•The week ahead: Oct. 30 - Nov. 
Claudia La Rocco, New York Times Cultural event listings.Melissa Briggs has set her "Book Dances" in the First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights. Ms. Briggs, who plays with the intersection between theater and dance, sets scenes from "Anna Karenina," "The Fountainhead," "East of Eden" and "Franny and Zooey" throughout the building. 10:01 AM    View blog reactions

•Shelf life: What’s new at the bookstores 
Mimi Diamond, Asbury Park Press "Ayn Rand Answers: THe Best of Her Q&A" edited by Robert Mayhew. New American Library, $15 (paperback). 09:57 AM    View blog reactions

•Mt. Olive can balance school with pleasure 
Dennis Lyons, Daily Record (Morris Co., NJ) Column defending the practice of schools assigning summer projects to students.Mary and I got something out of them, too. We went to Ellis Island for the first time with our daughter Megan. I got to discuss books like "A Farewell to Arms" and "The Fountainhead" with son Dan. 09:55 AM    View blog reactions

•Love, loss haunt model turned maid 
Ariel Gonzalez, Miami Herald Review of Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill.The relationship between Alison and Veronica will remind Gaitskill fans of her last novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin, which brought together two adult child abuse victims with an interest in a writer modeled after Ayn Rand. 09:51 AM    View blog reactions

•Villainy: An analysis of the nature of evil (Part 4 of 5) 
Andrew Bernstein, Capitalism Magazine Monseigneur Bienvenu, the magnanimous bishop of Les Miserables, is fictional, but, like Howard Roark (of The Fountainhead) or Dagny Taggart (of Atlas Shrugged), his characterization has stature and power because great-souled individuals like him do, in fact, exist. 09:42 AM    View blog reactions

•Diversifying the marketplace of ideas 
Bill Steigerwald, Tribune-Review (Pittsburgh) Column arguing for more "libertarian/conservative" ideas on newspaper editorial pages.Even Ayn Rand, the uncompromising champion of individualism and capitalism, wrote several dozen op-ed columns in the early 1960s for the Los Angeles Times. 09:40 AM    View blog reactions

•It’s the rich what gets the pleasure … 
William Keegan, The Observer (London) Opinion.The financial markets have vested the retiring Fed chairman Alan Greenspan with the kind of powers which rank him as God's Central Banker. Greenspan, though a very right-wing Republican, and a disciple of Ayn Rand (author of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness) has taken the Fed's brief of aiming at 'maximum employment' (as well as price stability) seriously. 09:34 AM    View blog reactions

•Building blocks of society 
Shamik Bag, Expressindia Profile of a former architect who now works with children.He read Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead at an impressionable age all right. But more than the iconoclastic narrative of a talented young architect’s disenchantment with conventions and deep-set notions turning him away from his vocation, Subrato Ghosh plunged headlong into architecture. But with a twist, for Fountainhead did manage to plant a “seed of dissent” in his thinking. 09:29 AM    View blog reactions

•Bernanke at the Fed: a solid if uninspiring nomination 
Allister Heath, Business Online (UK) Everybody knew where his predecessor stood politically: in his youth, Greenspan was close to Ayn Rand, the radical libertarian Russian-born novelist and philosopher; compared with her, Ronald Reagan was a socialist and a peacenik. 09:26 AM    View blog reactions

•Caldara says state’s future is at stake with C & D 
Steven K. Paulson, CBS 4 - Denver On Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute, and his opposition to upcoming Colorado ballot measures.He says he was converted to fiscal conservatism after reading books by Ayn Rand, the free-market proponent and author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged." 09:14 AM    View blog reactions

•Spot the winner 
Suchitra Bajpai Chaudhary, Gulf News (Dubai) Opinions from city residents on the topic of "nice guys."Padma Venkatraman: "Over the years, everything from the ubiquitous brooding, tall dark and handsome Mills-and-Boons type, to drawling, indifferent Rhett Butler types, the passionate and ideal Howard Roark in Fountainhead and, of course, the usual brood of Hollywood heroes have influenced my preferences." 08:40 AM    View blog reactions

•Dance listings 
John Rockwell, New York Times 'Book Dances' (Weekends through Nov. 6) Melissa Briggs Dance offers site-specific performances portraying memorable scenes from classic novels. The novels, one scene from each, are "Anna Karenina," "The Fountainhead," "East of Eden" and "Franny and Zooey." The audience will be split into small groups and guided to each site and scene within a 19th-century church. 08:35 AM    View blog reactions

•The Bernanke standard 
Wall Street Journal Mr. Greenspan has run monetary policy out of his own hip pocket. No one knows if Mr. Bernanke's pocket contains the same tricks or instinct. (We'd add "divine inspiration," except that Mr. Greenspan is a Randian.) 10:02 PM    View blog reactions

