MASS Consciousness Events 2 Survive Climate Change

Dear Humankind,

My name is Bekah Hill.  I am humbly asking for friends to start a project that I hope will help our species SURVIVE CLIMATE CHANGE and to help our EARTH THRIVE!!!

I am proposing to create a world-wide tour of huge, free (and donation-based) events that are designed to entrain participants in a regulated altered state whereby people FEEL CONNECTED to their deepest sense of themselves and to the UNKNOWN.

Through music, breathing exercises, guided meditations, intention, inspiration, and the field of connective energy that our autonomic nervous systems create, we will create an environment through which insights will flow.

The goal is to educate people about how to regulate their nervous systems, to educate people about the immediate need for change in our way of life in order to survive climate change, and to support people to experience their birthright as a human animal.

This birthright gives us access to our POWER: OUR ABILITY TO CONNECT.  This birthright gives us the space to CHOOSE rather than being hijacked by our social conditioning and trauma-patterned responses.  This birthright gives us access to our INSIGHT and our COURAGE!

We need insight about the new technologies, systems, behaviors, beliefs, etc… that will allow us to relate healthfully to our thinking minds and meet ALL of our basic needs as STEWARDS of OUR SACRED EARTH, OUR SELF – NO SEPARATION.

Warning!

The ideas and opinions expressed on this blog by the author are not necessarily the ideas and opinions of the author.  😉

 

Snapshot of Me – 12/10/2015

I am a 41-year-old woman.  I am interested in working on a project that will help demonstrate that there is an alternative to the 9-5, typical lifestyle that many Americans live.  I want to do this because I am demonstrating an alternative lifestyle that for me is a part of my personal psychological and spiritual growth.  I want to continue to develop my life skills and to help others, particularly women, develop their skills too.

Here is my story:   I married young, put myself through college, worked very hard to be successful, and ended up anxious and suicidally depressed.  At my low point, I realized that I had to change my life.  I began to pray for openness and courage to see the truth.  Over many years, and continuing to this day, life has shown me that I betrayed myself.  As a young adult, I began leaving my heart behind.  I left behind my youthful desires to help bodies be healthy, to feed people, to be loving, to share, to remain open, to take responsibility, to continually learn, and to be strong enough to see how our consumption vandalizes the Earth and causes suffering of people and animals.  I let my heart whither unconsciously because I was afraid.  I was afraid of not having a place to live, not having the approval of others, not being needed, among others.

I changed my life.  I left my career and started traveling, doing what I called “collecting information”  and challenging myself to get comfortable with uncertainty.  During this time, I have begun to see the root of my fears.  I had unconsciously agreed with many of the oppressive societal norms about women and had been judging and restricting myself.  I consider these norms to stem from the dominant American culture that I see as permeated with militarism.

Militarism is on display overtly.  Driving through the agricultural valleys, I see how we use veritable machines of war to cut down trees, plough the fields, and grow chemical-laden food for the masses.  On the interstate system, I see the logistical distribution system of diesel-powered semis transporting supplies from one city to another 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for decades now.  I see the cities with their sprawling populations and dreary box homes constructed to temporarily house the soldiers when they are off-duty, houses that are just good enough to get the job done, but that are the responsibility of their superiors – the engineers, architects, the permitting offices.  Franchise stores and strip malls look the same wherever you go, as if the stores are wearing BDUs.  And whether I see a city board meeting, a highway construction crew working on formwork, an urgent care clinic churning through patients, a chain grocery store putting up displays of have-to-have holiday items, or just about any enterprise doing what it does, I see a “band of brothers.”  This “band of brothers” represents a small, exclusive clique that wages its part in the war of keeping the system going.  In some cliques, such as construction crews, women are not welcome.  In other cliques, women are welcome only if they act like men and accept the unspoken agreement that this is a war, that the men get to do the really important tasks, and that the men make the important decisions.

Where does this leave women?  For me as a young woman, it left me utterly afraid.  I looked out at the world and saw a system which I didn’t understand, a system that did not want me unless I pretended to be something I was not.  At some point I unconsciously chose to believe that  because I was a woman, I needed to be in a relationship with a man to secure my safety.  I unconsciously believed that I could assume an acceptable female role as a cog in the militarized American society.  I unconsciously believed that as a woman, I was not as good as a man.  I sold my soul; I stopped searching for it; I went to sleep and closed my heart, unconsciously agreeing to these beliefs as long as the beliefs stopped my fears.  However, one day my heart became so hard that it almost stopped.  The pain was immense.  My heart was painfully afraid of not being allowed to be happy, to be free.  That pain woke me up, and since then, I have been cultivating my ability to listen to and to follow my heart, to take responsibility for my choices, and to take action despite my sometimes overwhelming, albeit irrational and culturally-conditioned sense of fear.

At this time in my life, I want to continue to learn about natural building, about sustainable food production, about community, love, and friendship.  I want to do these things despite the fears that have held me back.  And, I want to encourage others, women and men, to see their fears in truth, and despite those fears, take action.

Author

Rebekah C. Hill

12/10/2015

Culture of Consent on the Rise!

