O-Land News Junkie

Beginning at 3 o’clock in the morning on Fox News, I will be on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld and his crew of merry vulgarians. We are scheduled to talk about source-greasing Washington Post puff pieces, over-litigious parents of high school athletes, 3D pizza-printing, attitudes toward workplace sexytime, doctors going Galt, and the ideal actress to play the young Hillary Clinton, among other things. — Matt Welch, Reason # Categories: Atlas Shrugged, Going Galt View the full article

A recent report stated that our roads and bridges need several billions to be spent on infrastructure maintenance. But, no, we are subsidizing buses and shelters. Those who believe in such tax expenditures advocate for entitlements. They should read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” to see what category of American they fall under. They sure aren’t the producers or the politicians and bureaucrats who are the looters. The 3rd category: Moochers, fit them very well. — Steve Moore, Cookeville Times (TN) # Categories: Atlas Shrugged View the full article

[in Face of Mankind: Fall of the Dominion] we can see that anarcho-captialist utopia that all the Rand fans want to see play out in real time rather than watching it as a story in BioShock. This will be the stuff of intertube legends, full of YouTube gold and online dickery the likes of which we have never seen. — Jef With One F, Houston Press # Categories: BioShock, Capitalism http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Randex/~3/DdxSe2yJC3U/ayn_rand_may_kickstarter_round_up_caveman_chow_and_ayn_rand_games

[Connie Silver is] an artist, teacher-therapist and giver who donates all proceeds from the sale of her art to charity. She’s the opposite of the “greed-is-good” poison. Ayn Rand would have made her a villain in Atlas Shrugged because she helps other people. Paul Ryan and the Koch Brothers would accuse her of coddling the needy. She’s a one-woman answer to the tea party-GOP. [....] I suspect that Connie Silver was born restless, with an overdose of chutzpah. If she were to write her autobiography, she might call it Atlas Slugged: Ayn Rand, I'll give you a hand. She's that generous â and forgiving. — Stephen Goldstein, Sun-Sentinel (FL) # Categories: Atlas Shrugged, Egoism http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Randex/~3/r-g72sfi2RA/ayn_rand_shes_the_best_antidote_to_todays_selfish_thinking

Pieced together from Q&A in a thread at IMDB, by someone who saw an advance screening: Bottom Line: Definitely better than the first. I and literally everyone I talked to and overheard agreed. It was better directed, has some decent comedy, and was even pretty suspenseful at times. But… It’s still a TV movie. It still looks and feels extremely cheap. The acting is mediocre and “stage-like” with the exception of the new Rearden who was actually pretty damn good. Everything still feels clunky and disconnected like the writer was just trying to pack as many plot points from the book into the movie as much as possible. It gets especially bad when they try to do “big speeches” like Rearden’s trial and Fransisco’s Money Speech (even cringe worthy). I didn’t like Samantha Mathis but others I spoke with disagreed. I don’t think she looked right for the part in the first place (age and beauty wise). I much preferred Schilling who I also thought was good in AS 1. Morales doesn’t have much screen time but I thought he was very awkward with the “money speech” but competent aside from that. The speeches were understandably highly condensed though as far as I could tell, much of it was verbatim or close paraphrasing. Basically they were turned into extended dialogues where the hero will say three or four sentences worth of clunky Rand dialogue (which works a lot better on paper) and then the villain will respond with an obvious looter one liner like, “But what about the public good!?” (which also sounds a lot better on paper). Then everyone just stands around staring, or in the case of Rearden’s speech, clapping. The run time was a little under two hours. You are right about the movement and progression of the film. It seems like the director responded well to the common criticism of AS1 that it was too many slow board rooms and not enough plot progression. I am predicting that they [reviewers] will be slightly more generous to Part II because it is a better movie and the critics will have lower expectations. The latter will probably be the bigger factor for audiences and critics alike. One of the producers (not Aglialoro) spoke before the screening and outright said, “we could never make the Atlas Shrugged movie you envisioned in your mind.” I think as long as people know they are walking into a TV movie, they can find something to enjoy. “Does the story serve the politics, or vice versa?” As with the book, the two are completely intertwined and inseparable. The movie has NO significant deviation from the book whatsoever aside from shortening the whole thing. “how much enjoyment can somebody who doesn’t necessarily agree with Objectivism be likely to have watching the movie?” As an Objectivist, I don’t think a non-Objectivist will get much out of the movie. For those who know little to nothing about Objectivism, it can be a clunky introduction to some basic political and ethical concepts, but for those who know the philosophy and reject it, I seriously doubt any minds will be changed. View the full article

