• •Economic power 
Jonathan Hoenig, Smartmoney.com Business column on why it's big government, not big business, that people should be worried about."Economic power," as philosopher Ayn Rand wrote, "is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear." Of course, the bureaucrat represents political power, which, these days, is the power of government to do essentially whatever it damn pleases.  12:44 PM    View blog reactions

•Column 
Scott Holleran, Box Office Mojo Mickey Spillane—not the dominant intellectuals—was the true voice of the people, according to Ayn Rand, who expressed her admiration for Spillane's artistic style in a Los Angeles Times column in 1962. Mike Hammer, she observed, was a moral avenger. He did not appease evil; he killed it. 06:55 AM    View blog reactions

•Mirren, Bening taking star turns on the big and little screens 
Liz Smith, Baltimore Sun Hollywood is marveling at Brad Pitt and the manner in which he came back home from his travels abroad with Angelina Jolie and their three children and plunged back into work. [...] He has obligated himself for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Dallas Buyer's Club and Chad Schmidt, and he is in talks about Ayn Rand's classic Atlas Shrugged. 06:52 AM    View blog reactions

• •Starlets have their hands on… 
Hindustan Times Actress Preity Zinta is among the passionate readers club, who finds Ayn Rand's Fountainhead as one of the most influential book of all time. "I have read this book several times till now and still whenever I find time, I like to read it again. 06:45 AM    View blog reactions

• •Atlas smirked 
Lynne Snifka, Anchorage Press (AK) Profile of young musician and internet entrepreneur Erik Braund.Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's 1957 novel, is a sprawling, heroic work that espouses extreme individualism. Ultimately, it's about privileging the one over the many. Gordon “Greed Works” Gecko, the character Michael Douglas played in Wall Street, could have been a Rand disciple. Rand had disciples: She was that kind of writer. Braund says Rand taught him that “it's A-OK to be self-made, not wait for shit to happen.” 09:26 AM    View blog reactions

• •The Market For Liberty 
Mises.org Daily Article Excerpt of The Market For Liberty , by Linda Tannehill and Morris Tannehill.Here we have excerpted three of the earlier chapters [...] where the Tannehills build the foundation of their argument for the completely laissez-faire society and against the claims made by most of their fellow Objectivists, including Ayn Rand, that the minimalist "night watchman" state is necessary for peace and freedom. 09:22 AM    View blog reactions

•Book browser 
Hetal Adesara, Exec Life, Indiantelevision.com Television marketing executive Sita Laxmi Narayan Swamy discusses the role of books in her life."When growing up, you tend to read books like The Fountainhead and it does leave an impact on you," she [says]. 09:13 AM    View blog reactions

• •Sex advice from Nerve.com 
AskMen.com "In this series, we ask a certain segment of the population to school us on various sexual matters."Q: What can an objectivist teach me about sex? A: That it's a very rational, really good thing. 06:15 AM    View blog reactions

•Brad Pitt pushes button and play 
Scott Ferguson, The Deadbolt Projects like Dallas Buyer's Club, Chad Schmidt, and Atlas Shrugged have been rumored to include Brad Pitt. 06:11 AM    View blog reactions

•You are, therefore I am 
Jay Michaelson, The Forward (New York, NY) Review of two books on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.Secular humanism may be a popular outlook today, but those who make ethics their profession know that it rests on extremely shaky foundations. Why must we be ethical? Why may we not — or why ought we not, as Ayn Rand and others would argue — be selfish? What is so significant about human beings? 07:18 AM    View blog reactions

•Grace Frank Motylewski 
Sentinel (Edison, NJ) Obituary.Known as the "bird lady," she had more than 500 birds on her life list. Her special interests included penguins, butterflies, coins and objectivism. 08:44 PM    View blog reactions

•Frank Gehry on film 
Witold Rybczynski, Slate On the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, directed by Sydney Pollack.In his Hollywood way, Pollack wants to cast Gehry as an outsider, a rebel. (Never underestimate the lingering influence of The Fountainhead.) 06:31 AM    View blog reactions

•Brad Pitt still hurting from Jennifer Aniston 
Scott Ferguson, The Deadbolt [Pitt] has been announced for Dallas Buyer's Club, Chad Schmidt, and Atlas Shrugged. 06:29 AM    View blog reactions

•Student is essay semi-finalist 
Jed Chernabaeff, Visalia Times-Delta (Visalia, CA) Home-schooled student Robin Dembroff, 15, of Visalia, is a semifinalist in a nationwide writing contest sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute. More than 11,000 students in the ninth and 10th grades submitted essays based on Rand's novel, "Anthem." 06:45 AM    View blog reactions

•Classical scholars 
Winston L. Kirby, News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) Letter to the editor.Congratulations to Gary Hull of Duke [...] for his plan to initiate a new higher educational institution focusing on the intellectual life. [....] This is not to suggest that I support Ayn Rand's philosophy of "rational self-interest" -- in truth, the opposite for me is at my philosophical core -- but presenting it as a point of discussion for the students of 2007 and beyond, possibly in nearby Oxford, is exciting. 06:40 AM    View blog reactions

•4 stocks that took a hike 
Rick Aristotle Munarriz, The Motley Fool Investing column.Maybe it shouldn't be a coincidence that two of the major railroad operators decided to hike their dividends during the same week. It's all too easy to dismiss the sector as archaic. Wasn't this Dagny Taggart's dying turf in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged way back when? 06:36 AM    View blog reactions

• •Goodbye, tough guy 
Otto Penzler, New York Sun On recently-deceased author Mickey Spillane.In her nonpareil cultural analysis, "The Romantic Manifesto," [Ayn Rand] lauded Spillane's literary style, most famously as she compared identical scenes in a Spillane novel and one by the critics' darling, Thomas Wolfe. Anyone with a thirdgrade reading level easily could distinguish between Wolfe's bloated prose, describing a rainy night in New York, crawling on and on, page after page, with Spillane's few brief paragraphs so crisp and clear, showing the drenched cityscape. You felt you needed a trench coat against the weather. 06:44 AM    View blog reactions

• •Duke professor plans for-profit college with classic curriculum 
Jane Stancill, Charlotte Observer (NC) Details on a plan by Gary Hull to establish a new college.According to papers filed with the North Carolina Secretary of State's office in March 2005, The College of Rational Education "shall be exclusively operated as to provide a reality-based, rationally grounded education, by applying Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, to all of the Corporation's activities and undertakings." Hull says that was an idea "that fell by the wayside." 06:38 AM    View blog reactions

•Nameless and faceless 
Nancy J. Long, Ocala Star-Banner (FL) As Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute points out, "all too many of our soldiers have died unnecessarily - because they were sent to fight for a purpose other than America's freedom." 06:30 AM    View blog reactions

•“Insulting” the principle of free speech 
Joseph Kellard, Capitalism Magazine Commentary disagreeing with the arguments used by PEN to defend novelist Elif Shafak against charges of denigrating Turkish culture.A novelist who creates a fictional character is responsible for whatever that character says and does. She is responsible for her character’s views, since the character is her creation, just as Ayn Rand was responsible for creating Ellsworth Toohey. 10:41 AM    View blog reactions

•US, Israel accused of appeasing ‘Islamic totalitarians’ 
Alison Espach, Cybercast News Service Report on an Ayn Rand Institute op-ed and reaction to it from the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).Elan Journo with the pro-individual rights Ayn Rand Institute hammered the "U.S.-Israeli Suicide Pact" in an op/ed, declaring that the two countries have failed to recognize the ultimate goal of "Islamic totalitarians." 10:35 AM    View blog reactions

•Halpers’ Last Stand: The movie 
Brad Parks, Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ) On a protest against eminent domain by Logan Darrow Clements.[Clements is] a follower of a philosophy called "objectivism," which is based on the writings of Ayn Rand. It's a worldview that prizes laissez-faire capitalism and despises government intervention -- of which eminent domain is one of the worst examples, Clements said. 09:38 AM    View blog reactions

•Internet fees no threat to free speech 
Elizabeth Hovde, The Columbian (Clark County, WA) Opinion column on "Net Neutrality."Instead of being opposed to the idea that some customers will have superior access to information, those resistant to the idea of tiered Internet service (such as myself) need to be reminded (as I was by the Ayn Rand organization) that while the Internet began as a government-funded project, content providers, private network builders and hardware companies have made it what it is today. As such, customers have no right to equal access. 09:33 AM    View blog reactions

•Geek love 
Joshua Sindell, Los Angeles City Beat Profile of comedian Brian Posehn.Posehn’s “Metal by Numbers” satirizes some of the more prominent trends adopted by the current crop of Headbanger’s Ball guitar-slingers: “So grab your friends, some instruments, and start a metal band/Just sing about death, demons, Egypt and wizards, or rip off Ayn Rand.” 09:20 AM    View blog reactions

•Mickey Spillane’s tough-guy appeal 
Post and Courier (Charleston, SC) Editorial.The critics were generally unimpressed by Mr. Spillane's detective novels (though author Ayn Rand was a fan, as noted in a 1963 tribute of sorts by another maverick writer, Terry Southern). 08:30 AM    View blog reactions