• Help yourself by helping others 
Victor Vargas, The Gateway (U of AB, Edmonton) Imagine a world without volunteering, like something out of an Ayn Rand novel. A place where people do everything for their own benefit and the idea of helping anyone out for free is not only foolish, but considered harmful to the very person you wanted to assist. There’ll be no more Red Cross members coming to save you when your community burns down, and say goodbye to student groups giving out free candy and toys at the clubs fair too. 08:19 AM    View blog reactions

• Brain-directed animals 
Charley Reese, LewRockwell.com Ayn Rand said it well when she observed that we can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality. 08:16 AM    View blog reactions

• • Ken Levine on BioShock: The spoiler interview 
Chris Remo, Shacknews Atlas Shrugged  Interview with the designer of video game BioShock.Q: Do you think you gave Objectivism short shrift at all? I'm not an Objectivist, I'm just curious as to how you'd respond to that. A: I'm fascinated by Objectivism. I think I gave it--I think the problem with any philosophy is that it's up to people to carry it out. It could have been Objectivism, it could have been anything. It's about what happens when ideals meet reality. If you had to sum up BioShock's story, that's what it is. When philosophers write books, when they write fictional works like Atlas Shrugged, they put paragons in the books to carry out their ideals. I always wanted to tell a story of, what if a guy wasn't a paragon? What if his intentions were really good, but at the end of the day he was human? I think that's where the problem is. It's not an attack on Objectivism, it's a fair look at humanity. We screw things up. [....] It could have been Objectivism, it could have been anything. 08:09 AM    View blog reactions

• ‘BioShock’ creepy, pretty 
Sam LaGrone, News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) Rapture is the creation of Andrew Ryan, a crazy cutout of Ayn Rand, the pseudophilosopher who hated poor people and didn't care for much outside the realm of free market capitalism and sleeping around. 08:07 AM    View blog reactions

• Readers respond to Outing’s on climate change—and a note from Whittaker Chambers’ grandson 
David Chambers, Editor & Publisher Letter to the editor.After a career as Communist spy, TIME senior editor, and government witness, Chambers managed to exercise Free Speech on any number of occasions. He critiqued Rand's "When Atlas Shrugged" in Buckley's National Review --with his own byline. He then chose to resign from NR's staff. 08:00 AM    View blog reactions

• Dating—Getting specific in online love 
Megan Scott, The Olympian (Olympia, WA) There are niche dating sites for every political affiliation, religion and ethnic group. There are even ones for Trekkies (TrekPassions.com) and lonely Ayn Rand fans (atlasphere.com). 07:59 AM    View blog reactions

• Another fire at Ground Zero 
Jenna Orkin, Counterpunch Atlas Shrugged  Though the John Galt Corporation has proven as elusive as the eponymous character in the Ayn Rand novel, Atlas Shrugged, which opens with the question, "Who is John Galt?" it has served as an effective front for members of Safeway Environmental Corporation whose contract had been cancelled because of mob connections. 07:54 AM    View blog reactions

• Infinite lives 
Darren Zenko, Vue Weekly (Edmonton) Review of video game BioShock.Here’s a quick tip for any megalomaniacal Objectivist billionaire visionaries out there who may be looking into the feasibility of an subaquatic Art Deco metropolis dedicated to free-market endeavour: don’t cheap out on the waterproofing. Because the high-explosive stock of your town’s countless unregulated weapon kiosks plus a genetically freakified townsfolk driven mad by unregulated abuse of over-the-counter superpower potions equals trouble for lowest-bidder hull plating. 07:47 AM    View blog reactions

• Meg and Dia Frampton are big on books 
Glenn Gamboa, Newsday (New York) On rock duo Meg & Dia."Books have really inspired me," said Meg, adding that she is still reading a lot of Ayn Rand though she disagrees with some of her views. 07:44 AM    View blog reactions

• Dating menus: You can change yours 
Jocelyn Voo, CNN.com On niche dating sites.Ayn Rand fans can find love at TheAtlasphere.com. 05:59 AM    View blog reactions

• Free speech gets a reprieve at Tufts 
Mark Fitzgerald, Editor & Publisher On the rescinding of a Tufts University ban on unsigned editorials.Like many another publication written by young, privileged ideology-besotted students who just don't understand why the world and so many of their peers on campus cannot see how much better we would all be if we ran society guided by textbooks such as Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" or William F. Buckley's "God and Man at Yale," The Primary Source appears to be long on certitude, but short on empathy and, in its particular case, a sense of humor. 05:55 AM    View blog reactions

• Good people are round people 
Noah Hy Brozinsky, Cornell Daily Sun (Ithaca, NY) Geometry problems can be fun: A certain dumpster measures 10 feet by 10 feet by 30 feet. How many Ayn Rand novels and Thomas Kincaid paintings does it take to fill said dumpster? 05:53 AM    View blog reactions

• Fountain Hills High School students were semifinalists in nationwide essay contest 
Ofelia Madrid, Scottsdale Republic (AZ) The Fountainhead  Students read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, a novel loosely based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. Students then completed an essay addressing one of three topics posed by the institute. 05:50 AM    View blog reactions

• ‘BioShock’ is creepy, action-packed and doesn’t skimp on genetic self-mutilation 
Rhian Hibner, Daily Lobo (U of NM, Albuquerque) The city [of Rapture] is a scathing commentary on Ayn Rand's objectivist theories and was designed to be a utopia of free will and industrialism. However, by the time the player arrives there, it has descended into chaos with half its citizens twisted into a grotesque mockery of the human form and the rest dead. 05:45 AM    View blog reactions

