Category: The Atlasphere

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

Classical 'Holy Grail' Decoded

Posted on by Kernon Gibes

The online edition of The Independent has an interesting article that explains how ancient Greek and Roman texts have been made available for reading by the use of infra-red technology.
Excerpt from the article:

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure – a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.
Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

Joanne P. McCallie Takes Spartans to 2nd in U.S.

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Joanne P. McCallieWe noted in March of last year that Michigan State University women’s basketball coach Joanne McCallie is a huge fan of Dagny Taggart.
She’s been a busy woman during the past year, and was recently named Big 10 Coach of the Year (her fourth such award).
Earlier this month she was also named the Associated Press Coach of the Year:

McCallie, in her fifth season at MSU, has led the Spartans to the greatest season in school history. Michigan State is making its first appearance in the Final Four after having never been past the second round previously. The Spartans won a share of their second-ever Big Ten regular season title with a school-best 14-2 league record and won their first ever Big Ten Tournament title.
McCallie has guided the Spartans to a 32-3 record, smashing the previous school record for wins in a season (23). MSU is in the midst of a school-record 16-game winning streak and had its best-ever home record with a 13-0 mark at the Breslin Center. The Spartans have beaten 12 nationally-ranked teams, easily surpassing the previous school record of five in one season. Among the Spartans’ victims have been No. 1-ranked Stanford, No. 2-ranked Ohio State and No. 3-ranked Notre Dame, marking the first times MSU has ever beaten teams with those national rankings.

Yesterday her team lost the national title game to Baylor, but McCallie plans to stay in the limelight with a fresh round of high-profile recruits for next year’s season.
We’ll be working to see if we can get an interview soon with this prominent fan of Atlas Shrugged. Stay tuned.

A Viable Plan to Eliminate Income Taxes?

Posted on by Heather Wagenhals

From George Will’s article “A National Sales Tax” at TownHall.com:

The power to tax involves, as Chief Justice John Marshall said, the power to destroy. So does the power of tax reform, which is one reason why Rep. John Linder, a Georgia Republican, has a 133-page bill to replace 55,000 pages of tax rules.
His bill would abolish the IRS and the many billions of tax forms it sends out and receives. He would erase the federal income tax system — personal and corporate income taxes, the regressive payroll tax and self-employment tax, capital gains, gift and estate taxes, the alternative minimum tax and the earned income tax credit — and replace all that with a 23 percent national sales tax on personal consumption.

The article continues:

Under his bill, he says, all goods, imported and domestic, would be treated equally at the checkout counter, and all taxpayers — including upward of 50 million foreign visitors annually — would pay “as much as they choose, when they choose, by how they choose to spend.” And his bill untaxes the poor by including an advanced monthly rebate, for every household, equal to the sales tax on consumption of essential goods and services, as calculated by the government, up to the annually adjusted poverty level.
Today the percentage of taxpayers who rely on professional tax preparers is at an all-time high. The 67 percent of tax filers who do not itemize may think they avoid compliance costs, which include nagging uncertainty about whether one has properly complied with a tax code about the meaning of which experts differ. But everyone pays the cost of the tax system’s vast drag on the economy.
Linder says Americans spend 7 billion hours a year filling out IRS forms and at least that much calculating the tax implications of business decisions. Economic growth suffers because corporate boards waste huge amounts of time on such calculations rather than making economically rational allocations of resources. Money saved on compliance costs would fund job creation.

You can read George Will’s full article at TownHall.com, and you can learn more about the Fair Tax plan at FairTax.org.
Walter Williams also wrote favorably about the national sales tax back in December, in his article “National Sales Tax.”

Celebrity Rand Fan: JP Roney, of The Profits

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From the Wisconsin State Journal’s coverage of the Madison Area Music Awards:

Saturday night’s second-annual Madison Area Music Awards ceremony was professional, streamlined and entertaining.
Madison musicians and fans nearly filled the 1,300-seat Union Theater as the award categories zigzagged across numerous genres. Even the nominees’ wardrobes were eclectic. Best underage artist Brittany Hayes wore a Grammy-worthy evening gown, while best new artist Dafino displayed thrift- store fashion.

And why would we care? Because this happened:

Presenter Sybil Augustine of community radio station WORT-FM delivered a well- received diatribe against the FCC, and Shinky of the punk band New Recruits gave his best Liam Gallagher impersonation while decrying the city’s upcoming smoking ban. The show’s only moment of awkward silence came after J.P. Roney of best overall artist and best acoustic artist winners and performers The Profits thanked, among many other things, “the philosophy of Ayn Rand.”

