Category: The Atlasphere

All things Atlasphere can be found here, columns, podcasts, interesting anecdotes, and more.

Atlas Shrugged Movie Dead?

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

A friend of mine posted this on his blog:

The word on the street is that the Atlas Shrugged movie project is in “turnaround” status. That means that the producers (Baldwin Entertainment Group) have given up trying to make the movie right now, and are willing to sell the rights to someone else (presumably for their accrued development costs).
This is a major turn of events since last year, when the film looked like a sure thing. It’s amazing how fast a project can hit a dead end in the movie business.

Sigh.
UPDATE – JUL 18: I’m removing the name of my friend who originally posted this on his blog, because (due to my relative inexperience with LiveJournal) I was quoting a friends-only entry from his blog.
That said, I have telephoned the original source of this rumor, who is a Rand-admiring movie producer uninvolved in the Atlas Shrugged movie, for additional information.
He pointed out — and verified while we were on the phone — that the Pro version of IMDB lists the movie as “Status: Turnaround.” This status, he says, was posted on June 18th.
“Turnaround,” of course, has a very specific meaning in the film industry — basically, that the producer wants to sell the movie.
So it’s either a typo in the Internet Movie Database or the movie is, in fact, in turnaround.

Orit Arfa Profiles ARI's Yaron Brook for JPost

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Atlasphere member Orit Arfa has published a profile of Ayn Rand Institute Executive Director Yaron Brook in the Jerusalem Post, titled “You don’t fight a tactic.” It begins:

Dr. Yaron Brook, 46, speaks and carries himself like a Rand hero. His facial features are angular, his demeanor self-confident. His language is principled, logical, certain, fired by moral passion, replete with absolute terms: good and evil, right and wrong, defeat and victory. He has a slight lisp, which is easily overshadowed by the controversial and harsh words that roll off his tongue.
For the first time since he left Israel for America in 1987 – for essentially the same reasons Rand did – Brook gave a lecture in his mother country: “Israel and the West’s War with Islamic Totalitarianism: Why We are Losing.”
Born in Jerusalem and raised in Haifa, Brook met few intellectuals here who could nurture his interest in Rand’s ideas, which he first developed at 16 after reading Atlas Shrugged. The novel catapulted him out of the socialist-Zionist way of thought he had inherited from his South African-Israeli parents and from Israeli education and culture.

See the full article for much more.

Ayn Rand and Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" Thesis

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From a new article at Desicritics.org titled Book Review: Malcolm Gladwell and Ayn Rand:

[I]f you simply dig a little under the words Gladwell uses, such as “instincts,” “snap judgments,” and “thinking without thinking,” what you will realize is that Gladwellâ??s thesis is not novel in any significant sense, at least not to someone who is well-versed with Ayn Randâ??s philosophy of Objectivism.
Ayn Rand had decades ago stated that one must “trust your subconscious” while engaged in the task of writing. However, like much else of what Rand said, this little instruction to trust oneâ??s own subconscious mind can be extended beyond the context of writing and applied to practically every realm and action in life.

See the full article for more on the parallels between Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and Malcolm Gladwell’s thesis in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

Rand-o-rama at The Chronicle of Higher Education

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s “Rand-o-rama” post of two days ago:

This week The Chronicle features three articles about the intellectual legacy of Ayn Rand. (The intro is here; to get to the main courses, follow the links in the right-hand column.)
In this 2004 interview, the Ayn Rand Instituteâ??s director, Yaron Brook, briefly describes his â??plan to help [objectivist] graduate students get placed in top-level philosophy departments around the country. The program is still in its infancy. It is very ambitious, and we will not know its success for many years.â?
Is that kind of talk creepy and messianic? Or is it the commendable behavior of a group that believes it has a true and important set of ideas to bring to the world? That was one of the debates that occupied faculty members this spring at Texas State University at San Marcos, as they considered whether or not to accept a Rand-related donation.

