•Dead reckoning 
Stephen Dark, Salt Lake City Weekly Jason [Starks], 30, is an eerie reincarnation of Gary Cooper playing Ayn Rand’s über-architect Howard Roark, in looks, stature and even to some degree, personality. 07:45 PM    View blog reactions

•BB&T donates to Belk College 
Michael Parks, Niner Online (NC) The contribution will be payable over a five year period, and [...] will look to fund faculty research on the philosophical underpinnings of capitalism, create a speakers series focusing on ethical and core values in business; support UNCC's Center for Applied Ethics and establish an Ayn Rand reading room on campus. 07:42 PM    View blog reactions

•The War Party unhinged 
Justin Raimondo, AntiWar.com It is, after all, definitely an understatement to say [writer Christopher] Hitchens hates religion: it often seems that, for him, his militant atheism is on the verge of becoming one of those tiresome monomanias that often afflict brilliant-albeit-eccentric intellectuals, like Reich's "orgone" boxes and the talented novelist Ayn Rand's apparent belief that she was the world's foremost philosopher since Aristotle. 08:25 AM    View blog reactions

•Meeting Alan Greenspan in the strangest of places 
George Orbanek, The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction, CO) Resisting the temptation to bring up Greenspan’s reported youthful enthusiasm for Ayn Rand and her libertarian philosophy of objectivism, I turned to the fed chief and said, “Hey, I just have to ask you. What are you going to do with interest rates?” 08:59 AM    View blog reactions

•For L.A., utopia or dystopia 
Mick Farren, Los Angeles Times Commentary on urban planning.What's created may be ad hoc, and not up to code, but it's done with energy and ingenuity. I devoutly hope the city will study such pragmatic grass-roots responses and help ease their progress as in Boys' Town. Better, surely, than massive, imposed developments dropped — by a combination of Ayn Rand edict and developers' bottom line — into neighborhoods wholly unequipped to deal with them. 08:54 AM    View blog reactions

•Tying skills to wages 
Washington Times Editorial arguing that reported increases in income and wealth inequality should be investigated by the government."I think it's a very disturbing trend," replied Mr. Greenspan, whose formative years as an economist, it is worth recalling, were spent as an ardent disciple of Ayn Rand and whose conservative credentials today remain impeccable. 08:45 AM    View blog reactions

•The fear of fear itself 
John Maxwell, The Jamaica Observer Mr Allan Greenspan, one of TIME's Committee to Save the World is reputed to sleep with a copy of Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged by his bedside, reading passages from it, as from a holy text, every morning. Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism teaches that selfishness is the supreme virtue. 08:43 AM    View blog reactions

•Markets, crazy uncles, trans fat 
Jack Zaleski, In-Forum I’ve about had it with the Ayn Rand/Cato/Hoover/Milton Friedman congregation that worships the “free” market as if it were a New Testament letter from St. Paul. It’s good for us, they preach. Well, it’s not. Markets are amoral. 08:39 AM    View blog reactions

•Institute rewards Vista resident 
North County Times (CA) Ishita Desai of Vista is a semifinalist in the Ayn Rand Institute's 2005 "Anthem" national essay contest and will be awarded a $30 cash prize. 08:38 AM    View blog reactions

•‘Undiscovered’ uninspired 
Andrew Jefchak, Grand Rapids Press (MI) Movie review.The question underlying the woeful script by John Galt (isn't he one of Ayn Rand's lumbering heroes?) has something to do with bright eyes and bright teeth and how, in the absence of real talent, those assets can be parlayed into fame. 08:35 AM    View blog reactions

•Eclectic eccentric 
The Statesman (New Delhi) On nightclub designer Sandeep Khosla.While he may not be Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark, he definitely has a few avant-garde designs for pub-hoppers to mull over. 09:26 PM    View blog reactions

•Lunatic party fringe enlivens MMP election 
Bob Jones, New Zealand Herald Commentary on free time political broadcasts from fringe parties in New Zealand's election.Next up, a couple of scruffs took turns chanting how they would wipe out the bureaucracy, taxes et al - these being the Libertarians. No lads, you won't do that, or indeed anything with your lives, unless you toss away your Ayn Rand bibles and get on with actually living. 03:22 PM    View blog reactions

• •Summer reading turns up the heat 
Scott Richard Lyons, Indian Country Today Consider Thomas Bowden of the Ayn Rand Institute - a well-funded think tank devoted to, as their Web site explained, the defeat of ''pernicious ideas'' like multiculturalism and environmentalism - who not only praised colonialism but actually requested that Indians thank America for it. 07:06 PM    View blog reactions

