•What they’re reading 
Jon Fear, The Record (Kitchener, ON) [Mark Pettigrew:] "Once I'd read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, there didn't seem to be any reason to read fiction anymore. She said it all." 08:42 AM    View blog reactions

•Modern design begins at home 
Raymond Gill, The Age (Melbourne) Not so long ago design was really only something Manhattanites did. Ayn Rand's book and her 1949 film version of The Fountainhead led us all to believe that as a mode of self-expression, design and architecture belonged only to surly sociopathic geniuses and their swanky Park Avenue penthoused clients. 06:33 AM    View blog reactions

•On TV 
M. Bozena Syska, Newsday (New York) Every Wednesday evening in October, TCM offers "Architecture in Film." The festival begins at 8 p.m. Wednesday with "The Fountainhead," a 1949 film starring Gary Cooper as a Manhattan architect whose housing project design is altered from his original plans; rather than accept a perversion of his work, he dynamites the building. 06:32 AM    View blog reactions

•The “I’m so worldly, you’ll actually grow smarter after sexing me” date 
Drew Lazor, Philadelphia City Paper Recommendations for a date "to impress that cultured coffee-shop-flirt-session acquisition [who] speaks solely in Goethe quotes and Kandinsky compositions."Browse Red Sky's sweets menu for items like the warm brownie sundae, served with an insane chocolate chip banana gelato. At this rate, you'll be naked in bed reading The Fountainhead to each other in no time. 07:42 AM    View blog reactions

•Better critical than red 
Jonathan Schorsch, Tikkun (Berkeley, CA) On "the failings of Jewish neo-conservatism and its destructive impact on Israel."[A] West fighting under the banner of a New Testament rewritten by Ayn Rand and Adam Smith (with John Locke a distant third) is hardly worth getting behind uncritically. 07:32 AM    View blog reactions

•The Devil Wears Prada 
Jake Wilson, The Age (Melbourne) Movie review.For a cheerfully fluffy, superficial movie, The Devil Wears Prada manages to ensure that Marxists, feminists, Oscar-nomination forecasters, Ayn Rand fans and bondage enthusiasts will all have a fair bit to talk about. 07:30 AM    View blog reactions

• •The deal report 
Adam B. Vary, Entertainment Weekly Angelina Jolie has hopped onto Lionsgate's production of Ayn Rand's epic tome Atlas Shrugged, ending the novel's decades-long slow dance with Hollywood to the big screen. ''It's not going to be your normal movie — (the book is) 1,495 pages,'' explains producer Howard Baldwin (Ray). ''There's two ways [we] can go: [We] can go with two or three movies, or one fairly long movie." 07:24 AM    View blog reactions

• •Action Philosophers by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey 
John Snider, Philosophy Now Review of a comic-book series depicting philosophers.Lest you think all philosophers are predatory males, consider the case of Ayn Rand. The mother of Objectivism and author of the bestselling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, she is also notorious for her bizarre love affair with Nathaniel Branden, an acolyte 25 years her junior. 07:20 AM    View blog reactions

•The end user: Wikipedia morphs on 
Victoria Shannon, New York Times [Wikipedia founder Jimmy] Wales [...] in previous lives made a small fortune as a commodities trader, adhered to Ayn Rand's egocentric philosophy of Objectivism and ran a racy Internet portal (all according to his own Wikipedia entry). 01:14 PM    View blog reactions

•Capitalism kills: Mad cow, crime, salt, and suicide 
Thomas Riggins, Political Affairs Magazine Across India thousands of dirt poor Indian farmers are driven to suicide each year because of debt and poverty caused directly by the policies of globalization (led by US capitalism) as well as the pro "free" market attitudes of the Indian government. [...]. The [New York] Times says that "economic reforms " have "opened" (read "exposed") the peasants to world competition and that they have "access to" (read "are forced to buy") expensive and promising biotechnology." Sounds like a good deal. An Ayn Randian dream. Competition and science to the rescue. [...]. But, oops, the "reforms" have a downside in that they haven't "necessarily opened the way to higher prices, bank loans, irrigation or insurance against pests and rain." And the "free " part of "free trade" includes the US giving "$18 billion a year to its own farmers." 01:06 PM    View blog reactions

•Thom Hartmann comes to the defense of the embattled, and shrinking, middle class 
BuzzFlash Interview with radio host Thom Hartmann.There are two groups of people participating in the destruction of the American middle class. The first is those who benefit directly from it economically [....]. Then the second group is the ideologues, the true believers -- the libertarians and objectivists who read Ayn Rand and truly believe that pure unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism is not only a good economic system, but is also a good political system. They’re perhaps the most dangerous and destructive. [...]. And they get it that there’s something in it for them. 07:09 AM    View blog reactions

•Great Falls woman publishes novel using print-on-demand 
Stacy Haslem, Great Falls Tribune (MT) [Jessica] Wyatt was an unconventional child who subscribed to various eclecticisms. She learned to play guitar and appreciate a wide variety of music. She read works by Ayn Rand, Aldous Huxley, Michael Moore and other authors who tended to go against the grain. 09:52 AM    View blog reactions

