• •No substitute for conflict 
John Grimsley, Broadside Online (George Mason U, Fairfax, VA) Protesters turned their backs in opposition to a presentation by speaker John Lewis based on his article “’No Substitute for Victory:’ The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism.” This was only the beginning in an evening filled with heated outbursts and conflict. Lewis, an assistant history professor from Ashland University, spoke on Tuesday, April 24 in a crowded Johnson Center Cinema filled with security, in front of an audience that largely did not support him. The event was hosted by College Republicans and the Objectivist Club. Protesters included representatives from Students for a Democratic Society and the Muslim Student Association. 07:59 AM    View blog reactions

•Inventor advocates changes in education 
Jim Carney, Beacon Journal (Akron, OH) Interview with Robert Metcalfe, inventor of ethernet and founder of 3Com.Q: What is the best general interest book about science and invention that has ever been written? A: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is my favorite book. Have read it five times since 1959. Time to read it again. 07:56 AM    View blog reactions

•Victor Benavides 
Dallas Morning News High-school student profile.The best book I ever read was: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. 12:55 PM    View blog reactions

• • •A capitalist idea 
Sarah K. Winn, Gazette-Mail (Charleston, WV) The University of Charleston and BB&T have teamed up to offer business students and the community an insight into the moral underpinnings of capitalism. “There is overwhelming evidence that capitalism produces a higher economic standard of living, “ Phyllis Arnold, BB&T’s West Virginia president, said Friday at UC. BB&T will give UC’s Herbert Jones Division of Business a $350,000 grant over the next seven years to “create a program on the moral and ethical foundations of capitalism,” Arnold said. The program will be based on the philosophy of writer Ayn Rand and her book “Atlas Shrugged,” she said. 08:12 AM    View blog reactions

•2007 Lotus Exige S road and track test 
Trevor Hofmann, Automobile.com Certainly the Exige S isn't for everyone, but for the true enthusiast who reveres performance-oriented driving dynamics with the same puritan rigidity that John Galt takes to capitalism (or should I say objectivism), this is as undefiled a road car that money can buy. 08:10 AM    View blog reactions

•Borelians stage homegrown play 
Christy Chase, Durham Region News (ON) In 1993, the Borelians presented a play called The Night of January the 16th, by Ayn Rand, about the trial following the murder of a millionaire in Argentina. "I liked the style of the play. I often thought that's the type of play I'd like to write," [Dave] Ellis said. He sketched out some ideas about a follow-up to that play. "I resurrected it a few years ago and pitched it to the Borelians. And I finished it." 08:10 PM    View blog reactions

•Know your conservatives? Here’s a checklist 
Jim Panyard, The Bulletin (Philadelphia) Libertarian Conservatives: This is possibly the closest fit to the nation's founding principles in terms of minimal government and use of personal freedom and marketplace forces to determine support for the direction of the nation's economy. They are fiercely individualistic with their roots in free market economic thought, and more than they care to admit, in the writings of godless author/philosopher Ayn Rand ("Atlas Shrugged").  08:09 PM    View blog reactions

• • •‘Atlas’ at 50 
Kevin Walker, Tampa Tribune (FL) "Who is John Galt?" With that enigmatic opening line, author-renegade philosopher Ayn Rand began her 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged," which remains a controversial book 50 years after publication. Critics slam Rand for poor writing. Intellectuals ridicule Rand for sophomoric philosophy. And readers gobble it up. 04:33 PM    View blog reactions

•Sketch: Farm 2.0 
Navin Sivanandam, Stanford Daily (Stanford U, CA) Commentary critical of development on the Stanford campus.All the best authoritarians had their artists and architects — from the Medicis and Michelangelo to Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer to Ayn Rand and Howard Roark. Why shouldn’t Leland Stanford Jr. be the same? 08:42 AM    View blog reactions

• •It pays to invest in reading 
PV Subramanyam, moneycontrol.com (India) Books for investors.If you need to check your own attitude towards money, read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and see who your sympathies lie with. However, keep in mind the Bhagwad Gita attitude towards effort and the result seems better than Ayn Rand’s “Virtue of selfishness”. But Ayn Rand you must read! 07:58 AM    View blog reactions

•If the Bairds and the B’s connect with folks who live where it counts, there will be a happy ending 
Rick Bell, Calgary Sun On a new environmental plan introduced by the Conservative government of Canada.Oilpatch P.R. types, you'd better crank it up. This Ottawa madness will crater civilization as we know it, or some such rhetoric. Pick some quotation out of your favourite Ayn Rand scribbling. 07:52 AM    View blog reactions

•From idolatry to faith 
Rev. Graham Scott, Welland Tribune (ON) From the age of 14 to 21 I was a Humanist. Those are sometimes the years when one thinks one knows everything. I founded the Humanist movement on the University of Toronto campus in 1959, and I debated the Student Christian Movement. When zealous theology students from Emmanuel College started soapbox preaching at the Soldiers' Tower, I passed out copies of Bertrand Russell's essay, Why I am not a Christian. Eventually I got into the novels and ideas of Ayn Rand, who wrote a book entitled The Virtue of Selfishness. So how did I ever get to Christian faith? 11:57 AM    View blog reactions

• •Striving for individualism 
Janet Pak, San Francisco Examiner Facing New York has had plenty of opportunities to make more money. While music-industry people have offered lucrative deals in exchange for control over their work, the band members passed, wanting to remain true to themselves. Howard Roark, a character in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” (an inspiration for the group’s name) dealt with a similar struggle. Members of the group shared and admired Roark’s control of creative decisions even at the expense of money, says guitarist, keyboardist and lead singer Eric Frederic. “It’s a powerful thing we wanted to go with,” he says “We have a declaration to be the best live band in America.” 07:41 AM    View blog reactions

