One Dominant Female

Andy,

And by responding like you did, maybe that dominant female has now found a little of herself as well. And there's a good chance she doesn't like what she sees. So she keeps busy eating. Possibly till she explodes.

Any culture built on hierarchy and domination has the potential to be an ugly thing. No matter how advanced or backward.

As a traveler you are in a unique place. Sworn to fun, loyal to none.

Eric

bonjour andy,
first of all: excuse my english! i´m from germany and school ended last year and since then time was lacking giving me an opportunity to improve my language skills in both ways: understanding and speaking/writing. that means that i´m not 100% sure beeing right considering a good respond to your post... however, i try.

french philosopher and novelist jean-paul sartre discribed the idea that you see yourself through other people in his play "no exit" similarly to what you wrote in your post, however, he comes to the conclusion that the only tools we have to rate ourselves is the judgment of others. that means that with everything we say or think about ourselves, it´s always coalesced by judgment of others. so, if someones relations are bad, he/she is in total dependence to other people by trying to change his/her position (in my opinion: preconditioned these other people are superior in an interpersonal way). with this sartre now says: hell is - other people.

man, this was some pretty hard stuff to write...

one thing i wasn´t sure about in your article is who did you want to take a picture of? my guess would be that the cheese had to be some kind of return service for the picture?!

what made me a little angry was your description and comparison of the womens´ reaction towards your "no" with the apes in kubrick's movie/ clarke´s novel 2001: a space odyssey. having a lot of friends from the ivory coast and senegal i kind of see the picture of these women beeing... "pissed". it´s a very impulsive way to express displeasure, although, there is no comparison to the apes in that movie. without knowing you beeing a traveler, open-minded person towards new cultural experiences (otherwise you wouldn´t travel like you do, would you?) i immediately would categorize this sentence as racist.

well, with that young, chaotic mind of mine i come to my two last topics: i am planning an around the world trip this year and as i was surfing the internet on that issue i found your "around the world airfare" tips-side. thank you very much for that one. i am considering not to buy a complete rtw-ticket but instead to do it like you proposed on that side. my question is, if it would be possible to somehow update this side with new suggestions and new adresses or would you say that it is still current?

last but not least i have some news for you. wolfgang tiefensee (germanys minister of transport), representing the eu presidency and his us american colleague mary peters signed a treaty that creates a conjoint transatlantic airspace. it is ment to increase the airtraffic between the eu and the us. costs for airway-companys are getting lower, more competitors can join the transatlantic flights, which results in lower ticket-prices for flights between the eu and the us plus there are more flights. (i thought that would be of some interest...=)

have a nice stay in togo,
christoph

Andy of HoboTraveler.com is a big white hairy ape, and sometimes goes and craps in the woods as I did in Soki, Togo.

I find it humorous I am called a Monkey all the time in Africa, this is because I have about very long hair on my legs or extremely hairy in comparison to the Togo or West African people. I have many people come and play with the hair on my legs.

I occasionally like to grab or hold myself.

I wonder how the Animal kingdom thinks of us, I can just hear two large gorillas talking,
- How do they think they are, the are flesh and bone same a us, just because they live in houses they think they are superior. -

I will read Sartres no exit. I was a philosophy major, yet never read this book.

Christoph, in my opinion, a comment about the behaviour or an attribute of a person or group of people can nearly never considered racist. What can make it sound racist is the implication of the generalisation of this attribute to all the people of the same race.
So, saying that someone dances or moves like an ape is not racist, whereas saying "russians are sexy" is.
Anyway, here is an interesting timeline of human history.

Andy, I too would be interested in knowing, if your "AROUND THE WORLD AIRFARE" site is up to date or if something has changed since the last update.

Excellent Reebee,

Interesting views on racist thinking. A very difficult subject and the people that scream racism are rampant.

What causes problem though is sometimes the lack of generalized statements, because the fear of being called a racist.

There are culture, that I may consider more sexy, however, are all Russians sexy, I hope not, and I also hope so.

The use of words like developed and underdeveloped, developing and last phrase Third World which to me is semi-racist in nature all are problems phrase.

If a person is un-civilized is that ok to generalize to a culture.

If I say a culture has poor manners is this racist?

I truly believe the some races of people are better at math than others, it that racist to believe this.

To me the racism starts when I pass a judement that cannot be changed and is enforced on a person, like all this group must do this, the conversations here are semi-noise, however we need to encourage people to allow all person free rights.

