26 Unlimited: A philosophical exploration of the human condition

So you bought a Mac, possibly due to my influence, and the “Blue Screen Of Death” has only been replaced by the “Spinning Wheel Of Death” (why are these things always deadly?). First and foremost – give yourself a pat on the back, at least you’re not stuck with a Dell!

One of the most important components to Troubleshooting is isolation; Narrowing down WHERE your problem is so that you’re not just trying random stuff and praying to your favorite Nerd-Gods that your problems will just go away. Most issues occur as a result of corrupted preference files, and of these, most are at the account level; so odds are that you can isolate and remove the corrupted preference file and you’ll be fine and dandy. FYI – Apple has a support page on troubleshooting here

A problem with an apple computer can generally be isolated to one of the following:
- An application issue (reinstall or preference troubleshooting)
- An account issue (preference troubleshooting)
- A system error (Disk Repair/FSCK, System preference troubleshooting, Reinstall operating system)
- A hardware conflict (remove conflicting 3rd party hardware (i.e. USB drive or video card that you’ve plugged in)
- A hardware issue (take it in for repair)
- An ID-Ten-T error (write it down with a numerical “10″, so your computer was unplugged..)

Your computer will not boot:

No signs of life: your computer won’t even light up. First things first; try tapping a few keys to make sure it’s not asleep and make sure that your screen is not turned off or fully dimmed! try brightening the screen with the appropriate function keys (even I make this mistake with my macbook on occasion). If it’s a laptop, plug it in and try booting – maybe your battery is drained. From here, I would check the power connections – make sure the cable hasn’t come loose from the computer and that it’s fully plugged into the wall- it is also a good idea to test a light in the socket to make sure you haven’t blown a fuse. From here you should unplug any additional hardware from your USB/Firewire ports and see if that does it. Once you’re certain that the computer is plugged into a working outlet, that the screen is not fully dimmed or off, and that the computer is not asleep, you’ve only really got one more thing to try: resetting the PMU, or the Power Management Unit. Sometimes the PMU gets out of whack and the computer simply will not turn on, even though it’s plugged in and otherwise fully functional.  WARNING: Only reset the PMU as a last resort; there’s a small chance that a PMU Reset will fry the PMU, meaning you’ll have to take it in. Rather than taking this step, you may consider calling apple, especially if you’re under warranty or covered by an AppleCare plan. For instructions on a PMU Reset, check out this article.

If your computer hangs or crashes during the boot sequence, unplug any additional hardware from USB or Firewire ports and see if that does it; hardware conflicts can often cause these sorts of problems. Try booting to your install CD and doing a repair disk or into Single User mode (Command-S) and running an FSCK scan. When you reboot after this, try booting while holding Shift for the first 20 seconds of the boot – this does a Safe Boot: it will take a bit longer to boot and will disable a number of system settings. If this works, consider backing up, just in case you aren’t able to boot again. If this does not work, you’re probably going to have to erase and reinstall, though if you have another mac around and a firewire cable available you can boot into Target Disk Mode by holding Command-T- this will boot your computer as an external hard drive, allowing you to backup before erasing. If Safe Boot worked, try rebooting normally and see what happens. If normal boot doesn’t work, it’s likely an issue with something in your system folder; you can safe boot and try system preference troubleshooting, but that’s a little more advanced than what I’m going to cover in this article.

If your computer fully boots but won’t let you do anything once you get to your desktop, you might have a corrupt Finder plist (the finder is what allows you to browse your hard drive), meaning that you cannot login to your account to remove the corrupted preference file. You can try rebooting after unplugging any additional hardware, but if this doesn’t work there are two work arounds; one involves booting to Single User Mode and removing com.apple.finder.plist from your user profile (I’m not covering this),  the other only works if you have a backup admin account on your computer, which you should always have.  Reboot your computer, and if you have automatic login enabled, hold shift right after the gray screen with a spinning wheel disappears. Login to your backup account and go to Macintosh HD>Users>”Primary account, without a ‘house”. You’ll see folders in here with a ‘one way’ or ‘no entry’ sign, meaning that you do not have access.. but you can get around this if you are an administrator. Click the “Library” folder and go to  File>Get Info. Under Permissions or Sharing & Permissions, you’ll have to change your access so that your current username or the “Admins” group can read and write – you may have to click a lock and enter the password for your current account to do this. Do not apply this to all folders within.  Once you can get into the Library folder, do the same for Preferences. Once here, you can pull the finder plist, then go back and change the Permissions on both the Preferences and Library folders back to the way they were. Log out, log back in as your usual self, and hopefully your issue is resolved!

You are having an issue with a specific program

NOTE: If you’ve never successfully used the application, make sure that it is compatible with your current operating system (Apple Menu>About This Mac for OS details)

1. Try running the program in isolation to make sure it’s not a conflict with another application.
2. Try rebooting and unplugging all additional accessories from USB/Firewire, see if that fixes it.
3. Try creating a new user account on your machine, login as the new user, and see if you can reproduce the issue. If you can, this means that there is an issue with your main account, which can usually be fixed by preference troubleshooting! If not…
4. Try reinstalling the application.
5. If the above steps don’t work, it looks like a conflict between the application and your OS.. Did you update recently? Upgrade? Install new software that might have changed system settings?
6. You can try running a “Repair Disk Permissions” using Disk Utility in your Utilities folder, though this rarely fixes anything noticeable.
7. Try a Repair Disk or FSCK. If this doesn’t catch anything, you’re into a whole new league; either the application is conflicting with something in your operating system, or something else just isn’t jiving.. Sorry!!!

Disk Repair and FSCK: You can either book up to your Install CD/DVD and run a Disk Repair from here using the included disk utility, or alternatively, boot into Single User Mode by holding Command(apple) and “S” as you turn your computer on or reboot. This gives you command line access to the machine; it will take a second, then get to the point where you see >_  with a blinking underscore ( _ ), then type “fsck -fy” (that’s fsck[space]-fy) and hit return. It’ll take a few minutes (this is a disk diagnostic very similar to Disk Utilities’ Repair Disk). Once it’s done it will “Macintosh HD is Okay” or that it was repaired. When you’re done here, type “Reboot” and hit return. If  errors occurred in the disk utility, re-run “fsck -fy” to see if they repeat.. If you still have disk errors you should backup immediately, try the repair option from the install CD/DVD, and if that fails, consider doing an “Erase and Install”, which will wipe your hard drive clean and reinstall the operating system..  Make sure to backup first.