•The doctrine was not to have one 
Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times Review of Alan Greenspan's tenure as Federal Reserve chairman.A devout believer in free markets and at one time a disciple of Ayn Rand, the libertarian philosopher, Mr. Greenspan - who studied at New York University - served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Gerald R. Ford. 07:53 AM    View blog reactions

•‘Undiscovered’ should have stayed that way 
Bill White, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Movie review."Undiscovered," the feature debut of rock video director Meiert Avis, reflects a world in which reality television has supplanted reality. The script is attributed to John Galt, the character in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" who led an intellectual strike against a world that has deified mediocrity. If a pseudonym, it is fittingly ironic. 11:19 PM    View blog reactions

• •BB&T donates $1M to Belk College of Business 
Charlotte Business Journal (NC) The donation stems from discussion between BB&T Chairman and Chief Executive John Allison IV and Claude Lilly, dean of the school. "During a dinner meeting last year, our conversation turned from ethics and leadership to metaphysics, objectivism and Ayn Rand," Lilly says. 11:15 PM    View blog reactions

•Interns wanted 
New Haven Advocate (CT) As summer ends, we lose a terrific batch of interns. Which means that we want you — provided, that is, that you are interested in journalism, have good written communication skills, won't mind getting sent all over New Haven to pry into people's lives, have as strong an interest in news as you do in music and the arts, and can laugh at yourself and others. It would help if you were politically liberal, moderate, radical, anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist, Trotskyite, Bolshevik, or Menshevik, though we would consider hiring a monarchist. No Ayn Rand acolytes, please. 07:57 AM    View blog reactions

•New Lakeshore play draws audience in 
Emily Topinka, Pioneer Press (St. Paul, MN) The Lakeshore Players will perform "Night of January 16th" by Ayn Rand beginning Friday. 07:55 AM    View blog reactions

• • •Unless you’re looking for a scholarship, drop this book 
Laura Brockman, Collegiate Times (Virginia Tech, Blacksburg) Review of Atlas Shrugged.Objectivism could be called a philosophy of selfishness. In a nutshell, Rand sees man as a hero and believes that his own preservation should be his sole concern. She believes in industrialism and profit above charity and sacrifice. So you can imagine how surprised I was when I realized that I actually liked the book, and (with the exception of one sixty-page speech) that it was not so uppity and lofty as it sounded. 08:56 AM    View blog reactions

•Greenspan had a deft touch, can it last without him? 
Greg Robb, MarketWatch Reviewing Alan Greenspan's tenure as Federal Reserve chairman.He was a follower of Ayn Rand, the author of popular novels "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged," who had fled Soviet Russia as a young girl and was a passionate advocate for capitalism unfettered by government regulation. 08:51 AM    View blog reactions

• • •The (tangled) roots of Objectivist foreign policy 
Barry Loberfeld, LewRockwell.com After that second tower crumbled, at least one thing was for certain: We all knew that Leonard Peikoff was going to say BOMB! – and that the opinions of other laissez fairists would be somewhat less predictable. 12:34 PM    View blog reactions

•Isaac Asimov’s super quiz: Give me a “hand” 
Ken Fisher, San Jose Mercury News PhD-level question.Final line of "Atlas Shrugged'': "He ... and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar." 12:09 PM    View blog reactions

•It’s Souter vs. Souter, he says 
Chelsea Conaboy, Concord Monitor (NH) Logan Darrow Clements visits the home of Supreme Court Justice David Souter, where he hopes to build a hotel in protest against the Kelo ruling on eminent domain.Clements left a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged with an inscription that read 'Dear Mr. Souter, A story about the importance of property rights, Enjoy,' propped on the mailbox. 06:33 PM    View blog reactions

•Mugabe speaks out against Rory Gilmore 
Comrade Che, Brainsnap Humor.I've ignored her idiotic praise of Ayn Rand as a high school student and foolishly looked past her impetuous decision to study at Yale, abandoning lifelong dreams of studying at Harvard. 06:28 PM    View blog reactions

• •Animal rights activist and “recovering Objectivist” cries foul! 
Gayle Dean, Men's News Daily Response to an Ayn Rand Institute editorial condemning "animal rights" activists.As a recovering Objectivist, I'm offended when I hear this sort of irrational, baseless, rhetoric. 06:25 PM    View blog reactions