Is it safe to use cinder blocks or red bricks in stoves and ovens?

...ts off a firestorm of incoming Google hits. An old blog post on a “Redneck Rocket Stove” made out of cinder blocks prompted many to suggest that the cinder blocks would explode due to heat. Leon, of the blog Survival Common Sense, does a good job of refuting this notion in a blog post, “Build a brick rocket stove: Is it safe to use concrete blocks?” The short answer is that those concrete blocks are not going to explode. But if you want something...

Read…

Simple Tech

...ns. The rocket stove we featured earlier exemplifies this approach. With a rocket stove, which is made out of simple, easy to repair materials, you can burn twigs, newspaper and scrap wood rather than cutting down whole trees to make charcoal for cooking. Rocket stoves if adopted in wide numbers, have the potential to slow deforestation. Another example is a wheelchair made out of the ubiquitous plastic lawn chair developed by an organization call...

Read…

Appropriate Technology

...well. Here’s three of our favorite appropriate tech ideas and websites: 1. Rocket Stoves: our brick rocket stove and a link to a video on how to make a simple metal version. 2. The glorious Solar Cooking Archive which has links to dozens of simple solar cooker plans that you can build yourself. We built our cardboard and aluminum foil Pavarti cooker with plans from the solar cooking archive. 3. AfriGadget. The subtitle of this blog says it all, “s...

Read…

Bar Codes on Veggies

...rket, consumers use camera equipped cell phones to scan the QR code on the label. The code links to a mobile website detailing origin, soil composition, organic fertilizer content percentage (as opposed to chemical), use of pesticides and herbicides and even the name of the farm it was grown on. Consumers can also access the same information over the Ibaraki Agricultural Produce Net website by inputting a numbered code on each label.” Though we’re...

Read…

Gluten Intolerance . . . Is It All In Your Head?

..., and so they did. The finding led Gibson to the opposite conclusion of his 2011 research: “In contrast to our first study… we could find absolutely no specific response to gluten.” Nocebos, incidentally are placebos with a negative effect. If I tell you you are going to get sick there’s a good chance you will. All human beings are highly suggestible. How powerful are placebos/nocebos? A recent study showed that placebos/nocebos work even if you t...

Read…