Preference troubleshooting: You should start preference troubleshooting once you’ve isolated the issue to your user account (i.e. you cannot reproduce it in another account); at this point you know that the problem is somewhere in your “Home” folder.. Preference troubleshooting does resolve the vast majority of issues encountered, and it’s not incredibly difficult to do! Log into your main account and navigate to Macintosh HD>Users>”Your Account Name”>Library>Preferences. NOTE HERE: There are Library folders right inside the Macintosh HD, as well as in the System folder, DO NOT TOUCH THESE unless you know what you’re doing- you risk messing up your operating system. Now that you’re in YOUR ACCOUNT’S preferences folder, you need to track down the preference file of the application or system tool that you’re having trouble with and remove it. BEFORE you remove the preference file, make sure to quit the application; if the application is open while you remove the preference file, it will simply re-write the corrupted preferences into a new file. So – Quit the application, then remove the file. There are a number of possibilities for the file you’re looking for, but most will begin with “Com.COMPANY.APPLICATON.plist” i.e. “Com.Apple.Safari.Plist” or “com.google.videoplayer.plist”. move all preference files that seem to be associated with the application to your desktop, then try launching the application again, if it works and you’ve had to remove multiple plists, you can quit the application and put them back one at a time, relaunching and requitting the app each time. If the issue is with something like your Dock or a component of the system, you might have to pull the preference, log out, and log back in. If you can’t get the right preference, try pulling the whole preferences folder, logging out, logging back in, and seeing if that does it- this way you at least know that it’s something in that folder that’s causing the issue. If you can’t resolve the issue through preference troubleshooting, try pulling folders like “Application Support” and “Cache” much as you would preferences.

What if I can’t even get to my desktop to preference troubleshoot? If your system won’t boot, you can boot while holding the Shift key on your keyboard and your system will attempt a safe boot. If you have to resort to this, it means that you either have disk errors (see FSCK) or that there are issues with your operating system. Try running a Disk Repair or FSCK, and if you don’t get errors or resolve the issue, you might be able to remove system preferences to resolve the issue, though for the purposes of this write-up, I will recommend that you reinstall your OS.

What should you backup? Ideally you should backup everything on the Macintosh HD, though realistically you don’t need many of the things on it. GENERALLY (i.e. this might not quite apply to you), you should backup your home folder (Users>You) and any applications you’ve added; that’ll catch the vast majority of what you need and use, though not quite everything.

Side-note: You can call apple and ask NON-TECHNICAL questions without charge.. I.e. “Is there a battery replacement for my laptop”, “Is there a known issue with..” or, if you’re lucky, “how would I reset the PMU on a new macbook?”.

The Knowledge Base is your friend! There are PLENTY of instructions on apple’s support site, http://support.apple.com and do a search for what ever’s ailing you… Keep your terminology general, and hopefully you’ll get some useful results!

The below written Aug 28th, 2008.

What to make of this life?
I am an adventurer, an explorer, one who idolizes those who’ve broken from the mundane existence of accepting the norms and standards presented by their fleeting societies to pursue a truer form of life. I am one who acknowledges that man is an ape, and that we’ve done much to trick ourselves into believing that we are so much more than that. I am a man who sees the lies of his predecessors, and who knows that he lives in a world controlled by brutal billionaires who will do just about anything to retain their status and privilage. I am a voyager who has pushed himself to the fringes of the earth in search of the essence of the human condition; the common, timeless component that keeps us ticking, keeps us striving, and beats strong within each of us. I have sought freedom and found it to be so much like the pot of gold at the impossible end of the rainbow.

What are my goals, my aspirations? What do I seek to get from life?
Wow… tough question… Well, I suppose that I strive towards some goal of finding an essential freedom.. I woke up this morning and almost cried, for I had dreamed a dream of the end of summer; an old friend asked me what I had done with my summer, and despite all of the things I think myself to have achieved and all of the events that I partook in, I couldn’t find the heart in any of it. Through it all, I had yearned for the freedom to do as I wanted – to wake each morn to the rising sun, to stretch out and pour myself a coffee, to spend my morning wading about a hotspring and swimming in a prisine body of water, to spend my afternoon kicking around the forest of dreams and exploring ruins of an ancient past, to spend my evenings in the company of friends. Amidst it all to live without a worry on my mind, without any thoughts of what I had aught to do nor what is expected of me, to simply live life as I desire, day by day. To owe nothing to nobody, to find peace and happiness.

We have so deceived ourselves into unquestioningly living by the rules of others in a that world our forefathers made for themselves, forgetting the thousands of other societies before ours who have long ago met their demise. We do not question whether our way is the correct way to live, for it is all that we have ever known and so we have no measure of comparison by which to come to a thoughtful conclusion that this is the way things had aught to be. We forget that we are creatures of nature, and that our our nearest living ancestor on this earth derives great pleasure from spending its days swinging in trees, foraging daily, and throwing its feaces at passers by while so many of us live in a vicous cycle of work and vain attempts to quell our minds with the many distractions our modern media has presented to us. Critical thought is discouraged, as it is seen as dangerous by the powers that be; those rich few who hold the rest of the world in the slavery of ‘freedom’. The world is, at a glance, dictated by a small percentage of irresponsible individuals and groups who have more power today than any form of life has ever knowingly held on this earth, and we see that the results of this are destitute poverty in our own race, the daily genocide of countless species, unprecedented pollution of our own planet, an ever dwindling biodiversity as man continues to strangle the life from this planet for his own means, and all with the notion that we’re doing fine as a culture, as a species, and that you should enjoy all of the material success that has been provided by your 9-5 which works to perpetuate material success for others. Best to ignore the notions of dooms-day scientists who predict the end of the world from Global Warming, a lack of bio diversirty, over pollution, or what ever other abstract notions they might come up with. Why permit these things to ruin your day?

Yet amidst all of this we find ourselves yearning for something else, something more than this life that we’ve had passed on to us. (unfinished thought.. sorry!)

I’ve added a gallery section to the blog and am working on some other changes in formatting which should be done soon. Posts to resume soon- I promise! Between summer school, bartending school, job search, wedding planning, and all sorts of other tidbits and tedbytes time has become a coveted commodity! If you have time to spare, please contact me ASAP!!!
z

Please excuse the lack of recent content; I’m fighting my way out of the belly of the beast. Hope you standunder.

-Z

©Zac Ryan 2009

Foreword: This is probably under-sourced and certainly expects some requisite knowledge of International developmental. It was written for coursework, holds a degree of bias, and was not initially intended for a public audience, but what the hell! You need something to read!