Interested in seeing the new Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged movie during its nationwide screening on Tuesday, January 17th? The movie’s publicists are offering free tickets to Atlasphere members! The offer extends to both free members and paid subscribers. View the full article

The Ayn Rand Institute has helped sponsor the production of a new documentary titled Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged. Written and directed by Chris Mortensen, it is “a feature-length documentary film that examines the resurging interest in Ayn Rand�??s epic and controversial 1957 novel and the validity of its dire prediction for America.” The movie will be released “in select cities” on October 7th, 2011. And judging from the trailer below, it looks quite good. According to IMDB the documentary includes interviews with John Allison, Mike Berliner, Andrew Bernstein, Harry Binswanger, Yaron Brook, Northrup Buechner, Jennifer Burns, Al Ruddy, Ed Snider, and many others. I also recognize Leonard Peikoff’s former wife Amy Peikoff, here at the very start of the trailer. The movie’s synopsis at IMDB begins: Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged is a feature length documentary film that examines the resurging interest in Ayn Rands epic and controversial 1957 novel and the validity of its dire prediction for America. Set in what novelist and philosopher Rand called the day after tomorrow, Atlas depicts an America in crisis, brought to her knees by a corrupt establishment of government regulators and businessmen with political pull the looters and the moochers who prey on individual achievement. Less a conventional work of fiction than a philosophical manifesto in the form of a romantic novel, over the course of a thousand-plus pages, Atlas tackles no less an essential argument than the one debated by philosophers and theologians since time immemorial: altruism vs. self-interest. Am I my brothers keeper – or not? For Ayn Rand, the answer is an emphatic no. To Rand and the disciples of her Objectivist philosophy, self-sacrifice is as heinous an act as murdermurder of the soul. For more information about the documentary, check out the movie’s IMDB page, its Facebook page, the Ayn Rand Institute’s site for the Atlas Shrugged novel, and the movie’s official website, where you can sign up to host a screening or to be notified once the DVD is available for pre-order. View the full article

The Ayn Rand Institute has helped sponsor the production of a new documentary titled Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged. Written and directed by Chris Mortensen, it is “a feature-length documentary film that examines the resurging interest in Ayn Rand�??s epic and controversial 1957 novel and the validity of its dire prediction for America.” The movie will be released “in select cities” on October 7th, 2011. And judging from the trailer below, it looks quite good. According to IMDB the documentary includes interviews with John Allison, Mike Berliner, Andrew Bernstein, Harry Binswanger, Yaron Brook, Northrup Buechner, Jennifer Burns, Al Ruddy, Ed Snider, and many others. I also recognize Leonard Peikoff’s former wife Amy Peikoff, here at the very start of the trailer. The movie’s synopsis at IMDB begins: Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged is a feature length documentary film that examines the resurging interest in Ayn Rands epic and controversial 1957 novel and the validity of its dire prediction for America. Set in what novelist and philosopher Rand called the day after tomorrow, Atlas depicts an America in crisis, brought to her knees by a corrupt establishment of government regulators and businessmen with political pull the looters and the moochers who prey on individual achievement. Less a conventional work of fiction than a philosophical manifesto in the form of a romantic novel, over the course of a thousand-plus pages, Atlas tackles no less an essential argument than the one debated by philosophers and theologians since time immemorial: altruism vs. self-interest. Am I my brothers keeper – or not? For Ayn Rand, the answer is an emphatic no. To Rand and the disciples of her Objectivist philosophy, self-sacrifice is as heinous an act as murdermurder of the soul. For more information about the documentary, check out the movie’s IMDB page, its Facebook page, the Ayn Rand Institute’s site for the Atlas Shrugged novel, and the movie’s official website, where you can sign up to host a screening or to be notified once the DVD is available for pre-order. View the full article

The wonderful new Spanish movie Agora, recommended so highly in Don Hauptman’s review for the Atlasphere earlier this year, is now available on DVD from Amazon.com. The dialogue is in English, by the way — so you won’t have to read subtitles. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/873.php

In a lengthy but carefully-written article titled “Anthemgate: The Objectivist Movement Commits Suicide,” Robert Tracinski offers a hard-hitting analysis of the current state of the Objectivist movement, in the wake of John McCaskey’s resignation from ARI’s Board of Directors. It is well worth reading. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/870.php

