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Thai Restaurants & Culinary Diplomacy

The dramatic increase in the number of Thai restaurants is driven by a culinary diplomacy program of the Thai government

Between 2001 and 2019 the number of Thai restaurants worldwide tripled. In the United States the number of Thai restaurants went from around 2,000 to over 5,000. Meanwhile at around 300,000 people Thai Americans only make up around 0.09% of the 330 million Americans. By comparison there are around 37 million Mexican Americans and around 54,000 Mexican restaurants around the US. That’s one Mexican restaurant for every 650 Mexican Americans but one Thai restaurant for every 55 Thai Americans. That’s a lot of Thai restaurants compared to so few Thai Americans. So other than tasting great, what has driven this explosion in Thai restaurants?

Culinary Diplomacy

In 2001 the Thai government formed the Global Thai Restaurant Company, Ltd. whose goal has been to spread Thai food and Thai culture around the world. This government-supported program offers generous loans to Thai nationals living abroad to open restaurants. They offer training in the cooking of standardized Thai dishes, they award “Thai Select” certificates for restaurants that are of high quality, and they have created A Manual for Thai Chefs Going Abroad to help train new Thai restaurateurs. They also offer predesigned restaurant packages to create Thai restaurants at different price points.

Thai predesigned restaurant packages include:

• Elephant Jump: the lower-priced experience aimed at $5 to $15 per customer
• Cool Basil: the mid-tier offering at $15 to $25 per person
• Golden Leaf: the higher-end culinary experience at $25 to $30 per person

Some Thai restaurants are even named after these packages – they didn’t even bother to come up with their own names. These Thai restaurant packages are like a government sponsored version of the “Irish pub in a box”.

thai basil — Thai Basil restaurant in Manchester, Vermont didn’t even come up with an original name, keeping instead one of the predesigned restaurant package names.

The Thai government’s efforts fall under what is known as culinary diplomacy, or gastrodiplomacy – it’s soft diplomacy. Through food you can introduce your culture to other countries, winning hearts and minds through stomachs. As a result of Thailand’s success other countries are creating similar programs including Peru, South Korea, and Taiwan among others. Culinary diplomacy can generate revenue through increases in exports and tourism. Indirectly, these programs can create favorable impressions of a country, its culture, and its people.

Culinary diplomacy can also improve the relations of people within a country. Mustafa Nuur is a Somali refugee living in Lancaster, PA who runs the Bridge program. Bridge is a cross-cultural experience which allows you to book a meal with a local immigrant family to share stories and eat the food from their home country. This helps create bonds between new immigrants and their neighbors, all through sharing a meal.

The Headless Horseman

A legend of a headless horseman and the need to cross a body of water for safety isn’t unique to Washington Irving.

Washington Irving’s 1820 story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow centers around an encounter with the headless horseman (the restless ghost of a Hessian soldier of the Revolutionary War whose head was shot off by a cannon). After attending a harvest festival at the Van Tassel house our protagonist, Ichabod Crane, is pursued in the night by the headless horseman. Crane’s one chance of safety is to cross the Pocantico River because the headless horseman’s power ends at the boundary of the river. As Crane and his horse Gunpowder cross the bridge the horseman gives one last attack by throwing his own head at Crane (or so the story goes).

Headless Riders

Irving’s story is an American classic but it’s also part of a larger tradition of supernatural headless horsemen. The British Isles and Northern Europe have a variety of spectral headless riders but one of the most famous are the dullahans of Ireland. The dullahans are a kind of sinister magical creature. They’re dress in black, riding black horses (who are also headless in some versions), and when they stop riding it’s only to announce the name of someone who is about to die. Their decapitated head, which they carry in their hand, is said to have magical sight and speaks the name of the person to die. In their other hand they crack a whip made of a human spinal cord.

In some parts of Ireland a dullahan doesn’t ride a solitary horse but instead is the headless coachman of the Cóiste Bodhar, the death coach. The death coach rides to pick up someone who is about to die and carry them to the afterlife.

A dullahan as imagined by Ryan Van Dongen

Take Me To The River

In The Legend of Sleep Hollow Ichabod Crane’s one chance of safety is to cross the bridge and reach the other side. This supernatural nighttime chase, and trying to reach the other side of the river, is similar to Robert Burns’s 1790 poem Tam o’ Shanter. In the poem, the titular Tam o’ Shanter has ended an evening of drinking at the pub and sets out into the night on his horse Meg. As he is riding along he sees an old abandoned church with light coming from inside, so he stops to take a closer look. Inside is a satanic witches’ sabbath complete with the Devil playing bagpipes.