See the full post by David Glenn for (much) more Rand-related coverage at the Chronicle.

Andy Garcia's "The Lost City" Is Excellent

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Earlier this week my wife and I watched The Lost City (June 2006), starring Andy Garcia, who also produced and directed the movie.
It’s was best movie I’ve seen in months.
The film is Garcia’s own personal love letter to Cuba — the Cuba that existed before Fidel Castro’s “revolution.” It is a pulsating world of lively music, palpable sensuality, and tight-knit families.
The writing and acting are excellent throughout, and the cinematography is spectacularly beautiful. The movie is highly stylized — the opposite of naturalism, you could say.
Fidel Castro really takes it in the chin in this film. Predictably, mainstream movie reviewers panned the movie for its failure to conform to Hollywood’s preferred version of Cuban history, i.e., that Castro was leading a “people’s revolution,” etc.
Humberto Fontova — who was born in Cuba, like Garcia — wrote an article for NewsMax characterizing the left’s reaction to the movie:

Earlier, many film festivals refused to screen it. Now many Latin American countries refuse to show it. The film’s offenses are many and varied. Most unforgivable of all, Che Guevara is shown killing people in cold blood. Who ever heard of such nonsense? And just where does this uppity Andy Garcia get the effrontery to portray such things? The man obviously doesn’t know his place.

And:

Andy Garcia and screenwriter Guillermo Cabrera Infante knew full well that “the working poor” had no role in the stage of the Cuban revolution shown in the movie. The anti-Batista rebellion was led and staffed overwhelmingly by Cuba’s middle and, especially, upper class. To wit: In August of 1957 Castro’s rebel movement called for a “national strike” against the Batista dictatorship — and threatened to shoot workers who reported to work. The “national strike” was completely ignored.
Another was called for April 9, 1958. And again Cuban workers blew a loud and collective raspberry at their “liberators,” reporting to work en masse.
“Garcia’s tale bemoans the loss of easy wealth for a precious few,” harrumphs Michael Atkinson in The Village Voice. “Poor people are absolutely absent; Garcia and Infante seem to have thought that peasant revolutions happen for no particular reason — or at least no reason the moneyed 1 percent should have to worry about.”
What’s “absolutely absent” is Mr. Atkinson’s knowledge about the Cuba Garcia depicts in his movie. His crack about that “moneyed 1 percent” and especially his “peasant revolution” epitomize the cliched idiocies still parroted by the chattering classes about Cuba.

While political upheaval drives the movie’s plot, the movie itself is valuable and enjoyable on multiple levels — many of which have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with “life as it might be and ought to be.”
I recommend it highly.
The movie is available for purchase from Amazon.com. You can watch the trailer — which doesn’t really do the movie justice — at Apple. And you may also enjoy NPR’s interview with Garcia about the movie.

Hudgins: Let's Declare the Fourth of July a Tax-Free Day!

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From a new op-ed by Ed Hudgins, executive director of The Atlas Society, published in the Washington Times and elsewhere:

On July 4, 1776, America’s Founders declared the country’s independence from Britain, largely as a revolt against excessive and unfair taxation. So in our nation, which is much more overtaxed than it was over two centuries ago, it would be fitting if, in recognition of our Founding principles, federal, state and local governments made July Fourth a totally tax-free day.
Many cities already suspend sales taxes for a few days a year on items such as clothing and school supplies, usually to garner the favor of overtaxed parents struggling to raise kids and to give mom and pop an incentive to frequent overtaxed downtown enterprises struggling to make profits. So wouldn’t it be appropriate for all of us who struggle every day to be allowed to keep our money on that day on which we celebrate our freedom?
The total direct tax burden on Americans – not counting the indirect taxes of regulations – is estimated at about 35 percent of our $13 trillion gross domestic product, or $4.5 trillion. That works out to more than $12 billion we would keep in our own pockets if we were truly independent on Independence Day.
We wouldn’t have to pay taxes on the hotdogs, beer and barbecue we purchase for Fourth of July picnics. And since for most of us this is a paid holiday, for that day we would receive our paychecks without income tax, Social Security taxes, unemployment insurance taxes and the like taken out.
Such a tax-free day would be the time to fill up large SUVs and save $10 a tank in various fuel taxes. Malls would soon see Christmas-season sized crowds as shoppers seek to stretch their dollars.

