• Audrey Auld to Perform Feb. 4 at Posh Java 
Debra E. Dix, Wakulla.com (FL) Audrey Auld, born in 1964, was raised in the bush in Tasmania, with no TV and no Pop radio, in a house filled with animals, siblings, books and live music. She trained on a classical violin (including a stint with the Tasmanian Youth Orchestra), and studied jazz ballet. Her dad’s jazz piano and her step-dad's Dixieland trumpet influenced her love of music. Ayn Rand, Brahms, Satchmo and Peggy Lee were played in her home.     Share on Facebook

• Them on Us:Hockey in the Hole 
Jake Nichols, JH Weekly (Jackson Hole, WY) The Fountainhead  | Metropolis Magazine likes the way the Jackson Hole Airport communes with its surroundings. Sally Augustin, blogging for the architectural digest, called the airport a place that works and practically bestowed the ‘Howard Roark’ award to the single landing strip in Grand Teton National Park.     Share on Facebook

• • Texas Faith: How do we create a common good today? 
William McKenzie, Dallas Morning News - Texas Faith Egoism  | Once there was a sense among the moneyed, be it Roosevelts, Tafts, or Bushes, that those who benefited most from the American ethos had an obligation to serve - militarily, politically, financially. More recently, we have been inundated with the ethos of Ayn Rand, the “virtue of selfishness” argument, that has now been firmly concretized in our tax code, our interpretations of the Bill of Rights.     Share on Facebook

• • Bullish Life: What To Do When You’re Surrounded By Lazy Idiots (and Sweet, Fragile Simpletons) 
Jen Dziura, TheGloss Anthem  | Now, my opinions on Ayn Rand are on record. I do not think it would be “theft” from our nation’s geniuses if we all paid more taxes so we could have excellent public schools. I think sometimes shared sacrifice is appropriate. If you are a wealthy white man in the United States who loves Ayn Rand, I will probably consider it my duty to fight you on many important issues related to citizenship and governance. And yet, if you are a woman in Afghanistan, I can’t help but thinking that you could use a little Ayn Rand in your life. Of course, Rand herself grew up in Soviet Russia, so you can kind of see where she was coming from.     Share on Facebook

• • Strive For A Meritocracy, And Never Settle For Mediocrity 
Harley Finkelstein, Fast Company Atlas Shrugged  | There’s an amazing dialogue from Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, where Francisco d’Anconia explains that the reason for his family’s multi-generational prosperity is due to the fact that each new member of the family isn’t truly considered to be a “d’Anconia” until they prove themselves based on their own merits and abilities. I always loved this explanation, as despite Francisco’s nobility, he was committed to succeeding on his own merits and worked ferociously to prove himself without any support from his family. In a startup setting, and certainly at Shopify, we reward and promote the most deserving of individuals, despite age, experience, or length of service.     Share on Facebook

• • Where are the Real Entrepreneurs? 
Matt McCaffrey, International Business Times Capitalism  | Even supporters of the market economy often think of taxes and regulations only as something that government does to business, and they miss the deeper problem of the things government does for business. The result of this sort of thinking is that people adopt the mistaken idea (propounded by writers such as Ayn Rand) that businessmen are a persecuted minority, when in fact certain groups of businessmen are the very people agitating against new entrepreneurial endeavors.     Share on Facebook

• Penguin Launches ‘Artist’s Way Toolkit’ App 
Dianna Dilworth, mediabistro.com - eBookNewser Atlas Shrugged  | Penguin has been making their mark in the app space over the last year by creating interactive eBook apps for classic books. [....] The company [...] released an app edition of Ayn Rand‘s Atlas Shrugged.     Share on Facebook

• • 32 Inspiring, Funny, and Smart Quotes about Money 
Miranda Marquit, Moolanomy Below are some money quotes that can help you learn more about finances, and perhaps even inspire you to better habits: [....] “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” – Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• Road to the IGF: Expressive Intelligence Studio’s Prom Week 
Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra [Mike Treanor:] I've previously made games about Ayn Rand, marriage legislation and observing animal behavior.     Share on Facebook

