• • Into the mind of ... Hugh Hallman 

Atlas Shrugged  | Interview with the mayor of Tempe, AZ.
[Q:] What’s on your reading list? [A:] “Tender is the Night” (F.S. Fitzgerald), “Dead Souls” (Nikolai Gogol) and rereading “Atlas Shrugged” (Ayn Rand) to remind me why I do what I do.  

• • Dysart Unified School District gets $100K arts grant 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Anthem  |The Fountainhead  |Essay Contests  | Three Dysart students were recently recognized as semifinalists in the Ayn Rand Institute’s international essay contest for the 2010-11 school year. Willow Canyon High School sophomore Bridgette Smith won a semifinalist spot in the Fountainhead category, and Willow Canyon junior Alyssa Ortiz won a semifinalist spot in the Anthem division. Peyton Sikorski, who attended Willow Canyon last year and is a junior at Valley Vista, was a semifinalist for her essay on Anthem.  

• • How a fib and a 26-mile bike ride led to famed architect 
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The Fountainhead  |Syndicated  | A junior at North High School, [Mary Jane Burch] read Ayn Rand’s 1943 classic “The Fountainhead” and was intrigued with the central character, Howard Roark, an architect. So with complete conviction, she decided she too would become an architect. She went to the library, “where we all went before the Internet,” to find out more and learned of an architectural masterpiece, a home in Pennsylvania called Fallingwater. A little more research revealed that the genius behind Fallingwater spent his winters in the McDowell foothills just east of Scottsdale at a redoubt called Taliesin West. If Frank Lloyd Wright were this close, she reasoned, well then she would just have to meet him.  

• • Returning to days of robber barons 
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Ayn Rand is all about I’ve-got-mine and let the devil take the hindmost. Adopting her philosophy would take us back to the era of robber barons.  

• • Socialistic programs never work 
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We The Living  | I am in the process of reading Ayn Rand’s novel “We the Living.” It is an excellent, albeit somewhat exaggerated, picture of what our country will look like if President Barack Obama and his socialist cohort have their way.  

• • Goody on Film: Bring on more ‘Terminator’ 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | John Aglialoro, who reportedly spent $20 million of his own money to make “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1,” first told the Los Angeles Times that he was rethinking whether he would make the next two installments of a planned trilogy. “Critics,” he said, “you won.” (The film was critically panned.) But then he told the Wall Street Journal that maybe he wasn’t giving up so easily.  

• • Gerson’s ‘Atlas’ column on target 
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Altruism  |Egoism  | As a strong libertarian, I never thought I would live to see the day that I would agree with a Washington Post writer about anything, but Michael Gerson’s column on Monday “ ‘Atlas’: Utopia of selfishness,” was right on the mark.  

• • • Why did critics shrug at ‘Atlas?’ 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Image  | Fans of Ayn Rand’s novel are almost obsessive in their devotion. So when the movie opened recently to a resounding thud from critics (including me; you can read my review here) it’s not surprising that Rand’s supporters were skeptical at best, angry at worst. Leftist Hollywood conspiracy? Liberal knee-jerk reaction? Nah. It’s just a bad movie. [....] Anyway, if you follow the link above, you’ll find a lot of fun among the comments, with Randians, as they are evidently called, sparring back and forth with skeptics. I was a guest on a talk-radio show in which the host told me he’d heard that at one local screening there was a standing ovation at the end. Could be. And if so, that’s one easy-to-please bunch.  

• • • ‘Atlas Shrugged: Part I,’ 1.5 stars 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | It has taken decades to bring Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” to the big screen. They should have waited longer. The acting is so poor and the story so badly told that the viewer’s feelings about Rand’s novel - an epic ode to free-market fundamentalism - are almost immaterial (though if you’re a devoted fan, you’ll perhaps be more forgiving).  