• •Students write standout essays 
Christopher Nagy, Press & Argus (Livingston, MI) Although [...] students [Alyssa Stevenson and Chris Hooks] earned some fairly high marks for their essays on "Anthem," neither said they would rank Rand among their favorite authors. 09:49 AM    View blog reactions

• •Channel 56 to offer series on race 
Detroit Free Press Angelina Jolie is set to star in an adaptation of "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand's political novel about the destructive effects of altruism on the Individual [....]. An otherwise sentient being, Jolie once told CNBC, Rand has a very interesting philosophy, boiling it down to self-therapy: "You re-evaluate your own life and what's important to you." Heavy. 09:43 AM    View blog reactions

•Clemson University establishes a think tank devoted to studying the moral basis of capitalism 
Gary Shapiro, New York Sun On the establishment of The Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism.[T]he institute [...] has a promotional brochure that features pictures of John Locke, Adam Smith, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand, among others. 06:46 AM    View blog reactions

•Two-day film fete on environmental issues 
newkerala.com Premiering at the festival will be [...] Suparna Chaddha's 'When Atlas Shrugged Again' highlighting the ongoing relief work in Uri, one of the worst-hit areas in last year's earthquake, festival manager Ashwini Sinha said. 07:51 AM    View blog reactions

• •No apologies are owed to militant Islamists 
Paul Saunders, The Morning Call (Allentown, PA) Letter to the Editor.In her 1957 novel, ''Atlas Shrugged,'' Ayn Rand gave us a warning on how the pope should have handled the militant Muslim reaction to his recent speech. In the chapter, ''This Is John Galt Speaking,'' she gave the following context-setting remarks. ''There are two sides to every issue: One side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.'' 07:44 AM    View blog reactions

• •Angelina Jolie signs up for movie of gigantic Atlas book 
Stuart Heritage, hecklerspray Angelina Jolie is getting ready to take a run-up and do a great big moviemaking bellyflop - she's getting ready to star in an adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, a monumentally heavy-going objectivist 1,100 page book written by one of the 20th century's leading philosophers. Woo-hoo! Save us a line in the popcorn queue for this one! 07:43 AM    View blog reactions

• •‘Atlas Shrugged,’ Jolie shrugs back 
Zap2it Jolie has been a longtime fan of Rand's work, which suggests that the Oscar-winning UN Goodwill Ambassador has never read any of the "Fountainhead" author's virulent screeds against the United Nations. 07:40 AM    View blog reactions

•Taking aim 
Jennifer Senior, New York Times Book Review Review of How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime, by Sidney Blumenthal and Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration, by Lewis LaphamLike his worst counterparts on the right, [Lapham] compares those he doesn’t like to fanatics, as when he refers to David Frum and Richard Perle as “Mufti Frum” and “Mullah Perle,” adding, “Provide them with a beard, a turban and a copy of the Koran, and I expect that they wouldn’t have much trouble stoning to death a woman discovered in adultery with a cameraman from CBS News.” Possibly, but provide Lapham with a blond wig, stiletto pumps and a copy of “The Fountainhead,” and I suspect he wouldn’t look much different from Ann Coulter. 07:36 AM    View blog reactions

•Hindi film is Canada’s Oscar contender 
The Guardian (London) Angelina Jolie is the latest pin-up for "guerrilla artist" Banksy after spending £200,000 on works at his well-sited show in Los Angeles, an easy art-buying stroll from Beverley Hills. She's invested in various drawing-room talking points, including a white bust with a bleeding bullet hole in the forehead. Jolie is going to need inspiration after landing the part of power-woman Dagny Taggart in the film version of feminist icon Ayn Rand's vast novel Atlas Shrugged. 07:29 AM    View blog reactions

• •Angelina Jolie to star in Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 
Kimberly Maul, The Book Standard According to the website for the Ayn Rand Institute, the basis of Objectivism is “Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.” 07:29 AM    View blog reactions

• •Jolie bags Rand heroine Dagny Taggart’s role in Atlas Shrugged 
Darya Zarin, Earthtimes Angelina Jolie is on a roll. After bagging the role of Daniel Pearl's wife Mariane in the slain journalist's biopic, the Girl, Interrupted star will play Dagny Taggart, the legendary no-nonsense heroine of Ayn Rand's magnum opus Atlas Shrugged.  07:26 AM    View blog reactions

•Gossip monkey - 22/9/06 
Moviehole Angelina Jolie has joined "Atlas Shrugged". Hey, I’m shrugging too. No wonder Pittster balked at this. The not so thrilling story has Jolie playing a railroad Exec who battles society as her company dwindles. 07:22 AM    View blog reactions

• • •Angelina Jolie to star in Atlas Shrugged 
Nancy Connors, Best Syndication Many conservatives and libertarians have applauded the concepts and writings of Ayn Rand. Russian born in 1905, Rand learned to loath the collectivist mentality of communism. She came to America and became a broadly influential figure in post-WWII America; her work attracted both enthusiastic admiration and scathing denunciations. 07:20 AM    View blog reactions