A sadness was in me this morning.  Was the sadness there first or was I feeling sad because I’d heard yesterday morning a story from my friend.  Their friend was raped as a child. The activity of my mind bubbled up painful memories from my life that also happened when I was a child.  As a child, painful acts were also performed on my body against my will. The circumstances were different. I was caged, cut, and prodded at a hospital.  As a child, I experienced this as torture. I did not give my consent to have surgeries. My friend’s friend did not give her consent to be sexually violated.

In reflecting on this, I see how our thinking minds look at surgery for a child differently than we view child rape.  We take the intention of the person performing the non-consensual act into consideration. Perhaps we say the rapist’s motivations were evil and adjudicate punishment.  Perhaps we say that my parents intentions were to help me, and therefore, what happened was okay. I submit that in both cases, when we focus for a moment purely on the perspective of the person who experienced something done to them against their will, the intention of the other does not matter.  Our pain is what matters, and it is often wildly intense and long-lasting. We experienced this pain because we did not consent. We did not have our voice! We need to give consent in our lives. We all do!

I began to think about the shades of gray in everyday life in which consent is at play.  One thing that popped in for me was my observation of the expansion of the “culture of consent.”  I live in Oregon. There are people here and other places around the US that I’ve encountered who are teaching about the importance of giving your consent and in asking for the consent of others.  I’ve seen many workshops about this, articles, and hear it talked about at gatherings. And, consent is not only being discussed in the context of sexual conduct. People are suggesting that it’s important to ask a person their consent to ask them a question!  I’ve been wondering about this “culture of consent” as a growing phenomenon.

There is a polarity that exists between a person acting only with the consent of others versus a person exercising complete free will without the consent of others.  So, the polarity is acting with consent versus acting freely.  I’m proposing that the rise in the culture of consent is due to the deep pain that people are feeling as a result of so many acts done without our consent.  We have not given our consent for the environmental destruction we see today; we have not given our consent for war; we have not given our consent to be treated differently based on our race, gender, or sexual orientation; and we have endless other examples, too numerous to list here!  All we need to do is watch the news and feel where we have not given our consent or scroll our FaceBook feed and see our peer’s posts about all the tragedies and injustices that our peers did not consent to. We have experienced so much pain! We did not consent to this! We are so fragile and sensitive that we are needing to rebalance.  Some people are working towards rebalance by making a point of asking for consent whenever possible, even by asking if it is okay to ask a question, which for me illustrates the degree to which we are feeling pain!

But let’s look at the other side.  For every act that is done without consent, a person is exercising their free will.  And, if we look closely and are honest with ourselves, we exercise our free will without the consent of others all the time.  We need to exercise our freedom just as much as we need to give consent! We exercise our free will when we harvest lettuce. The lettuce did not consent.  We exercise our free will when we speak in public; not everyone consented to us speaking. We use electricity generated by damming wild rivers that had no say.  We eat meat without the consent of those who morally object and the animals. We kill droves of microorganisms when we wash our hands. No matter what we do, it would be impossible to acquire the consent of all beings that are affected by us exercising our free will.  Even if we could ask permission of everyone, it would be almost completely unlikely that we would receive everyone’s consent! That is, if we tried to ask everyone’s consent, the answer would be “NO!” This illustrates that we need to go against the consent of others in order for the activity, the movement of LIFE to happen!

So, I’m suggesting that we have needs that are, on the surface, opposing:  we need to give our consent, and we need to be free to act against the consent of others.  What do we do? Well, we just live our lives! We be with our experience and bring awareness to our actions so that we acknowledge when we give consent, when we ask for the consent of others, and when we act freely without the consent of others.  We need all of these things. Perhaps none of these things are inherently good or bad. We’ll still have to deal with the gray areas about what to do when a person performs an act against a person’s will that causes huge amounts of emotional or physical pain.  Life will continue to be life in all its shades of gray. The struggles “thicken the plot!”

As for the culture of consent, I agree that we do have a deficit of using our voices clearly and giving our consent with a resounding “YES!” or a loud “NO!”  Practicing asking others for their consent, even in small ways, is a way to help them experience more autonomy, more control in their lives. In fact, perhaps it would be helpful to practice writing down an agreement of the things in your life that you are saying “YES!” to, the things that you are saying, “YES, I CONSENT TO THIS!”  Perhaps you might write or say, “I consent to being truthful and fair in my business relationships.” You might write or say, “I consent to go to exchange my time today at my job to receive money.” Doing this exercise to use your voice to say what you are consenting to may help you to feel some balance juxtaposed against all the pain you feel for the things that you don’t consent to.  Also, you might start to evaluate where you are doing small things in your life right now that a part of you really doesn’t consent to. How would your life be different if you acknowledged this? What if you said “NO!” to the things that you don’t consent to and you said “YES!” to the things that you do consent to?

Presence be with you!

The Jack of Hearts Cryptocurrency and Transformation Network

This post is an abstract that describes the principles, vision, and function of a proposed new cryptocurrency and the network and community that maintains this new cryptocurrency.

This cryptocurrency is an idea that came through Bekah Hill (aka The Jack of Hearts). As an idea that came through Bekah, Bekah considers this idea to be an autonomous entity, belonging to no one and to everyone.  Perhaps there are enough humans who resonate with this idea and would love to join a team to develop, implement, and refine this idea.  Bekah loves this idea and sees how it has the potential to transform the way we meet our needs for goods and services on a global scale that creates abundance, equity, autonomy, authenticity, gratitude, personal power, hope, freedom, and more!

