[ExI] abandoning hope - the queuing experience

[giovanni santost]

Amara is very right here. Somebody estimated that about 30 percent of all the art in the world is in Italy. And the landscape, the culture, the people, the food are just amazing.......
So Eliezer, you will be a very incomplete human or transhuman if you are not visiting Italy soon or later....
and all the silly problems are tractable with patience and a philosophical approach...
the thing that I most agree with Amara is that researchers in Italy are paid nothing, and they don't get much support from their government.
That is enough to justify leaving if you work in science. 
Everything else is more than compensated by the beauty of the place and the depth of the people.
When I go to Italy and meet my friends, for example, very quickly we go in amazing conversations, they have questions about US, the people, the places, they listen, they ask relevant questions.
When I tell people in the US that I'm Italian, they don't really care, and at most they make some silly remarks about red sauce or white sauce, mafia or things like that. They barely know where Italy is, even if somebody once asked me if Italy was in Europe.
The average newpaper in Italy, is at least at the level of the New York Times.
The average italian news stand has wonderful magazine about art, science, culture that people actually read.
Even if goverment doesn't use properly its resources to support science, the people have reverence for knowledge and culture in general.
The main problem is corruption and how resources are used. Italy is one of the strongest economies in the world and somehow the money is channelled in the wrong direction.
There are a lot of positive forces though and hopefully change will come soon.
Singularity will change everything, everywhere, anywhere right?




Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote: Eliezer, Italy has a large percentage of the world's art.. For ex. If any
of those sculptures on a random street corner in Rome were moved to the US,
then the US local art curators would put glass around it and charge you
an arm and a leg to see it. In Italy, such art that is all over the
cities is free to see and for everybody. It will be rare to experience
such a phenomenon anyplace else, and it is an absolutely gorgeous place
to visit. When I decided to move to Italy, it was not only because I fell
in love with Serafino, it was because I thought that Italy was so beautiful
and so interesting. So I do  suggest if you have an opportunity, to go.
IF you have time, because time _does_ run differently in a cultural sense.

Most of what I listed is what people who live in Italy must experience
in daily life with the government bureaucracies. Not visitors; with the
exception of the airport and public transportation (that's not easy
either).

I think that Rome Fiumicino generally is an awful airport, but that is
partly slanted to my necessarily heavy use.. I don't care how they might
change its appearance (which occasionally happens); I need it to
function properly because all of my scientific colleagues are located
outside of Italy. In the last 3-4 years I've been traveling for 1/3 of
every month, which means that I've seen and experienced everything
possible that can and does go wrong there. Italy's overall
transportation system is not generally designed for ease of use and
comfort for the passenger, so that's the main point that the visitor
needs to be aware about.

Amara

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