Continue reading on The Atlas Society website.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey: "I Loved Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead"

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey is among the few large corporate managers that actively blogs, on behalf of his company, without letting the PR and media relations staff turn his posts into mealy-mouthed generalities.
In his recent post “Whole Foods Market, Wild Oats, and The Federal Trade Commission,” Mackey very directly and publicly takes on the Federal Trade Commission for their recent complaint about the merger of Whole Foods and Wild Oats.
In the ensuing discussion, one commenter wrote:

You’re one of my heros now. I am so glad you responded as you did to this FTC nonsense. I bet you kinda feel like John Galt, but please don’t go on strike.

To which Mackey replied:

I loved Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. “Who is John Galt?”

For more about John Mackey and Ayn Rand, see our earlier posts “Interview with Whole Foods’ John Mackey” and, before that, “Notes on Whole Foods Owner John Mackey.”

Cool new technology from Microsoft

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Experience some of Microsoft’s newest technological developments in action: Microsoft Surface and Photosynth. At Popular Mechanics you can see how Surface allows you to move information from one object to another via 30-inch tabletop display without a mouse or keyboard. And a recent TED talk by Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrates how Photosynth can reconstruct objects and places taken from large collection of photos into a three-dimensional space.

Angelina Jolie: Atlas Shrugged Movie Moving Slowly

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

In a brief interview with Cinematical, Angelina Jolie provided this update on the upcoming Atlas Shrugged movie:

She had a little more to say about the adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, which is moving forward very slowly, despite having the Plan B powerhouse of Pitt and Jolie behind it. Angelina told me that the project is still on the table, but “the thing with Atlas is just, we all feel that it’s one of those projects where if you can’t do it right, you really can’t touch it. So we have not had all the pieces come together. There’s not been a director that’s right to come on, or all of those elements. So until it does, you know, I certainly don’t want to be a part of something that’s just put together to hit ‘this date.'”

When it comes to Atlas Shrugged, it’s hard to disagree with the perspective that “If you can’t do it right, you really can’t touch it.”

Group Encourages Wal-Mart to Promote Atlas Shrugged

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

To combat the left’s gradual encroachment on corporate policies, some free market activists have begun formally offering Wal Mart a new intellectual paradigm — namely, that the company should embrace free markets rather than run from them.
In the Townhall article “Wal-Mart’s Public Policy Dilemma: Turn Right or Left?” Tom Borelli explains the dilemma:

Most concerning is the possibility that Wal-Mart might actively support government funded universal health care as a way to shift its employee health care problem to the U.S. taxpayer and ease one major area of criticism. Turning Wal-Mart into a lobbyist for the Leftâ??s agenda represents a serious risk to the free market and, if successful, expands the role of government in our lives.
However, Wal-Mart can chart a different course. Instead of following the incremental path to socialism, a shareholder proposal (introduced by an organization Iâ??m affiliated with) offered Wal-Mart a free market alternative.
Wal-Mart can silence its critics by using its clout to encourage its suppliers to promote a pro-business atmosphere. For example, Wal-Mart should rally these businesses to promote free-market ideas such a tax cuts, litigation reform and medical savings accounts.
In addition, Wal-Mart should use its marketing muscle to sell Ayn Randâ??s timeless novel Atlas Shrugged into millions of homes. The book provides insight and perspective regarding the nature of Wal-Martâ??s conflict: capitalism vs. socialism; the risk posed by rent seeking corporate executives; and government interference in the free market.

See the full article for more.

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