• Hitting the high notes in the business 
Laurie Wapenaar, Business Day (South Africa) Many years ago, reading Ayn Rand was a big eye-opener for me.     Share on Facebook

• • The highs (and lows) of public officials on Twitter 
Mark Hannah, PBS - MediaShift The Fountainhead  If our representatives continue to fail to use Twitter for its nobler purposes (like thoughtful, if concise, constituent communications), I'll continue to be reminded of this ominous quote from Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead": “People want nothing but mirrors around them to reflect them while they're reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.”     Share on Facebook

• The challenge of being a GC in an always-on environment 
Richard Acello, Law.com Atlas Shrugged  Profile of Amy Onder of iPX Corp.Last books and movie: "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand; "The Last Lecture," by Randy Pausch; and "Outliers: The Story of Success," by Malcolm Gladwell; and "Sunshine Cleaning."     Share on Facebook

• • The book(s) that changed my life 
Colorado Springs Independent Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Douglas Bruce. Twenty-five years ago, a friend told me my self-reliant philosophy of life was captured in Ayn Rand's ponderous tome, Atlas Shrugged. I read its 1,100-plus pages and agreed.     Share on Facebook

• • Financial industry regulation: What would Ayn Rand say? 
Dana Wiklund, NetworkWorld.com Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  What is the role of government in structuring a free market financial system? Ayn Rand might not have had the benefit of living in a interwoven, risk laced, global economy with both positive and negative volatility, but her notions come to mind every time sweeping regulatory change is at the forefront.     Share on Facebook

• A closer look at Apple & antitrust 
Bryan Chaffin, The Mac Observer Capitalism  I think breaking up Standard Oil was an appropriate action on the part of government a century ago, though my Objectivist friends tend to vehemently disagree. I also think that breaking up AT&T in 1984 was a good thing, though I recognize the tradeoff in reliability we got with the increase in choice, innovation, technologies, and services. On the other hand, there's the absurd claim Psytar made that Apple has a monopoly on Macs. Well, it's not an absurd claim -- Apple obviously has a monopoly on Macs, but it's like claiming that Toyota has a monopoly on Priuses, or that Dell has a monopoly on ugly-ass computers.     Share on Facebook

• • Are nanoparticles safe? 
Thom Hartmann, The Thom Hartmann Program Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Egoism  Yaron Brook  Video  Interview with Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute.[Brook:] Objectivism is about reason, it’s about a morality of self-interest, of pursuing one’s own happiness and one’s own well-being as one’s highest moral purpose, in a rational, long-term way. And as a consequence [it’s] about a political system that leaves individuals to make decisions for themselves and to gain the rewards when they make right decisions and suffer the consequences when they make wrong decisions.     Share on Facebook

• The price of high tech is sometimes privacy 
Jonathan Takiff, Philadelphia Inquirer Owners of Amazon Kindle electronic book readers recently woke up to discover that their copies of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" and "1984" - along with works by such authors as Ayn Rand and J.K. Rowling - were vanishing from their devices.     Share on Facebook

• • Those wild and crazy Fords 
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Wall Street Journal Capitalism  Ford’s press coverage lately portrays Ford as almost a character from an Ayn Rand novel—bravely, disdainfully waving away government money. This is, ahem, an exaggeration.     Share on Facebook

• Life: Perplexing, painful, precious 
A. O. Scott, New York Times We The Living  Review of the movie, You, the Living.The friendly affirmation of the title seems ironic, almost to the point of cruelty. (It also echoes the name of Ayn Rand’s first novel, “We the Living.”)     Share on Facebook

• It’s enough to make the angels weep 
Richard T. Klein, Dayton Daily News Atlas Shrugged  Very few of the classics are part of the core reading subjects [in public schools]. Books such as Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley are not required reading.     Share on Facebook

• Pulitzers lost, what a cost 
John Temple, Temple Talk Capitalism  Interview with journalist Jerry Kramer.[Gannett is] part of the steady ascendancy of buccaneer capitalism in our country. Look at Wall Street, where the bastards went wild with the smiling benediction of Alan Greenspan, whose every non-move was directed by the Gospel of Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• • Lunch weekly for Monday, July 27 
Publishers Lunch Deluxe Anthem  (Requires subscription.)The first-ever graphic-novel adaptation of work by Ayn Rand, Rand’s ANTHEM, about a dystopian future where individualism is forbidden, being adapted by writer Charles Santino and Marshall Holt Entertainment (artist to be named later) to Tracy Bernstein at NAL by Colleen Lindsay at FinePrint Literary Management.     Share on Facebook

• • Epix lands first carriage deal 
Georg Szalai, Hollywood Reporter Atlas Shrugged movie  The "Atlas Shrugged" miniseries with Charlize Theron has not been greenlighted, but [Epix president Mark] Greenberg said both sides want to do it as long as the script is right.     Share on Facebook

• • Atlas is shrugging again 
Chuck Ivie, Daily Press (Victorville, CA) Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  In “Atlas Shrugged,” John Galt said he would “Stop the motor of the world.” Well, in the real world everywhere you look the motor is stopping.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand: ‘Goddess of the Market’ 
Richard Baehr, American Thinker Atheism  Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Personal life  Review of the Jennifer Burns biography of Ayn Rand.Burns is honest about contradictions that plagued Rand. For example, she was a vigorous proponent of reason and individualism, but among her followers, criticism was not a route to the inner circle, and was viewed as disloyalty, which could lead to a lifetime freeze-out in relations. The meetings of the "Collective" (Nathaniel Branden and his wife Barbara, Alan Greenspan, and select others) on Saturday nights at her New York apartment took on cult-like qualities (a religion of sorts?).     Share on Facebook

• Carrie Prejean on the cover of National Review 
Soheil Rezaee, The Examiner You read correct, Carrie Prejean (Miss California) is on the cover of National Review (the conservative publication). [....] Sure some political junkies will argue it was a good choice since she is hot; but so is Ann Colter, Sarah Palin, and Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• The stakeholder society 
America Capitalism  Only 30 years ago the principle that business has moral ties to the wider society was made popular by the investor responsibility movement, and it was for a time affirmed by many corporations. Unfortunately, that realization was eclipsed in the last generation by an Ayn Rand-style of individualism and the prominence of high finance, the branch of business most abstracted from real people and fundamental human interests, as a leading sector of the economy. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the relevance of the stakeholder conception of business should be clearer than ever.     Share on Facebook

• • Labour’s patio tax makes Britain a hostile land for hard-working middle class 
Harry Phibbs, Daily Mail (London) Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  The American libertarian novelist Ayn Rand wrote a book entitled Atlas Shrugged about wealth creators who were fed up with carrying the burden of the world on their shoulders and vanished. Does it really make sense to make Britain a hostile land for the hard working, the talented and the entrepreneurial?     Share on Facebook

• • Atlas Shrugged to be miniseries for new network? 
Sci Fi Wire Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Charlize Theron [...] has been in talks with husband-and-wife-producing team Howard and Karen Baldwin at Lionsgate about turning Ayn Rand's 1957 dystopian SF novel Atlas Shrugged into a miniseries.     Share on Facebook