• • TWiST #46 with David Heinemeier Hansson 
Jason Calacanis, This Week In Startups Capitalism  Video  (Relevant section begins at approximately 1:03:30.)[Q:] Are you, like, an Ayn Rand guy or something? Is there some Objectivist thing that I need to know about? [A:] No.

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• • Going Galt on Medicaid 
Don Surber, Daily Mail (Charleston, WV) Atlas Shrugged  [Dr. Marc Siegel is] not really going John Galt because that fictional character simply stopped working in order to stop paying taxes to a socialistic state. Such a protest would not really work. The government simply prints more money and the ruling party likes it.     Share on Facebook

• • Inside the Beltway 
David Frum, FrumForum Ayn Rand Center  Yaron Brook  PJTV has a super-sarcastic (and longggg) video up in which Bruce Bartlett and I are mocked and derided as out of touch with ordinary Americans for questioning the knowledgeability of tea party protesters. A lot of chortling on set. I chortled along with the hosts, but for different reasons: Irony #1: Among those chortling at our lack of connection to everyday politics – the head of the Ayn Rand Center! Now there’s a movement with grand appeal to everyday working Americans.     Share on Facebook

• Natural rights 
James H. Spielberger, Daily Press (Newport News, VA) Atlas Shrugged  To those who demand a right that imposes an obligation on a fellow American, as urged by politicians who need their votes to maintain power, I suggest that they read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" to get a feel for where America may be heading.     Share on Facebook

• Wrong way to govern 
Peter Applegate, Marin Independent-Journal (Novato, CA) Atlas Shrugged  No wonder local banks are backing away from Supervisor Charles McGlashan and his crowd. The ratepayers have not asked for their help and the county has not voted for it. Everyone I have spoken with about this fiasco have already "opted out." This Atlas Shrugged "we know what is best for you" style of governing is not for me.     Share on Facebook

• • The politically correct libertarian 
American Thinker Atlas Shrugged  Atlas Shruggedremains popular for a reason. All isn't lost.     Share on Facebook

• • Say ‘yes’ to capitalism 
Walter Block, LewRockwell.com Capitalism  Every word we use to describe ourselves is precious. We must keep them all, jettison none of them. And this includes (classical) liberals, free enterprisers, libertarians, Austro-libertarians, anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, laissez faire capitalists, and, yes, plain old unadorned "capitalists." Ayn Rand, bless her heart, never failed to rally to the banner of capitalism. I do not of course agree with everything she ever wrote, but on this matter I am very grateful to her. There were few wordsmiths in our movement better acquainted with the importance of language.     Share on Facebook

• • Banking on a conservative majority 
David Turner, The Inter-Mountain (Elkins, WV) The present day American right had demonstrated a tendency to embrace a notion that not only a majority exists to prevent any further expansion of government, but that a large group yearns to roll it back. The Tea Party devotees of Ayn Rand's ideas are sure that the time to dismantle the state is nigh. Others like Amity Schlaes openly advocate the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare. [....] Naked Ayn Randism has never been tried, although Goldwater came close. Ronald Reagan burned his fingers when he tried to make drastic adjustments to Social Security as did George W. Bush. But never did these two presidents exhibit a callous view toward the unemployed.     Share on Facebook

• BioShock 2: Great game hurt by a special trick that is too powerful and addictive 
Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat BioShock’s world of Rapture was created by megalomaniac Andrew Ryan as an underwater haven for the intellectuals of the world. Ryan was a believer in the Objectivist theories of Ayn Rand, and he was intent on creating a super race of people through genetic modification.     Share on Facebook

• BioShock 3: Where next for the story? 
David Houghton, GamesRadar Following the fall of Rapture ruler Andrew Ryan [...] the city descended into spliced-up anarchy. Leadership arose in the shape of Sophia Lamb [...]. The antithesis to Ryan’s Objectivist, every-man-for-himself philosophy, Lamb’s intention was to reunite the fractured city through a conceptual “Family”, a sharing Splicer collective intended to bring Rapture’s denizens together for their greater good.     Share on Facebook

• Sequel lacks ‘Shock’ 
Seth Schiesel, Post-Bulletin (Rochester, MN) "BioShock" took players beneath the Atlantic to the underwater Art Deco dystopia known as Rapture in a fearless, mesmerizing depiction of Randian philosophy run amok.     Share on Facebook

• Best worst dressed brands of SXSW Interactive (and a film I love) 
Alona Elkayam, Huffington Post Atlas Shrugged  Surely if this thing takes off, I will search for Calatrava, McGuiness, and John Galt who surely left for a secret design utopia.     Share on Facebook

• • Search for truth crumbling into hot-air hysteria 
Bradley Harrington, The Bulletin (Philadelphia) Back in Galileo’s era, and for most of the centuries afterward, hypotheses were adjusted to fit the facts. Now, in a more pliable time, we reverse that process: we alter the facts to fit the desired hypothesis. As Ayn Rand once observed, “It is on the basis of this kind of stuff that you are being pushed into a new Dark Age.” (The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 1971.)     Share on Facebook

• Is the US self-interested? 
Tibor Machan, Sun Journal (New Bern, NC) Egoism  as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others have maintained — but recently with only a few such as Ayn Rand and quite a few psychotherapists joining them — the virtues are necessary to advance one’s proper self-interest. Morality for these thinkers is about making it possible to succeed in one’s human life, doing well at living as a human individual.     Share on Facebook

• Tex-Mex heads to Turkey as credit thaw fuels restaurant growth 
Duane D. Stanford, Bloomberg FOCUS Brands [....] is owned by Roark Capital Group, an Atlanta-based private equity company named for Ayn Rand’s protagonist in “The Fountainhead.”     Share on Facebook

• Greenspan returns 
Mike Whitney, Counterpunch Capitalism  [Alan] Greenspan doesn't believe in regulation, because he thinks the market is the manifestation of Ayn Rand’s immortal plan and mere humans shouldn't interfere in its divine workings.     Share on Facebook

• The Baby Sitters Club: Rugged individualism, middle school style 
Zac Bissonnette, Walletpop In an era where young people are constantly being told how bad the job market is, how screwed they are by declining public funding for higher education, and how all hope is lost unless President Obama can save us, the girls of the Baby Sitters Club emerge as Randian heroines for the elementary school set.     Share on Facebook

• Gidget: It’s the summer of 69 
Damien Murphy, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Atlas Shrugged  [Frederick] Kohner turned his daughter's diary into a fortune. His book Gidget, The Little Girl with Big Ideas, came out in 1957. By October, the original surfer girl was No. 8 on the Los Angeles bestseller list, one above Jack Kerouac's On the Road, one below Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.     Share on Facebook

• Daylight robbery 
David Blackburn, The Spectator - Cappuccino Culture (London) I am a rampant capitalist. If Ayn Rand were alive I’d chide her for being a social democrat. But even I baulk at [director James] Cameron’s greed.     Share on Facebook

• • 4 of the 10 books that influenced me most 
Matt Steinglass, True/Slant Anthem  Ayn Rand, Anthem. [....] I read this on a bike trip through Cape Cod when I was 15, and found it so stupid and inferior (I’d read Animal Farm the week before) that it put me off Ayn Rand and any form of libertarianism forever. So I’d consider that pretty influential.     Share on Facebook