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.
Category: The Atlasphere
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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.
Classical 'Holy Grail' Decoded
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.
TSA to be Dismantled
On Wednesday we published our column by Walter Williams detailing the worthlessness of the Transportation Security Administration’s policies.
Today we learn the White House has asked the agency’s director to step down.
Just a coincidence? You decide!
Joanne P. McCallie Takes Spartans to 2nd in U.S.
We 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.
Objectivist Travelers Web Site
Atlasphere member Vanessa Smyth has launched a web site for Objectivists who are interested in the travel group that her mother and her late father (Suzanna and Charles Tomlinson) began several years ago. For more information, visit the web site for Objectivist Travelers.
A Viable Plan to Eliminate Income Taxes?
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
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.”