• Green sell: Do you buy it? 
Shannon Rupp, The Tyee (BC) Capitalism   The evolution of green from a movement of zealots as fierce as anything politics and religion have spawned into a mainstream marketing phenomenon has been fascinating [...]. [....] But the marketing schtick I've dubbed "Ayn Rand goes green" may soon be on the wane. 07:59 AM    View blog reactions

• • Condo design: Who’s the boss? 
David Lasker, National Post (Toronto) The Fountainhead   Literature tends to portray architects as heaven-storming prima donnas, viz. Ibsen's The Master Builder and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. But architects don't, in fact, sit at the head of the conference table, beside the building’s owner. It is the developer who calls the shots - because developers, of necessity, are the ones who are most attuned to the Zeitgeist. “I find that the Fountainhead myth of the architect as artiste doesn’t exist any more,” says Gary Switzer, executive vice-president of Great Gulf Homes.  08:17 AM    View blog reactions

• • Sins of omission and emission 
Paul N. Lessard, Sun Times (Owen Sound, ON) Ayn Rand Institute   Letter to the editor.I went online and did some digging concerning [Keith Lockitch's] credentials and the organization he represents (The Ayn Rand Institute). What I found out made me physically ill and made my hair stand on end (literally). 07:25 AM    View blog reactions

• • Dead pig, dead ideology 
David McGruer, Weekly Journal (Ottawa) Altruism   Atlas Shrugged   [In Atlas Shrugged] Rand used fictional examples identical to the government idiocy we are seeing today and outlined in detail both the philosophy that was responsible for all human conflicts and that which is proper for man’s life on Earth. Others had identified the facts of the problem but none had integrated the how and the why. Atlas Shrugged was a bestseller in 1957 yet sells more copies today than ever. 07:12 AM    View blog reactions

• • Evidence proves we cause global warming 
Ken Walker, Sun Times (Owen Sound, ON) Ayn Rand Institute   Letter to the editor.[Keith] Lockitch's argument is typical of the Ayn Rand ideology, which celebrates the accomplishments of industrial civilization, without acknowledging their inevitable costs. Our way of life is simply destroying the planet, in the long run. 09:25 AM    View blog reactions

• • Guilty or not? 
Mary Golem, The Post (Hanover, ON) Night of January 16th   Five jurors will be sequestered from the audience each night as they arrive at The Bijou theatre in Chesley to see the play and will sit in the jury box on stage throughout the performance. They will be given a few minutes near the end to decide their verdict, the play's director Peter Clements said, "so there could in fact be a different verdict each night." "The Night of January 16th" is a mix of drama and comedy, Clements explained. 10:55 AM    View blog reactions

• A good fit with both site and community 
Trevor Boddy, Globe & Mail (Toronto) The Fountainhead   In her novel The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand based her character Henry Cameron on the tragic life of Louis Sullivan. 06:18 AM    View blog reactions

• Pot Prince’s falling out with Fraser Institute 
Brian Preston, The Tyee (BC) “Since those early 1980s days when I was filling my head with the ideas of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and the Austrian School of Economics, the Fraser Institute was invaluable, and I am more proud to speak under The Fraser Institute banner than perhaps any other.” So said Vancouver's infamous marijuana seed salesman Marc Emery, prior to delivering a speech in the Fraser Institute’s Opus Speakers series last fall. 06:10 AM    View blog reactions

• John McCain admits having failing grades in Economics 101 
David Olive, Toronto Star McCain allowed in December that "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should ... (but) I've got Greenspan's book." That was a reference to the memoir of Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan, a McCain mentor and the most overrated chair in the history of the U.S. Federal Reserve.  08:46 AM    View blog reactions

• Feeling betrayed, Greenspan hits back 
Barrie McKenna, Globe & Mail (Toronto) Capitalism   Neither tougher regulation nor tighter monetary policy would have suppressed the real estate bubble, Mr. Greenspan added, taking an apparent swipe at those now intent on re-regulating Wall Street. "I am reasonably certain that I am right here," insisted Mr. Greenspan, an early admirer of libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand. 12:50 PM    View blog reactions

• On the stand: A weekly roundup of the best magazine reads on the racks 
James Adams, Globe & Mail (Toronto) Time was the [Playboy] Interview was something of a prestige, occasionally news-making berth, attracting the likes of Jimmy Carter, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Ayn Rand. But that was a lonnngggg time ago; today the interviewees are more Jean-Claude Van Damme than Jean-Paul Sartre. 06:59 PM    View blog reactions

