All things Atlasphere can be found here, columns, podcasts, interesting anecdotes, and more.
From Atlasphere member Don Hauptman:
The local NPR affiliate WNYC just ran a lengthy segment on Rand, Objectivism, the forthcoming Atlas film, and more … with commentary by admirers and detractors, excerpts from the novels, dialogue from the film of The Fountainhead, and Randâ??s words in her own voice.
Notwithstanding the usual attempts at â??balance,â? this segment struck me as a generally fair presentation of Randâ??s achievement and importance.
Complete audio is here.
From the announcement:
The Monday, May 12 deadline is approaching for discounts on full-week registrations for The Atlas Society’s 19th annual Summer Seminar on “Objectivism in Theory and Practice” in beautiful Portland, Oregon from June 28 through July 5. You can still register at least through June 16 but can save money by registering now.
Here are some more of the over 30 speakers in some 50 sessions that you’ll hear:
In philosophy, The Atlas Society’s William Thomas, who organized this Summer Seminar, will discuss “Government & Anarchy” and will ask “Is a Limited Government a Small Government?”; William Kline, a big hit last year with his course on business ethics and Objectivism, this year offers three parts on “Environmental Ethics;” and New Individualist editor Robert Bidinotto discusses “Platonic Politics.”
In politics and culture Vickie Oddino will reveal the truth about “Group Identity on College Campuses;” Edward Hudgins explains “Individualism and the Quest for Community;” Stephen Moses gives us two parts on “Rolling Back the Welfare State;” Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute will alert us to “The FDA’s Deadly Overcaution;” and Michael Shaw will raise our consciousness about the danger of “Transforming America: Understanding Sustainable Development.”
In art, Susan McCloskey gives us two parts on “The Root of All Evil” with reference to Ayn Rand’s novels, and Lindsay Wilcox will explain “What Makes Heroic Sculpture Heroic.”
In applied Objectivism, Rob Bradley, who worked for over a decade and a half for Enron, will reflect on “Ayn Rand, Enron, and Reconstruction of Business Ethics;” Joe Duarte will gladden our minds and hearts in “Flourishing: The New and Evolving Science of Happiness;” and Jackie Hazelton will give us very timely “Thoughts on Voting.”
You can check out the full schedule at our events website.
And don’t forget: This year’s event at the University Place Hotel and Conference Center at Portland State University will offer upscale accommodations for those who want physical comfort. But we’ll still offer basic rooms in the nearby university dorms if you’d rather save your money for other priorities–like purchasing products from our Objectivism Store!
At the Summer Seminar you will find as always a benevolent gathering of like-minded and open- minded individuals with whom to share ideas, enjoy friendships and celebrate life–the true Galt’s Gulch experience!
You can find the various registration options on The Atlas Society website. Act by May 12 and save!
A brand-new experimental “City of the Future” is being built from the ground up in Abu Dhabi, financed primarilyâ??over 80%â??by private investors:
“We want it to be profitable, not a sunk cost,” says Khaled Awad, who is directing the development of the city. “If it is not profitable as a real-estate development, it’s not sustainable. Then it will never be replicable anywhere else.”
“We will no longer have to guess what the city of the future looks like. In Abu Dhabi, we will be able to see it with our own eyes.”
This is a striking example of an accelerating social-evolutionary shift, first identified in the early twentieth century by inventor and philosopher Spencer Heath, from the traditional non-proprietary (political-coercive-bureaucratic) administration of communities and societies, towards the proprietary (economic-voluntary-entrepreneurial) administration of communities and societies.
Looks like Mulligan’s Valley is gradually becoming reality, and in some of the most unexpected places. On April 15, 2008 libertarian and PayPal founder Peter Thiel pledged $500,000 to the new Seasteading Institute co-founded by Patri Friedman, son of economist David D. Friedman and grandson of economist Milton Friedman.