The Fair Trade movement: a struggle towards moral markets

            The Fair Trade movement challenges the Neoliberal approach to market-led development and seeks to break down the barriers between purchaser and producer that have facilitated long term consumer ignorance to exploitative corporate practices. It brings greater wages and more direct global market access to small farmer cooperatives, though in its move to certification as a means to a greater share of the market it has bundled elements of social justice, ethical purchasing, consumer and corporate responsibility into a marketable product line without making any fundamental changes to the way that we do trade. By branding FairTrade and distributing it through retailers who neglect to so much as uphold the certification standards themselves (i.e. Starbucks), the movement risks compromising its core values. At the same time, FairTrade along with several other social justice movements have succeeded in spreading awareness on social injustices in production and distribution chains; this increased in consumer awareness has elicited an increase in ethical corporate practices and stands to leverage the future potentiality of a moral economy. Despite its flaws and failures the Fair Trade movement progresses towards its goals in what may be the only way it can; by changing the system from within. It would be prudent to make clear the distinction between Fair Trade and FairTrade before I go any further: the former describes a movement towards egalitarian market practices and the latter specifically meaning the certification initiative driven by the FLO.

The Neoliberal approach to market-led development sees development as a result of, rather than a means to, a functioning market economy; it fails to incorporate human oriented priorities into the development process and has not made significant progress towards developing the third world. The pursuit of a global free market economy has diminished the power of the state and civil society while increasing the power of the corporation and maintaining western-bias terms of trade. The corporate-led approach to globalization has resulted in decades of reckless social and environmental practices, an widened wealth gap, a loss of individuals rights and freedoms, the emergence of a global western-modeled consumer culture, proliferation of monoculture, a loss of traditional knowledge, a reduction in ones capacity to live independent of the market, and countless other uncivil, inhumane and unsustainable practices in the pursuit of greater profit margins. Values such as community, cooperation, independence, democracy, social welfare, education, equality, freedom from unreasonable coercion, and the basic human rights that presumably bring civility to civilization are largely omitted from corporate-led development. By all appearances the trickle-down effect that is supposed to eliminate poverty has hardly been as successful as the siphon-up effect that has further intensified the concentration of global wealth among the already wealthy. One is left to wonder how the trickle-down effect can be expected to succeed when “the market generates no incentive to invest in such things as roads, sewers, schools, parks, and hospitals except where a profit can be made” (Fridell); the result is that much needed social investments in less affluent regions are typically disregarded in corporate-led development due to their lack of profitability. Beyond a lack of social investment in low-earning rural areas, small-scale farmers are gradually run out of business by super-sized agricultural giants who have access to the capital and technology required for rock-bottom prices maintained through rock-bottom employee wages. As these agricultural giants conquer the market and push out any smaller-scale competition, the dispossessed are forced to migrate to urban slums or take up work as wage-laborers for the very sorts of companies that robbed them of their livelihood. This hostile market environment spawned the Fair Trade movement; a bottom-up development initiative that seeks to empower producers by establishing consumer-producer solidarity, ensuring a living wage, and focusing on comprehensive community-based development.

The Fair Trade movement set out to empower small farmers who have been put at a disadvantage by the capital-bias free market system by changing the relationship between consumers and producers. According to the FLO “Fairtrade standards are designed to address the imbalance of power in trading relationships, unstable markets and the injustice of conventional trade.” By establishing long term contracts, providing advances in times of need, and paying additional funding for social development, the Fair Trade movement has assisted numerous small-scale community oriented agricultural cooperatives in taking control of their own social development. The Fair Trade movement promotes participatory democracy, community development, social welfare, economic and environmental sustainability, gender equality, ethical labor practices, and a market floor intended to insure livable wages (Fairtrade Labelling Organization). These producer-friendly efforts have helped stabilize numerous farming communities whose livelihoods would have otherwise become victims of corporate-led development. The movement promotes cultural diversity through providing sufficient income to allow indigenous communities to preserve their way of life, agricultural diversity in its disallowing the use of genetically modified organisms; as such it works to counteract the shift towards monoculture The Fair Trade movement brings not only a focus on helping small scale producers achieve sustainable practices, but it also seeks to spread consumer awareness on issues of social justice. The movement transcends meager market transactions by pushing consumers towards conscientiousness and asking them to take control of their purchasing power: if one dollar is one vote, Fair Trade asks consumers to vote for the best practices rather than deferring their vote to the lowest bidder, who is often the most exploitative. The Fair Trade movement seeks to cut out the exploitative middlemen whose sweeping profits come at the cost of both consumer and producer. Fair Trade decries the market environment which facilitates the unprecedented profits for TNC’s at the expense of the dispossessed, and as such it challenges the basis of corporate influence. At the same time, the Fair Trade movement has had to shift towards a more market friendly approach in order to grow its influence, presenting new challenges and opening it up to a new wave of critics.

As the Fair Trade has transitioned from a social movement for moral markets facilitated by Alternative Trade Organizations (ATOs) to the mainstream approach of the FLO’s FairTrade certification and labeling initiative it has seen an exponential increase in sales and ‘brand’ recognition, though it now faces a fundamental conflict of interest. As a result of the FLO’s labeling initiative FairTrade products have seen an extraordinary increase in sales worldwide, with an average growth of 30-40% per annum and the UK seeing a tenfold increase in less than a decade ( International Development Committee, UK House of Commons); on the other hand, the movement has become divided between those who seek to fundamentally challenge the way we do trade and those who seek to assist small scale third world producers in accessing to first world markets (Bisaillon, Gendron and Turcotte). Despite the divide and criticism that have resulted from this transition, the growth in sales and consumer awareness plus the growing number of businesses that are now selling FairTrade certified products or adopting ethical trading practices in an effort to stake out a share of the growing demand for such products (Sidwell) equates to an increasing number of disadvantaged producers who benefit both directly or indirectly from the Fair Trade movement. The FLO’s mission statement includes: “to connect consumers and producers via a label which promotes fairer trading conditions […]” (Fairtrade Labelling Organization); the emphasis on labeling as the medium for social justice has lead some to speculate that “the ultimate goal of fair trade is to get fair trade products on as many sales shelves as possible”(Fridell), which would represent a significant departure from the movements initial intention to fundamentally transform the market.