•Jaycees present professional Dogwood Pageant 
Connie Bretz, Phoenixville News (PA) The three questions aimed at the contestants were: 1. When you look into the mirror, what do you see if you were to wear the mask? 2. What woman in history do you admire, and why? 3. You are writing your autobiography. What would be the title? Some of the answers to number two were Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged, my mother and Rosa Parks. 07:38 AM    View blog reactions

•Adrienne Hernandez 
Mika Doyle, Rockford Register Star (IL) Profile of a technical engineering specialist in the U.S. Army Reserve.Good book recommendation: “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand and “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. 07:37 AM    View blog reactions

•Barry Diller’s flashy new digs 
Thomas de Monchaux, BusinessWeek We're familiar with The Fountainhead notion of designer as Prometheus, bringing back from the cutting edge forms we didn't know we needed. [Frank] Gehry has seemed happy to play that role in his most disappointing recent engagement, as designer and public face of the Atlantic Yards development, which will bring 22 dire acres of skyscraper to downtown Brooklyn. 07:31 AM    View blog reactions

•Cracking the code 
Grace Chan, Columbia Spectator (Columbia U, NY) ThemEarthMeteors-which anagrammatically rearranges to reveal its actual name, "The Master Theorem"-fills a certain void on Columbia's campus, its coded fliers serving as outlets for mystery-loving students. [....] The cryptic fliers that have appeared over the course of the past four weeks contain little more than the puzzle, a deadline, and a URL, themearthmeteors.com. A quote from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged [...] lines the bottom of every flier: "The only man never to be redeemed is the man without passion." 07:34 AM    View blog reactions

• •Celebrating Brooklyn’s ball of fire 
Bruce Bennett, New York Sun On a celebration of the centenary of actress Barbara Stanwyck's birth.Stanwyck ended her relationship with Warner Bros. in the late 1940s over losing the part of Dominique Francon in "The Fountainhead." Author Ayn Rand, Stanwyck, and Stanwyck's second husband, Robert Taylor, were all members of the Alliance for Preservation of American Ideals, a rabidly anti-communist organization that welcomed HUAC to Hollywood. The star championed Rand's book to Warner's story department for years. When Jack Warner green-lit the long-delayed film and cast Patricia Neal in the lead role, Stanwyck terminated her contract with the studio. If any actress could have saved Rand's purple prose and clunky symbolism from the absurd melodramatic oddity it subsequently became, it was Stanwyck. 07:15 AM    View blog reactions

• •Paul Krugman’s illuminating smear: How the right and the libertarians diverged 
Brian Doherty, TCS Daily Krugman doesn't tell you that Friedman's pamphlet for FEE, written with George Stigler, about rent control, created stress between [FEE founder Leonard] Read and one of his heroines, and until then his supporter, Ayn Rand. Rand was outraged that the Friedman/Stigler pamphlet seemed to say that rationing through government action was morally equivalent to rationing through free markets, merely less efficient. The resulting foofewaw, in which FEE added a footnote against Friedman and Stigler's wishes disagreeing with them on some points, was a great encapsulation of the wars between moral and prudential arguments that have run through the libertarian movement ever since.  06:39 AM    View blog reactions

• •Real world politics and radical libertarianism 
Anthony Gregory, LewRockwell.com In 1932, [...] Ayn Rand cast her vote for Franklin Roosevelt. Libertarian heroine Isabel Paterson also supported FDR. Why? Well, his platform was overall much better than Hoover’s. He vowed to cut government by 25%, protect sound money with a gold standard, lower trade barriers, cut taxes, balance the budget and end alcohol prohibition. [....] Fast forward a few generations and consider the supposed Reagan revolution. Now, Ayn Rand refused to vote for him, because of what she saw as his unacceptable position on abortion. This was ironic, since as California governor he liberalized abortion law. But his rhetoric never lined up to his actual governance, and Rand was right when she thought she smelled a rat. 06:35 AM    View blog reactions

•Sports in the saddle and riding mankind 
Chuck Avery, Palladium-Item (Richmond, IN) I filled my adolescence with Mickey Spillane's violent, sexy tales. I even took up smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes because Mike Hammer did. I would have liked to been as successful with beautiful women as Mike and to have gunned down as many bad guys. I'm not sure whether I grew up or gave up. Later I got into Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and her philosophy of Objectivism. She was, I thought, a woman who had it right. After a while, I abandoned it as a rationale for creative egotists. 07:50 AM    View blog reactions

•Aspen mayor contest on fire 
Nancy Lofholm , Denver Post Developer candidate Tim Semrau, 53, in designer jeans with coiffed hair, set Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" on the table in front of him, along with a sheaf of position papers and cast himself as a developer, yes, but one who has done many affordable-housing projects. 06:09 AM    View blog reactions

• •The causes of cultural violence 
Thom Hartmann, The Thom Hartmann Program (Audio) Interview with Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. 01:22 PM    View blog reactions

•Legal thinkers clash in debate on U.S. surveillance 
Ari Kaplan, Law.com [Former U.S. congressman Bob] Barr quoted Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" in stating "privacy is the essence of civilization itself," and noted that if the American people allow the government to intrude into their lives, then they are not free. 07:51 AM    View blog reactions

• •Earth Day: It’s easy being green 
CNBC (Video)With so many big companies going green, you'd think there'd be little argument against it. But there's always room and need for the contrarian view.  Peter Schwartz, former chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Michael Ewall, director of the Energy Justice Network, squared off on "Power Lunch." 07:48 AM    View blog reactions