Women are being abused all over the planet in a systematic and legal way, this is a problem, much bigger than racism. Races tend to keep away from each other, while the women problem is brought home.

ON the page of AROUND THE WORLD AIRFARE -
http://www.hobotraveler.com/aroundtheworldairfare.shtml

It has not been updated much, however I do update about every two months when I can, any new ideas are continually added.

Do this though, go to the help center and post questions, I will write you and the answers are shared with the world in the airfares section.
http://www.hobotraveler.com/helpcenter/category/airfares


I will soon weave this and the site flyinghobos.com all together.

I do not think there are races that are bad in math, the education plays in my opinion a bigger role than genetics. So some races may be in general better in running to long distances, some to short distances, but the differences in the ways the brain functions seem pretty unlikely to me. There just was not enough time since we use our brains that way for the evolution to develop harsh differences. Also, it's pretty hard to talk about evolution of human beings, as the human society makes things much more complicated than it is with other animals.
The term "race" is also pretty hard to define in human world (in genetical meaning), as it all pretty much mixed up in the last centuries.
And I think, the typical deviations between people of one race are of much higher amplitude than the differences between races.
Still, if we imagine, there is such thing as different races in the human world, and they have differently developed abilities, it still can't be bad, if someone points at this differences, because it's just like this. e.g. People of the negroid race have black skin, and therefore are not so well suited for a long antarctic expedition, because their skin blocks a lot of sunrays, and they have to take medication with vitamin X (forget which it was) to remain healthy and not fall into a depression. So just pointing out the differences is not bad, it starts to get bad, if prejudices are used exclusively instead of common sense, which you already said in your comment, if I understand you right (I'm a russian living in Germany).

As for the treatment of women all over the world.. I dream, we just should treat each other well, regardless if man or woman, rich or poor, naked or wearing Prada (still, I have prejudices against the latter :)

Social dynamics is an interesting thing which I don't want to study cause I want to retain some faith in humanity. Nevertheless, I always wondered, what effect the capitalization of "I" had on english and american societies...

Keep it up with your site,
see you in Germany. Or Russia. Or south america this summer :)

Thanks forever... I think you may have answered a question that has been annoyingly bothering me for about 10 years.

I wanted to know are some races of people smarter than others? I have interviewed many travelers, in an indirect way, and asked,
- What do you think are people in some countries smarter? -

The answer is almost alway yes if the person is not engulfed in some insane desire to be politically correct at the expense of the truth.

YOU SAID and I agree.
- There just was not enough time since we use our brains that way for the evolution to develop harsh differences. -

To have Germans brains be dramtically better at math would be a difficult task to happen by evolving. This different is nurtur or the society focus. Germans focus on math more maybe or have a need to be good at math.

There is some food problems and nutrient problems whereby I feel confident in saying, that malnourishment has stunted the minds of a few people. I had problem in India and Nepal, then China when I continued to eat only crackers for about one year. I developed large infections. When I demanded of myself to eat fruits, etc, Vitamins, after a year the problem went away.

But this is an opinion.

I went to your site and was lost or the blog, all Russian, maybe German and could not make a clear decision.

Hope to see you one day

To say the truth, germans suck at math. When I first came to germany, I was 13 years old. I asked my teacher where is the focus in a parabola, if the rays are falling straight downwards on it. My mother told me about it as she told me how the sattelite dish functions. My teacher wasn't able to tell me that, though I painted it in many different ways.. Parabola was only a subject 3 years later. I learned how to find the focussing point when I was 19..
So, the german education system and the german society in general is pretty bad at math.

Nutrition is a valid point, I read once that in your home country you have a pretty balanced nutrition, getting all the needed elements with your food. As you travel to another country with another (also balanced) nutrition but different food, you don't eat balanced, just because you don't eat everything the eat, or not in the right ratio. So it would be vital to take vitamine supplies during extended travel..
It reminds me of a book called "hungry planet" with photos of weekly provision of a family in different countries. I could find scans here:
http://www.menzelphoto.com/recent/recent.php?base=MCWorldAtTable&page=3
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v504/lopezfamilycasa/?action=view¤t=whatworldeats_cuba.jpg
And I think, food in the western world looks.. like plastic..

My site must be pretty hard to understand for non-german speakers, except maybe for two sculptures:
Rain
and Impotence.