Despite its noble goals and focus on human interests, the FLO’s labeling initiative has shied away from challenging the fundamental flaws in the existing market system which spawned the Fair Trade movement. Though FairTrade certified farmer communities certainly benefit from the FLO’s standards, the pursuit of genuine consumer-producer solidarity has been left to the wayside as the social movement transitions towards branding. Despite its impressive growth in sales, the reduced number of consumer visits to Fair Trade cooperatives since the mainstreaming of FairTrade (Taylor) seems to indicate an erosion of the North-South solidarity that once pervaded the movement. In order to survive and thrive, the movement has had to adapt to the very marketplace that it once sought to oppose- shifting from the far-left counter-culture movement it once was to the more moderate labeling initiative that has emerged in the mainstream market. Beyond the risk of selling out by appealing to the mainstream market, Fairtrade also risks exacerbating the downward trend of commodity markets by incentivising production and resultantly increasing the supply for products whose demand is falling (Sidwell). If we consider the coffee market, it has been noted that the supply of coffee has in the past grown faster than its demand (Lindsey), and that more FairTrade coffee is produced than is consumed (Taylor), so unless the FairTrade movement manages to increase the overall consumption of coffee proportionate to the increased production that results from its premiums, it will likely contribute to further deflation in a market that has seen over a decade of rock-bottom pricing. Should the prosperity of a FairTrade certified cooperative in Mexico impinge on that of an uncertified farming community in Vietnam, one is left to wonder whether this country-club model of exclusive benefits represent a genuine moral opposition to a free market system. While the FLO claims that “Fairtrade standards apply to traders and producers” (Fairtrade Labelling Organization), profit-driven vendors such as Starbucks offer FairTrade products actively suppress attempts at unionization (Fridell). This leads one to wonder whether trade can be considered fair when producers are required to meet exhaustive standards while the distributers needn’t meet any.

The continued success of the FLO’s FairTrade initiative is dependent on the continued empathy and affluence in the first world. Should the global markets fail and western prosperity fall into a deep recession, we could expect that most consumers would concern themselves more with the value of their dollar and less with the conditions under which the products they purchase are produced; we could expect a substantial drop in the number of consumers able and willing to pay the FairTrade premiums on which certified producers have come to depend. One might wonder whether Fair Trade could resolve the issues highlighted by dependency theory, for it requires a dependence on foreign consumer empathy in international trade relationships. The FLO’s certification initiative functions as a result of the enormous disparity in purchasing power between third world producers and first world consumers. There seems to be a fundamental oversight in a movement which strives towards global parity yet founds its practices in a disparity-dependent strategy. Were the modern market truly egalitarian there would be an immense increase in the developed world’s cost of living; should the global terms of trade to take a serious shift towards equity, I wonder whether we could continue to afford FairTrade products or if the loss of western affluence would result in the OEDC declaring an economic crisis, resorting to protectionism, and pushing to re-establish it’s long standing trade advantage. Despite the gains of a few producer communities, relegating fairness to nominal premiums levied on willing consumers while the payment of such premiums depends on a fundamentally unfair market system will simply not lead to global equality.

Beyond the precursor of disparity in the FLO’s FairTrade system, there is also the concern that it promotes a continuation of single-faceted export-oriented primary commodity production in the third world. One might wonder whether the FairTrade model is a feasible approach to long-term development when its product range lacks diversity and it depends so heavily on consumer empathy and foreign demand. Will FairTrade coffee farmers ever gain sufficient income to consistently afford Fair Trade coffee, and if not, can it be considered fair? Though the primary commodity price buffer system does work to afford many producers their livelihood, it does not seem likely that it will lead them to affluent lifestyles comparable to those of the consumers who can afford to purchase their products. Another obstacle in the FLO’s certification strategy is the lack of consumer interest in the expansion of FairTrade to other markets such as that of lumber (Taylor); if consumer interest in FairTrade is limited to a modest range of products, there is cause for concern that the movement will succeed in little more than achieving nichehood in the corporate-led neoliberal inspired marketplace.

Though the Fair Trade movement set out to reestablish a relationship of equality and solidarity between purchaser and producer, it’s clear that the current incarnation of the movement is focused more on spreading consumer awareness and alleviating poverty on as large a scale as possible through the existing market system. It is not a comprehensive solution to the daunting social ills that face modern man, but rather an effort to leverage as many disadvantaged small farmers as possible while growing and spreading values of consumer awareness. One could say that the mainstreaming of FairTrade products is necessary evil, for it could hardly be expected that a smattering of church groups, small businesses and NGO’s could catalyze the degree of change required for the global adoption of genuinely fair trading. As the movement works to broaden its base of financial support it must appeal to a more diverse population of consumers; by adapting to be accessible, competitive, and recognizably branded, the movement stands to compromise some of its core values while at the same time by transitioning from counterculture to mainstream it succeeds in the only way that it was likely to – by adapting to the reality of the environment which it seeks to challenge. As the movement grows, it establishes a stronger base of support and influence, as a result it becomes more capable of making significant change. If someday it becomes commonplace for consumers to question the conditions under which products are produced and expect a degree of fairness, the movement has at least in part succeeded. The Fair Trade movement is not in its self a comprehensive solution to the woes of the world, but it plays a part along with numerous other moral movements in working to shift power from the company to the community. Whether the moral economy pursued by the Fair Trade movement will ever be achieved or whether the movement will simply succumb to nichehood is yet to be seen. To criticize it as short sighted or ill conceived without giving due consideration to the more drastic failures of and inequalities perpetuated by the system that it seeks to change would be to overlook the distinctly human-focused approach to trade and development. Perhaps FairTrade’s greatest success is a psychological shift beginning in consumers: rather than selfishly striving to maximize the material realization of their labor, many of the worlds affluent are beginning to contribute a portion of their purchasing power towards more equitable market practices, which could be seen as a move towards North-South solidarity, albeit one markedly different from the sort of solidarity that the Fair Trade movement had hoped to achieve. As consumer awareness grows and the affluent become willing to sacrifice a portion of their purchasing power for the sake of others, we might see the erosion of the accumulative and materialistic paradigm which has pervaded consumer culture and driven us to global inequity. By spreading the notion of consumer conscience as opposed to consumer convenience the movement potentially sets the stage for further and more dramatic moves away from the exploitative practices that have pervaded western civilization and towards a closer approximation of a moral market.

Bibliography

International Development Committee, UK House of Commons. “Fair Trade and Development.” UK House of Commons Publications. 7th April 2009 <http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmintdev/356/356i.pdf>.

Bisaillon, Véronique, Corinne Gendron and Marie-France Turcotte. “EFTA.” November 2006. Fair Trade and the Solidarity Economy: the Challenges Ahead. 13th May 2009 <http://www.european-fair-trade-association.org/FairProcura/Doc/Brochures/Fair_Trade_Workshop_Activity_Overview.pdf>.

Fairtrade Labelling Organization. Fairtrade Labeling Organization. Multiple April-May 2009 <http://www.fairtrade.net>.

FLO Annual Report. “FLO Annual Report.” FLO Annual Report 2007-2008. 7th April 2009 <http://www.fairtrade.net/uploads/media/FLO_AR2008.pdf>.

Fridell, Gavin. “Fair Trade and the International Moral Economy: Within and Against the Market.” Global Citizenship and Environmental Justice 2006: 81-94.

Lindsey, Brink. Grounds for Complaint? Understanding the “Coffee Crisis”. 2003. 7th April 2009 <http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tbp-016.pdf>.

