CALLING ALL BLOGGERS!
This is your chance to make your blog known to a larger audience of likeminded thinkers.
The Ayn Rand Meta-Blog will be posting a Carnival of the Atlasphere, modeled after the popular Carnival of the Capitalists.
Atlasphere member?s blogs will be listed along with a general description of the purpose of the blog and postings of interest to Atlasphere members. I want to highlight what Atlasphere bloggers are doing and thinking ? your ideas.
The Carnival will be published here, on the Ayn Rand Meta-Blog and for each blog listed, the blogger?s network profile will be linked.
I?m currently scouring the Atlasphere bloglisting for blogs to highlight in the upcoming Carnival but the list is long, so if you don?t want me to miss your blog and can?t wait to reach out to a larger audience, please drop me a line, tell me about your blog and your favorite postings.
For more information and to tell me about your blog please email:
carnival@theatlasphere.com
Cheers and Happy Blogging
$
Category: The Atlasphere
All things Atlasphere can be found here, columns, podcasts, interesting anecdotes, and more.
Kay Nolte Smith's 'Chantecler' (by Rostand) in NYC
Forwarded by frequent Atlasphere columnist Michelle Fram Cohen. Note that it only runs through May 22nd!
Chantecler, by Edmond Rostand, author of Cyrano de Bergerac is an animal allegory about a rooster who believes that his song makes the sun rise. Adhesive Theater Project’s production will investigate the themes of inspiration, finding our place in society, and overcoming our greatest doubts and fears.
Not seen in New York since it’s original Broadway production in 1911, this fresh translation by Kay Nolte Smith brings back the poetry and vitality of the original French. So celebrate this year of the rooster with this king of the barnyard – Chantecler.
Performances:
April 29th to May 22nd, 2005:
8:00 pm – Tuesdays through Saturdays
2:00 pm – Saturday Matinees
5:00 pm – Sundays
Running time: 2 hr (includes 1 intermission)
At: Teatro LA TEA at Clemente Soto Valez Cultural Center
107 Suffolk Street, 2nd Floor, Manhattan, 10002
(Between Delancey and Rivington, Lower East Side)
See the full announcement for additional information.
The Rise of the Do-it-Yourself Economy
Here’s a development sure to appeal to fans of Atlas Shrugged-style industriousness:
It?s doubtful that Steve Jobs ever faced these kinds of interruptions. “Daddy, I want to take a picture,” says Owen Misterovich, motioning to a digital camera on his father?s desk. “Okay,” says Pat Misterovich, handing it to his 5-year-old son, who proceeds to snap a few self-portraits. Then it?s back to the work at hand: producing the next great MP3 music player. Only instead of the simple, elegant lines of the iPod, Misterovich?s device will look just like a Pez dispenser. Oh, and instead of working from a corporate campus in Cupertino, Calif., with nearly 12,000 employees, Misterovich is a stay-at-home dad, creating his Pez MP3 player from the basement of his Springfield, Mo., home.
Misterovich is the former head of IT at the University of Detroit Mercy. He has few of the engineering skills necessary to build a device like this, no marketing experience, and absolutely no corporate infrastructure. And yet he?s got two factories?one in China, one in the U.S.?vying to build the player. He has a small Austin company started by an ex-Apple engineer designing the innards. And on his blog, pezmp3.com, he uses prospective buyers?some 1,500 people have already expressed interest?as an R&D-center-meets-focus-group. What?s better, he asks, AAA batteries or Li-Ion? In come dozens of replies (“Go for the AAA with a USB NiMh recharger if possible,” suggests one reader). What?s a good slogan? Some 50 ideas roll in (one of the best: “Candy for your ears”). By the end of this month the first prototype should be in Misterovich?s hands. “I don?t know that this product could have come to life years ago,” he says. “I seriously doubt it. And if it did, it wouldn?t have come through a guy in his basement.”
It used to be that a tinkerer like Misterovich could, at best, hope to sell his idea to a big company. More likely, he?d entertain friends with his Pez-sized visions. But a number of factors are coming together to empower amateurs in a way never before possible, blurring the lines between those who make and those who take. Unlike the dot-com fortune hunters of the late 1990s, these do-it-yourselfers aren?t deluding themselves with oversized visions of what they might achieve. Instead, they?re simply finding a way?in this mass-produced, Wal-Mart world?to take power back, prove that they can make the products that they want to consume, have fun doing so, and, just maybe, make a few dollars.
