• National merit semifinalist: Kevin Cong | Green Valley High School 

Atlas Shrugged  | [Q:] What's your favorite movie and book? [A:] Favorite movie is "Fight Club" (I know the first rule). My favorite book is "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.  

• Comedic couple compile book of funny advice 
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Atlas Shrugged  | [Traci Skene’s] blog is Road Atlas Shrugged.  

• • Latest DVDs, CDs, books: Nov. 8, 2011 

Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | A look at some of the DVDs, CDs and books hitting stores this week: [....] “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1” (PG-13) adapts Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, set in a dystopian U.S., about an executive (Taylor Schilling) struggling to keep her business going as society crumbles around her.  

• Beyond glam and glitter, Miss Nevada serves community 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Books: Just started "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.  

• Norwegians ‘must keep them in a safe’ 
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“Anders Breivik,” the [London Evening Standard writes], “was patently an obsessive extremist but his background was both prosperous and liberal; he would not have been first on anyone’s checklist of a potential mass homicide.” Tell me I’m just imagining the Standardmen mean that such a crime might be more understandable if committed by some lower-class barefoot Okie, or a fan of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek -- as though Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were not all well-fed leftist intellectuals.  

• Cardenas is River Cats’ renaissance man, hit leader 
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[Oakland Athletics prospect Adrian Cardenas’] favorite authors include Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ayn Rand, but one of his favorite quotes was uttered by Ernest Hemingway: "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed."  

• NEVADAN AT WORK: Attorney fights to win cases, encourage organ donations 
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Profile of Mark Ricciardi, regional managing partner, Fisher & Phillips, LLP.
Favorite authors: Ken Follett, Ayn Rand, Stephen King.  

• NEVADAN AT WORK: With conservative approach, bank boss promises progress 
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Profile of Reed Radosevich, president of Northern Trust Bank.
Favorite authors: Theodore Dreiser, Ayn Rand, Ernest Hemingway, Booth Tarkington and John Steinbeck.  

• • • Sidestepping studios to bring ‘Atlas Shrugged’ to the big screen 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Personal life  |Image  | Ayn Rand attempted something so massive in “Atlas Shrugged” that, for 50 years, no one could figure out how to film it. And I don’t mean just that it’s a thousand-page book. Growing up in Russia, Rand saw how socialism could destroy not just an economy, but the moral framework of a nation. She fled to America and promptly saw the same seductive culture of looting taking root here in Roosevelt’s cynical “New Deal.” What Rand’s brilliance illuminated was the critical realization that, as bad as the looters and redistributors are, they prevail only by insidiously recruiting their very victims to become “enablers.” She saw how America treats a self-made man who says, “I’m proud of my wealth; it’s the creation of my brilliance and the sweat of my brow, and I don’t owe you any of it.”  

• Finally, a defense of liberalism 
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First the president’s deficit-reduction commission came out with a report that was so boldly Draconian that it got defined as a far-right plan. Barack Obama said we needed to go slowly. Then U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican House Budget Committee chairman with Ayn Rand on his sleeve, made that commission’s work seem positively centrist. He proposed essentially ending Medicare while simultaneously cutting taxes -- yes, still more -- for the richest people.  

• • • Make room for Taylor Schilling 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Image  |Video  | “Atlas Shrugged” is, in the end, a pretty good movie -- a far more important and rewarding experience than 98 percent of the stuff that’s out there, bidding for your entertainment dollar -- maybe in part because, as director [Paul] Johansson told one interviewer, he was raced into the project so quickly he “didn’t have time to be afraid.” And the very best thing about this movie is the relatively unknown Taylor Schilling (“Dark Matter,” 2008) as Dagny Taggart.  

• • Politician seeks to outlaw the competition 
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Atlas Shrugged  | If Mr. Obama can no longer say he’s waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether all our remaining “gun control” or asset seizure laws are unconstitutional -- as they obviously are -- how can he justify continuing to enforce them, or thousands of other extraconstitutional edicts? Or are we back to “Atlas Shrugged,” in which book Dr. Floyd Ferris asks: “Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? ... We want them broken. ... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, 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.”  

• • ‘It’s the worst government in any state. The laziest’ 
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Atlas Shrugged  | While listening to the negative reactions to [Gov. Brian] Sandoval’s austerity budget, one could hear a plaintive undertone, something like a plea for a “modern government,” a 21st-century government that does things for its citizens. An active, supportive government. At the same time, one could eavesdrop on a conversation from our distant past or imminent future: “‘Why are they all running to Colorado?’ he asked. ‘What have they got down there that we haven’t got?’ “The young man grinned. ‘Maybe it’s something you’ve got that they haven’t got.’  

• We’re all libertarians now 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Cato analysts David Kirby and David Boaz concluded, “In the past three years ... libertarians have become a more visible, organized force in politics, particularly as campaigns move online. [....] On September 12, 2009, more than 100,000 people marched on Washington to protest federal spending and the growth of government, carrying nerdy, libertarian-inspired signs such as ‘What Would Mises Do?’ and ‘I Am John Galt.’ “  

• • The pitfalls of extremism 
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Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page mused that he was disappointed to learn that Rand Paul was not named for the uber-libertarian writer Ayn Rand. After all, Paul and his father, Ron Paul, hew closely to many aspects of the libertarian thinking that Rand helped popularize in the 1960s. “I, too, was a fan of Ayn Rand,” Page writes of a common case of youthful flirtation with the author’s work. “Then I grew up.” By growing up, Page means “to reconcile one’s ideology with other people’s reality.”  

• Winding rhymes 
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On his latest mixtape, "Nuclear Winter Vol. 1," stalwart MC Sole (Tim Holland), a fixture of the indie hip-hop underground for a decade and a half now, sounds like a street preacher warning of the apocalypse on one track, a wily scene veteran confident of his lofty perch in the progressive-rap pecking order on the next. He turns sacred cows into T-bone steaks, name checking Timothy Geithner and the works of Ayn Rand before the disc's intro is over and critiquing the current administration in particularly bayonet-sharp terms.  

• Architect revels in pursuing possibilities 
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The Fountainhead  | Profile of Gemie Knisely, owner of GK3 Architecture,
Favorite book: “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand.  

• After the collectivist winter will come the spring 
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Watch for “Atlas Shrugged” and "The Lord of the Rings" to become best-sellers, again. And when you hear people saying, "Yeah, I read that Libertarian platform. Kind of wimpy. Nothing in there about hanging from the lamp posts all those politicians who promised to 'protect and defend the Constitution' and the limited government for which it stands," you will know the wonder of the first buds of spring.  

• Nevadan at work: If this official visits on a Friday, bank’s end may be near 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Profile of George Burns, Nevada Financial Institutions Division Commissioner.
Favorite book: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand.  

• Climate folly 

Capitalism  | Instead of sending cash to Chad, Laos, Guyana and Niger under the guise of mitigating global warming, we should send the works of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, John Locke and the founding fathers. Then toss in tomes by Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand.