<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>From:</b> spike@rainier66.com <spike@rainier66.com> <br><br><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div><div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal>>…Diseases evolve. International travelers carry it across the globe to every country they visit. There isn’t much we can do about that, or rather not much we will do: every economy needs tourism. Tourists spend a lotta money everywhere they go. So… find other ways to have fun besides travelling abroad, compensate by looking into virtual travel where a camera bot walks around the big tourist attractors and lets you see what is there…spike<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I am not an international traveler. Been to Canada on road trips twice, had a good time, never anywhere else. I would like to go traipse about Europe at some point, perhaps do the Sound of Music tour, genealogy, that kinda thing, so I listen carefully to my friends who mostly have done some international travel, see if I can improve on their experience.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I have no wealthy friends, but all are doing well enough that it was typical for them to tour Europe for the first time in their mid fifties, after their children were in college. Mine is in grade 8, so I have time.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>A persistent message I have heard from those who do package-deal tours is that they are always too crowded and too hurried. They go see that Angelo feller’s marble statue or the Mona Lisa, but a million others want to see that too, so it is shoulder to shoulder, like being in a cattle chute, not enough time, too many others. The travel brochure showed one person standing there admiring it. They paid, they went, joined a stampede eager to glance over, check off a box, OK been there saw it let’s go watch football. My friends wanted to see the art works.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>OK so now we can see that it isn’t a good idea to join a tourist stampede and won’t be again in the easily foreseeable. So how can we compensate for that? I can imagine a form of virtual tourism which not only mimics the experience, in some ways it exceeds it. For instance, take the famous marble statue Michael created. Wait until all the touristas go away, then set up a kind of controllable camera where a prole can see everywhere on that art work, in places you can’t see if you are there in person and can’t see even if a stampede of football fans isn’t herding you along. What does the top of David’s head look like? To what level of detail did the artist find it necessary to carve hair? A virtual tour could answer that. Being there would merely give you practice mooing.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></div></div></body></html>