• US agrees to give money for refugees after angelina Jolie visits Syria and Iraq 
Julie Marcus, Best Syndication Atlas Shrugged movie  Angelina is still confirmed to play the role of Dagny Taggart in the Ayn Rand film adaptation of “Atlas Shrugged”. The IMDB website reports that the project has been "indefinitely delayed." 05:42 AM    View blog reactions

• Angelina’s Iraq tour 
Julie Keller , E! News Atlas Shrugged movie  Up next for the actress is a run as railroad exec Dagny Taggart in the film version of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. 05:41 AM    View blog reactions

•‘BioShock’ is pure imagination 
Derrik J. Lang, The Olympian (Olympia, WA) The Fountainhead  Video game review.There's much to see in Rapture, an emotionally bankrupt place inspired by the likes of "1984" and "The Fountainhead," and little time to see it since most of the citizens have turned into Splicers, deadly zombies intent on killing. 05:37 AM    View blog reactions

• Impossible dream 
Mitch Krpata, Boston Phoenix Atlas Shrugged  Video game review.According to BioShock’s foundation myth, [Andrew] Ryan envisioned his sub-aquatic metropolis (inspired by Ayn Rand, and especially Atlas Shrugged) as the place where man could realize his potential, unfettered by the restrictions placed upon him by government and religion. He populated the city with the greatest minds the world had to offer: industrialists, doctors, artists. Rapture had room only for the productive; there was no place for the weak, the infirm, or even the mediocre commoners that Ryan considered a drain on society. [....] Andrew Ryan dreamed of a city where the great would not be constrained by the small; Rapture failed because he didn’t understand that the great rely on the small. 05:34 AM    View blog reactions

• Writer misinterprets scripture 
Timothy A. Van Eck, Daily Southtown (Chicago) Atlas Shrugged  Wes Dickson's diatribe against 1 Timothy 6:10 has more in common with Francisco's money speech in "Atlas Shrugged" than it has with the Bible. [....] His interpretation of the text is suspect since he fails to use the more accurate translations, which render the verse as, "For the love of money is 'a' root of all kinds of evil." "A" root; not "the" root. 09:11 AM    View blog reactions

• The Iranian regime: The Bush administration’s latest deadly evasion 
Craig Biddle, Capitalism Magazine The Virtue of Selfishness  In order for the U.S. government to engage in a campaign of American self-defense, American citizens—those who elect and influence our country’s leadership—must demand it. And in order to demand such a campaign, Americans must come to understand and embrace the principle that acting in a self-interested manner—which means: using reason to identify, pursue, and defend the values on which their life, liberty, and happiness depend—is the essence of being moral. The observation-based, logical proof of this principle, for those willing to let the evidence decide the matter, can be found in Ayn Rand’s book The Virtue of Selfishness. 09:06 AM    View blog reactions

• BioShock 
Russ Fischer, CHUD.com Video game review.Industrialist Andrew Ryan -- half Howard Hughes, half Ayn Rand hero -- built Rapture, a city under the sea, and sponsored the scientific exploration of genetic alteration. 09:02 AM    View blog reactions

• Ken Levine sinks back with BioShock 
Micheal Mullen, GameDaily Interview with video game designer.Q: Would you consider [protagonist Andrew] Ryan to be the first atheist character in gaming history? A: [....] I saw a post that people view the game as an anti-religious screed or an anti-communist screed or an anti-capitalist screed or anti-objectivist screed and I like that no one can exactly put their finger on it. I want it to be what the audience thinks it is. I like being in a position where everybody's kinda pissed at something because I think that if the game is about something, it's about not ending up too far on the side of any one philosophy and I like that it's a little stick in the eye to almost everybody. 08:56 AM    View blog reactions

• • Genetic warfare damns a city to a watery grave, and you crash in it 
Erick Wong, San Francisco Chronicle Review of the video game BioShock.Watching over [the inhabitants of Rapture] is industrialist Andrew Ryan - a thinly disguised take on Ayn Rand - who created [the city] in the '40s and still rules it with the iron grip of a fanatic. [....] Just hearing Ryan spout his hard-line beliefs over the PA [...] makes him that much more effective as a central villain - and, by extension, provides the game with a critique of objectivist philosophy. 08:50 AM    View blog reactions

• • BioShock lets users take on fanaticism through fantasy 
Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe Atlas Shrugged  [Atlas Shrugged] envisions a commercial utopia founded on free enterprise at its most absolute -- so absolute that in [Whitaker] Chambers's view, this new freedom must ultimately be enforced at gunpoint. "From almost any page of 'Atlas Shrugged,' " said Chambers, "a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber -- go!' " Fifty years on, an erstwhile "Atlas Shrugged" fan named Ken Levine came to much the same conclusion. Rather than pound out a scathing critical essay, he created a beautiful, brutal, and disquieting computer game instead. It's called BioShock, and it's one of the best in years. 08:38 AM    View blog reactions

• The moral hazard of central banking 
Gary North, LewRockwell.com [In a 1998 speech,] it sounded almost as if [Alan Greenspan] had reverted to his free market youth as a follower of Ayn Rand. 08:36 AM    View blog reactions