Upon seeing a witch in a nightshirt that is just a bit too small, an intoxicated Shanter comments aloud, which is heard by the supernatural creatures. The lights go out and what follows is a daring chase where Shanter has to reach the other side of the River Doon. Like the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, the witches won’t cross the river and so Shanter’s only chance of survival is to make it to the other side. As he gallops across the Bridge of Doon a witch pulls off Meg’s tail.

A detail from *Tam o’ Shanter and the Witches*, with Tam looking in from the window

The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New York celebrates *The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow* and the Headless Horseman.

The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is also the final resting place of Washington Irving as well as many other notable individuals.

Added info: Beyond being an inspiration for Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Tam o’Shanter is also the naming inspiration for the Scottish hat of the same name. The Bridge of Doon which Tam crosses, aka the Brig o’ Doon, is the inspiration for the name of the 1947 Broadway musical Brigadoon and its fictional town that appears once a century.

Tam o'Shanter inspired the name of the Scottish hat as well as the name of the 1947 Broadway musical Brigadoon. In this image is the Tam o'Shanter hat and the Brigadoon record cover.

Calvin and Hobbes (the real ones)

The characters of Calvin and Hobbes are named after a theologian and a philosopher.

The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features a six year old boy named Calvin and his sometimes anthropomorphic stuffed tiger Hobbes. The two are named after 16th century protestant theologian John Calvin and 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. The characters of Calvin and Hobbes are decidedly a lot more fun than their namesakes.

John Calvin

Born in France in 1509, John Calvin trained to be a lawyer but moved to Geneva, Switzerland and became a major figure in the protestant reformation that was spreading across Europe at the time. Unlike Martin Luther, who looked to work with Catholic doctrine but make some changes, Calvin threw it all out and started from scratch creating an entirely new school of Christian thought. Among other things his new theology taught that we can’t know anything about God except what God chooses to reveal to us, that because of Original Sin we are driven to sin unless God steps in to help us, that you only partially have free will because God has predetermined your fate to end up in Heaven or Hell so you’re going to end up doing what it takes to merit the one you are destined for, and that there is nothing you can do about any of this.

The Catholic Church used to name heretical movements after the founder (such as Lutheranism). Similarly, this is how Calvinism was born. Calvin’s ideas for reformation became influential with a host of protestant groups including the Presbyterians, the Puritans, and the Huguenots. Calvin also believed that “… the human heart is a perpetual idol factory”, and that religious art was a distraction. This is why Calvinist churches are so plain and without statues or other ornamentation. Until this time the Catholic Church had been a lucrative source of work for artists, but because of the reformation movement’s austere aesthetic, to earn a living artists were forced to either produce more secular art or move to other cities or countries where the reformation hadn’t taken hold as strongly. This simple aesthetic applied to Calvinist clothing as well (such as the simple styles and Sunday black clothes of the Puritans).

In politics Calvin believed in the separation of church and state, but he also believed that politicians & royalty were in positions of power because God willed it. As such authority figures should be submissively obeyed even when said figures are unworthy of such deference (except if they are leading you astray from God). Which is kind of like Thomas Hobbes …

Thomas Hobbes

Born in 1588, 24 years after Calvin’s death, Thomas Hobbes’s world view was strongly influenced by the destruction brought about by the English Civil War. From this he produced Leviathan, which is his 1651 treatise of social contract political theory. In short, he believed that, when left on our own and without government, humans are violent and selfish. He believed we need government to help us rise above our base instincts. Without a political community he said that the life would be “… solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Similar to Calvin’s view that humans are compelled to selfishness & sin, Hobbes’s political philosophy was that without a government, the default “state of nature” for humans is chaotic and violent.

This is the basis for his argument that we not only need government but that we also must obey authority figures even when said figures leave a lot to be desired. In his mind, an abusive dictatorial government was still better than no government at all. There was almost no place for political revolution in Hobbes’s version of the social contract.