A new book review at the Wall Street Journal begins with this story about Ayn Rand and Cecil B. DeMille: On a cool Southern California morning in September 1926, an impoverished, 21-year-old Russian with sketchy English who had just renamed herself Ayn Rand was dejectedly leaving the DeMille Studio after being told that the publicity department had no job openings. Near the exit gate, she spotted a beautiful open roadster parked by the curb; the man behind the wheel was unmistakably the boss himself. She couldn’t help staring for a moment, then collected herself and turned toward the gate. Before she made it out, however, the car pulled up to her and the driver asked: “Why are you looking at me?” Cecil B. DeMille shortly invited the young lady into the car and drove her into the nearby hills, where his epic life of Christ, “The King of Kings,” was shooting. The director allowed Rand to observe the filming for a week, then employed her as an extra for three months, whereupon she became a junior writer assigned, eventually, to a picture called “The Skyscraper.” Uninspired by its story and characters, Rand began her own screenplay of the same name, turning the story into one about an architect whose power and integrity intimidate lesser mortals. The salient point of the Rand-DeMille convergence—as related in “Empire of Dreams,” Scott Eyman’s colossally comprehensive and surprisingly moving biography of DeMille—is not so much that the film director inadvertently helped plant the seed that would blossom into the 1943 novel “The Fountainhead.” (Although it is ironic that Ayn Rand’s name and even that of the novel’s fictional hero, Howard Roark, are undoubtedly more familiar to people under 40 today than is DeMille’s.) Rather, what matters about the episode is that it shows us DeMille as a real-life Roark, a powerful man of such ambition, determination and fearlessness that nothing and no one could stop him. See the full article for much more about the DeMille biography. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/869.php

Libertas Film Magazine has published the video recording of their recent interview with Atlas Shrugged movie director Paul Johansson. Johansson is a passionate guy; it will be interesting to see the results of his efforts. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/865.php

A new article at Deadline.com begins: For almost two decades, Hollywood has tried unsuccessfully to turn Ayn Rand’s 1100 page classic Atlas Shrugged into a feature film with actresses ranging from Angelina Jolie to Charlize Theron to Faye Dunaway. John Aglialoro, the entrepreneur who 17 years ago paid $1 million to option the book rights, is tired of the futility and is taking matters into his own hands. He’s announced that he is financing a June 11 production start in Los Angeles for the first of what he said will be four films made from the book. Aglialoro, who had a hand in writing the script by Brian O’Tool, is taking on this ambitious plan with an unproven director, and is weeks away from production without stars to play Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, John Galt and the other roles. He’s moving forward despite the conventional wisdom that without stars, it could ultimately be the audience that shrugged. It will be a four-part series. See the full article for much more. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/853.php

Forbes.com — one of the top 1,000 sites in the world — has published a very favorable review by Kathy Young of the new We The Living movie DVD. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/852.php

Ed Snider, perhaps best known as owner of the Philadelphia Flyers, is starting a new cable network called RightNetwork, which will compete with Fox News while focusing on entertainment rather than news. Snider has long been a supporter of Rand-related causes, as he talks about in .Hat-tip to Don Hauptman for the link. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/849.php

Today is the last day for early registration discount for the OCON 2010 conference. This year’s OCON will be held from July 2-10 in Las Vegas, Nevada. I will soon turn on the OCON summer conference networking options inside the dating service, as that seemed to be a popular option last year. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/848.php

From the introduction at Wired.com: I’m a month late on this, for the spotlight of public attention, but I have an Ayn Rand story, too. 11 years ago I blind-pitched Wired magazine an ill-defined article on Rand. In response, they asked me to write an “interview” with her, where I would come up with all of the questions and then cobble together her answers from things that she had written and said (she died in 1982). Fun! Around the same time, they published similar “interviews” with Nicola Tesla and Mark Twain under the rubric “The Wired Living Archive.” I had a great time researching and writing it, and although they never published it, they must have seen something they liked in it because I started working at Wired the following year. Meanwhile I never did anything with it. But re-reading it now, I like the added time-trip aspect of it. The idea of the article was to make Rand relevant to the current day, of course, but things were different in 1998. Like, the biggest newsmaker was Monica Lewinsky (hmm... I didn’t see much 10th Anniversary coverage of that), and personally, things like the Critical Mass bicycle demonstration had a much larger role in my life than they do today. Rand was a contradiction-filled woman who hated all contradictions, and whatever fiery, petite actress can succeed in bringing this complex character to life, in the inevitable major studio biopic, is pretty much guaranteed an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Meanwhile, here’s my attempt at bringing Ms. Rand to life. Note that it’s long – over 4000 words, and written for an editor to cut down. Sources for all quotations are noted as abbreviations inline, with full titles listed at the end. See the full interview for much more. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/843.php