See the full article, “The Amazing Rise of the Do-It-Yourself Economy” at Fortune. Thanks to InstaPundit for the link.
Atlas Spooned
A new phenomenon from New York has been attracting quite a bit of media attention lately. It?s called a Cuddle Party, and is described as a ?workshop/social event for adults to explore giving and receiving affectionate touch in a safe, non-sexual setting.?
As it turns out, the Cuddle Party?s creators, Reid Mihalko and Marcia Baczynski, consider themselves huge fans of Ayn Rand?s novels. So much so that they named their company “Atlas Spooned.” Asked what Atlas Shrugged means to them, the duo answers, ?It?s about integrity.?
When Atlasphere member and columnist Andrew Schwartz was introduced to Baczynski in September (through mutual friend Pete Lyons, yet another Atlasphere member) Schwartz found the concept so worthwhile that he decided to start hosting Cuddle Parties in Los Angeles.
?When I first heard about Cuddle Party on the internet, before meeting Marcia, I was pretty dismissive,? says Schwartz. ?I figured this was a way for immature adults to behave like immature college students.?
?But when I learned more about the structure of Cuddle Party, and subsequently attended an event myself, I became enthusiastically impressed with the way it teaches extremely mature communication and boundary-setting skills.?
And on the Rand connection? ?If you want to get Randian about it, Cuddle Party as a workshop is all about personal responsibility, self-assertion, and respect for others in the context of affectionate touch. It teaches unusually straightforward communication around asking for what one wants and saying ?no? clearly and plainly to what one doesn?t want.?
?Also,? Schwartz adds, ?it’s just plain fun.?
You can learn more about these events on the Los Angeles Cuddle Party site.
Taiwan Chooses Independence
Taiwan’s struggle to maintain its independence from China is is one of the great political dramas of our time.
In yesterday’s elections, the Taiwanese people rejected heavy overtures from Beijing as well as some damands within their own country for reunification with China.
It’s a topic that deserves serious interest and attention from any sincere advocate of political freedom. (Link via InstaPundit)
Presenting the Fair Tax to the President's Panel
We’ve noted before that the Fair Tax proposal currently before Congress may be the most viable option available to eliminate the IRS during our lifetime.
The President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform will hold its eighth meeting on May 11th and 12th in Washington, D.C. The May 11th meeting will focus on specific options for tax reform and Tom Wright, FairTax.org executive director, will present the FairTax solution to the panel on Wednesday. The exact time is not available, but they are listed on the agenda on Panel III.
The meeting will be covered from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET on C-Span3 (reruns on C-Span 1 and 2). You can also watch streaming video on the C-Span web site.
More Ayn Rand Conferences
After our announcement yesterday of the summer conferences produced by the Ayn Rand Institute and the Objectivist Center, some members have written to bring our attention to two other conferences we did not mention, including the European Objectivist conference in London from September 9 – 11th, and the Sense of Life Objectivists conference that was recently held in Newport Beach from April 22 – April 27.
We appreciate the heads-up, and will include information about both of these conferences when we send out next year’s conference calendar.
Howard Roark Fan: Indian Actress Preity Zinta
A new interview with IndiaFM reveals that Indian model and actress Preity Zinta is a huge fan of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead:
So is there any particular book that she did recommend as a ‘must-read’? “Don’t know if it would do the same to others, but it definitely changed my perspective about life” she declares. And the miracle book is� “Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead” she replies.
“My dad gifted me the book when I was in the 8th standard” she says. “Not that I made sense of it then but I loved the character of Howard Roark. He is a strong, able guy who overcomes big storms in his life. I loved that trait in him” she points out. “I must have read it several times over the years and each time I am filled with admiration for Howard for the way he lived life with steely determination & endurance” she points out.
Firefly Movie 'Serenity' in Select Cities on May 5
Ayn Rand fans who have enjoyed the TV series Firefly — and there are a lot of you — may be excited to learn that it the new full-length Firefly movie, titled Serenity, will be available for preview in select cities on May 5th. That’s a full four months before the scheduled public release of the film.