• • Voting reform: A progressive voting scheme 
Diane Rufino, Beaufort Observer (NC) Individual Rights  | Ayn Rand, author and philosopher, wrote: “Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.”     Share on Facebook

• • Should Ron Paul Accept Matching Funds? 
Walter E. Block, Psychology Today Atlas Shrugged  | Ragnar Danneskjold, one of the heroes of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged [....] knew full well and so should we, that the state (in my view, any state, in his view, any government that exceeded its proper limited bounds) is a thief, and should forthwith be relieved of its ill gotten gains.     Share on Facebook

• How BioShock: Infinite’s Elizabeth Controls The Fate of Columbia 
Andrew Dyce, Game Rant BioShock  | The differences between BioShock: Infinite and the game that spawned the series are fairly evident, with sunshine and politics replacing the gloom and Ayn Rand philosophy of the original BioShock.     Share on Facebook

• Rundle12: no one understands how utterly unconservative Newt Gingrich is 
Guy Rundle, Crikey (Australia) [Newt Gingrich’s] Americanism is not that of Jefferson or Hamilton still less of Calhoun or Rothbard, and not even of Ayn Rand – it is the America of Buckminster Fuller, of Norbert Weiner, of a more aggressive Bill Gates, and a smarter Jack Welch. Gingrich sees the US as the manifest destiny of humanity, but he sees that destiny as unrealised. He doesn’t want to balance the budget and get on the gold standard. He wants the private sector to go to Mars.     Share on Facebook

• • An Open Letter to President Barack Obama Concerning Recent Tyranny 
Marc Barnes, Patheos - Bad Catholic You are a Tyrant. Now, I know: Tyrant? (Quick, label the man an ultra-super-neo-conservative Tea Partier and ban him to the ranks of old men holding Ayn Rand signs so we don’t have to engage in rational debate.)     Share on Facebook

• • The end of ‘compassionate conservatism’? 
Amy Sullivan, The Christian Century Syndicated  | The Tea Party movement has embraced what political writer Jill Lawrence calls “Darwinian conservatism.” You could also call it “Ayn Rand conservatism,” after the libertarian philosopher whose work many congressional Republicans praise. In 2010, Republican Senate candidates attacked programs such as Social Security, student loans and unemployment benefits, saying they made Americans lazy.     Share on Facebook

• Gingrich campaign is back on the ropes 
Anna Fifield and James Politi, Financial Times (London) [Gingrich supporter Neil] Matheson said he had been involved in Republican politics since he “read a book by Ayn Rand” and predicted that Mr Gingrich would “slide by” and win the Florida primary, despite recent weakness in the polls, which he blames on “money and those horrible ads”.     Share on Facebook

• Reasonable Profits Board for Oil Harms Teachers, Police Officers, Firefighters 
Nicolas Loris And Rachael Slobodien, The Foundry (The Heritage Foundation) Atlas Shrugged  | The mere suggestion of a Reasonable Profits Board means only one thing: We’ve officially reached Atlas Shrugged territory.     Share on Facebook

• • Contrasting Visions Of 2112: Gail Collins v. Neil Peart 
Dave Bry, The Awl Anthem  |The Fountainhead  |Individualism  |Rush  | If we have learned anything from Peart’s work on the subject, a man like Gingrich, a visionary comparable to say, the light-bringing electrician Equality 7-2521 or the rapist architect Howard Roark, would have no place in the “cold and empty life” brought about by the Federation’s social engineering.     Share on Facebook

• • County’s wealth 
Rick Fausset, Ventura County Star (CA) Atlas Shrugged  | With our current president and governor both vilifying success, it is easy to see why the most liberal factions of our society are looking to add their weight to the backs of the ever-shrinking population of individuals who carry the burden for society. Maybe Ayn Rand was a visionary after all?     Share on Facebook

• • Why Bruce Lee Has More Kick Now Than Ever 
Jeff Yang, Wall Street Journal - Speakeasy Egoism  |Individualism  | Though Lee was a firm believer in the power of the individual, he was if anything the inverse of the Ayn Randian self-interested superman, contemptuous of the lesser beings around him.     Share on Facebook