Further examples include the explosion of private residential communities, private industrial parks, private entertainment worlds (such as Disney World and Las Vegas entertainment complexes), etc. which now number in the tens of thousands. What is more, these fledgling proprietary communities are increasing in scale and becoming fully generalized communities that provide the full spectrum of community infrastructures and services. The bottom line: traditional not-for-profit bureaucratic political administration is gradually being crowded out by for-profit entrepreneurial economic administration.
Suggested further reading: “The Quickening of Social Evolution” by Heath’s grandson Spencer Heath MacCallum.
In a new interview with PopMatters, Atlas Shrugged movie director Vadim Perelman reflects on the task before him (making the Atlas movie) and Ayn Rand’s legacy:
Speaking of â??frustrated,â? youâ??re taking on an Ayn Rand novel, a movie thatâ??s sure to be controversial, taken from a novel that many have wanted to film but nobody can crack, â??Atlas Shrugged.â? At least you have Angelina Jolie on board.
Itâ??s been in the making for 50 years, and the length of the book has daunted people, I think, for every one of those 50 years. How can you get a manageable film out of a book that big? Adapting â??Atlas Shruggedâ? is a huge responsibility because this book, this woman, are so fervently loved and followed by millions of people. Itâ??s like taking on â??Lord of the Ringsâ? with maybe a different sort of devoted following.
Rand would be, I think, today a great libertarian icon. Perhaps thatâ??s what Angelina Jolie is interested in making the movie. For me, Rand is this writer of big, broad themes and emotions. But so am I, thematically. People accuse her of being heavy-handed, and I hear the same thing said about me. It is the Russian way, I think, of doing things. That was my window into this, growing up under the same repressive regime.
See the full interview for more about Perelman’s recent work, including some of the criticism he’s received lately for his movie The Life Before Her Eyes.
Wow, Reason.tv is doing some excellent work, here.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
(h/t Instapundit)
A story in the style section of today’s New York Times begins:
STEPHANIE BETIT first read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and Ayn Rand’s essay collection The Virtue of Selfishness in 2004. The books changed her life, she said, turning her from a devout Christian into an atheist and a follower of objectivism, Rand’s philosophy of independence and rational self-interest.
“From then on, I was looking for a partner who shared my outlook on life,” said Ms. Betit, a 28-year-old teacher working with autistic children in Walpole, N.H.
Finding him proved a challenge. Last fall, she met someone while volunteering for the Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul, but the affair was as ill-fated as the campaign itself.
By winter she had all but given up on love. Then a friend told her about TheAtlasSphere.com, an online dating site for Rand fans. Ms. Betit posted a profile, which caught the attention of James Hancock, 30, the chief executive of a business software company in Orillia, Ontario. He sent her an e-mail message, and within a few days they graduated to talking on the phone. Three months later, they were engaged.
Mr. Hancock had tried mainstream dating sites in the past, but “no one even marginally piqued my interest,” he said. “Women who don’t know or follow Rand tend to just accept what they’ve been told. I can’t be with someone like that in the long-term.”
See the full story for more, including a photo of Stephanie and James.
Here are some excerpts from a Box Office Mojo interview with Michael Burns–Vice Chairman at Lionsgate.
Box Office Mojo: But Atlas Shrugged is your personal favorite Ayn Rand novel?
Michael Burns: It is. It’s one of my favorite booksâ??with some of the richest, most colorful characters of any book. I read it when I was in the ninth grade and it just stuck with me. I can still vividly remember specific scenes in the book. I can’t wait to see what [director Vadim Perelman] does with them. …
Box Office Mojo: What makes Dagny a great character?
Michael Burns: She is strong and smart but [she’s] also flawed; she’s really stubborn, almost dogmatic at times, and, if you remember the book, she goes down hard. She really does everything she possibly can to save the railroad. She’s got a brother who’s a buffoon that’s allegedly her boss, a sort of checkered life with lovers and an interesting dynamic with people who work for her and with her. She fights to the bitter end when the great minds of the world go on strike before she capitulates. That’s a really interesting character.
Box Office Mojo: Do you see her as the main character?
