Happy New Year from The Naked Whiz Publishing Empire!

Well, New Year's came in with a whimper here at The Naked Whiz Publishing Empire. We went down to Hilton Head for Christmas, and then spent a quiet week at the Empire for New Year's. It seems most of the children in our neighborhood have grown up and left since there were no fireworks going off at midnight on New Year's Eve. We thought about pulling out some of the original Kingsford lump, though...

So, what's up? Well, we suppose we need to address the continuing delay in publishing the review of aFire coconut charcoal. We decided we wanted to try a couple more things in order to try to completely address the claims made by aFire. We are finding out that things are little more complex than we had assumed. We also wanted to try cooking some chicken over it to see if there is any flavor contributed to the food by the charcoal. Needless to say, between the weather and the holidays, we have had trouble finding the time and conditions to complete our work. But, weather permitting, we may try to finish up the research this weekend or next.

We recently published a white paper on the safety of using a Rutland Grapho-Glas gasket on a ceramic charcoal cooker. We wanted to get the "facts" out there in light of the arguing that has gone on in the past on ceramic charcoal cooker discussion forums, particularly the BGE forum. We contacted Rutland to get their position on the matter, as well as to clear up this fiction that Rutland has told people that their product will harm unborn fetuses. We gathered data from various sources including Material Data Safety Sheets from the manufacturer and from other companies on fiberglass and graphite. We also included a report from The International Agency for Research on Cancer, an agency of the World Health Organization, on the cancer risks of crystalline silica, a minor ingredient in graphite. You can read to white paper to learn our conclusion on the matter, but you should read the information and make your decision about using this product.

We have several other projects in the works and we'll be letting you know more about them as they approach conclusion, so stay tuned!

We hope you all had a good holiday as we look forward to another year of exciting (?) projects here at The Naked Whiz Publishing Empire!

- TNW