Diana Hsieh asks a terrific question over at NoodleFood: “At what point in reading Ayn Rand did you realize that she had something really significant to contribute to your understanding of the world?”
The comments in response to her posting make for some interesting and enjoyable reading.
Category: The Atlasphere
All things Atlasphere can be found here, columns, podcasts, interesting anecdotes, and more.
Wafa Sultan on Al-Jazeera TV
If you’ve not yet watched the video of Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan on Al-Jazeera TV, do it now…
It’s incredible. An intelligent, articulate woman taking Muslim relionists to task, right on an Arab TV network? Unbelievable!
Here are some choice quotes:
The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, two eras.
It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century.
It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. […]
The Jews have came from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling.
Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge.
We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people.
The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy.
Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results.
The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for mankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.
Can you imagine a woman saying this, with great force, to Middle Eastern audiences? This is a woman of great courage.
There’s much more, and it’s good. Watch the whole thing.
Lisa VanDamme to Speak in Maryland
Lisa VanDamme, a frequent speaker at the ARI Summer Seminars, whose work focuses on the application of Objectivism to educational theory, will speak at the annual conference of the Maryland Home Education Association in Annapolis on April 1.
Ms. VanDamme will deliver the conference’s keynote address, “The Hierarchy of Knowledge: The Most Neglected Issue in Education.” She will also present two sessions: “A Conceptual Approach to Education,” and “Applying the Principle of Hierarchy in the Homeschool Program.”
In the first session, Ms. VanDamme will discuss the importance of understanding rather than just memorizing the learned material, by means of “requiring that in every subject, students not just recite or do rote exercises, but explain their knowledge in words.” In the second session, she will discuss the practical implementation of the principle of hierarchy, from the simple to the abstract, in all subject areas.
Ms. VanDamme is the owner and director of the VanDamme Academy, a private school in California, where she also teaches grammar and literature. She developed a curriculum that “emphasizes those subjects essential to fostering the child’s intellectual maturity, one that recognizes a necessary and inviolable sequence of knowledge in all subjects, and one that stresses the connections within and between subjectsâ??and between school and life.”
For more information and to register, check the MHEA Conference Page.
'Chris Shrugged' in Columbia Newspaper
Columbia University sophomore Chris Kulawik has a column in the Columbia Spectator called “Chris Shrugged,” which runs every other Wednesday.
In this week’s column, he takes up the familiar (to anyone on a college campus during the past 20 years) question of why college administrators promote every kind of diversity except for, you know, the ideological kind. From the article:
If feminist and black scholars criticize the faulty thinking of Aristotle or Jefferson and get included in the curriculum, why is there no text from this modern era critical of Karl Marx or secular progressivism? Why no Friedrich Hayek? Why no Ayn Rand (a woman, no less)? What of William Jamesâ?? classic, Varieties of Religious Experience?
He’s a good writer, and makes good points. Three cheers for campus activism! Brought back lots of memories of my own time as a campus columnist.
Atlas Shrugged on UPN
The following is a clip of a surprising appearance of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism on the UPN show, One on One. In this clip, one of the show’s character’s is studying for a philosophy exam that includes Atlas Shrugged. Another character explains–for the most part accurately–the essence of Objectivism.
Watch the clip.
(I’d like to give a hat tip to the person who found this–but I received this link on aYahoo Rand discussion list with no explanation of its source)
Saul Williams: Atlas Shrugged Changed My Life
From an interview at Alternet.org:
Saul Williams has been acclaimed as the ‘Hip Hop Poet Laureate’ and for good reason. On stage and on paper he captures a true MC spirit and establishes a furious, hypnotic hip-hop flow, as he tackles serious subjects from god to love to music to power to poverty. […]
AMB: What books, music, or films changed your life?
SW: Autobiography of Malcolm X, autobiography of Assata Shakur, and of Miles Davis. Temple of my Familiar by Alice Walker, The Famished Road by Ben Okri, and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. For films, Slam, Mary Poppins, Naked, and Farewell My Concubine.
See the full interview for more information about Saul Williams.
As it happens, he’s not the first hip-hop icon to cite Ayn Rand’s writings as a major influence. I think hip-hop morning host Star (of Star & Bucwild) holds that title.
Search the Atlasphere from FireFox
If you’re a Firefox user, you have no doubt noticed and enjoyed the feature that allows you to search your favorite sites (Google, Amazon, etc.) directly from the browser itself, saving you the extra step of first going to the site you want to search.
Now you can add the Atlasphere to your Firefox search bar! Any search you conduct using this feature will return the relevant results (utilizing a search by “All Fields”) from the Atlasphere’s member directory.
The search feature will only work, of course, if you are an Atlasphere member. Atlasphere profiles are never accessible to non-members.
If you encounter problems or have questions, feel free to contact us for help.
Come Rally for the Danes!
Robert Bidinotto points us to this announcement:
Please be outside the Embassy of Denmark, 3200 Whitehaven Street (off Massachusetts Avenue), [in Washington, DC] between noon and 1 p.m. this Friday, Feb. 24. Quietness and calm are the necessities, plus cheerful conversation. Danish flags are good, or posters reading “Stand By Denmark” and any variation on this theme (such as “Buy Carlsberg/ Havarti/ Lego”) The response has been astonishing and I know that the Danes are appreciative. But they are an embassy and thus do not of course endorse or comment on any demonstration. Let us hope, however, to set a precedent for other cities and countries. Please pass on this message to friends and colleagues.
Bidinotto will be there. And if I didn’t live 2,000 miles away, I’d be there too.
The Left's Secret Pact: Subverting War on Terror
A hard-hitting article that originally appeared on the American Thinker:
The Leftâ??s Secret Pact: Subverting the War on Terror
November 30th, 2005
by Vasko Kohlmayer
The War on Terror has brought on many complex problems and challenges. Perhaps none is more critical than the conduct of the political Left which is apparently set on sabotaging our efforts. Unable to come up with a logical explanation, political observers either throw up their hands in bewilderment or ascribe the Leftâ??s posture to some irrational nihilistic impulse. But such conclusions are neither satisfactory nor correct.
The Leftâ??s sabotage of this war is a deliberate attempt to give relief to the other side. This is because their corresponding views on capitalism and the West make Islamic radicals and the Left natural allies. The Left seeks to weaken us from within in order to help those whose shared worldview binds them in a common pact. Once we understand the nature of this stealth partnership, the reasons behind the Leftâ??s often seemingly inexplicable actions will become alarmingly apparent.
But to do so, we must start at the beginning.
The full article is now available in our columns section.
Objective Standard: Deadline Extended
The subscription deadline to receive the inaugural issue of Objective Standard has been extended to February 24th.
From Editor Craig Biddle:
A quick update as our 130 page premier issue goes to press.
We were able to extend the subscription deadline. If you have not yet
subscribed and wish to do so (or if you want to give someone the gift of
objectivity), please subscribe by *February 24th* to ensure that your first
issue of TOS is included in our initial mailing, scheduled for early-March.
My essay “Introducing The Objective Standard” will be posted to the website
this week and will be accessible to subscribers and non-subscribers alike.
Check out their site for more information about this new publication for Objectivists.