It’s worth noting that the foundation for Hobbes’s argument, the belief that without government “uncivilized” humans would engage in constant bickering & violence and would always be looking over their shoulder for attacks from others, isn’t necessarily true. The philosophical novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn partially explores this assumption and how the competition for greater wealth is what incites violence. Many early tribal groups living within their means were able to live in relative stability. It has also been argued that, as humans became more sedentary in civilizations, warfare increased because humans couldn’t move away from one another to avoid conflict.

Even keeping to 17th century social contract philosophy there are arguments against Hobbes’s ideas. John Locke also believed in the benefits of having a strong government, but he believed that if that government was jeopardizing your natural rights to “life, liberty, and property” you had the right of revolution to overthrow the government. Thomas Jefferson later copy & pasted Locke’s ideas for the Declaration of Independence.

Calvin & Hobbes

Ultimately both Calvin and Hobbes had fairly dim views of humanity. They believed that without an authority figure (be it God or be it a political leader) humans were by default mean and unable to make better lives for themselves. Fortunately the fictional Calvin and Hobbes are a lot more positive than their namesakes.

Calvin and Hobbes crossing a log bridge appeared in the *The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book*. It was later parodied by Nina Matsumoto showing the actual Calvin and Hobbes as Calvin and Hobbes crossing the log, and has since become a much parodied meme.

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

The witches’ ingredients for the cauldron in Macbeth are mostly coded names for medicinal plants.

Macbeth’s Act 4 opening scene is probably one of the most well known scenes in Shakespeare. The Three Witches (aka the Weird Sisters) are in a dark cave with a boiling cauldron at the center. The witches gather and begin an incantation of dark magic, adding ingredients as they go. “Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” Each witch then lists a series of ingredients that, at face-value, sound disgusting and macabre. But the ingredients are not what they seem.

Witches, like early alchemists, kept their knowledge a closely guarded secret. After putting all of that effort into R&D you didn’t want the competition getting a hold of your findings. But witches had other reasons for secrecy. Unlike the fictional witches in Macbeth, most “witches” were in reality female medical workers using herbs & botanicals to create medicines. In Medieval Europe medicine was a male-dominated profession and women caught practicing medicine were sometimes branded as witches. As such they had to keep their activity, and their recipes, secret. By using alternate names for their ingredients, the contents of one’s “spell book” were kept secret. Also, using alternate names worked as a safe-guard to keep their proprietary medical knowledge out of the hands of the general public who might mistakenly try to prepare these treatments themselves.

Some believe that almost all of the 23 ingredients in the witches’ brew are actually coded plant names, even the problematically named “liver of blaspheming Jew”. How much of this Shakespeare knew is unclear. All the ingredients together would make an unrealistic ridiculous concoction, so they were probably chosen for theatrical shock value. He may have found a list of real “witches” ingredients and used them without knowing they were coded names. Still, if you want improved blood circulation some eye of newt (aka mustard seed) might help.

A list with pictures of the 23 ingredients in the witches' brew in Macbeth — A list of the 23 ingredients in the witches’ brew, and their real world counterparts.
Learn more about these and other alternate ingredients.

Germanic Gods (and Saturn)

In the English language the days of the week are named for six Germanic gods … and the Roman god Saturn.

In the Indo-European family tree of languages, English is a descendant of Germanic languages. English also inherited elements of ancient Germanic culture such as Germanic mythology. The Germanic peoples took the Roman idea of naming the days of the week for various gods, but they changed the Roman gods to Germanic gods (except one).

• Sunday is named after the Germanic goddess Sunna (aka Sól in Norse mythology). Along with her brother Máni, she was taken from their father Mundilfari and placed in the sky. Sunna is the sun, moving across the sky in her chariot. Her brother is the moon, moving across the sky in his chariot. To make sure they keep moving the gods set two wolves to chase each sibling continuously. The wolf Sköll chases Sunna. From her we get the Sun’s day, or Sunday.

• Monday is named for the Germanic god Máni, brother of Sunna (as mentioned above). He rides through the sky on his chariot and is chased by the wolf Hati. From him we get Moon’s day, or Monday.

• Tuesday is named for the one-armed Germanic god of war Týr (aka Tíw), which became Tīwes day or Tuesday.

• Wednesday is named for Odin (aka Wōden), the central god of the Germanic pantheon of gods. From him we got Wōdnes day which became Wednesday.

