All things Atlasphere can be found here, columns, podcasts, interesting anecdotes, and more.
From Atlasphere member Noah Rusnock:
I am not sure how much the Atlasphere community is involved with video games, but in the next few months a highly-anticipated, main stream video game with an Objectivist base will hit the market. The game is called BioShock and you can read about it here, here, and here.
UPDATE: For more about the game, check out the hands-on preview at Shacknews.
Yaron Brook, Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, gave a talk at Wheeling Jesuit University on March 6, 2007. The title of his talk was: “In Defense of the Morality of Free Financial Markets.” The talk was sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality at WJU, as part of their distinguished speakers series. The talk was well received, and according to Ed Younkins, Director of the Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality, Dr. Brook’s ideas “were still being talked about daily by students and faculty well over a month later.”
As reported here before, the Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality is a recipient of a grant from BB&T.
The May/June issue of Script, a magazine for screenwriters, has a cover story on Randall Wallace, focusing on his new job as writer of the screen adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.
Unfortunately, the story itself isn’t available online, but Script Magazine‘s web site lists newsstands around the country where the issue can be purchased.
From their blurb:
Randall Wallace: The World on His Shoulders
by Bob Verini
Recently tapped to adapt the epic tome Atlas Shrugged, Randall Wallace talks about the most challenging assignment of his career.
Don Hauptman, who alerted us to the article, sends this report:
Fortunately, Wallace admires Rand and “gets” a lot of her message. But he’s sometimes a bit confused.
For example, he claims that Rand held that “sacrifice and duty and honor are corrupt.” Honor?
Wallace explains how he translated a scene in Atlas into cinematic terms. Heâ??s obviously proud of what he did, but his version strikes me as ludicrous; I suspect that audiences would react with inappropriate laughter.
Finally, as many feared, it sounds as if the book is being condensed into a two-hour film. After all the talk last year about doing it as a trilogy, thatâ??s a letdown. Can this story really be told in 120 minutes?
From the article “Executive Picks,” just published at US News & World Report:
[H]undreds of business books are published each year: How to find the one you need?
U.S. News spoke with 14 leaders from all walks of business lifeâ??from academics to entrepreneurs to corporate executivesâ??about the five books they consider indispensable reading for managers. The responses ranged far and wide: Military metaphors popped up occasionally, with Sun Tzu’s The Art of War rearing its age-old head. But books about biology were also surprisingly prevalent, not only for their insight into how business environments imitate the natural world but also, several executives said, because understanding biology helped them appreciate the concept of randomness.
The vast majority of the books selected are more than five years oldâ??and not all were bestsellers. “There’s a tendency to think there’s a lot of great new stuff out there. That may not be true,” says Jack Brennan, CEO of the Vanguard Group, who reads a few dozen business books a year, then hands his favorites out to his executives.
Some basic how-to guides were also mentioned, from books about making sales calls to advice on writing. Ayn Rand, with her revolutionary ideas about entrepreneurship, also made her presence felt. And then there was Jim Collins, whose books Built to Last and Good to Great offer highly respected explanations of what separates good companies from great companies. Collins, Thomas Friedman, and Peter Drucker were the authors mentioned most often. Read on for more of what business leaders have found between the covers of books.
Nice to see Rand figured in the list for at least some managers. I’m sure her novels have inspired many people to view the world through more entrepreneurial eyes.
An unattributed opinion editorial (typically indicating the work of a newspaper’s own editors) in today’s Colorado Springs Gazette, appropriately titled “Our View,” begins with this tribute to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:
Who is John Galt? Unless youâ??ve read Ayn Randâ??s novel â??Atlas Shrugged,â? which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, you probably donâ??t have a clue. But you can be sure millions of other people do.
Whether youâ??ve read it or not, whether you love it or hate it, â??Atlas Shruggedâ? still inspires passion a half-century after it was first published. Itâ??s not just that the book was widely read, and still sells relatively well, but that it has been so influential in the intellectual development of so many people.
Rand, whose guiding philosophy came to be called â??objectivism,â? challenged those who say that the pursuit of entrepreneurship and capitalism are evil and the expansion of government to promote altruism is good. â??Atlasâ? and her other books are still considered radical today.
The Soviet Union, which she fled as a youth, has crumbled, but the underlying philosophy that despises competition, freedom and individualism is still alive and well, even in America. â??Atlas Shruggedâ? still inspires, enthralls and angers people because it remains relevant.
See the full editorial for more.
