From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sat Sep 07 2002 - 23:57:24 MDT
Amara:
>JOIN US, in the _NEW_ STAMP FREE KINGDOM.
Serafino:
>I'm already living in a stamp free republic, in the
>sense that anyone can draw and print his own stamp,
>and stamp his postcards. (Machines do not recognize
>'improper' stamps).
so the letter will simply not go through the mail. :-)
I like that someone can be artistic and make their own stamps:
>A famous printer is mr. Cascioli,
>here you can see his old collection ....
and can one use Italian mailboxes, if you want to deliver the letter
yourself ?
Maybe there's confusion about what kinds of stamps I was talking
about, it was about those large colorful bureaucratic stamps that
one carries in one's passport and also stamped with ink on other
official documents. (The officials' most recent stamps (visas) take
up two pages at a time in my passport). I'm very sure that your
republic is not 'stamp free', in that sense.
Something else that readers may not know with regard to 'stamps' is
that the Italian bolo tax stamp is one method to the Italian tax
madness to extract more taxes from people. Italy is the most heavily
taxed country in the EU. Anytime you want to do anything, from
registering a moped to filling out (thousands of) forms, there is yet
another bollo tax stamp to buy. Most of the time one doesn't even
know exactly what is the bollo for, only that without it, you cannot
complete your task. One buys these bolo tax stamps at the tobacco
store.
--
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Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
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"Drosam pieder pasaule." (The world belongs to the brave.)
--a Latvian proverb
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