraged to work out more so they'll end up being taller. Maybe that is just another math equation they should think about solving before going for their next swim!

Back to Blogging

Doompi inspired me to do this after I sent a couple of long emails! She probably thought I would quiz her less if the "email" was not in her "inbox". HA! We'll see!!!

Oh and if you happen to read beyond two posts below please don't forget to remember, i was 4 years younger :D

Before Sunset

I love that movie. I watched that movie for probably the hundredth time today. For the uninitiated, let me begin by giving you a brief overview. You can skip the next two paragraphs without loss of any continuity.

A twenty something American guy (Jesse) is doing what all white guys love doing. Traveling around Europe. During one of his train journeys, he meets a young French woman (Celine) who he starts talking to and hits it off really well with. Jesse and Celine spend a day in Vienna and part without exchanging phone numbers because they want the memories of the night to not fade away. They decide to meet at the same place exactly six months from then to see if they both feel exactly the same way till then. That's where "Before Sunrise" ends. I really liked that movie. It was very romantic and mushy and all of that with a very feel goody character attached to it. This was in spite of (or probably because of) the open/seemingly sad ending the movie had.

Before Sunset starts nine years later. In the interest of this post not becoming a review of before sunrise and before sunset, let me just say that Jesse and Celine meet again in Paris and spend another day together talking about their current lives and how much they remember that night in Vienna.

Like I said before, I have watched this movie several times. Each time I watch it, a different portion of the movie appeals to me. Before Sunset is a lot more cynical than its prequel and it has a very real lifey character attached to it. I really liked Ethan Hawke's Jesse. He seems to be this guy who is at a place in life where he has resigned to fate and has figured out a way to find happiness in whatever he has. He used to be a big cynic where he was trying to find the purpose of life and all that. But now after going through whatever he has gone through, he has realized that there is no point in being cynical. The only way you can actually BE happy is if you WANT to be happy. This sounds very much like all those self help books. I am just agreeing with whatever they are saying. But one of the lines in the movie was really very appealing. Jesse at one moment says, "so many of the men that I admire most, their lives were dedicated to something greater than themselves..." This reminded me of a google status message that a friend of mine had. It said "Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working". At the instant I saw it, I simply dismissed it as one of the many "funny" quotes people like to put up on status messages. But after watching the movie I started to think about that statement. Being "tired and discouraged" has some very interesting connotations here. Could it mean that work is the ONLY thing that is not tiring/discouraging?

Julie Delpy's portrayal of Celine was indeed very interesting. She seems to be a very smart, well informed, independent kind of a woman who thinks she knows exactly what she wants. I found myself being very empathetic and in many ways also attracted to her character. But honestly, I didn't like her at all! She was obviously too cynical. She seemed to be the kind of person who doesn't WANT to be happy in life. She is always complaining about how life is being unfair to her and all that. So however much you want to "help" her she would refuse to be helped. I can not imagine what living with such a person would be like! Maybe my mom was right when she said, god bestows huge responsibilities on great people!

At the end of the movie, you could either be the cynic and agree that "life sucks then you die". Or you can be the optimist and say "there are no failures in life. Just setbacks." I took the political compass test (http://www.politicalcompass.org/test) and it revealed that I am very close to the center of the axis (with a slight inclination to the right side AND the libertarian side). So I think I can justify not wanting to adopt either of the above statements (but still leaning slightly towards the former)