• Petersen wants to make government more efficient 
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[Gilbert Town Council candidate Victor] [....] Petersen is the general manager for production at VIP Homes, his family’s construction business. He described himself as a bit of computer nerd, and said he sometimes writes little programs for the company at work. He also enjoys reading, especially history and politics, encompassing everything from John Locke and Adam Smith to biographies of the Founding Fathers and the novels of Ayn Rand.  

• • Emergence of ‘Tea Party’ mind-set is buoying conservatives 
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When Obama led a pair of campaign rallies [in Las Vegas] for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose state of Nevada is grappling with a 14 percent unemployment rate, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published an editorial with the headline, “Welcome back, Mr. President. Your economic policies suck.” The president’s visit coincided with FreedomFest, a convention at Bally’s Las Vegas and billed “as the world’s largest gathering of free minds.” Attending were an amalgam of 2,000 libertarians, conservatives, anarchists, laissez-faire capitalists, anarcho-capitalists, Objectivists, tea partyers, right-wing cranks and business investors, among others. Over the course of three days (July 8-10), participants picked from among 160 political and financial workshops and argued over such topics as open borders, anarchism vs. limited government, and the legacy of Ayn Rand, goddess of the right.  

• • Modern, minimalist design showcases art 
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The Fountainhead  | Five years ago, Treg Bradley started interviewing local architects. He needed a home to showcase his growing modern-art collection and to provide a peaceful retreat surrounded by nature. When he met Cave Creek architect Michael P. Johnson, he knew he’d found the man who would create it. [....] He was this rugged individualist - very raw and authentic.” Johnson reminded him of Howard Roark, the fictional architect in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” who refuses to compromise his artistic vision. “He hates it when I say that,” Bradley added. It’s an understatement to say Johnson is no fan of Ayn Rand, but he admits “rugged individualist” might fit.  

• • Hollywood honors American values 
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Atlas Shrugged  | James Cameron would be wise to consider picking up the rights to make his next epic picture “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. He may even consider asking his ex-wife, [Kathryn] Bigelow, to collaborate in directing. Now, that would be an Oscar sweep.  

• • Politicians throttling businesses 
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Atlas Shrugged  | As Ayn Rand's character in Atlas Shrugged, Francisco D'Anconia, expressed it: "When you see that in order to produce you must obtain permission from men who produce nothing . . . and your laws don't protect you against them but protect them against you . . . you may know that your society is doomed." Maybe investors are simply withdrawing their investments in endeavors made inordinately risky by politicians with arbitrary power.  

• Service, quality drive AC filter service 

Atlas Shrugged  | Profile of businessman Joe Campbell.
Favorite book: "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand.  

• ‘Walking’ succeeds in sharing woes of love 
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Theater review.
Straddling theater and performance art, Magical Walking's odic reflections are rooted in esotericism, a label that oozes academic elitism. The target audience would seem to be directed at those cerebral enough to quote Ayn Rand and immerse in Eastern meditation instead of obsessing over American Idol and playing Wii Fit.  

• 30 years later, Rush broadens fan base 
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[Rush] wrote the soundtrack to many lives with its 1976 release, "2112," a concept album based on the writings of Ayn Rand.  

•Language update is overdue 
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"Singer" used to mean Sinatra; now it means Ashlee Simpson. "Cancer" was a deadly disease; now it's a selfish pro athlete. "Author" was Ayn Rand; now she's Ann Coulter.  

•How the beach read lets us get lost on vacation 
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According to the National Review, "Sold with a sunscreen inside the cover, [Gloria Steinem's 1963] The Beach Book contained suggested fantasies: 'You have just dealt a crushing defeat in public debate to (choose one: William Buckley Jr., Hugh Hefner, David Susskind, Ayn Rand), who is being laughed off the stage.' "  

•Bridge jumper sober at time of death 
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[Vince] Palermo said his son read and enjoyed Ayn Rand books, including The Fountainhead, in which the main character, a former architecture school student, stands atop a cliff and dives into the water below and swims to the side safely.