Principles of the Jack of Hearts Cryptocurrency

The Jack of Heart, or shortened to “Heart,” is a cryptocurrency – a currency, i.e. money.  (This blog post will use the terms currency and money interchangeably, even though currency typically refers to money in a specific country or region.)   Money is an entity that has no intrinsic value. The things that have intrinsic value are the goods and services that we exchange. Money is a generic symbol or placeholder for the actual good or service that was exchanged.  So too, the “Heart” is a symbol or placeholder. The “Heart” is money, but it is more than a placeholder for goods and services.

As a concept, the Heart represents our needs being met.  This is the critical foundational principle the makes the Heart so potentially transformative to the world.  The Heart is a way of acknowledging and expressing gratitude when a need of ours is met. With this intention, when exchanging Hearts, we see the endless opportunities around us to meet the needs of others.  In a transaction in which the parties agree to exchange Hearts, Hearts are either created or exchanged when the needs are met. There are abundant opportunities to meet needs, therefore, we have an abundant potential pool of Heart-generating resources, so long as we choose to meet our needs and acknowledge, with gratitude, when they are met.

Typically, money is exchanged in a transaction in a unidirectional way.  I like to give the example of a doctor helping patient. (Please imagine that health insurance does not exist, just to keep this hypothetical scenario as simple as possible.)  In the exchange, the patient receives some focused attention from the doctor, the doctor collects some data and gives their advice to the patient. At the end of the transaction, the patient (assuming there is no insurance) pays the doctor some money.  There is a unidirectional flow of money from the patient to the doctor.

However, if we look at this transaction from the perspective of what needs were met, if the transaction was voluntary, there were likely many needs met for both parties in the transaction.  The patient’s needs for being heard, for obtaining clarity and understanding about their health, needs for treatment options to care for their body, and likely more were met. But the doctor’s needs were met too. The doctor met their needs for connection, for being of service, for contributing their knowledge, for challenging their ability to apply the scientific method, for learning about the human body and human experience.  The doctor and the patient both had their needs met by this exchange! The doctor needed the patient and the patient needed the doctor.

Vision

The vision for the Hearts cryptocurrency is that it will be utilized as a symbol that represents when our needs are met in any type of voluntary transaction that the participants choose to acknowledge with Hearts.  As a cryptocurrency, the Hearts are maintained by a decentralized, impartial peer-to-peer network.  The people in the transactions are the ones who choose to acknowledge, record, and even create Hearts!  In this way, the people who use the Hearts are the ones who collectively regulate it. There is no central bank or government manipulating the value of the Heart; there is no restriction on who can exchange Hearts – as long as two people agree, they can be anywhere in the world and agree to a transaction, without oppressive rules from governments.

The longer we practice being mindful that we give and receive Hearts when needs are met, we will be more aware of when needs are not met.  We will notice when we agree to meet the needs of others but there is not a balance of our needs being met.  We may decide that the work we are doing is not meeting enough of our needs.

When we choose to meet the needs of others when it also meets our needs, we see how our giving is the same as our receiving!  We just enjoy meeting needs so much that the Heart exchange doesn’t even feel necessary! At that point, we are just giving and receiving love! And, it is given and received freely, without any future expectation.  This is true love, not transactional love, emerging from a system of money based on the principle that money is a symbol for a need being met.

In the long run, the outcome of using Hearts is that we would feel free to follow our hearts (our passions) in life and not be restricted by the scarcity of money.  We would look at the world and ask: “What are my friends and neighbors needing?,” “What am I needing in order to thrive in life?,” “What are the Earth and the creatures around me needing?,” and “What would I enjoy doing voluntarily to meet my needs and the needs of others?”  We would enjoy helping each other to connect with the resources that would make each of our lives better in some way.

Our ability to meet our needs is ABUNDANT; therefore, Hearts are ABUNDANT.  Shifting our view of our ability to meet our needs from one of scarcity (like in the current way we view money) to one of abundance has the power to completely transform our planet!

Function

So, how does The Jack of Hearts work?

The Jack of Hearts is a decentralized autonomous organization implemented with blockchain technology.  Transactions are encrypted and maintained by nodes on a peer-to-peer network. Like other cryptocurrencies, one needs to have an electronic wallet for your Hearts.

To exchange Hearts, both participants in the transaction must agree to the amount and must both have an electronic wallet.  The participants agree to the terms of the transaction. Hearts can be exchanged unilaterally or bilaterally in a transaction.  Hearts can also be created in a transaction with the agreement of those in the exchange.

How does a Heart get created?

A Jack of Heart symbolizes a need being met.  In transactions that are perhaps most often local, individual people will agree when it makes sense to create a Heart (or Hearts) in a transaction, rather than asking for a person to spend a Heart from their wallet.

Please note that the specific process and validation required for creating Hearts will be defined clearly by the team of people that emerges to implement the proposed Jack of Hearts idea.