• Thursday has perhaps the most well-known origin. Pop culture has made the hammer-wielding god of thunder & lightning Thor (aka Þunor – pronounced “Thunor”) one of the most well known Germanic gods. His name is also the origin for our word thunder which, in modern German, is “donner” and gives us Donnerstag or “Thunder day / Thursday.” In English Thor’s day became Thursday.

• Friday is named for the Germanic goddess Frigg (aka Frīja, or Frea). She was the wife of Odin and, given a good deal of mythological overlap, she and the goddess Freyja may have been the same character at one point. Frigg’s day became Friday.

• Saturday is the odd man out. In the West Germanic languages Saturday comes from the Latin “Saturni dies” or Saturn’s day, named for the Roman god Saturn. Around Scandinavia however, in Norse Germanic languages, Saturday is called by different variations of lørdag or laugardagur, which translates as Bath / Laundry Day.

Added info: The reindeer pair Donder & Blitzen from the Christmas story Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, come from the Germanic words for thunder & lightning.

Ghosts As Sheets

Ghosts represented as sheets come from the tradition of burial shrouds.

For most of human existence, unless you were wealthy, you weren’t buried in a coffin. Most people were buried in other ways and one of the most common was in a shroud or sheet of some kind (the original green burial). Coffins didn’t become common in Europe until the 18th century. So until then there were a variety of different kinds of shrouds but the basic idea was that the deceased was wrapped in cloth and lowered into their grave.

In this context, the idea of seeing a sheet/burial shroud walking about in the dark is terrifying. This is the origin of ghosts being portrayed as sheets – it’s from the understanding that a deceased person in their burial shroud was out of the grave and back from the dead.

Being buried in a shroud was a common practice in Europe and so, to see a shroud up and moving around, would have been a frightful sight.

Ghost Impersonators

In 19th century Britain impersonating a ghost by dressing in a sheet became both a prank fad and a real problem. At best a prankster would wear a sheet, run around at night, and generally frighten people in humorous ways. At worst it was a way to terrorize and assault women. There are even a few incidents of these “ghosts” frightening people out of their homes, leaving the house temporarily free to be burglarized (the original Scooby-Doo villains). It was also used in mid 19th century America by the Ku Klux Klan who pretended to be the ghosts of Confederate soldiers, come back to terrorize the people of the south.

This motif of ghosts being represented as moving burial shrouds/sheets found its way into entertainment by way of the theater in the late 19th century. The ghosts of the stage would be in white sheets, move silently, and generally do the spooky things we think of today. Early animated cartoons portrayed ghosts in a similar manner, most notably with Casper the Friendly Ghost (who is shroud-like).

Ghosts as burial shrouds underwent some stylization and became the lovable cartoon ghosts we see across pop culture.

Today the motif is fairly harmless and pretty ubiquitous. You see it in the iconic Ghostbusters logo, the ghosts in Pac-Man, Boo from the Mario games, the ghost mascot of Snapchat (aka “Ghostface Chillah”), Boo Berry cereal, the ghosts of LEGOs, Halloween Tootsie Pop ghosts, etc. The burial shroud ghost continues to live on.

Pain Medications: What’s the difference?

Common pain medications are similar but have a few differences, and generic drugs are just as good as brand names.

When looking for pain medication there are more than enough options to induce the paradox of choice. The key is in knowing what active ingredient will treat the problem you have. Most pain medications will treat basic aches and pains but they also have different strengths & weaknesses. The following are an introduction to the four most common active ingredients in most pain medications.

Aspirin is best used for:
• reducing heart-attack risk/severity (by thinning blood)
• mild aches & pains
• headaches

Not great for:
• more severe pain

Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid)

Aspirin was the first modern pain reliever. An example of multiple discovery, both the ancient Sumerians as well as some pre-Colombian Native American tribes used the bark of the willow tree to relieve fevers & pain. Willow tree bark contains salicin which is metabolized into salicylic acid in the human body, something not understood until the early 19th century. Early synthesized versions of salicin were irritating to the stomach. It took until 1897 for the German corporation Bayer to begin mass producing a synthesized version known as acetylsalicylic acid that was kinder on the stomach. Bayer branded their product Aspirin and it quickly became the number one drug in the world.

