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Choosing a Backpacking Stove

There is a huge market for backpacking, expedition and camping stoves these days, resulting in the availability of many products targeted at different consumers. You can find many stove options suitable of various purposes, fuels, and pocketbooks. These stoves range from classic designs modeled after ones our grandparents used to newer stoves genre incorporating cutting edge space age vaporization technology and special materials to make them lighter, perform better or just look more modern. Each stove design has its own special features (e.g. white gas stoves work at subfreezing temperatures, butane stoves are as easy to use as a home gas range, alcohol stoves burn clean, hexamine stoves and fuel are ultra-light, wood stoves don't require packing in fuel, water activated cookers are relatively safe to use and solar stoves are pollution free). And each stove design has its unique drawbacks (e.g. petrol stoves use caustic fuel, gas stoves must use prefilled canisters, alcohol stoves have a poor heat to fuel weight ratio, hexamine gets very expensive, wood blackens pots, water activated cookers are heavy, solar stoves are generally extremely slow to cook with). This can make stove selection exciting and potentially a difficult endeavor since no one stove has it all, making stove selection an exercise in compromise rather than a hunt for the ultimate stove.

Faced with all of the stove choices out there these days, you may need to do a little research to narrow down which stove, or stoves, will best suit your particular needs. Some of the factors to consider when selecting a backpacking stove include:

Some backpackers may even find that they need to plan for different types of cooking systems for separate treks or multiple platforms on extended treks, should the main/preferred fuel type not be available on a leg of their journey. Visit our Stove Systems Page for more on the system concept, as you will need more than just a stove to cook.

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Zen Backpacking Stoves - How to Choose a Stove

I recently responded to a comma question on another website that really made me think. The question pertained to commas in sentences that have conjunctions followed by conjunctive adverbs. I am reposting my response herebecause (1) it was an interesting question and(2) my response may help people who have a similar question.

Go here for the original post and discussion. (external site, new window)

You asked a complex question, but I will take a crack at explaining how to use commas in your sample.

Lets use this sample: The rider had a lot of experience, but, nevertheless, could not control the wild stallion.

This sentence should not have a comma before but because the text that follows is not an independent clause.

If you were to remove nevertheless, the sentence would be structurally identical to the sentences described in this post, as follows: The rider had a lot of experience but could not control the wild stallion. It has no subject following but and, therefore, does not need a comma before but (similar to this sentence).

In brief: If you have two independent clauses joined by a conjunction, use a comma before the conjunction. Otherwise, dont.

Now, lets think about your question specifically and examine the commas around conjunctive adverbs, including nevertheless. Lets add a subject to the second part of the sentence (which requires adding the comma before the conjunction) and see what happens.

First approach: Some people say you should use commas around nevertheless because nevertheless and similar words are conjunctive adverbs, whichare set off from the rest of the sentence with commas. Using the commas around conjunctive adverbs following conjunctions can make a sentence sound choppy, but this advice represents strict adherence to comma rules.

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Zen Comma | Meditations on Correct Comma Use from the ...