Here are some example scenarios that the people in the transaction could choose to create a Heart:

1. Person X shares their knowledge about plant identification and leads a plant walk for several people in a park.  Person Y listened to Person X, went on the walk, and found that the experience met Person Y’s needs for learning.  Person Y is feeling grateful and therefore initiates a Heart transaction. Person X and Y negotiate, and together they decide that because the lesson was birthed there in the park and met peron Y’s needs, that they want to birth a Heart, out of thin air so to speak, and award it to Person X to acknowledge Person Y’s need for learning having been met.
2. Person A and Person B meet.  Person A gives Person B a back massage.  Person B then helps Person A with their school work.  Both of their needs for relaxation and support are met.  They both agree that they both want to create a Heart and award it to the other person.
3. Person E loves to plant trees.  Person E propagates and plants trees to restore habitat near the town where Person R lives.  Person R’s need for environmental stewardship is met, and so Person R creates Hearts and awards them to Person E.

How are Hearts from the Wallet used?

In a more impersonal transaction, like at a distance, at a retailer, or a scenario where an existing item is being exchanged rather than produced, if either party wishes to bypass the protocol that would allow the buyer to create Hearts, then a unilateral flow of Hearts from the wallet of the entity receiving the goods or services to the entity that provided the goods and services is what would occur.  For example: A farmer sells a pound of apples at market. The buyer awards a Heart from the buyers wallet to the farmers wallet to acknowledge that the farmer met the buyer’s basic need for healthy food!

How would credit work?

This is an interesting one.  Dollars and money are scarce and controlled.  So, extending credit is risky for some lenders, expensive for borrowers, and profitable to banks.  The use of credit also creates boom and bust economic cycles. Hearts are abundant. So, it’s different.  Say someone has a strong desire – a need – but they don’t have the Hearts to get or do what they want. What follows are a couple of options for how someone could get Hearts when they don’t have enough.  As the idea of the Heart is developed, more ideas for more strategies would come.

1. They can negotiate with the other party and demonstrate how their needs would be met by having their desire.  And, they could substantiate that it makes sense to create Hearts in this case. For example, if a person really desires to study engineering, it would meet their needs for learning, growth, play.  The school may agree to let the person create the Hearts in order to attend the school. After all, by having an excited and dedicated student, the faculty will likely really enjoy their interactions with this student and will have their needs met to contribute to the development of the next generation.
2. They can look around their community to see what people are needing.  They could meet these needs in order to accumulate Hearts.

The Jack of Hearts Transformation Network

The Jack of Hearts cryptocurrency is one facet of the Jack of Hearts Transformation Network, an online, collaborative community that supports connecting people to the resources they need to thrive.  It includes:

1. Cupid Central: An online marketplace of “Requests for Desires” and “Offers of Opportunities and Resources.”  This marketplace utilizes the Heart cryptocurrency or operates as a gift economy.
2. Community Calendar: A shared calendar of Events, Opportunities, and Recurring Opportunities posted by community members.
3. Forum: A open community forum.
4. Insight Hearth:  A feed of personal or shared insights posted by community members.
5. ManifestNEXT:  An online framework for community members to share desires that would likely be described as visions, aspirations, or projects that have a collaborative spirit.  The framework provides tools for people to connect and build teams to realize their dreams.
6. The Matchmaker:  Video conferencing for community members.
7. Playground and the Playground Developer API: An online library of software applications designed by and for community members.  The Playground Developer API supports the integration of the Jack of Hearts cryptocurrency and other components of the Transformation Network with third-party software applications.

Conclusion

I hope this post helped you to understand the principles, vision and function of the Hearts cryptocurrency and the Jack of Hearts Transformation Network.  I also hope that it piqued your curiosity.  I’m excited to read comments!

Send Bekah an Email

I am looking for opportunities to connect with kindred spirits who are interested in creating a team to implement this proposed idea.  If you feel inspired to connect with me, I’d love to connect with you!

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Rocket Stove Lab

The winter of 2015 I went to the desert to cleanse, to observe the time of rest and reflection that Nature so steadfastly provides.  It was a time to give thanks for the previous year and usher in some excitement for the year at hand.  Well, on the first morning after arriving at my peaceful spot in a coyote-laden canyon beneath a snow-capped peak, my cooking propane ran out!  As I considered my options, I decided to use the materials available on the land to build a rocket stove.  This is the story of how I proceeded and the lessons that I learned about rocket stoves.

The spot provided all of the materials to build a stove from cob, which is sometimes called adobe.  I like to call this building material MUD, glorious MUD!  Pre-contemporary people in many places around the globe figured out that they could build shelters with a mixture of clay, sand, and a fibrous material like straw.  The proportions of ingredients used to make the mud building material, the method for assembling it, and the additives used to tweak its adhesiveness, hardness, color, etc… vary greatly.  Lots of combinations work!  It’s fun to play with the materials and just get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

First, lets talk about the materials that I found to make my mud.

MATERIALS

Clay

Clay is a dense, smooth, sticky substance that comes in many colors.  Geologists have figured out the compounds and minerals that comprise clay and have studied the microscopic interactions of clay components that explain why clay hydrates with water and then becomes brittle when fired.  For someone out in the desert, looking for clay, you don’t have access to microscopes or electron spectrometers or fancy shit like that.  So instead, it helps to know that when water is mixed with soil that contains sand, clay and silt, the sand will settle to the bottom, the clay works its way to the surface, and the organic silt will separate the two layers.