The Serenity trailer was released just yesterday. (It looks very, very good.)
If you’ve not yet discovered Firefly, be sure and read Monica White’s Atlasphere review “The Ascendance of Firefly” from last fall. Better still, buy the Firefly DVDs and see for yourself.
Here is the actual sneak preview announcement from Firefly Creator Joss Whedon, which was recently posted in the Browncoats message board:
Well.
It gets better.
As thus: The movie is very nearly finished. You’ve seen many pretty images in the trailer. But I’ve still got work to do and you’ve still got months before you can see it.
Unless.
And, no, I’m not talking Australia (but Hi, Australia! anyway), I’m talking here in the more-or-less-United States, a one time multi-city Browncoat sneak event. Thursday, May 5th at 10:00 pm, the movie (Serenity! Pay attention! Jeez.) will be playing at exactly 10 theaters in 10 cities across the country. You (or possibly someone much like you) (or possibly a robot EXACTLY like you, but with better manners and sonic arm-lasers, sent to take your place) will be able to buy a ticket to see Serenity months in advance. Not just the bitty trailer with not enough Kaylee and Book, but the whole film, in its extremely almost completed state.
You probably have some questions. How is this possible? What cities exactly will it be in? What are these changes my body is going through? All valid. It’s possible because some clown put a bunch of Universal execs in a theater full of Browncoats and dude, they came out SWEATING, they never seen energy like that. They loved it, and even though they were already wicked supportive of the movie (see: earlier posts re: we’re making the movie) they simply weren’t ready for you guys. When I whinged on about pushing the date and everyone here was posting about “what do we do till September”, they agreed to let me sneak it out.
Maybe they thought it was a fluke. Maybe they wanna see if people really do care about the flick. Or maybe they’re just treating us with respect and kindness, though that last option confuses and terrifies me as much as these changes my body is going through (I’m “perspiring” and becoming “interested in girls”, which believe me is very unsettling when you’re 40.) Does it matter? The plan works for me, and it can work for a select bunch of y’all. Here’s what I know:
The cities to be hit are:
Seattle
Austin
Sacramento
Boston
Altanta
Chicago
San Francisco
Las Vegas
Denver
The Portland of Oregon
If you’re in or near one of those, you might wanna stop by. There’s supposed to be a “Can’t Stop the Signal” page on this website (I don’t know where it is — hey, I remembered my damn password, doesn’t that buy me any cred?) There should be more info there soon about how to get in, bringing peeps into the fold, I think there’s even competetions and stuff. (All I know is I have exactly 20 Brownie points. I answered ONE triv Q and got it wrong. Forget cred. I have no cred.) Now a couple of us might just creep into one of those major metropolitan multiplexes to see if anyone does show up, so remember: swearing in Chinese ONLY.
All right. This will please the fans and satisfy the employers of Joss Whedon, so I must stop as my arm-lasers are getting tired. I politely thank you for your attention.
Should be fun.
-j.
UPDATE: I started to notify some of the usual suspects, and noticed that they’ve already blogged the phenomenon themselves. It’s good to see this movie getting the attention it deserves.
Socialism Bad for Your Sex Life
From an MSNBC article by Glenn Reynolds about the situation in Sweden:
It’s almost as if high taxes, heavy regulation, and an extensive dole sap people’s desire to work hard, making the society as a whole worse off so that those policies don’t just redistribute wealth, but actually destroy it. That’s probably because they do, and have done so everywhere they’re tried. People are usually pointing to some socialist paradise or other where life is wonderful, but — not to put too fine a point on it — those places are basically a lie. Socialism just doesn’t work, anywhere, for very long. You’d think people would learn.
One of the unfortunate things that happens under socialism is that people have fewer children. (This is a bug. For a while it was seen as a feature, but with the world now facing a global baby bust, it’s a bug.) This disturbing essay from The Belmont Club spells out what Europe’s demographic collapse means. I think it’s a bit on the pessimistic side — but the Europeans had better hope that I’m right about that. And we Americans should be very grateful that we didn’t follow the Swedish model. Socialism produces shortages — and in Sweden’s case, apparently, it’s even managed to produce a sex shortage among the formerly randy Swedes. Which just proves that too much government can ruin anything, given enough rope.
Indeed. Read the full article for details.