Aspirin (when spelled with a lowercase “a”) has become the generic name for the active ingredient acetylsalicylic acid. The Bayer corporation “lost” their patent for the drug as a part of the fallout from WWI. Today it is the one of the most widely used medications in the world with about 120 billion tablets consumed each year. While it is used for pain & fever, it’s especially useful for a variety of heart problems.

Aspirin is best used for:

• reducing hear-attack risk / severity (by thinning blood), mild aches & pains, headaches

Aspirin is not great for:

• more severe pain

Ibuprofen

Ibuprofen was developed by Dr. Stewart Adams in the 1960s as an alternative to aspirin for the English company Boots. Adams said he initially tested the drug on his own hangover. Boots sold the drug under the brand name Brufen but today ibuprofen is the active ingredient in a long list of brand name pain reliever drugs. It’s considered the best common pain reliever, better than aspirin.

Ibuprofen is best used for:

• aches & pains, headaches (and hangovers), reduces inflammation and relieves arthritis, reduces fever, relieve menstrual cramps

Ibuprofen is not great for:

• chronic headaches

Naproxen

Naproxen is similar to Ibuprofen. While its effects take longer to kick-in they last longer. The effects of ibuprofen last 4-6 hours, naproxen’s effects last 8-12 hours.

Naproxen is best used for:

• very similar to ibuprofen but its effects last longer

Naproxen is not great for:

• quick relief because it takes longer to kick-in than ibuprofen

Acetaminophen is used for:
• bringing down a fever
• aches & pains
• headaches

Not great for:
• inflammation
and joint pain

Acetaminophen (Paracetamol)

Acetaminophen can help treat pain and reduce fevers on its own, but it is also found in combination with other drugs such as in cold & cough medicines. While aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen are all nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and help treat inflammation, acetaminophen is not an NSAID and so it treats pain but not any underlying inflammation.

Acetaminophen is best used for:

• bringing down a fever, aches & pains, headaches

Acetaminophen is not great for:

• inflammation and joint pain

Go Go Generic

When you have decided which active ingredient you want relieving your pain the next question is if you should buy name brand or generic store brand. In short: buy generic.

When you buy a name brand pain reliever you are largely paying for marketing. In the United States a generic drug’s active ingredient is required by law to have the same strength as the brand name equivalent. It also has to work the same way in your body (it has to be bioequivalent). Also, like many white label goods, generic drugs are frequently made by the same company making the name brand equivalent.

First Sleep & Second Sleep

We sleep in cycles and adult humans aren’t designed for 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep.

Sleep Cycles

When we fall asleep we go from consciousness to unconsciousness, but within unconsciousness there are different stages to sleep. We descend from N1 (which is a very light sleep) to N2 (a restful sleep) down to N3 and sometimes even N4 (which are the deepest and most re-energizing stages). But we don’t just do this once, emerging on the other side wide awake in the morning. More like a roller coaster, we travel down from light sleep to deeper sleep and back up several times throughout the night. Each time we do this is considered a sleep cycle, we have about 5 sleep cycles per night, and each one takes between 60-90 minutes adding up to around 7.5hrs of sleep.

At the end of the each sleep cycle, instead of going back to N1, we enter a very different kind of sleep known as rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep) – from which the band REM is named. REM is so named because our eyes are moving around despite being closed. This is especially interesting because during REM sleep our eyes are on the short list of things that we actually can move. During REM sleep your body becomes paralyzed with the exception of your eyes, heart, and lungs. One potential reason for this is that during REM sleep we dream, and paralyzing our limbs is a safety feature that prevents us from acting out our dreams and possibly punching or kicking in our sleep. When REM sleep ends we either start a new sleep cycle or we wake up, but we don’t just wake up the next morning.

First & Second sleeps

While young children and teenagers can sleep uninterrupted throughout the night (and sleep longer), it is unusual for adults to do the same. We think we’re supposed to because we used to as kids, and society tells you to sleep for 8 straight hours, but to sleep uninterrupted throughout the night as an adult is fairly unusual. For millennia it was common practice to go to bed at sundown, sleep for about 4 hours, wake up for an hour or two, do some activities, and eventually go back to sleep for a few hours until sunrise. So instead of one period of sleep there were two, known as first sleep and second sleep.

What people did in this liminal time between first and second sleeps varied. Some would do the normal things of going to the bathroom or reading, but others might smoke, some might do some light house work, and some even visited neighbors from time to time. This waking period between sleeps was so common there were even special prayer books for these hours.

