• An interview with David Edelstein 
Paul Morton, Bookslut Interview with journalist David Edelstein.Q: That brings us back to Natural Born Killers and why you hate that movie so deeply. A: Because Oliver Stone turns serial killers into existential heroes. Because he raises them to a mythic plain where we’re supposed to see these Ayn Randian exalted individuals, rock and roll conquistadors. We’re supposed to rock out to the carnage. There’s a moral indifference in that movie. 09:17 AM    View blog reactions

• God-fearing people 
Christopher Hitchens, Slate “Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?”If I choose to spit on a copy of the writings of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or James Joyce, that is entirely my business. 08:27 AM    View blog reactions

• Party Come Here 
Frank Rizzo, Variety Theater review.Story centers on nebbishy Jack ([Hunter] Foster) who, somewhat improbably, is about to marry beautiful, Ayn Rand-loving Kate ([Kate] Reinders). 08:19 AM    View blog reactions

• Angelina’s Chicago raid 
Bill Zwecker, Chicago Sun-Times Atlas Shrugged movie  Jolie is [...] providing voice talent for the upcoming ''Beowulf'' and ''Kung Fu Panda''; starring in ''The Changeling,'' and is expected soon to begin the long-delayed ''Atlas Shrugged,'' based on the Ayn Rand novel. 08:18 AM    View blog reactions

• ‘Whiz’ student, 81, gets degree at Kennesaw St. 
Aixa M. Pascual, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlas Shrugged  Favorite book: "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. 08:16 AM    View blog reactions

• Tom Snyder, one of a kind 
Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com On TV talk-show host Tom Snyder, who died recently.Guests [of the Tomorrow show] included John Lennon (his last TV interview), Muhammad Ali, Alfred Hitchcock, John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, Steven Spielberg and Ayn Rand.  08:14 AM    View blog reactions

• Legendary talk-show host Tom Snyder dies 
Mark Schoifet, Bloomberg Notable guests [of The Tomorrow Show] included authors Ayn Rand and Harlan Ellison, and the last TV interview given by former Beatle Lennon, in 1975. 08:10 AM    View blog reactions

• Tom Snyder, TV talk host, dies at 71 
Bill Carter, New York Times (Subscription required.)The [Tomorrow] show’s guest list included names like Spiro Agnew, Jimmy Hoffa, the Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski, Marlon Brando, the author Ayn Rand and Alfred Hitchcock. 08:08 AM    View blog reactions

• Hearts and souls dissected, in 12 minutes or less 
Dave Itzkoff, New York Times (Subscription required.) On television talk-show host Tom Snyder, who died recently.The [Tomorrow] show could vary wildly in its guest selection from bleary-eyed night to night: one episode might feature a cerebral interview with the author Ayn Rand, another a freewheeling chat with the rock band Kiss. 08:06 AM    View blog reactions

• Report portrays former top executives at Motive as willing to cut corners 
Robert Elder, American-Statesman (Austin, TX) [Scott Harmon] co-founded Motive in 1997 and became known for a hard-driving style — encouraging his employees to take martial arts classes — and a devotion to writer Ayn Rand, a champion of individualism and unfettered capitalism. "We're not warm and fuzzy, there's not a lot of cheerleading, and we don't give back rubs on Fridays," he told Forbes magazine in 2003. 08:02 AM    View blog reactions

• • Whittaker Chambers: Journalist 
Ron Capshaw, FrontPage Magazine Atlas Shrugged  [Chambers'] sense of mission entailed cleansing conservatism of its more soulless elements such as Ayn Rand. Chambers’ review of Atlas Shrugged compared her atheistic capitalism to Karl Marx: “He too admired naked self interest …and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleansed away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishments.” 07:09 AM    View blog reactions

• Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson again! 
Josh Tyler, Cinema Blend The way some people form cults and devote themselves to worshipping the works of Ayn Rand or that guy Jesus, that’s how I feel about Hunter S. Thompson’s story of rum guzzling and raving insanity. The first time I read it, “The Rum Diary” literally changed my life. 07:06 AM    View blog reactions

• • Sex, love and the scolding psychotherapist 
Mary Jo Murphy, New York Times Capitalism  Excerpts from the books of psychotherapist Albert Ellis, who died recently.From “Is Objectivism a Religion?,” in which [Ellis] takes on Ayn Rand: [....] “[Objectivism] remains in a world of ‘rational’ fictions and it invents innumerable fantasies about capitalism and refuses to admit its fantasizing.” 08:21 AM    View blog reactions

• • From ‘Princess’ to literary royalty 
Michael Ordoña, San Francisco Chronicle Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Interview with actress Anne Hathaway."When I told Meryl (Streep, her co-star in 'The Devil Wears Prada') that I'd read 'Fountainhead,' I was hoping she'd be very impressed, but she goes, 'Oh yeah, I loved that book when I first read it. You'll read it 20 years from now and you'll find it unbelievably snobby,' " [Hathaway] says with a long, loud laugh. "Believe me, things that Meryl says usually come to pass." 08:18 AM    View blog reactions