• Bookwinked into bed 
Shannon Rupp , The Tyee (BC) It's generally agreed by those of all sexes that a fondness for the Da Vinci Code, Ayn Rand, Dianetics, The Secret, and anything by Ann Coulter or Eckhart Tolle will get you booted out of bed by most thinking singletons. 06:50 PM    View blog reactions

• • Buckley, Chambers & Rand 
Wayne Holstenson, National Post (Toronto) Atlas Shrugged   Capitalism   Letter to the editor.Father de Souza's description of the laudatory requiem for William F. Buckley didn't factor in one act of choice which Buckley made: to publish in his National Review a screed penned by Whitaker Chambers. The subject was a new novel, Atlas Shrugged, written by Ayn Rand. [....] If God exists, and performs an audit of the actions of an individual after life on Earth, William Buckley will surely be called upon to explain, in his best silver-plated oratory, the integrity of his actions toward another who just may have surpassed him in defending America's founding ideals. 07:59 PM    View blog reactions

• • New anti-smoking laws torch liberty of ‘the reviled’ 
Mark Hasiuk, Vancouver Courier Atlas Shrugged   In Ayn Rand's libertarian epic Atlas Shrugged, torture merchant Dr. Floyd Ferris offers the following observation: "There's no way to rule innocent men... when there aren't enough criminals one makes them... one declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." While Ferris was not talking about Vancouver in 2008, one wonders what future laws they're dreaming up at city hall. 10:22 AM    View blog reactions

• After a slow start, Calamity Physics zips into high gear 
Joanne Hatherly, Times Colonist (Victoria, BC) Book review.Marisha Pessl’s debut novel sat around the house for months before anyone could stand to pick it up. First, there was the title, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. It had the aura of an intellectual heavyweight on the level of Ayn Rand, but with a heavy dose of science ladled in — a little too much work for a relaxing curlup on a rainy day. 06:21 AM    View blog reactions

• • ‘The rich have money issues, too’ 
Mary Teresa Bitti, National Post (Toronto) The Virtue of Selfishness   Egoism   It's too bad Ayn Rand isn't around to see just how far individualism has come. What would the author of The Virtue of Selfishness and proponent of self-interest make of the rampant consumerism that is leaving recent generations, regardless of where they fall on the wealth continuum, unable to save for the future or even find happiness in the accumulation of stuff? It seems we're fine with the self-interest part, but our impulsive and compulsive spending is minus any sense of responsibility -- another tenet Rand held dear, next to personal happiness. 06:08 AM    View blog reactions

• United States needs to be a better broker 
Cord Weekly (Wilfrid Laurier U, Waterloo, ON) Ayn Rand Institute   In the West, we preach about preserving the basic necessities of life, yet it is this very Western entity, led by the United States, who espouses the greatest hypocrisy. Now if we turn our eyes to America’s oft-called – notably by the Ayn Rand Institute in California – “only true ally” in the Middle East, Israel, some of the greatest human rights abuses are being committed by this nation state. 08:59 AM    View blog reactions

• Book sales flagging, industry gets desperate 
Johnny Oboe, The Strand (U of Toronto) Humor.Salman Rushdie [...] once noted that "saying that you are influenced by Ayn Rand is like saying you have been influenced by Dan Brown". 09:05 AM    View blog reactions

• • Thou shalt have guilty pleasures 
Jay Stone, Calgary Herald The Fountainhead   There are many modern guilty pleasures [...] but they come with a built-in irony that lessens the pure camp value of the classics. The 1949 film The Fountainhead, speaking of fountainheads, is one of my favourites in that regard: it's an adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel, written by Rand herself, about free-thinking architect Howard Roark, a man who won't go along with the crowd and demands the liberty to build his own vision. [....] People don't talk in The Fountainhead as much as deliver speeches at each other, outlining positions that are inspired by Rand's Objectivist philosophy, and the movie includes a six-minute monologue by Roark expounding on them. It's filled with such wonders, a guilty pleasure softened by the real on-screen passion between Cooper and Patricia Neal, the love interest in the story, with whom he was having an affair at the time. The big love scene in The Fountainhead comes when he rapes her. 07:00 AM    View blog reactions

• Anti-smoking move is loss of rights and a foundation of fascism 
Ken Hill, Welland Tribune (ON) Letter to the editor.In the words of eminent philosopher/novelist Ayn Rand, “Under both systems (fascism and communism), sacrifice is invoked as a magic omnipotent solution in any crisis - and the public good is the altar on which victims are immolated.” Anti-smoking is not only a loss of rights, it is the foundation of fascism.  08:26 AM    View blog reactions