At my camping spot, I had observed that there were puddles of water in the parking lot where the tires had repeatedly mixed the soil with the standing water.  Since the parking lot is not busy, the puddles sat and the clay in the soil had risen to the top where I could just scoop it off.  I collected a nice bucket of this buttery, sticky clay. 

Buttery clay

Dry clay flakes

Clay cracks

Clay has very fine particle sizes and will seem to dissolve readily in water and will feel smooth on your tongue.

I have also found clay in other locations where there is seasonal water and where animals have congregated.  The animals tromping in the water holes mixed up the soil in the water and allowed the clay to separate.

Sand

Sand is tiny rocks.  The best sand for making mud for building is jagged rather than smooth.  Sand that has been formed by water erosion is often quite round.  It is not ideal, but it will work.  In my situation, there was an abundance of colorful and beautiful canyon sand.  I could see how the bends in the creek acted to separate the different granularities of sand.  The higher and outer edges of the dry creek had coarser sand, and finer sand was below the rocks in the dry creek bed.  It was easy to collect some sand that had a nice variation from fine to coarse.

Fibers

The fibers in a mud mix perform some important functions.  They give the mix tensile strength so that when the dry mud has external forces applied to it it is less likely to break.  Also, the fibers give body and thickness to the mix to make it easier to build up because it retains its shape better when wet.  It also provides a texture to the mix that acts as a rough surface that is ready to receive subsequent layers of mud, particularly thin mud mixes that are used as plaster.

I have heard that not all plant fibers and plant material are created equal or equally desirable in the mud.  Leaves, sticks, and seeds don’t really work.  I have been told that they rot, but I don’t have direct experience with this.  I was told that fibers that are hollow, like straw, are best. 

Lucky for me, there was an abundance of cow manure at the site, as it is a free-range cattle ranch.  Manure contains fine, pre-shredded stalks of grass.  The poo also gives the mix a nice stickiness.

Next, let’s talk about mixing the materials…

MIXING

To make the mix, just experiment.  Typical mixes contain about 1 part clay to 3 parts sand with a decent amount of straw and enough water to incorporate it all together.  Some guidelines to follow are:

1. Don’t use too much clay.  Clay will shrink as it dries and can cause cracks.
2. Use as much sand as you can.  When a baseball-sized handful of mix compressed in your hand sticks together and feels very solid but not crumbly, you have a good mix!  You can also drop your baseball-sized sample onto a soft surface like a lawn.  The sample should hold its shape.
3. If you smash your sample ball into the palm of your hand and invert it, the pancake should not really “defy gravity.”  If the mix sticks to your palm too readily, you likely have too much clay or perhaps too much water.
4. Add enough water to make it workable, but not so much that it slumps.  You want to be able to sculpt it.
5. Add enough fibers such that the mix doesn’t want to pull apart too readily, but don’t add so much that it gets crumbly.  Be sure to incorporate the fibers evenly.
6. If you have enough time, make some bricks with varying recipes, let them dry completely, and test them.  Test to see how flakey they are, how much they shrank, whether or not they cracked, how much force it takes to break them, etc…  Choose the recipe that was least flakey, did not shrink, and did not crack or break.

Since there is so much regional variation between clay and sand, I have read that anywhere from 15% – 50% clay could work in your mix.  It is more important to feel it and test its behavior than to use a someone else’s recipe.

On to the the features of what I built: a rocket stove…

FEATURES OF A ROCKET STOVE

So, there are many resources (e.g. Rocket Mass Heaters by Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson, or richsoil.com) that describe what a rocket stove is.  I will just make a quick summary here.  A rocket stove is a particular shape of stove that encourages a fire to initially burn horizontally and turbulently and then to burn increasingly hot in an insulated heat riser.  The combination of the turbulence and the insulation means that the fuel for the fire burns completely as do the secondary combustion gases.  When constructed well, it does not smoke; in fact, it releases mostly water vapor as exhaust!  The materials used to construct the stove or the type of fuel it burns do not make it a “rocket.”  It’s really the shape of the fire and the way it burns that make it a rocket.  Also note that the heat generated by the “rocket” can be put to use in different ways.  The heat can be used to cook food, heat air, heat a dense material like a cob bench, heat a hot tub (my favorite!), etc…

The basic shape of a rocket stove is a horizontal burn tunnel connected to a vertical heat riser.  The fuel for the fire is fed into the end of the burn tunnel that is called the feed tube.  The ratio between the size of the burn tunnel and the heat riser is important.  For a rocket stove to work well, it has to have a strong enough draw to suck the fire horizontally, but not so much draw that it sucks the fire out.  Ianto Evans invented this design.  He says that a ratio of a burn tunnel that is 1 part wide to 2 parts long to a heat riser that is 3 parts tall works best.

Following are the pictures and observations that I made as I proceeded to make and tweak my rocket stove.

BUILDING MY ROCKET STOVE

I started out by snapping some sticks to help me lay out the shape of the components of the rocket stove.

I decided to make a bit of a foundation for it, even though I knew that the cattle would probably stomp on the stove as soon as I left!

I excavated a little for the foundation, put some gravel down, and locked it in with sand.

My sticks layout

Burn tunnel = 1 wide : 2 long

Layers of my “foundation.”