From an interesting new interview with John Stossel about his new show on Fox News: Stossel. How did you come up with that name? They just sprung it on me. Tell me a little bit about what the show is going to be. It will be one subject. The first subject will be maybe Atlas Shrugged or global warming—Atlas Shrugged because I think 50 years ago, Ayn Rand predicted today. It sort of sums up what I’m going to be reporting about. Ayn Rand predicted what? Big government, nice-sounding legislation like “The Preservation of Livelihood Law,” which mandated that Hank Rearden’s production must not be bigger than any other steel mill, to make it a level playing field. It’s silly. Is that a new law passed by this Congress? No, but it’s what Wesley Mouch, the evil bureaucrat in the book, passed. And what Tim Geithner and what Barney Frank might like to pass. See the full interview for more. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/842.php

From an ARI press release: A recent Zogby national online survey indicates that 24.8 percent of the 2,232 respondents have read Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.” When asked why they chose to read “Atlas Shrugged,” 37.6 percent of respondents in the online survey said it was recommended by a friend or colleague, 18.4 percent had it assigned or recommended in school, 9.9 percent read or heard about it in a print/Internet article or radio/TV program, 8.4 percent saw it in a library, and 1.9 percent noticed it in a bookstore. The survey also indicated that 19.8 percent of respondents have read Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” 6.9 percent “Anthem,” 4 percent “We the Living,” and 3 percent “The Virtue of Selfishness.” In the past two years, national telephone surveys of about 1,100 people have indicated that 8.1 percent of respondents had read “Atlas Shrugged.” The latest online survey was randomly drawn from a pool of several hundred thousand people while the telephone surveys were drawn at random from larger lists of people who own telephones. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/839.php

The New York Times Book Review has given front-cover treatment to a review of Anne Heller’s new Rand biopic. In response, Atlasphere member Don Hauptman penned the following letter to the editor: To the Editor: Adam Kirsch, in his review of Anne Heller’s biography of Ayn Rand (Nov. 1), commits far too many serious mistakes than can be refuted in a brief letter. So let’s consider just one: “Giving up her [Rand’s] royalties to preserve her vision is something that no genuine capitalist, and few popular novelists, would have done. It is the act of an intellectual, of someone who believes that ideas matter more than lucre.” Kirsch is alleging that one cannot be an advocate of capitalism and retain one’s integrity. In fact, of course, writers and other creative professionals are also businesspeople who like to earn money. Yet such individuals can and do act ethically—by turning down contracts and assignments and commissions and their attendant revenues—if acceptance would compromise their principles. Kirsch’s bizarre implication that one must either be a prostitute or an “intellectual” is misguided and fallacious. Integrity as the highest value of the creator-capitalist is one of the major themes of Rand’s classic novel “The Fountainhead.” Perhaps Kirsch should have read it. Or, failing that, simply exercised some common sense. DON HAUPTMAN New York http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/838.php

From an article in TIME, pre-dated to October 12, 2009: She knew how to make an entrance. Her dark hair cut in a severe pageboy, Ayn Rand would sweep into a room with a long black cape, a dollar-sign pin on her lapel and an ever present cigarette in an ivory holder. Melodramatic, yes, but Rand didn’t have time to be subtle. She had millions of people to convert to objectivism, her philosophy of radical individualism, limited government and avoidance of altruism and religion. Her adoring followers – some called them a cult – revered her as the high priestess of laissez-faire capitalism until her death in 1982 at age 77. The bad economy has been good news for Rand’s legacy. Her fierce denunciations of government regulation have sent sales of her two best-known novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, soaring. Yet her me-first brand of capitalism has been excoriated for fomenting the recent financial crisis. And her most famous former acolyte – onetime Fed chairman Alan Greenspan – has been blamed for inflating the housing bubble by refusing to intervene in the market. Uh-huh.... See the full article, “Ayn Rand: Extremist or Visionary?” for more. Its factual accuracy seems sketchy in places, but that’s par for the course. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/835.php

Ever wonder how the nonprofit Ayn Rand Institute is doing in these economically challenging times? The answer is: Better than ever, thank you very much. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/834.php

