Sam I am

In around ten minutes, I will be on a plane back to the USA. I did find a place to edit, upload, resize, and crop my photos in Florence, but I didn’t have the time to create log postings to show them. Expect lots of photos in the next couple of days.

Milan and Siena were probably my favorite two cities. I think I would have enjoyed Rome even more if I hadn’t been really tired. Florence was nice, but it has far too many tourists.

I had a couple of pleasant dining experiences in Milan. I had a couple of nice dining experiences in Florence. I also had a very disappointing meal in Florence at a restaurant called Rossini. Not only was it the most expensive meal I had in all of Italy, but also it was one of my most disappointing meals of all time. I will be sure to write up the experience. I also going to send them a letter which I will post here.

I had a great time in Italy, but I’m looking forward to returning home.

Art in Rome is ubiquitous. The Vatican Museum is a perfect example of this. The floors were works of art. There was so much art there, people sped past exhibit after exhibit. They were seemingly unaware of all of the items there. There was a small statue of The Thinker by Rodin in one room. Most people sped by without a second glance. I could have spent a year in the modern art collection of the Vatican Museum alone.

In college, I worked on the student newspaper with my friend Dan. Dan was the Art Editor, and one week he proposed an editorial urging more works of art on campus. Dan took me to task when I said it was a fluffy editorial. Over the years, I have grown to appreciate his point more and more. Most people have a dearth of art in their lives, especially in the United States. If you look at religious institutions, works of art are everywhere. The art works are generally religious, but at least they are there. Where are the great secular works of art in secular institutions?

When was the last time a corporate office park was decorated with stained glass windows or a mosaic on the floor? When was the last time you walked down the street and saw performance art? When was the last time you walked in a restaurant and saw an amazing painting? When was the last time you ran across art simply because it was there?

I am fortunate to live in New York City, where you see art more often than not. I have walked down the street to see a performance like Shakespeare in the Parking Lot. However, that kind of experience is generally a pleasant surprise rather than a regular part of city life.

We should fund the arts more in the US. It doesn’t even have to be a lot. Maybe next year we could buy ten fewer cruise missiles and give the money to arts organizations instead. Or maybe we could choose not to invade another country next year and give the yearly invasion money to the arts instead.

The good news is that it looks like Windows XP is not responible for my camera not being able to always read digital cards. The bad news is that my camera is acting really flaky. Who would have thought that the camera getting dropped and banged up all the time could lead to damage to the camera? (Note to security checkpoint operatives at the Olympic Main Press Center: be careful when you choose to back up the X-ray machine.)

Right now, I have the Canon PowerShot S400. I think I want the Canon PowerShot S500. It is 100 better than the S400. The best feature of the S500 is that I can slip it in my pocket and use it whenever I feel like it. Of course, this is also why it got banged up in the first place.

I will probably be able to afford the S500, but it would be really cool to own a Canon EOS 20D. The 20D is a fully featured digital SLR. It is very light, yet it is still durable. It is on the high-end of the consumer line and the low-end of the professional line. It would be a really great camera to use to shoot wildlife.

Next vacation I think I will bring my laptop. I really want the ability to upload photos to my website. The dinner offer is still open for anyone who tells me where I can upload and edit photos in Florence or Milan.

Random tech question: The Euro symbols in my food review do not render correctly in Internet Explorer, but they look fine in Mozilla. Did I do something wrong, and can I fix this problem short of removing the Euro symbols? If you give me a productive answer, I will buy you dinner in New York City.

Random tech note: I bought more time on the Internet Cafe computer.

Here are a couple of fun bathroom facts:

• In Greece, every bathroom has a small garbage can. Instead of flushing used toilet paper, you are expected to throw it out in the garbage can. This helps protect the Greek sewage system. When I talked about this with an Olympic volunteer, he was shocked to learn that this was not the practice everywhere in the world.
  
• In Italy, many public restrooms do not have toilet seats. This isn’t to say that they are eastern-style toilets. No, most of the restrooms are western-style toilets with the proper holes to attach a toilet seat, but they just don’t have toilet seats.
  

Courtesy of Lawrence Lessig’s blog, a link to a really interesting report regarding Diebold’s vote tabulation system. The more I read about the Diebold systems, the less I like them. I should probably write a note to my elected officials when I get back to NYC; I’ll probably also give the authors of the report, Black Box Voting, some cash. The report is really interesting. The Diebold systems read as if they were implemented by someone as a weekly homework assignment in college.