Sidwell, Marc. “Unfair Trade.” 2008. Adam Smith Institute. 8th April 2009 <http://www.adamsmith.org/images/pdf/unfair_trade.pdf>.

Taylor, Peter Leigh. “In the Market But Not of It: Fair Trade Coffee and Forest Stewardship Council Certification as Market-Based Social Change.” World Development 33.1 (2005): 129–147 doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.07.007.

Here are a few interesting videos that might make you think a little about the mind and the current global situation. I strongly recommend spending hours browsing TED for those of you who have not yet done so – it’s tantalizing and will spark your interests, whatever they are. I could post heaps more, but these ones came to mind at the moment. Enjoy!

Jill Bolte Taylor discussing an astounding experience

Split-Brain phenomenon

Enough on the mind – how about the world?

An interesting video illustrating UN Data relating to international development.

Another video on data and development.

Z

After over a year of escalating piracy, the Somalian buccaneers that have crippled international shipping through the region has finally been quashed. The horn of Africa can expect to see the kind of stability that has long evaded this nation recent state of anarchy due to a lack of sovereign governance. The fourteen attempts to instate a stable government since the early 90′s have failed, rendering the nation a relatively safe haven for the new breed of piracy the world has come to see. With no foreign nationals bearing jurdistiction over Somalian waters there have been numerous legal concerns surrounding the apprehension or extermination of these slum-dog buccaneers, at least until United Refensive Co (URC) stepped up to the plate and took action. In an historic move, URC contracted a substantial private army in Somalia and waged war against the scurvy-ridden Somalian sea-dogs. Coincidentally most of the active pirates had been recruited into the very army that sought to cease their activities, and with a consistent income of reasonable wages the deep sea hustlers promptly dropped their arms to pick up arms anew; the success of URC was virtually immediate.

the United  Refencive Co’s Media Spokesperson Reinwaldt Duke told us that ”this represents a new era of Somalian prosperity”, indicating that the newly formed subsidiary of URC, Somalia Inc., has paired with the Yemen government in imposing fees  on any shipping business in the region. Modeled after the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal Tariff (SCT) will even use the Panama Canal Universal Measurement System (PCUMS) in the calculation of its fees. Its newly formed fee-structure will ensure safe passage through the  sovereign waters of each nation at a reasonable price; certainly much less than the ransoms previously demanded in the region. “This truly is a spectacular demonstration of the free market’s capacity to alleviate poverty and dispair” Duke said, adding that Somalia Inc is moving “to begin exporting labour, lease national assets and mineral rights, establish a solid oil and agricultural industries, and start importing the bare necessities that are so desperately need.” Duke further claimed that “URC’s establishment of Somalia Inc. will unquestionably benefit the global community as well as the people of this long disjointed nation. We are bringing order to the chaos that represents Somalia’s recent history and spreading the benefits of globalization to the very people who would otherwise be left in its wake.”

Analysts have dubbed Somalia Inc the first in what will undoubtable become a multitude of ‘Compantries’, and though the corporate takeover if raising some eyebrows world wide, URC has reportedly established a solid base of support with several influential global institutions. Jennifer Braxter, head of the Somalia based NGO Solidarity United, remarked “At first we were wholeheartedly against [URC's] move. Admittedly corporations have substantial land holdings world wide, but for a company to take control of a nations sovereignty is unnerving. On the other hand I have to admit the benefits on the ground have been faster and more widespread than we could have ever hoped to achieve. The general welfare of the people here has skyrocketed in the past few days, and URC has released further plans to build private schools, hospitals, and otherwise improve the local infrastructure.”

Please note that the above is a fictional report and is not representative of actual fact. -Z

I have previously discussed the distinction between Life and Nature and would now like to consider some of what the world of lifelessness entails and discuss our best guess at what lead up to the beginning of life.

Nature is astounding in its scale and complexity; it is something that we are really just beginning to grasp with science, and still holds countless mysteries. It is noteworthy that most of what we presume to know of the universe is mostly based on speculation and small-scale observation, and as a result, quite likely as inaccurate as our former notions that the earth was flat or that the universe literally revolved around us. The realm of perception and observation which we base our conclusions from is infinitesimal in that we have observed but a sliver of the universes history from a miniscule vantage-point in a subjective manner. Though we seem to have learned an enormity about the way that nature works, we will undoubtably continue to redefine our view of nature so long as we continue to succeed in our pursuit of understanding it. That being said, I will explore some of the notions that we have about the Natural world and the history of the universe. In all of this I am looking to explore what kind of place we live in and how immaculate it really is, though I will inevitably go on a long cosmological discourse because it is a topic that intrigues me.

What we are made of; the other story of stuff.

It is fairly well accepted, within fields such as astrophysics and cosmology, that pretty much everything on our planet is made of stardust. Your body, the clothes you wear, the water you drink, and the car you drive to work were all made possible by a series of astronomical yet at the same time surprisingly delicate cosmic events. Why do we think this to be the case? It’s a mixture of physics and chemistry; it’s our best explanation of how all of the complex materials that exist in the universe today could have been generated. This is the story of the universe as best as we can tell.

In the beginning:

The Big bang theory, which is the predominant explanation for the state of the universe, asserts that the universe just kind of popped up from the unknown in an unimaginably massive explosion that spewed forth the base building blocks for the universe as we know it. It’s assumed that prior to the big bang the universe didn’t work the way it does now; basically, none of our rules applied and that’s why we can’t really explain it. In order to understand why we accept that we can’t understand the universe prior to the big bang, you’ve got to understand a little more about time.

Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the future.

Time does not appear to be quite as normal as we tend to think it is.. We like to consider time as a constant: 5 minutes is a fundamental and basic value which will always equate to 5 minutes and never any more or less. Modern science disagrees. Time can move more quickly or slowly depending on where you are; the main factor here is A) how fast you are moving, B) whether you are accelerating or not , and C) how much gravity is being exerted on you. To simply, if you were in a black hole looking out, everything on earth would seem to be moving very very quickly; we’ll say 1,000,000 years per second. On the other side, if you were on earth looking into a black hole, it wouldn’t seem to be moving at all, as it would take 1,000,000 years to observe  a black-hole second.. 

Both the earth dweller and the black-hole dweller would perceive local time the same way – one second is one second; that second would only seem shorter or longer when you’re comparing it to time passage elsewhere. Confused yet? Well, it is a hard one to get your head around, but the basic thing that’s important to this write-up is that Acceleration and Gravity slow time down, by ‘bending’ it. Now then, before the beginning of the universe, we can imagine that all this matter and energy that exploded in the Big Bang must have been sort of sitting around — but with so much gravity being exerted by all the mass in the pre-big bang universe it wouldn’t just bend time and slow it down like the black hole did, but it would ‘break’ time, making a sort of ‘time-bubble’ around the pre-universe, effectively stopping time from happening. Without time as a factor in the universe, everything that we know of the universe falls apart, meaning that the pre-universe wouldn’t need to follow the post-big bang universes rules (oh you rascally little rebel!).