From the article “Striving for Individualism” in today’s San Francisco Examiner:
Facing New York has had plenty of opportunities to make more money. While music-industry people have offered lucrative deals in exchange for control over their work, the band members passed, wanting to remain true to themselves.
Howard Roark, a character in Ayn Randâ??s â??The Fountainheadâ? (an inspiration for the groupâ??s name) dealt with a similar struggle. Members of the group shared and admired Roarkâ??s control of creative decisions even at the expense of money, says guitarist, keyboardist and lead singer Eric Frederic.
From the band’s MySpace page:
Facing New York is a psychadelic rhythm & blues band from the year 2020. 2 guitars + 2 basses + 2 drum sets + 2 Fender Rhodes + 2 Roland Junos + 4 close friends = a band obsessed with â??nextâ? and hopelessly devoted to the black music and prog rock from the early 1970s.
Check out their site or their MySpace page for more info. Their song “Full Turn” opens with a cool guitar riff.
Writing for TCS Daily, Brian Doherty offers an insightful analysis of the history of antagonism between libertarians and conservatives in his article “Paul Krugman’s Illuminating Smear: How the Right and Libertarians Diverged.”
From an article in yesterday’s Denver Post:
Aspen mayors, as former office-holders attest, hobnob with world leaders and celebrities. They turn up on CNN and at parties hosted by The Donald as well as tackling pressing problems such as undoing Aspen’s worsening traffic congestion and helping struggling businesses.
“You meet someone, and they are very impressed you are the mayor of Aspen,” said Helen Klanderud, who will be vacating the post after three terms. […]
The cast of candidates willing to jump into this political cauldron includes a bicycle-riding, left-leaning environmentalist attorney who has survived three recall attempts as an outspoken and sometimes abrasive Pitkin County commissioner; a developer who favors sports cars and high-dollar cowboy boots and quotes Ayn Rand; a former tennis pro who goes by one name and is courting the young vote; and a platinum-blond former TV news anchor whose website features sexy portraits and an admission that she may resemble the late Anna Nicole Smith – but only in looks. […]
Developer candidate Tim Semrau, 53, in designer jeans with coiffed hair, set Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” on the table in front of him, along with a sheaf of position papers and cast himself as a developer, yes, but one who has done many affordable-housing projects.
See the full article for more.
Any politician willing to set a copy of Atlas Shrugged on the table deserves a second look.
From Atlasphere member Stephen Boydston:Â
I am happy to announce Objectivity Archive at www.objectivity-archive.com. This site is an archive and library of Objectivity, now freely open to all readers and researchers.
Objectivity is a journal of metaphysics, epistemology, and theory of value informed by modern science. It consists of two volumes, each with six issues. It was a hardcopy journal, for subscribers, published from 1990 to 1998. Its authors were both professional academics and independent scholars.
In addition to the complete, exactly replicated text of Objectivity, the Archive site offers additional helpful features such as ABSTRACTS for all the main essays and a SUBJECT INDEX and NAME INDEX for the entire 1770 pages of the journal.
Atlasphere member Will Wilkinson recently published a new paper for the Cato Institute titled “In Pursuit of Happiness Research: Is It Reliable? What Does It Imply for Policy?”
From the abstract:
â??Happiness researchâ? studies the correlates of subjective well-being, generally through survey methods. A number of psychologists and social scientists have drawn upon this work recently to argue that the American model of relatively limited government and a dynamic market economy corrodes happiness, whereas Western European and Scandinavian-style social democracies promote it.
This paper argues that happiness research in fact poses no threat to the relatively libertarian ideals embodied in the U.S. socioeconomic system. Happiness research is seriously hampered by confusion and disagreement about the definition of its subject as well as the limitations inherent in current measurement techniques.
In its present state happiness research cannot be relied on as an authoritative source for empirical information about happiness, which, in any case, is not a simple empirical phenomenon but a cultural and historical moving target.
Yet, even if we accept the data of happiness research at face value, few of the alleged redistributive policy implications actually follow from the evidence. The data show that neither higher rates of government redistribution nor lower levels of income inequality make us happier, whereas high levels of economic freedom and high average incomes are among the strongest correlates of subjective well-being.
Even if we table the damning charges of questionable science and bad moral philosophy, the American model still comes off a glowing success in terms of happiness.
As Will writes, “It is not a short paper, nor is it written at a USA Today level of difficulty. So reserve a cool hour for some serious intellectual contemplation. Itâ??s worth it, I hope.”
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