Completed “foundation” ready to receive insulation in the form of wood ash.

Next, I added a layer of wood ash.  Wood ash is insulative.  For a rocket stove to attain complete combustion, it needs to reach very high temperatures.  Higher temperatures are reached when you insulate the burn tunnel, and especially the heat riser.  I had access to wood ash in the fire pits.  Awesome!  I opted to put a layer of ash across the bottom of the stove to act as a thermal barrier between the fire and the ground.  My hope was that more heat would make its way up to my pot of potatoes and parmigiano reggiano than heat the ground and that my fire would be hotter, burn more completely, and be less smokey.

Wood ash

Sand in the cracks

Next I put a base layer of mud and worked on sculpting up the overall shape.  I glommed in big pieces of rock to provide structure for the ceiling of the burn tunnel.  Note that I could have built the entire stove with mud rather than mud and rocks, but I did not have enough time to apply multiple layers of mud, waiting for it to dry between applications.  I needed some warm grub in my belly!  It was freezing at night!  I also used a little steel in the ceiling of the burn tunnel cause I had it.

Burn tunnel “frame”

Base mud layer

Burn tunnel ceiling

Adding heat riser

Heat riser fin for turbulence

Rather than get too fancy with insulation, I opted to just insulate the bottom and the top of the burn tunnel.  I made a moat on top of the burn tunnel and filled it with ash and eventually sealed it in with shingled rocks. 

Taller heat riser

From above

Moat from above

Moat from the side

Moat with ash

Fired up!

I was surprised at how well the wood ash worked.  When the fire was raging, I could rest my hand on top of the burn tunnel with the wood ash insulation.  It felt a bit warm but was not close to burning me.  However, the uninsulated sides of the burn tunnel were extremely hot!  It was so hot that I heated up rocks to take to bed with me by propping them against the side of the burn tunnel!  If I had had enough time to incorporate wood ash on all sides of the burn tunnel and heat riser, I would anticipate quite a boost in efficiency.

As I used my stove, I was quite pleased.  It was easy to start, and it boiled water in a reasonable amount of time.  I was happy to be eating hot food!

 

Fired up!

Nevertheless, I started to notice some issues:

1. The size of the kindling matters a lot.  If I used sticks that were too small, they burned really fast and were hard to move forward.  I say forward because the correct way to load wood into a rocket stove is to add wood to the “back” of the fire, furthest from the heat riser.  The small sticks also fell down quickly and would fall into the burn tunnel.  Eventually the ash would build up, and air intake from the front of the burn tunnel was constricted.  When this happened, the fire did not burn as well and tended to want to just burn up the sticks and out the feed tube instead of being sucked into the horizontal burn tunnel.  This phenomena is called “back burn.”  Also, if I used sticks that were too big, they would have a tendency to burn out.  I had to use medium-sized sticks and feed them down and forward constantly. 
2. When I really got the fire going, the flames of the rocket would lap up out of the top of the heat riser.  In retrospect, I think this was probably just fine for my situation, but I decided that I wanted to try a taller heat riser, thinking that a taller riser would give the fuel more time to burn and increase heat before hitting the bottom of the pot.

So, I made some modifications…

1. I made a trap door on the bottom of the fire pit so that I could control the vertical level of the fire, keeping it mostly starting at the bottom of the burn tunnel.  I really liked this.  It was much easier to keep the fire raging at a consistent pace.
   

   

   

   

   
2. I made the heat riser taller.  When I did this, a couple things happened.
   

   
   • The draw was definitely greater.  In fact, it was large enough that it was harder to start the fire.  When trying to start the fire, the draw would suck the fire out, something that did not happen with the shorter heat riser.  I found myself covering the heat riser to reduce the draw and also moving the fire to the far end of the feed tube/fire pit.  The draw was greater right on the edge of the burn tunnel, so I could get the fire started better further from that spot.
   • The stove could accommodate a full load of larger sticks and put out a raging amount of heat!
   • The stove did not work as well with smaller sticks.  This made it a little less flexible because one nice feature of the earlier version of this stove is that it worked better on wood that was more common and easier to collect.

FINISHING TOUCHES

After all that work, I made some alterations that were mostly cosmetic.

1. I removed the worn out mud feed tube and just stacked rocks to serve the same purpose.
2. I shingled the burn tunnel with some lovely rocks.
3. I embedded some rocks on the top of the heat riser on which to rest the pot.

Please keep in mind that mud will not stand up to rain (or cows).  For this stove to last, it would need to be protected from the rain by a good roof.  To protect cob from sideways wind, a natural water-resistant lime paint or boiled linseed oil could be applied.

FINAL REMARKS

Foraging materials and building this stove was a really fun experience.  I’m sure that you will have a lot of fun doing your own Rocket Lab and will get a much fuller understanding of these concepts than I could provide in this blog post.  Keep in mind that rocket stoves can be built and insulated with other materials than those that I had available.  Steel cans, stove pipe, fire brick, holes in the ground, and other options can be used to form the overall shape.  Alternate insulation materials include vermiculite, perlite, pumice, lava rock, and other space-aged shit that I don’t have laying around. 😉

I hope this post inspired you to do a lab, to make your own observations, and to be innovative as you troubleshoot your artful creation!