While in some more primitive tribes this idea of two sleeps is still common (such as in parts of Nigeria), this practice began to die out in the west in the 17th century. As people gradually pushed their bedtime back the time between sleeps grew shorter. At first it was just the wealthy, who could afford to burn more candles and stay up longer. Eventually larger cities began to illuminate some of the streets with lamps which extended waking hours for people of all classes. Coffee houses also became more popular in Europe during the 17th century which kept people wired for longer after the sun went down. But what really killed off first & second sleep was the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Through a combination of increased time spent in factories, gas & electric lighting becoming more prevalent, and a focus on efficiency, it became unfashionable to go to bed so early only to spend the middle of the night awake in activity.

A detail from the late 17th century *Interior of a London coffee-house*. Coffee houses kept people up longer at night, reducing the amount of time people spent between sleeps.

The next time you find yourself frustrated at being awake in the middle of the night when you “should” be asleep, you can reframe the situation knowing that your body might know better. Having a biphasic sleep pattern and waking up during the night is a normal part of human physiology. Choosing to be active in the middle of the night like your ancestors once did, is optional.

Imitation Eyes

Eyespot mimicry is used throughout nature to defend against predators

Mimicry is a useful method of disguise employed by a variety of species for both offensive and defensive reasons. Eyespot mimicry is frequently used defensively where a decoy set of eyes are used to help a vulnerable species. This is especially true of creatures lower down the food chain but you can find it higher up as well. Tigers have spots on their ears that look like eyes when they vulnerably lean over to drink water, giving the appearance that they’re still on the lookout.

Sometimes the decoy eyes serve as a scare tactic, such as in Batesian mimicry. The owl butterfly has owl-like eyes on its wings. It’s believed that in being able to flash the eyes of an owl the owl butterfly is able to scare small predator birds into thinking a large owl (who eats such birds) is present. In other species the eyespots are a distraction. In flashing a set of eyes a species can surprise & confuse a predator just long enough to escape. Some species use eyespots to draw attention away from their more critical body parts. The foureye butterflyfish for example has dark eyespots near its tail (which is less important) which draws attention away from its head (which is very important). When feeling threatened it can even swim backwards making its tail seem more like the head and vice versa.

The owl butterfly whose eyespots mimic that of an owl to frighten away predators.

The foureye butterflyfish, eyespots by its tail.

Eyes looking out, for you

The northern pygmy owl of North America has eyespots on the back of its head, helping to mislead predators into thinking they are being closely watched. In 2016 an experiment was conducted in Botswana of painting eyes on the rumps of cows to prevent lion attacks. The cows with painted eyespots were less susceptible to predation by lion attacks than normal cows, as the lions may have felt they were being watched.

Finally, for those who believe in the supernatural malevolent force of the “evil eye”, you have some options of magical defensive eyespots. The nazar (a blue & white eye-like amulet) has been used for thousands of years from Turkey through to India and elsewhere. Similarly the hamsa (which also features an eye but sitting in the palm of a hand) has been used around the Middle East for a similarly extended period of time.

Both symbols are said to attract the negative energy of evil eye attacks, and destroy/repel them. If your nazar is cracked then it’s “proof” that it has worked, and of course you’re supposed to buy a new one. After all, you have to keep your magical eyespot functional.

Amish “Miracle” Fireplaces

Amish built mantles added to Chinese space heaters

In print and online you may stumble upon advertisements (that frequently look like news articles) for the Heat Surge, the “miracle heater”. These ads heavily imply that the heaters are being brought to you by the Amish. Sometimes the deal is that you get the heater for “free” if you purchase the Amish built oak mantle to go with the heater. They range in price from $330 to $600 and use technology from the “China coast” according to the Heat Surge website. The secret to their power is their “Fireless Flame^® technology”. Of the numerous questions one may have, one question is: how is this happening?

The Amish, famous for their aversion to electricity, are not developing electric space heaters. Their involvement is in the production of the oak mantles that encase the heaters. As for the “miracle” heaters, they’re nothing more than 1500 watt electric space heaters made in China. Search your local big-box store and you can find comparable 1500 watt space heaters but with price tags as low as $50. That said you would be losing out on the opportunity to partake in a “miracle”.