Michael Burns: Certainly, in the first two acts of the movie, Dagny Taggart will be the lead and, in the end, that’s who the audience is rooting for, so, if there were one lead, I think it would be Dagny. But there are other fantastic characters, [playboy] Francisco [d’Anconia] who basically fleeces all these people that he thinks have been taking advantage of societyâ??obviously [industrialist] Henry Rearden, or Hank Reardenâ??and this great character, the pirate Ragnar [Danneskjold] and John Galt, who’s sort of a tangential character in many ways, but certainly a central character.
Read the full interview for more on Burns’s thoughts on the Atlas Shrugged movie.
Excerpts from a new interview with Vadim Perelman at Box Office Mojo:
Box Office Mojo: Are you one of the men of the mind?
Vadim Perelman: Yes. [Pausing] I am. That’s my way in [to Ayn Rand’s novel]â??where I am right now and where I started, I had to be [a man of the mind]. That’s what my mom told me when she read Atlas Shruggedâ??because she knows I have to have a door to get in [to adapting a literary work] and that’s what she said: “look at your life.” To [live under communism and] have no hot water and come to Hollywood with 14 dollars and not a single contact [and succeed]â??that’s only due to my individualism and my entrepreneurial spirit. I mean, I’m not changing the world. But maybe I am.
Box Office Mojo: Would you go on strike?
Vadim Perelman: If I was feeling victimizedâ??yes, I would.
Box Office Mojo: How does having survived a childhood in Soviet Russia affect your work?
Vadim Perelman: I left with my mother when I was 14. That was 1977. [The communists] were letting [some] Jewish people out for public relationsâ??also because there was a wheat shortage. I remember that [U.S. President Jimmy] Carter and [Soviet dictator Leonid] Brezhnev struck some sort of deal and I remember thinking: we are worth a couple of loaves of bread. It kind of made me who I am. There was a lot of death in my family. That definitely has an effect on my work; it made me stronger. …
Box Office Mojo: The novel is written in three parts. Did you consider producing Atlas Shrugged as a trilogy?
Vadim Perelman: I don’t think it would hold up as a trilogyâ??remember, [J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary series] Lord of the Rings was written as a trilogyâ??but there isn’t enough climax after each part in Atlas Shrugged. …
Box Office Mojo: Is moneyâ??as Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shruggedâ?? the root of all good?
Vadim Perelman: I have a great quote from Ayn Rand that I actually believe: “If there’s a more tragic fool than the businessman that does not realize he’s an extension of man’s highest creative spiritâ??it’s the artist who thinks that the businessman is his enemy.” That should be on the masthead of your Web site. So, that answers your questionâ??and that’s from Atlas Shrugged.
See the full interview for much more about the Atlas movie as well as Perelman’s other movies.
Many Objectivists and free market advocates have mixed feelings about patent law and how it is used. If you’re one of them, don’t miss this letter to the lawyers representing Monster Cable. It is hilarious. (Hat tip Instapundit)
Here’s one interesting excerpt, just to save you a click:
I have seen Monster Cable take untenable IP positions in various different scenarios in the past, and am generally familiar with what seems to be Monster Cable’s modus operandi in these matters. I therefore think that it is important that, before closing, I make you aware of a few points.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle. In plaintiffs’ practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table. I am “uncompromising” in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.
But read the whole thing.
New Individualist editor Robert Bidinotto has one of the best responses I’ve seen to the brouhaha about BB&T’s donations to college campuses.
He wrote to The New York Times:
I have never heard any howling about common university course requirements that have students read environmentalist or socialist “literature” — material often prepared or pushed by various “nonprofit” advocacy groups.
Would any of the protesters here complain about the classroom use of materials created by, say, the Sierra Club, NRDC, or St. Al Gore?
What’s the matter, folks? Afraid of a little competition in the marketplace of ideas?
I think this observation gets at the heart of what’s so ridiculous about certain professors’ protestations. The “academic autonomy” thing is mostly manure, because no one is being forced to do anything against their will.
See Robert’s full post for more.
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