Time Begins

So, the Big Bang released Time as we know it as well as an explosion of energy and matter in the form of plasma. The plasma gradually cooled down and formed into Hydrogen, the most basic and simple atom (there’s a lot of other jazz about Matter kicking Anti-Matter’s ass and so forth, but I’ll save you the anti-matter and pre-atomic/subatomic particle discourses). Skipping along quite a ways and simplifying things a little, we ended up with a sort of giant expanding hydrogen cloud that started to form little clusters due to gravity, kind of like how raindrops form inside a cloud. Gravity pulled vast amounts of hydrogen together into tight packages, and the amount of friction and heat occurring within these imploding clusters as a result of gravity’s pull began the process of nuclear fusion; high energy atomic collisions that produce more complex elements and release a ton of energy (fusion is notable different from fission, the kind nuclear power that tend to we use which splits atoms and releases energy). Once the fusion begins, these hydrogen clusters ascend to Stardom.

From the life of a Star to the birth of the Earth

Note that there the cycle of a star depends on its size, and that the process I describe below is one scenario of several. Due to the amount of energy produced from fission, it manages to keep gravity from collapsing the star past a certain point of equilibrium of ‘push and pull’ wile the star gradually fuses (‘burns’) most of its hydrogen. Once most of the hydrogen is depleted, the star stops producing enough fusion energy to maintain the push-pull balance with gravity, allowing gravity to kick in and compress the star until it gets hot enough for helium to start fusing and produce enough energy to start a new push-pull equilibrium. The star progresses this way for a while, finding balances between gravity and the energy produced from fission and producing denser and denser elements until it gets to iron. Iron will not fuse as the elements before it did; it takes more pressure and heat than what’s available, so gravity wins… sort of. The star collapses in on its self, resulting in a massive explosion, or a super-nova. The supernova produces enough energy to start fusing Iron and so it is in supernovas that all of the denser materials of the universe are created.. Iron is the 26th element on the periodic table and we’ve found the first 96 elements to occur in nature (these 96 are being present on Earth), meaning that nearly three quarters of the earths atomic diversity appear to result from Supernovas, most of the rest having formed in the centers of stars. Each supernova would spread these elements out into the universe as a sort of cosmic dust, which would later get sucked into existing or newly forming stars. Our sun would have formed in part from this dust, along with a lot of hydrogen, and our solar system would have formed from the ring of dust surrounding our sun. So the Earth is made of star dust which resulted from the big bang and countless supernovas, and it just so happened to be placed at the right range from our sun to allow liquid water and provide enough (but not too much) solar energy for life to emerge.

Beyond the cosmos 

The above was made possible by the ‘rules of nature’, or the way that things are; the time, forces, masses, energies, and events made possible by the universe being exactly the way that it is. If the interactions between things on both a cosmic and sub-atomic scale were ever so slightly different, the whole story of the universe would be significantly different. If any of the three natural forces (Gravity, Strong Nuclear and Weak Nuclear) were any different the Earth would not exist as it does; if the weight or interactions of atoms and sub-atomic particles were different, if the anti-matter to matter ratio was different, or even if the total mass of the universe were different. All of these are intriguing topics, for they showcase how little we really know. If you look into Sub-atomic particles you’ll quickly become lost in the vast abstractions of our theories. If you look into matter and anti-matter you’ll probably get as confused as I do (though it’s certainly interesting, for work on antimatter has demonstrated that all matter is simply a form of energy); If you try to imagine time as we believe it to be you’ll probably twist your mind; Notions like quantum theory and string theory prove baffling and inconceivable to most; cosmologists have even taken to explaining much of the universes quandaries through the existence of  ’Dark Matter’ and ‘Dark Energy’ which are said to make up as much as 95% of the universe and remain undiscovered unexplained at large (which to me sounds like we may have made some errors along the way). We are probably wrong about a lot of the things that we take to be true of the universe; but the fact remains that the base structures of the universe and all of its ‘rules’, or Nature as I would call all of this, is truly a beautiful and astounding thing on both a macro and micro scale, and we can only really dream of understanding in within our lifetimes. We occupy such a small fraction of it that we could be likened to a day in the life of a grain of sand in the Sahara desert. 

UrbisMedia

The order and chaos of Nature is truly amazing, and the immerse complexity of it all certainly raises a question: how did it come to be? From the sub-atomic to the galactic there seems to be so much order in the way that things work, but what determined the rules? Could it be that time, matter, energy, the natural forces, and all that comprises the universe that we life in is just a matter of happenstance? How could such an amazing thing simply come to be? These are questions that we cannot answer, but it does leave room for some sort of designer, some initiator, some driving force that had a role in determining just how the way things turned out to be within the universe.. 

Neat, but what the hell are you getting at?

Well, I mean to demonstrate our lack of understanding relating to nature while also contextualizing the equally astounding event which is life. I think it is important to understand that there is much more than what’s here and now, but also to illustrate our best guess at what it took just for the building blocks of life to come into being. Next I hope to discuss what happened from here: the beginning of life.

Cheers,
Zac

Age 3-5: kindergarden. Endoctrination begins.
Age 5-12: Primary school. Endoctrinated Education
Age 12-17: Secondary school. Some critical education begins.
Age 17-21: Post secondary. Debt begins. Some critical education continues.
Age 21-Adulthood: Enter labor market to repay student debt. Corporate Endoctrination begins.
Adulthood-middle age: get married, have children, buy a house with a 2 car garage and 2 cars. Stay in labor market to pay off debts and pay for your children.
Middle age-old age: retire from the labor market: Freedom at last (you’ve earned it!).

Assessment: unsuitable for human consumption.
-Z

The days of Columbus, Mackenzie, Magellan, Cartier, Hudson, Marco Polo, Shackleton and so many other adventurers have for the most part past. The modern world is not so crude a place that men of such ambition oft set out in search of such adventure; clambering aboard wooden ships and propelled by the wind to unknown lands and uncertain futures.  Tales of such adventurers have intrigued me since childhood; these unique folk of iron will and immense ambition pushing far beyond the boundaries of convention into the heart of the untamed.

The would-be adventurer finds himself rather amiss in our present day society; lost for a cause to match his ambition and living in what may be the ultimate age of convenience. Lost for his own adventure, he may follow the legions of thrill-seeking individuals finding freedom and adventure in the form of a backpack. Each year millions of people from around the world opt for total mobility and long term travel rather than renting an apartment and working a 9-5; they choosing to immerse themselves in the freedom that is so often promised to us yet so rarely delivered. These rugged crusaders are beating their own trails throughout the known world, exploring jungles, parks, communities, and regions that are out of bounds for the sunday tourist.

