Check out Back to the Roots here to get your own mushroom garden and view the TED Talk with Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez below:

“Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, did a great Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit a couple weeks ago. This comment really hit me:

Hi my name is ****** ** and I’m a second year student in the University of Western Australia (UWA) majoring in Physics and Maths. I was originally from Singapore where I spent the first 15 years of my life failing school, day after day I would not understand a word the teacher was saying as they said, “you must remember this or you won’t get a job in your future.” and every year I would fail school. When I was 14, I started failing pretty badly and fell into a world of drug addiction. When I was 15, my drug addiction got so intense that it affected my grades so badly that I had to be held back a grade in my high school in Singapore. Finally in January 2008 (the year I was 16), my parents decided to move to Perth in Western Australia. They had me enrolled in a private school where within 8 months I was expelled for fighting and drugs. At the end of that ordeal and closely evading arrest, my parents had me enrolled in a local public school where I was faced with the worst problem of my entire life. The final exam of high school that determines if you go to University or not was coming, and I had no idea what to do as I never listened in class since I was 13. All I could do was expand a bracket and that was it, no factorizing, solving an equation or doing trigonometry. I first met the Khan Academy in December 2009 where I stumbled on his videos on Complex Numbers on YouTube. I had a whole load of heavy weight subjects like Literature, Physics, Advanced Maths, Chemistry and Biology. Everyday when I came home from school, it would be a 4pm – 10pm study session driven by my own fears. With 5 years of work to catch up on and only Khan Academy helping me, it was a grueling experience. I failed every test and exam that year, thankfully none of those tests and exams contribute to your final University determination grade. I worked through the Khan Academy playlists on Basic Algebra, Trigonometry, Physics, Chemistry and Biology before moving on to the “higher level” things like Calculus and Differential Equations. Thanks to Salman Khan for quitting his day job as a Hedge-fund Analyst, he has allowed a drug addict whom the public would look down upon to persevere through his A levels and come out on the other side with a result good enough to get into Western Australia’s best University. I hope and pray that the Khan Academy will expand to do subjects like Modern Physics and Maths topics like Topology, Differential Geometry and so on. In any case, I thank you Salman Khan, and the effort you have put into the Khan Academy. You’ve opened doors for us that we would have never been able to unlock alone.

::: I am Salman Khan, AMA via Reddit ::

Salman Khan’s Ted Talk is pretty rad too

There is another question from the AMA that I found pretty interesting:

What made you study for so many degrees? (Three from MIT and an MBA from Harvard!)
Also, thanks a lot and much respect from me, a student from Hong Kong. You make learning truly enjoyable.

MIT let you take as many courses as you wanted for the same tuition. I was the hungry kid at the all-you-can-eat buffet
My prime motivation for going back to Boston in 2001 to get an MBA was to find a wife (and it worked). Silicon Valley in the late 1990s was not a great place to be a young single guy. My secondary motivation was to broaden my experiences and allow me to think about what I really wanted to do longer term (I did end up changing careers).” – via Dustin

“Inspiration for your quiet place somewhere.
Edited by Jace Cooke and Zach Klein.
Contributions by Brian Jacobs and Grace Kapin.
Together we care for some land in Upstate NY called Beaver Brook.

Submit a Cabin

• Stanley Tislavold:

  Cabin in Tykostølen, Suldal, Norway

  12 Jan 2012 / 179 notes
• 

  

  

  Sol Duc Cabin designed by Olson Kundig and built in Olympic Peninsula, WA, 2011. Thank you Lloyd Alter at Treehugger for the tip.

  11 Jan 2012 / 329 notes
• 

  

  

  

  Aura der Nostalgie by Benni Pause

  11 Jan 2012 / 281 notes
• 

  Justin “Scrappers” Morrison, his son Camper, and their dog Bamboo in a backyard cabin in Portland, Oregon. Photo by Carlie Armstrong.

  10 Jan 2012 / 479 notes
• Dream Cabin – Hinton, WV by Lou Murrey

  (Via Austere Vernacular)

  9 Jan 2012 / 359 notes
• 6 Jan 2012 / 198 notes
• 

  A cabin in Baltimore waiting patiently for someone to care for it.

  5 Jan 2012 / 155 notes
• 

  Zack Griffin built this 112 sq. ft tiny house to spend six weeks bumming across the west with fellow skiers Molly Baker and Neil Provo in search of great snow and good people for Outdoor Research’s Sidecountry Sessions.

  • #tiny house
  • #snow
  • #skiing
  • #mobile
  • #diy
  • #mountains
  4 Jan 2012 / 373 notes
• The Best Hut by Jono Williams (and friends) in New Zealand.  Built for less than $1500 using mostly scavenged or donated materials, the treehouse includes solar panels, rainwater collection, a gas-fired outdoor bathtub and a radio-controlled drawbridge.

  Via The Modern Cabin

  • #treehouse
  • #new zealand
  • #recycled
  • #diy
  • #hut
  3 Jan 2012 / 802 notes
• 

  Up North by Peter Baker

  2 Jan 2012 / 300 notes
• 

  

  Built in Suffolk, England by Haworth Tompkins.

  2 Jan 2012 / 290 notes
• 

  Barn in Trentino, Italy.

  28 Dec 2011 / 208 notes
• beaverbrook:

  The old toolshed in Yulan, NY.

  • #winter
  • #shed
  28 Dec 2011 / 163 notes
• 

  

  

  

  I’m digging around for sugar houses today, the unique Eastern Canada and New England buildings in which maple syrup is produced. They’re also known as sap houses, sugar shacks, sugar shanties, sugar cabins, or cabanes à sucre in Québec. My mom’s extended family are farmers in Western New York — they call them shanties — and I grew up spending a few days each winter with older relatives while they boiled syrup, ate bacon and beans, played Euchre and drank whiskey. Nowadays, I very fond of these houses because of my memories.

  I have not found a comprehensive photographic library detailing the history of sugar house architecture, but there are few pots of gold here and there.

  The University of Vermont maintains a Maple Research Collection. There are many results if you search Google Images, too.

  Have a sugar house? Please share.

  Top photo by Jared Benedict.

  25 Dec 2011 / 214 notes
• 

  Merry Christmas — we hope you’re someplace cozy.

  25 Dec 2011 / 327 notes

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see more here – http://freecabinporn.com/

In November of 1958, John Steinbeck — the renowned author of, most notably, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Of Mice and Men — received a letter from his eldest son, Thom, who was attending boarding school. In it, the teenager spoke of Susan, a young girl with whom he believed he had fallen in love.

Steinbeck replied the same day. His beautiful letter of advice can be enjoyed below.

(Source: Steinbeck: A Life in Letters; Image: Thom and John Steinbeck with their father in 1954, courtesy of UC Berkeley.)

New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa