•Swades, the dotcom way 
Sushma Naik, Express Computers (India) Profile of computer industry entrepreneur Faisal Farooqui.Faisal is a bookworm and his business idea was inspired when he headed book reviews on Amazon. He says he has been greatly influenced by Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. “I can read them time and again.” 07:08 AM    View blog reactions

•Bubble time: Ridings has eye on a strong finish 
Lenox Rawlings, Winston-Salem Journal (NC) Profile of golfer Taggart Twain Ridings.His mother, a passionate fan of author Ayn Rand, named Ridings for Dagny Taggart, the heroine of Atlas Shrugged. Ridings traces this personal history and grins wryly. Atlas had the world on his shoulders. Ridings only has a familiar bubble. 07:02 AM    View blog reactions

•Scapegoat 
Mir Tabassum Mairaj, Daily Times (Pakistan) Letter to the editor.Every movement that seeks to enslave a country; every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, said Ayn Rand, needs as scapegoat a group, which it can blame for the nation’s troubles. In politicians – whom we can accuse of everything from corruption to terrorism – the Pakistani establishment seems to have found what it needed. 07:10 AM    View blog reactions

•DVD review: Dylan documentary legend’s story 
David Hyland, FoxReno.com Review of Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan documentary.The film follows the story of a very young man who is committed to a course of constant artistic evolution. A commitment to a path -- here comes the story's drama -- that would continually turn him against friends and collaborators as well as his audience. Facing the slings and arrows, however, he'd continually reinvent himself. Ayn Rand [would] love it. 07:01 AM    View blog reactions

• •Musings on Fekete and Rothbard 
Nelson Hultberg, GoldSeek Cults always attack those who oppose them with ad hominem smears. Ridicule rather than reason is far too often their tool of disputation. This is the way the Randians policed their Objectivist cult back in the sixties? They declared all those who poked holes in Rand's reasoning to be "whim worshipers" and "social metaphysicians." They sneered churlishly at critics as some kind of contemptible anti-humans rather than calmly counter their arguments with reason in a responsible and rigorous manner. 06:51 AM    View blog reactions

•The greatest stories never told 
Alex Beam, The Atlantic Monthly Exploring the world of privately circulated, unpublished writing.Chicago entrepreneur James McBride [....] operates a seamy Web site that alerts teen video renters to scenes of exposed (female) flesh—critical information for the Porky's and American Pie set. For a nominal fee you can view film clips of, say, an undraped Helen Mirren cavorting in the 1999 classic The Passion of Ayn Rand. 06:43 AM    View blog reactions

•Pretention makes these novels ‘classic’ 
Les Chappell, The Daily Cardinal (U Wisconsin - Madison) I've never read "Catcher in the Rye," "Moby Dick," "Red Badge of Courage," anything by Ayn Rand or any of the "Harry Potter" series. (I'm guessing I don't need to ask which one will offend my reader base the most.) 06:17 AM    View blog reactions

•U.S. view: Who supports Bush’s sinking ship? 
Keith Gottschalk, rabble.ca List of reasons why President Bush will always have a loyal core of supporters.Greed [...]. The plutocracy of America believes that Bush will let them keep more of their stash [...]. (subgroups: magical thinkers, Randian objectivists). 07:16 AM    View blog reactions

•Animal rights: Separate but equal, separate but equal… 
Gayle Dean, Men's News Daily Commentary the tactics and motivation of those opposed to animal rights.In a recent Op-Ed, Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute attacked animal-rights advocates and defended Covance Laboratories, a biomedical research company that experiments on primates. I challenged Epstein, saying that even if one doesn't agree with the concept of animal rights, the evidence in this case is overwhelming. 07:55 AM    View blog reactions

•Cache & packets: VON show offers proof that VoIP is now mainstream 
Efrain Viscarolasaga, Mass High Tech (MA) This week, pulvermedia’s Voice on the Net (VON) fall show comes to the new, Ayn Rand-esque Boston Convention Center, and marks the culmination of a hot summer for VoIP and its migration to big business. 09:00 AM    View blog reactions

• •For the birds 
Roger Cost, New York Post In the landmark novel "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand envisions a future New York brought to its knees by out-of-control liberalism. Late in the city's decay, a law is passed that prohibits lighting above the 25th story of any skyscraper. Reading about the new "bird-brained" lights-out policy for the Chrysler building was eerily reminiscent of Rand's gloomy vision. 08:52 AM    View blog reactions

• •Eight electrifying questions 
Roland Hu, TheBootleg.com (Stanford U, CA) Interview with volleyball player Courtney Schultz.Q: What is your favorite book of all-time? A: Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. My mom forced me to read it, and I was scared because it was something like 1,200 pages, but it really changed my life. I passed it on to Lizzie Suiter on the team and a few of my friends, and they felt the same way. It’s just a classic. 08:45 AM    View blog reactions

• •Should the government prevent price gouging? 
MSNBC (Transcript and video.)Dan Abrams welcomed Dr. Andrew Bernstein, the author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and a senior writer with Ayn Rand Institute and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot to 'The Abrams Report' to discuss the issue of price gouging. 08:38 AM    View blog reactions

•Johnson not same old Vandy coach 
Bryan Mullen, The Tennessean (Nashville) Profile of Vanderbilt University football coach Bobby Johnson.Johnson is a bookworm, a voracious reader of many topics. His favorite? Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Beethoven, Chevy Chase, Angie Harmon and Ayn Rand? The man with the boring name maybe isn't so boring after all. 07:33 AM    View blog reactions

•Challenging normal education 
Tobin Spratte, Daily Collegian (UMass, Amherst) Argues for consideration of ideas that don't come from traditionally respected sources.Ayn Rand's contemporaries criticized her for suggesting that egoism is the greatest form of ethics because nobody else said it first. 07:24 AM    View blog reactions

•Now, from Hollywood, visions of conservatism 
A. O. Scott, International Herald Tribune Last autumn, "The Incredibles" celebrated Ayn Randian libertarian individualism and the suburban nuclear family, while the naughty puppets of "Team America" satirized leftist celebrity activism and defended American global power even as they mocked its excesses.  07:19 AM    View blog reactions

•Molière, updated 
Karen Bovard , Hartford Advocate (CT) Review of a production of Learned Ladies.Add a nymphomaniac aunt with Fascist leanings, a scheming uncle, and a Hungarian cook who is fired for reading movie magazines instead of highbrow fare. Throw in mentions of Steinbeck and Ayn Rand, Franco and FDR. Serve it all up in Seussian couplets with adult overtones, and we get a fun, fashionable evening with satiric sallies, where true love wins out in the end. 07:54 AM    View blog reactions

•Fear and loathing at CMJ 
Tim Fernholz, Georgetown Voice (Georgetown U, DC) Account of experiences at the College Music Journalism Music Marathon in New York City.When college kids and dirt poor musicians converge on the already crowded island of Manhattan, cheap housing runs out. A last minute Craigslist.org search led us to an informal hostel (read: tenement) run from an underutilized Objectivist theatre. Cheap, clean and based on Ayn Rand, it seemed fine, if small and a bit egotistical. 07:49 AM    View blog reactions

•Just a little to the left vs. 1970: The Pussycat Dolls 
Stephen Greenwell & Pat Aguiar, The Good 5¢ Cigar (U of RI) Debating the merits of musical group the Pussycat Dolls.Art at its highest level should challenge people's perceptions about the world around them. Not many artists can lay claim to actually achieving such a lofty goal. Ayn Rand, Jack Kerouac, Salvador Dali and the Beatles would be on my shortlist of such geniuses. With the recent release of their self-titled album, I would speak of the Pussycat Dolls as being on par with these luminaries, if not for one thing: the fact that their new album puts them on a plane of brilliance that it would be an insult to PCD to compare them to any other artist, or even God Himself.  07:42 AM    View blog reactions

•Republicans are humans too 
Lauren Evans, The Orion (Cal. State - Chico) A small fraction of the reason I registered with [the Republican] party was because of the horror it causes to spread across people's faces. Turns out people can do some really funny stuff with their nostrils. The other part is for fiscal reasons and an unhealthy amount of Ayn Rand, but that's another column entirely. 06:47 AM    View blog reactions

•Women, wisdom & wealthy: Donate a charitable gift without hurting your cash flow 
Darcie Guerin, Marco Island Eagle (FL) Financial advice on charitable donations.In the words of Ayn Rand, "Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision." 06:42 AM    View blog reactions

•Jeff & Margaret 
Sonja Haller, Arizona Republic The story of a couple's meeting and long-distance romance.The bookshelves were intriguing, too. Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was next to Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. "That told me that the person who owned those books thought it was important to be an individual but be part of a couple, too," Margaret said. 06:37 AM    View blog reactions

•Who lost New Orleans? 
Ernest Partridge, Democratic Underground The free-market absolutist libertarian right proclaims, in Ayn Rand's words, that "there is no such entity as .. 'the public' ... only a number of individual men." (Rand: The Objectivist Ethics.) Thus the optimal society emerges "automatically," through an unregulated free market, from the self-serving economic activity of individuals and families. 07:20 AM    View blog reactions

• •Rand’s influence 
Washington Times "Culture Briefs" item excerpting "Who Needs Ayn Rand?" an article by Algis Valiunas from Commentary magazine's September 2005 issue.Rand continues to command attention as the heroine or villainess of a passionate libertarian strain in conservatism -- although she disdained the label of conservative or libertarian. ... Whatever you might call her, there has never been a more vehement champion of rugged individualism, laissez-faire economics, the primacy of property rights, or the businessman as cultural hero. 07:13 AM    View blog reactions

•Politics please, no sex 
Sarah Rapp, Columbia Spectator (Columbia U, NY) Report on an appearance by Salman Rushdie to promote his new book, Shalimar the Clown.Segueing into the question and answer session, Rushdie became playful, knocking other authors. Interrupting a questioner who began with “I heard that you were greatly influenced by Ayn Rand—“, Rushdie said, “That is untrue! Shame on anyone who is influenced by Ayn Rand. That’s almost as bad as being influenced by Dan Brown!” 07:29 AM    View blog reactions