I have no idea who The Profits are, but it’s certainly enough to raise one’s curiosity about the band.
UPDATE: You can learn about the band at www.theprofitsband.com, where this bio appears for JP Roney:

John Paul Roney – vocals, acoustic guitar, piano
JP is a Senior at UW Madison majoring in Pre-Law. He started singing at the age of 5 in The Madison Boy Choir, traveling to Japan and Greece to sing for up to 300,000 spectators as a soloist, and performed a lead role in an opera with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra starring alongside Metropolitan Opera star Kit Foss. In 1995 he was selected to sing in the National Honors Choir comprised of the top 100 singers in America, who performed for President Clinton in the White House. In high school, he had a daily guest spot on Madison’s 92.1 WMAD radio as goat boy, performing and writing comic skits. He began college studying opera performance until he picked up the guitar and switched majors. His influences include folk, alternative rock and hip-hop.

His bio also includes a promotion of Atlas Shrugged and a link to the web site of our very own Sarah Saturday, whom we interviewed here about a year ago.
The Profits web site includes downloadable mp3s of their music. Check out “Sex at Six” if you want a grin. (There’s a live version available and a studio version too. The studio version is easier to hear.) For some nice acoustic guitar work, listen to “High Horse” and “Margot.”

What is a First Edition of Atlas Shrugged Worth?

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

About $6,500, apparently. This from the Chicago Tribune:

A box of old books donated to the Batavia Public Library contained a gem–a rare, first-edition copy of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged.”
The Friends of the Batavia Public Library must now decide how to spend the $6,500 that the autographed copy brought at an online auction.
Bidding started at $3,500 and was over in about 45 seconds, said Jo Ann Smith, a volunteer with the library group who watched the Web auction Thursday. PBA Galleries, a San Francisco auction house, handled the sale and will keep 15 percent of the sale price.
The group will take a few months to decide how to spend the proceeds, Smith said.
“We don’t have any immediate plans, but we would like to take this nice, big chunk of money and buy one big thing,” she said.
Two years ago, the group began setting aside donated books that looked valuable. One member came across the book by Rand, a Russian-born author, in an anonymous box of donations.

Nathaniel Branden Interview Online

Posted on by Kernon Gibes

An interview of Nathaniel Branden by Mark Selzer is available online (either streaming or for download in various formats).
From the Libertarian TV web site:

Mark Selzer is a long-time host of “The Libertarian Alternative,” the long-time-running public access TV show in California which has graciously agreed to share their videos with us. In return, they have asked that we provide a link to the Libertarian Party website for those of our viewers who might be interested in joining the party.
Mr. Branden, best known for his early association with Ayn Rand, shares his views on a self-esteem and personal responsibility as he discusses his book, Taking Responsibility. He says, “You cannot have a good level of self-esteem unless you lead a responsible life.”

The video can be downloaded in a variety of formats. Since this is about a 28 minute interview, these are large files.

Spring 2005 Journal of Ayn Rand Studies

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Volume 6, Number 2 of THE JOURNAL OF AYN RAND STUDIES has just been published. This Spring 2005 issue is the second of two symposia celebrating the Ayn Rand Centenary. It is entitled “Ayn Rand Among the Austrians,” and it features the articles and contributors listed below. This landmark anthology surveys Rand’s relationship to key thinkers in the Austrian school of economics, including Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, and F. A. Hayek.
Spring 2005 Table of Contents
======================
Centenary Symposium, Part II — Ayn Rand Among the Austrians
Introduction: Ayn Rand Among the Austrians
Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Larry J. Sechrest
Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises
George Reisman
Ayn Rand and Austrian Economics: Two Peas in a Pod
Walter Block
Alan Greenspan: Rand, Republicans, and Austrian Critics
Larry J. Sechrest
Praxeology: Who Needs It
Roderick T. Long
Subjectivism, Intrinsicism, and Apriorism: Rand Among the Austrians?
Richard C. B. Johnsson
Menger, Mises, Rand, and Beyond
Edward W. Younkins
Two Worlds at Once: Rand, Hayek, and the Ethics of the Micro- and Macro-cosmos
Steven Horwitz
Our Unethical Constitution
Candice E. Jackson
Teaching Economics Through Ayn Rand: How the Economy is Like a Novel and How the Novel Can Teach Us About Economics
Peter J. Boettke
Reply to William Thomas: An Economist Responds
Leland B. Yeager
Rejoinder to Leland B. Yeager: Clarity and the Standard of Ethics
William Thomas
Visit the JARS web site for article abstracts, contributor biographies, and subscription information.

Jimmy Wales Profiled in Wired Magazine

Posted on by Heather Wagenhals

Atlasphere member and long-time Objectivist Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales is profiled in this month’s issue of Wired Magazine, in an article titled “The Book Stops Here.”
The article discusses the origins and success of the Wikipedia project, of which Jimmy is the founder.
Some of you may also remember Jimmy as the founder and owner of the Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy (MDOP), which was the largest Objectivist discussion forum of its time and the predecessor to what became the We the Living project.
Our congratulations to Jimmy and the Wikipedia team on their high-profile coverage in Wired magazine!

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