How to Utilize the 23andMe Raw Data

If you are reading this and wonder what a 23andMe DNA test is, check out this previous post.

Otherwise, if you’ve received your 23andMe results and you want to use the raw data to do some in depth research about your genes that was not covered in the 23andMe reports, but don’t know where to start, this post might help!  This research requires more sleuthing, and although I have learned some things, I am not an expert. But, I’ll share what I know, and it might help you.

Let’s start with an example.  Lactose intolerance can be genetic, but I think it can also be due to gut bacteria imbalance, inflammation, or probably other conditions that downregulate the production of the lactase enzyme. So just as an example, say you want to look at your raw data to see if you have a mutation for lactose intolerance.

First you need to know the location of the gene or SNP that encodes for the potential genetic condition. You might find this information at many sites online. One resource that I’ve used is SNPedia.com. I’ve also used ghr.nlm.nih.gov.

If you search SNPedia for “lactose intolerance” you will find an article about it. It says that there are two SNPs that are responsible for lactose intolerance. They are rs4988235 and rs182549. (Keep in mind that these are the SNPs we know about so far. As research continues, more may be found. I digress.)

Great! Now you can learn more about the SNPs on SNPedia and then cross-reference your raw data. If you jump to the page in SNPedia for rs4988235, you can read that the bad SNP is C:C. Now, in 23andMe, after you have clicked on your username and “BROWSE RAW DATA” in the upper right-hand corner, you put “rs4988235” into the text box labeled “a SNP:” and click “Go.”

Bingo! Fortunately the 23andMe results include this SNP. Keep in mind that the 23andMe results do not contain all SNPs. But, here you can see your result.

My result is AA, but SNPedia says the possibilities are C:C, C:T, or T:T. What gives! This is where you have to know a little about how the DNA is formed to correctly interpret the results because not all labs and scientists refer to the mutations the same way. Just remember that Adenine pairs with Thymine and Cytosine pairs with Guanine. So, A:A could just as easily have been called T:T if you arbitrarily chose to look at the other half of the DNA strand. (Again, sorry, I don’t know the scientific terms for this stuff, but it doesn’t quite matter if you know what it means. Like Richard Feynman said, “I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” I digress again!)

OK, so when you read the SNPedia page it says C:C are lactose intolerant. For me, this means that I do not have one of the mutations for lactose intolerance. Good to know!

Also, if you are searching for SNPs on a particular gene, you can also browse the raw data by typing that gene name into the search box labeled “Jump to a gene:” and then click “Go.” Just to test, type “CBS” and check out all of the SNPs that 23andMe tested for on the CBS gene! Now you can sleuth in the opposite direction. Look up these SNPs on SNPedia.com or other sources.

I hope that you can use these strategies to explore your results. Best of luck!

How to Use Genetic Genie with Your 23andMe DNA Results

If you are reading this and wonder what a 23andMe DNA test is, check out my last post.

Otherwise, if you’ve received your 23andMe results and want to figure out whether you have any MTHFR or other methylation cycle mutations, you might want to use GeneticGenie.org to make this process simpler.  GeneticGenie.org is a site that allows you to upload your raw 23andMe data for analysis.  It spits out a nice, easy to understand report regarding your methylation cycle SNPs included in the 23andMe result set. 

Privacy Concerns?

Genetic Genie does not store your data. And, even if they did, I think you have much more to gain by getting the results than you have to lose if some researcher happened to keep your results. However, they do not store your data.  Nevertheless, if you rename the zip file and its contents that you download from 23andMe, the Genetic Genie site will not have your name. The content of the zip file contains only raw data for the genes. The data does not contain your name or other personal information. You can open the text file and see that this is true. Otherwise, the HTTP request you send to their server is no different from any other request anywhere else on the internet like browsing to this post, so you have nothing to worry about. 

Step 1 – Get Your Raw Data

1. To get your raw data for Genetic Genie, first log in to the 23andMe site.
2. Click on your username in the upper right-hand corner and choose the “BROWSE RAW DATA” menu option.
3. Then, on the upper right, click, “DOWNLOAD.”

4. Complete the form, selecting, “All Data” for your Data Set.
5. Finally, click “Download Data.”

The data file you save to your computer will be called something like “genome_YourFirstName_YourLast­Name_….zip”.

Step 2 – Optionally Ensure Anonymity

Do this only if you are concerned about sending your name to Genetic Genie:

1. Navigate to the downloaded zip file on your computer.
2. Extract it.
3. Rename the extracted .txt file to something innocuous like “raw_data.txt.” Your name is not inside the text file, so now the raw data is essentially anonymous.
4. Now make a new zip from “raw_data.txt” which by default will be called “raw_data.zip.”

Step 3 – Genetic Genie

1. Navigate to GeneticGenie.org.
2. Click the “Methylation Analysis” tab.
3. Follow the instructions to upload the file on the Methylation Analysis tab.  (You can also upload your data to the Detoxification Analysis tab.)

Bam!  When you get your lovely color-coded analysis, you’ll have a lot of fun learning about your SNPs and you will surely generate many new leads to follow as you sleuth out what you can do to to restore your health.