• • The Iron Horse and Ripken 
Ray Robinson, New York Times Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Profile of former major league baseball player Cal Ripken.“My personal philosophy is to get a feeling of fulfillment through my work,” [Ripken] said. “I have a desire to create something. I guess that’s why I’ve long been fascinated by two books, ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ The leading figure in ‘The Fountainhead,’ an architect named Howard Roark, is someone I’ve thought about a good deal.” 08:16 AM    View blog reactions

• Taking a cultural odyssey with Homer 
Tim Swift, Baltimore Sun It was [The Simpsons] that introduced me to HMS Pinafore, Citizen Kane, A Streetcar Named Desire and even the works of Ayn Rand. 08:09 AM    View blog reactions

• • • Happy birthday, ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 
Linn and Ari Armstrong, Free Press (Grand Junction, CO) Ayn Rand Institute  Leonard Peikoff  Yaron Brook  Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  On the Ayn Rand Institute conference in Telluride, CO.[Atlas Shrugged is] about towering heroes and dastardly villains: Dagny Taggart, the inexhaustible railroad executive; her brother James, who works to undermine not only his sister’s efforts but the pillars of a free society; the pirate Ragnar Danneskjold, who pursues the only course left to him by civilization’s destroyers. And John Galt? You should discover his identity on your own. 09:31 AM    View blog reactions

• • • Book review of “The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics” 
Wendy McElroy, ifeminists.com Atlas Shrugged  We The Living  Personal life  Review (written in 2005) of the book by James S. Valliant.At 15-years-old, I became an Objectivist through reading We the Living and, then, everything I could find by Rand. Her impact on my life was profound and benevolent. At 15-years-old, I needed a role model; I needed an ideal at whom I could look up and toward whom I could climb. The one-dimensional John Galt was a poor substitute for the flesh-and-blood woman who had created a philosophy and movement out of nothing more than her passion for ideas. 09:20 AM    View blog reactions

• • Architects vie for Parker Project 
James LaRue, YourHub.com Castle Rock (CO) The Fountainhead  When I was in high school, I read a book that changed my life. It was Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." 09:17 AM    View blog reactions

• Box-office heroes 
Biswadeep Ghosh, Pune Times (India) Authors have always had loyal fans. But nowadays, reading certain authors has become more of a status symbol. Ankit Tandon, manager in an engineering company, says, “Yes, there are such authors. Today, everybody is supposed to have read Paulo Coelho, Ayn Rand, John Grisham, Deepak Chopra and even J K Rowling!” 09:12 AM    View blog reactions

• Remembering Henry Hazlitt 
Bettina Bien Greaves, Mises.org Daily Article [Hazlitt] came to know practically all the conservatives and libertarians of his day, not only [Ludwig von] Mises and [Chase National Bank economist Benjamin M. ] Anderson, but also, among others, FEE founder Leonard E. Read, Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, John Chamberlain, William F. Buckley Jr., Lawrence Fertig, Sylvester Petro, F.A. Hayek, and Ayn Rand. 09:09 AM    View blog reactions

• Eat your heart out, Ayn Rand! 
Preston Adams, Lucid Magazine At first glance, the idea of objective thinking seems reasonable. However, I find it to be counter-intuitive as the very basis which constitutes objectivity is subjective — a thought. Think about it. There is no such thing as an objective idea. It is an oxymoron, because for every thought that exists - there precedes it a thinker. And by definition, that’s subjective thinking, “proceeding from or taking place in a person’s mind.” 09:04 AM    View blog reactions

• Not much spice 
Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle The Fountainhead  Movie review.No Reservations isn't, like Ratatouille, a frenetic epicurean love-in, but it does take place amid the bustling tension of a high-end restaurant — and it plays off the idea of chefs as slightly loony artists. This time, the star is not a rat-wunderkind who rides in the hair of a teenage boy but an uncompromising Ayn Rand purist who would rather blow up a building (or stab a raw steak into a table, but same difference) than suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous patrons. How dare they question the rareness of her beef? 07:18 AM    View blog reactions

• Jackass Cooper and the 1-trick donkeys 
Ilana Mercer, WorldNetDaily Ayn Rand Institute  On the CNN YouTube Democratic presidential candidates debate.Most of the candidates disavowed reparations. But, coupled with assorted race-based redistribution plans, they vowed to continue to take "jobs away from one group in order to compensate a second group to correct injustices caused by a third group who mistreated a fourth group at an earlier point in history" – that's Edwin Locke of the Ayn Rand Institute's distillation of America's discriminatory hiring practices. 07:15 AM    View blog reactions

• The Architect 
Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter The Fountainhead  Comic book reviewThe Architect is a horror story drawing on elements of Frank Lloyd Wright's life, or at least the Wright we tend to see through the prism of fiction like Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. The borrowing proves clumsy; the figure at the story's center is even named Roark. 07:29 AM    View blog reactions