The Humble Libertarian original

"Imagine living in a home that costs you nothing to heat or cool. Imagine building this home yourself. Imagine growing your own vegetables year-round in this home. Imagine no utility bills. Imagine easily available, limitless natural [and salvaged] resources to build this home..." Expect to start hearing more survivalists ( like this one ) talk about earthships. These are just way too cool. I want one:

The Faster Times reports : "In a report of what can only be called ironic in the strictest sense, it has recently come to the attention of the internet that Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is the most popular user on his direct competition, Google +. Zuckerberg currently has 110,820 followers on the latest social networking phenomenon, nearly double that of Google’s own CEO Larry Page, who weighs in at 61,678 followers." There's some lesson to be learned in all of this, about how weird, and new, and different, and glorious the information and social networking industry is compared to past industries and inventions, but at 3:45 am local time for me as I write and schedule this blog post, I can't quite organize my thoughts well enough to share it coherently. Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

In honor of Nikola Tesla on his birthday: Text: 'Nikola Tesla was born on July 10th 1856, in the territory of modern day Croatia to his two Serbian parents. Tesla grew up into bright inquisitive, yet eccentric child, who found himself fascinated by the world around him. Tesla once tried to fly by jumping off the roof of a barn while holding on to an umbrella. He devised a bug powered motor using Junebugs, but had to abort his experiment after a friend decided to eat some of the bugs (Tesla thought this was gross). He once attempted to generate electricity by rubbing two cats together, which resulted in two very mad cats and a scratched up Tesla. On June 6th, 1884, Tesla arrived in the United States. He was hired by Thomas Edison to do basic electrical engineering, but moved up to re-designing the direct current generators that ran Edison's business. Edison offered Tesla $50,000, or about $1.1 million in today's currency to make these improvements. After complet...

With the end of the shuttle program yesterday (and government sycophants bemoaning its long overdue end), I thought I'd share this little graphic, which quite nicely summarizes the difference between when an unfettered private sector does something and when the government does: Hat tip: reddit Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

" The leviathan state is the great enemy of American prosperity, the monster that devours wealth. Every bit of economic growth that we experience is due not to the presence of this leviathan, but to the ingenuity of American enterprise in getting around the barriers . To understand how this works, imagine the US economy as a car on a racetrack. Private enterprise, in addition to building the car, provides the fuel, maintenance, and technical innovations that make it run. The government, meanwhile, is in charge of the track, and it puts tacks on the road, increases the sharpness of the turns, and adds speed bumps, as it burns with envy. In order to keep the car traveling forward at a fast rate, private enterprise has to innovate constantly, adding horsepower, tack-proof tires, and drivers that are ever-more skilled. Private enterprise can never rest in its efforts to overcome the ever-intensifying demands on the car and driver. All the while the Federal Reserve stands by to tempt t...

Video: This is possibly the future of the Internet and computing- they will become so integrated into the physical world around us so as to disappear into ubiquity. An excellent example of innovation, entrepreneurship, and free markets in action. Good for you, Pranav Mistry! Hat tip to THL forum user, Prismatic Sphere for suggesting this on the THL message forum .