The backpacking experience ranges from the more common Euro trek or Australian adventure to more exotic cultural experiences like the Latin American experience or the African emprise. With shoestring budgets and modest standards one can stretch a few thousand dollars to afford months of adventure by shaving the bigger expenses down to the minimum. Many hard core Backpackers work hard back home for months at a time, saving as much cash as they can and opting out of consumer culture, preferring to put their money in experience rather than possession. They leave everything they own behind them while off on an adventure (less backpackables of course), so owning more stuff is simply impractical. Backpackers don’t tend to see vacations in terms of weeks, but instead in terms of dollars; traveling until their savings have run dry at which point they head home to replenish savings while they plan their next trip.

Having spent a year traveling through numerous countries in Central and South America, South-East Asia and the Indian Subcontinent, I have  learned a few lessons that I would like to share with prospective backpacking adventurers daring enough to venture into what is so often called the Third World. First of all – it’s very important to know that the basics for life are available pretty much everywhere, cash transcends many language barriers, internet is widely available, and most of the poorer countries in the world aren’t quite what you might expect them to be after watching World Vision ads. 

What do I need?

The Beginners Backpacking Bible tends to take the form of a Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Footprint, or other budget traveling guidebook. These are available at most major book retailers and are worth spending some time researching as different versions and companies are geared to different kinds of travelers. Look for a book that is relatively lightweight and that will cover most of your destinations. For example: you’re planning on heading to Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, rather than getting three general guide books, get Lonely Planet’s Central America on a Shoestring. A good guidebook will include maps,  hostels, hotels, local transit routes, prices, restaurants, local attractions, a crash-course in the regions language and so on. 

Pack everything you need, unpack, get rid of half of what you packed, repack, unpack, cut it in half again; now you’re ready for backpacking! When it comes to the open road, there isn’t really very much that you need. Before you load up on expensive travel gear, consider the fact that 90% of what you might buy will be available at lower prices once you arrive at your destination, 

it’s mostly the high-quality/high-tech stuff that you need to buy back home. Clothing in particular is available around the world and will be geared towards the local climate, so don’t burden yourself with more than a couple changes. Tents, pots, stoves and other camping gear tends to be unnecessary unless you’re REALLY pinching pennies or heading deep into the bush without a guide (Bad Idea). A few things worth taking are: a good backpack (40L/+), a guidebook, a good pair of comfortable shoes/boots, a hidden pouch for your passport and emergency cash, a good sleeping bag (and/or a bed-sheet sewn in half for the tropics), compression bag(s) for clothes/sleeping bag, a toothbrush, a garbage bag, a waterproof bag cover, a camera, a hardcover journal, a mini sewing kit, a book to read then trade, a decent raincoat/windbreaker, a small flashlight, a utility knife, and a good outdoors med-kit (add blister/tensor bandages, imodium, some pain killers, muscle relaxants, possibly a suture kit and anything else you may need).  

Try to pack light wherever possible but do consider some extras like a mosquito net, dryer sheets (to freshen dirty laundry), a steel mug, travel cheques, a siltarp (light-weight tarp for weather protection/emergency tent), 10-15 feet of lightweight rope, an MP3 Player, a glow-stick, candles, mini locks for zippered pockets, a lock and chain, a compass, an immersion heater, a cutlery set, some non-cotton socks and so on. Personally, one luxury item that I like to travel with is a cloth hammock that I picked up in Costa Rica (it works as a pillow, blanket, sack, and tent when used with a tarp), sadly they’re hard to find. Once you’re on the road it’s worth picking up a day bag that can fit a snack, your guidebook, a bottle of water, and your camera.

Preparation:

You should  consider travel insurance and also go to a Travel Clinic and get any vaccinations that you might need; they’ll probably recommend ciprofloxain (which is handy) and anti-malarials (which I’ve purchased but decided not to use) – make sure you’re aware of any/all side-effects. 

Make 2 photocopies of any important documents (passport, government ID, insurance info etc) – leave one copy at home with a good friend and take the other copy with you, keeping it separate from your original documents when traveling. Also carry a list of emergency numbers, such as local embassies (Note: Commonwealth embassies will often help Canadians), your travel insurance number, and the numbers of family and friends… it’s also worth e-mailing some of this info to yourself in case you lose the printed copies. Consider getting a Skype account for keeping in touch with friends and family, you could even setup a travel-blog to keep people posted on what you’re up to!

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a Discount Airline!

Small local air lines often offer much cheaper rates when booked well in advance, and round-the-world tickets offer savings to those looking to hit a few continents along the way. Look through your guidebook for tips on regional airlines and check out their websites, if you’ve got a small budget get ready to spend hours deal-hunting. 

Travel agents and Websites like Travelocity, Kayak, Expedia, Flight Centre and Red Tag Deals don’t tend to list the cheapest air-lines out there, so you’ll have to search numerous websites for specific dates to find the best price. When I planned an extended trip to India I spent over a dozen hours deal-hunting and ended up flying with 4 different airlines to get to my final destination, some international flights costing under $100 after tax; the up side to this was that I took a few days off in each layovers and got a chance to see a few countries along the way.

Is there a potential down side? Sure! On my way home from my most recent trip, 9 days before my flight, the company that I was flying with liquidated. The money for my ticket disappeared and I was left flightless, and to make things worse I had another flight booked a few days after this one. In the end it all worked out though, I got my money back and ended up upgrading to a far superior airline for about 10% more than my original ticket (which happened to be less than half of the normal price for the flight).

Don’t let the bed-bugs bite (or is it worth the risk?)!

Hostels, the dormitory cousin of the hotel, provice an inexpensive alternative to luxury travel and offer invaluable opportunities to network with fellow backpackers. In a hostel you can meet like-minded travelers who speak your language, get local travel tips and hear about the must-see sights, learn all sorts of money-saving secrets, and find travelers to tag-along with for the extra fun and safety. You can find hostels in most major cities and  For the serious penny-pincher, home-stays and tiny hotels/guesthouses can offer rooms of questionable cleanliness at rock-bottom prices (i.e. $2/night). Spending less than $5/night often means cold showers, communal bathrooms, questionable bedsheets and grubby rooms – though there are always exceptions! Make sure to see the room before you agree to anything and don’t hesitate to make a run for it. If you don’t have the time or energy to find your bed on foot and don’t mind paying a little extra for your room, you can always ask a cabbie for a recommendation. Keep in mind that even the big hotels often struggle with pest management; you may not like it but cockroaches, mice, rats, flies, mosquitos, and geckos are sometimes unavoidable; on the other hand, I’ve only ever had ‘bed bugs’ twice (in the same city too) and I’ve slept in over a hundred dirt cheap places. If a weekend of camping in the woods is out of your league, then low budget third world Backpacking might not be for you.

