The day we’ve been waiting for has arrived: Watch the Atlas Shrugged trailer!
Author: s1e2t3u4p5
No "sanction of the victim" from Amazon.com
Forced to choose between having a fulfillment center in Texas and enjoying its tax-free status as an internet retailer, Amazon choose to close its fulfillment center. This sounds like a win for Amazon customers, a lose for Texas taxpayers, and probably a draw for Amazon itself.
The Alliance for Main Street Fairness, a lobbying group for small businesses working to eliminate Internet sales tax loopholes, criticized Amazon’s decision to close the Irving center.
“Texas retailers collect and remit sales taxes every day â?? whether the sale happens in a store or online,” said Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the group. “Amazon.com was asked to play by the same rules, and has responded by eliminating hundreds of Texas jobs. Amazon could have chosen to collect the sales tax as Texas retailers do, but instead they opted to protect their special sales tax loophole to the detriment of hardworking families.”
World premiere of Anthem on stage in Austin
It sounds like Jeff Britting, whom many of you may recognize as the manager of the Ayn Rand Archives for the Ayn Rand Institute, has been up to interesting stuff lately.
From a new article at WeAreAustin.com:
Austin Shakespeare opens 2011 with the world premiere of a new stage production based on the Ayn Rand novella, Anthem, adapted by Hollywood composer Jeff Britting. The new drama plays in the Rollins Studio Theatre at The Long Center from Jan. 19 -23.
Adapted by Hollywood composer Jeff Britting, who wrote the score for the Academy Award-nominated documentary Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, the work will include an original score and projections also crafted by Britting. Staged as an oratorio, the production will function as a play with music underscored throughout the production.
Based on the Ayn Rand novella of the same name, Anthem addresses the importance of individualism in a totalitarian world. The staging includes a strong video component to compliment the intimate setting of The Rollins Theatre.
See the full article for much more.
Atlas Shrugged movie blog reminder
If you haven’t already done so, you may want to add the Atlas Shrugged movie blog to your blogroll or newsreader. Here are some recent headlines likely to interest fans of Ayn Rand’s novels:
Atlas Shrugged movie has booking service
Major new verdict threatens to bankrupt John Alialoroâ??s company, if not overturned
The Atlas Shrugged movie will be rated PG-13
Study moral foundations of capitalism at Clemson, on a scholarship, this summer
The Clemson Institute’s annual student summer conference on “Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and the Moral Foundations of Capitalism” will be held in late May this year. Students must apply by March 1st. For details, go here. (h/t Diana Hsieh)
Celebrity Ayn Rand fan: Facebook CFO David Ebersman
In his profile, Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman lists Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as two of his favorite books — and his list is fairly selective, with only six unique books (plus The Fountainhead listed a second time, since there happen to be two pages for it at Facebook).
Nice!
New feature: Link to your Facebook profile
With the incredible popularity of Facebook, we’ve now added a space for Atlasphere members to share direct links to their Facebook profiles.
You can add a link to your Facebook profile on the page for editing the general info portion of your Atlasphere directory profile.
We welcome your feedback on this new feature.
New feature: Browse sites and blogs for free
We’ve made some experimental changes to the Atlasphere’s member directory pages:
- Unpaid members can now see full names
- Unpaid members can now browse all member blogs
- Unpaid members can now browse all member websites
Previously, these features were available only to paid subscribers.
There are thousands of member blogs and websites listed in the Atlasphere directory, so this opens up a significant new channel for interaction, even among members with no paid subscription.
We hope you find these new features useful and welcome your feedback about this or any other aspect of the Atlasphere.
The Stuxnet story: Better than fiction
If you haven’t already seen it, don’t miss the story “Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions.”
I found myself marveling several times at the brilliance and ingenuity of Stuxnet. The way it unfolded on the world stage seems like the sort of “series of mysterious events” that could have been in Atlas Shrugged, were it written today rather than in the 1950s.
AIG chief invokes Ayn Rand while defending his bailout
J.P. Freire makes some astute observations, over at the Washington Examiner blog. Worth a look, if only to see what AIG executive Robert Benmosche has been reading. And not fully understanding.