• • •Young Northwest leaders challenge racism as philosophy 
Indian Country Today On a government- and university-sponsored summer program that helped high school students to "rebut [...] misinformation contained within the anti-Indian writing" of organizations like the Ayn Rand Institute.ARI's positions grow out of objectivism, in which reason, individualism and capitalism are central guideposts. Objectivists appear strongly libertarian about personal behavior, interestingly against faith-based politics, while being completely domineering and insulting against Indians and Native peoples as legitimate communities of human beings. 09:43 PM    View blog reactions

•License to Bill 
Lila Rajiva, Counterpunch To his fans, a Randian free-market hero, an Atlas barely quivering under the Himalayan chain of operating systems, software packages and security patches with which he feeds the hungering cyber-masses. Or as one Indian model squealed orgasmically, "Mr. Gates, you are my idea of the ideal man. You are rich, and you are powerful." 09:35 PM    View blog reactions

• •Books that matter 
Bradley R. Gitz, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” Turgid prose and cardboard characters, but a book that has probably influenced the political views of more people than any since “The Communist Manifesto,” albeit in a more desirable direction. 09:25 PM    View blog reactions

•Youth movement 
Rick Brookhiser, National Review Online Rerun of a column from the July 6, 1998 issue of National Review.The conservative movement, when it was first moving, was to a great extent a youth crusade. Frank Meyer and Russell Kirk, in their very different ways, collected young acolytes. Thirtysomething William F. Buckley Jr. had wholesale appeal, and Ayn Rand's bestseller status was based on young readers — especially young women readers, for whom she offered self-aggrandizement leavened with submission. But the conservative who packed Madison Square Garden was Barry Goldwater. 09:22 PM    View blog reactions

•Challenges on horizon for new Fed chief 
Indianapolis Star Editorial supporting Alan Greenspan's successor as Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke.Greenspan's decision to coordinate the bailout of hedge fund Long-Term Capital in 1997 would not have pleased his mentor, political theorist Ayn Rand. But that, along with decisions to lower interest rates during the tech bust, helped bolster the economy. 09:18 PM    View blog reactions

•Dating beneath you 
Devon M. Wiesend, The UWM Post (U of Wisconsin - Milwaukee) As much as I don’t want to spend my life hearing about the complexity of a carburetor, most mechanics won’t want to hear about the complexity of Ayn Rand’s political views as interpreted from her novels. None of us is better than any other, but finding someone with a relatable background, education and goals is very important. 09:14 PM    View blog reactions

•Ben Bernanke - Manna or mange for gold bugs? 
Tim Wood, Resource Investor Gold bugs have an unrequited affection for Alan Greenspan since he made a cogent case for gold as the coinage of liberty. Forty years have passed since Greenspan penned his Randian manifesto, Gold and Economic Freedom. He now departs the scene never having realized his manifesto’s ideals. 09:05 AM    View blog reactions

•In real estate and in life, she sees beyond boundaries 
York Daily Record (PA) Profile of Shawn M. Colbert, CEO of Springwood Real Estate Services.Q: What management books would you recommend and why? A: Two of my favorites are "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand and "The Servant" by James C. Hunter. "The Servant" endorses the philosophy that you achieve great things by helping others succeed. "Atlas Shrugged" is a neat what-if. 09:02 AM    View blog reactions

•Bernanke may best Greenspan 
David Olive, Toronto Star Only nominally Republican, Bernanke is a non-partisan, non-ideological figure widely respected by liberals and conservatives. By contrast, Greenspan still carries a torch for his mentor Ayn Rand and embraced the voodoo of supply-side economics when first appointed by President Ronald Reagan 09:00 AM    View blog reactions

•Lowering your ‘age’ 
Sarah Skidmore, San Diego Union Tribune Profile of Charles Silver, CEO of RealAge.He keeps an Ayn Rand poster in his office and other inspiration nearby to stay focused on his tenets. 08:58 AM    View blog reactions

•Greenspan leaving big shoes to fill 
Journal Star (Lincoln, NE) Although Greenspan has ideological baggage — earlier in his career, he studied the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand — he handled his responsibilities as Fed chairman essentially as a nonpolitical technocrat, focusing mainly on fighting inflation. 08:55 AM    View blog reactions

•LaRouche vs. Greenspan: An 18-year fight over financial derivatives 
Executive Intelligence Review Alan Greenspan, an acolyte in the cult of Ayn Rand, was appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in August 1987, shortly before the "Black Monday" crash of Oct. 19. 08:53 AM    View blog reactions