Getting Around:

The third world tends to have much better public transit than we do. From the incredible train network of India to the extensive chicken-bus networks of Central America there is always a way to get where you’re going. Hitch-hiking is reportedly safe though I rarely chanced it myself, at the same time there are cab drivers out there who will scam tourists or worse. Busses are a safe method of traveling for the most part, but be wary of ‘Tourist’ busses in unruly regions as they’re an easy target for Banditos. Personally I like to take things slow and stick to the local transit systems; traveling with locals can be incredibly uncomfortable, but is the cheapest  choice and is generally safe (with a few exceptions like 14 year old drivers taking their passengers for a joy-ride on narrow mountain passes), you also get a chance to interact with the local culture. If you need to cover a substantial distance in a short period of time, you’ll probably to resort for the much pricier and generally more comfortable travel options. 

Taxis and Rickshaws are always an option, with very affordable rates and drivers that are happy to share some local knowledge. Be wary of drivers at airports or transit terminals though – it’s often best to get to the street and hail a cab or take a bus; the prices are lower and the drivers tend to be more honest.

Avoiding Scams:

The vast majority of people in the world are decent at heart, though there are always a few people out there looking to cash in on fool-hearty tourists. First things first: you will be scammed in one form or another, if you’re smart it will only be for a few dollars so don’t let it ruin your trip. Every backpacker buys something at a crazily inflated price or buys into promises of quality or authenticity – realize that life is rough in the poorer countries of the world and that scams are a common. Be wary any time that you’re offered something but don’t be closed minded; some of the best experiences are leaps of faith where you’re convinced that you’re getting conned or scammed but find out that people are more genuine and outgoing than you had ever expected. If a cab driver recommends a hotel, he’s almost certainly making a commission. If a cop accuses you of something and demands an on-the spot fine (i.e. bribe), you can probably negotiate it – I’ve even heard stories of cops giving change for bribes! The first price is almost never the last price, brush up on your bartering skills and ask friendly locals what the prices should be (noting that sometimes  skin-tax is unavoidable). Watch your pockets in crowded places and keep some backup money; I’ve caught a few hands in my pockets when places have been utterly packed with people. Test to make sure; don’t let your guesthouse charge more for an air conditioner and a TV when they don’t have any electricity. Finally: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

What does it cost?

In my experience, I’ve found my trips to average about $50/day. That sounds like a lot, but this includes all transportation (flights, trains, ferries, busses, cabs etc), accommodations, meals, souvenirs, far too much alcohol, indulgences, replacement gear, clothes, occasional vehicle rental, bottled water, and lots of adventure activities (i.e. paragliding, scuba certification and diving, lots of sight-seeing, snorkeling, sailing, guided hikes, surfing, and more). I could have done plenty more to cut my costs and have met plenty of people who travel much cheaper, but I would say that you make some big sacrifices if you get much cheaper than that.. When it came to my base living costs, they ranged between $5-50 on any given day depending on accommodations ($2-20), meals($1-10), and non-adventure leisure activities ($0-50).

Some Tips and Tricks:

- Set a date, figure out how to get there (why fly when you can bus all the way from Toronto to Panama or take an unconventional cruise and be a passenger on am international freighter (avoid Somalia)!). Set the date, and start getting ready – before you know it you’ll be there. On my trips I’ve put all my stuff in storage – a 4x8x8″ locker holds a lot of stuff and is way cheaper than keeping your apartment.

- Learn how to properly pack a backpack!! It sounds brain-dead simple, but it’s a real skill.. Heavier items should be close to your back and towards of the bottom, with the lightest stuff around the top and further from your back. There’s nothing worse than traveling with a bag that’s top heavy: it throws you off balance and is rough on the sholders.

- Travel with other backpackers. This is a great way to learn the ropes and has plenty of other benefits. Having someone you can trust with your backpack while you go into a shop or look at a hotel room is invaluable, shared rooms are cheaper, and the company is always worth while. There is a sort of an unwritten ‘backpackers code’, 

- Keep some backup cash with your passport, in your hotel room, in your sock, wherever! In a worse-case scenario $20 goes a LONG way! US Dollars are the language of business; accepted pretty much everywhere, so it’s worth getting some USD if you’re crossing a number of borders or if the local currency is particularly unstable.

- check the local currency exchange rates before crossing borders so that you know what the local currency is worth, also count any changed money carefully – especially if you’re changing money with ‘black-market’ moneychangers at the border – they have swift hands.

- Money talks. Sometimes it’s worth paying ‘additional fees’ a border crossings or in lengthy waits.. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been held up at borders or in bureaucracy due to a lunch break, lazy employee or overcomplicated processes. sometimes $5 can save you hours of waiting; I’m not saying that you should ever overtly bribe anyone – especially officials! I’ll give an example: I was in a Van with some west-coast Canadians driving through Honduras and between insurance, van inspections, passport stamps, and all the wonderful stuff involved we would have been at the border all day.. A kid offered to help (he couldn’t have been any older than 10), and said it would cost $20 and he’d need our passports.. We were pretty wary about it, but went along.. Within 15 minutes we had all our stamps, paperwork and so on completed!  A little cash the process turned from slow and arduous to quick and painless.

- I’ve come across some damn mean looking dogs in my travels, and it’s always a tense situation. If a wild dog (yes, there are wild dogs) is acting aggressive, try bending down and pretending to pick up some rocks (or actually pick some up).. In a lot of areas the local dogs will be familiar with the act and will back off. 

- Learn the language: make a serious effort to at least pick up some basics – it goes a long way in separating you from an ignorant hawaiian-shirted tourist and is a quick way to make friends.

- Scratching the surface of local culture is one of the best things about this kind of travel; you will be invited to see some of the intimate details of local peoples lives, you may even have someone’s daughter offered to you as a bride (respectfully refuse). Go with the flow, don’t be so suspicious of everyone as to miss these opportunities (even though most people who overtly approach you are looking to get something from you)!

Well, I could go on and on and on, but that’s all I’ll cover for the sake of this now obese post. I would love to go back and edit it to make it a little more lyrical, but I have work to do and the clock is ticking!  

Happy Trails! – Zac

Afterword: Some useful Links: 

http://wikitravel.org/en/Discount_airlines

http://wikitravel.org/en/Urban_backpacking

http://wikitravel.org/en/Packing_list

http://www.travelindependent.info/

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/ (Check out the world guide and the thorntree form!)