Review of Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand And The American Right by Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty in The Washington Times: Why is Rand, dead since 1982, so hot again today? Ironically, big government, one of Rand’s betes noires, is stimulating her sales. Her more than 1,000-page 1957 novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” sold 25 percent more copies in the first half of this year than it sold in all of last year, shipping a total of 300,000 copies so far this year - tremendous success for a 52-year-old novel. Readers and pundits alike look at America and see a world scarily reminiscent of Rand’s government-choked dystopia in “Atlas.” It’s a world with a struggling economy where political pull matters more than success in the free market, where the government blithely takes over huge transportation industries. You can read the rest here. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/833.php

Atlasphere member Dan Edge (writing from Greenville, South Carolina) sends the following: In case you are unaware, I was unlawfully arrested at a protest I organized last month in opposition to an “emergency” curfew. The media is actively covering up the story and I’m facing potentially 6 years in prison. My arresting officer is guilty of serious Civil Rights violations, and I may file a 1983 Civil Rights lawsuit against the City of Greenville. The local media has been unwilling to publish the truth in this case, so I could use all the help I can get (including moral support!). He has written much more on the topic here and here. If anyone is interested in writing a column about this for publication at the Atlasphere, please contact me ASAP. We have some 7,000 members who’ve asked to be notified each time a new column is published, so our readership is non-trivial. I would do it myself, were I not covered up by some daunting professional commitments. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/832.php

From Atlasphere member Gregory Garamoni: Doctors Support Proposed Florida Amendment to Protect Rights of Doctors and Patients Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine today applauded the Florida State legislators who proposed an amendment to the State Constitution that would thwart Washington’s plans to impose socialized medicine. Dr. Gregory L. Garamoni, Founder of Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRLog (Press Release) – Jul 29, 2009 – Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine, a private organization that champions individual rights and freedom in medicine, today applauded the several Florida State legislators who on Monday proposed an amendment to the State Constitution intended to stop the federal government from taking over medicine. “Washington politicians are poised to inject a massive, lethal dose of statism into the heart of healthcare – one that would violate the rights of doctors and patients to make personal, private, and independent healthcare decisions,” said Dr. Gregory Garamoni, founder of Doctors on Strike. “This ’statist medicine’ would induce grave waves of arrhythmia - inflation, price controls, lower quality, doctor shortages, waiting periods, and rationing.” “Doctors, patients, and law makers must stand together now to bring a halt to this leftist-led, lemming-like leap into healthcare hell,” Garamoni said. “We urge legislators all over the country to follow Florida’s lead by creating political firewalls in every state to protect us from any further federal infringement on states’ rights and individual liberty. ” State Senator Carey Baker (R-Eustis) and State Representative Scott Plakon (R-Longwood) filed legislation (HJR 37- Health Care Services) on Monday to amend Florida’s Constitution “to prohibit laws or rules from compelling any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system; permit person or employer to purchase lawful health care services directly from health care provider; permit health care provider to accept direct payment from person or employer for lawful health care services; exempt persons, employers, and health care providers from penalties and fines for paying or accepting direct payment for lawful health care services; permit purchase or sale of health insurance in private health care systems; and specifies what amendment does not affect or prohibit.” “Today, we’re drawing the line in the sand. It is bad enough that our federal government wants to choose your doctor and ration your treatment,” Senator Baker said. “But to do so virtually in secret and in such a rush proves that the goal is not to get better health care but to get socialized health care.” “The federal government and its bureaucracies dictating who, when and what kind of treatment you receive is not reform at all,” said Representative Plakon. “We believe this unprecedented power-grab by President Obama and Congress is clearly not in the best interests of the citizens of Florida.” “The proposed constitutional amendment may be the only way left to prevent the destruction of the independent practice of medicine that has served us so well for so many centuries,” said Dr. Garamoni. # # # Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine has the mission of preserving, protecting, and promoting freedom in healthcare. Our organization’s most pressing goal is to defeat HR3200 and other statist healthcare reform proposals now circulating in Washington. To this end, we are actively encouraging doctors and patients to put intense political pressure on legislators during their deliberations on healthcare reform. We supply doctors and patients with the intellectual and political ammunition to do this. We are calling on doctors to be prepared to go on strike against more government-run healthcare. We want doctors to let the country know - now - that if the President signs any legislation that establishes another government healthcare plan, they will “go on strike”: Doctors will refuse to participate in any new government healthcare plan, and they will resign from all government healthcare programs, including, but not limited to Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE. http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/829.php