Consider a 23andMe DNA Test for Your Health

Whether you are a person wanting to optimize your health, combat disease or disease risk factors, learn about your relatives, or keep tabs on interesting new research developments in genetics and health-related fields, you might be interested in getting a 23andMe DNA test. I did, and I’m glad that I did.*

Once your test results are complete, you’ll be able to access many reports on the 23andMe website about your DNA. But, if you want to take your research to a new level, consider learning about the methylation cycle. Methylation is a fancy sounding word that describes a biochemical reaction whereby a carbon atom that is bonded to 3 hydrogen atoms bonds to another molecule.

Methyl groups are supremely important to the biochemistry of our bodies. Methylation reactions trigger or are involved in many biochemical processes including but not limited to repairing and generating DNA, immune response, metal detoxification, protein synthesis, and cancer suppression.

Researchers are working to better understand how our bodies produce and utilize methyl groups and how our genetic makeup can predispose us to imbalances in methyl groups and other compounds within the body. Utilizing her amazing knowledge in biochemistry, physiology, and genetics, researcher Amy Yasko, PhD had a goal of understanding how overproduction or underproduction of products in several interrelated biochemical cycles contributes to dysfunction such as neurological inflammation and other symptoms of autism and other chronic diseases. Specifically, she took the Urea Cycle, the BH4 (or Biopterin) Cycle, the Folate Cycle, and the Methionine Cycle and coined them as a group the “Methylation Cycle.” She then considered how genetic mutations in several key enzymes utilized in the methylation cycle can contribute to imbalances in the body. By using genetic test results and other laboratory tests, she has been able to successfully tweak the biochemical reactions in the methylation cycle to bring about better balance and therefore healing in many of her patients.

In addition to helping people with disease, this new paradigm of using your genetic test results to optimize methylation cycle function can be used by any person looking to improve health. It provides a quantitative and logical approach to choosing foods and supplements that are appropriate for you based on your genes.

To read more, you can download Amy Yasko’s book Autism: Pathways to Recovery for free.

* If you suffer from a serious illness or have the cash to invest in more thorough testing, there are other more expensive and complete genetic SNP tests available.  Check with your health adviser or check out this link.

Why Love Liberty?

What is liberty? Isn’t it just freedom? What does Ron Paul say? In his book, Liberty Defined, Ron Paul says, “Liberty means to exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others. This means, above all else, keeping government out of our lives.” There are several key concepts here. First is the concept of human rights. We recognize human rights as sacred and intrinsic because of our empathy for our fellow human beings. I know my rights are precious. It is natural for me to empathize with you and understand that your rights are just as precious as mine. The second concept mentioned above is that of personal choice. Making a personal choice implies that you are free from government making the choice for you. Finally, the last concept is the caveat that we must not infringe on the rights of another. So, we are not talking about an “anything goes” interpretation of liberty. Liberty, as understood by Ron Paul and our forebearers, is at the heart of our system of governance. Love liberty so that we defend it and reap its many rewards.

Let us look at the implications of liberty on society starting with an example. Say that one person is physically attacked by another. When being attacked, a person’s personal physical liberty is being infringed. We agree that the person being attacked has the right to defend himself. Liberty is worth defending, after all. This simple example illustrates the natural justification to defend liberty. When we agree to create a representative form of government, we are pooling resources in order to defend our liberties. Therefore, defending the liberty of the people is the proper role of government. Love liberty because it provides a principled foundation for the proper role of government in society.

When ratified, the Constitution enumerated responsibilities for the federal government. Each of these responsibilities was a way to defend our liberty or to facilitate the enjoyment of our liberty by appointing the central government to act either as a liaison between States or to perform several common functions on behalf of the States. The 10th Amendment clarifies that powers not enumerated, “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Why not just centralize all government power? It was done this way because our founders loved liberty! When you love liberty, you come to understand that the best way to preserve it is to create small jurisdictions and keep lawmakers close to home, so that you can influence decisions that affect your liberty. People aren’t perfect. Mistakes in government will be made. The fewer the number of people affected by a mistake, the better. So, why love liberty? A society that loves liberty will not tolerate top-down mandates that unilaterally chop away at liberty.

Another benefit of the principle of liberty is that it requires that laws will protect and treat individuals equally. If a “law” does not apply equally, it’s not a law! It is a mandate that either punishes or rewards individuals at the expense of someone’s liberty. Love liberty and challenge lawmakers to come up with creative solutions that protect the minority, not just the majority. Remember, everyone’s liberty is to be defended.

Personal liberty creates the environment that unlocks human potential. The free exchange of ideas and the ability to act freely lead to the creation of better experiences and products. Recall that liberty as defined above requires empathy. Cultivating liberty causes us to exercise empathy, grow our equanimity, and develop thoughtful, loving, and convincing arguments when we engage in public debates.

Most Americans grew up learning to love their country, but loving the principle of liberty has a much more profound and meaningful effect on the society and the individual. Love liberty because we are empathic beings. By being mindful about the principle of liberty in our interactions, we can temper our desires to rule over others. Exercise discernment when choosing public servants. No longer choose candidates based on political party; rather, choose based on the candidate’s principled words and actions that prove he or she is qualified to defend our liberty.

Finally, it’s not enough just to love liberty. Stand up and make the case for others to love liberty and to restore the proper role of government in these united States.