Voice of America (broadcast in 45 languages) now offers a newly-produced program about Ayn Rand that seems reasonably objective. (I’ve not listened to the program itself.)
UPDATE: One of our members points out that “While I’m happy to hear that VOA did a generally positive piece on Ayn, it does contain a number of errors, such as she wrote a book on love (a confusion about the Romantic Manifesto) or that the Collective helped edit Atlas Shrugged.” Thanks for the heads-up.
Category: Culture
Mark Skousen on Atlas Shrugged in the Christian Science Monitor
Mark Skousen has penned a new (and ultimately disappointing) article called “Atlas Shrugged – 50 Years Later” for the Christian Science Monitor.
Seems he digs the novel’s capitalist politics but can’t quite stomach its ethic of enlightened self-interest. Still choosing between sadism and masochism, as Miss Rand would say.
Bob Burg to Host "Extreme Business Makeovers"
On February 23-24th, critically acclaimed author and speaker Bob Burg, who is also an Atlasphere columnist, will be co-hosting a two-day business seminar in Orlando called “Extreme Business Makeovers.”
Burg is the author of The Success Formula, Winning Without Intimidation
His business columns at the Atlasphere include the “Success Formula” series (parts one, two, and three), his “Winning Without Intimidation” series (covering Belief Concepts, The Three P’s, How You Say It, The Power Play, Allowing Yourself to Win, and The Power of Questions), and many others.
He has also authored several political columns for the Atlasphere, including “A Nation of Laws (Not Lawmakers,” “Re-Framing the Immigration Debate,” and, most recently, “Default Settings to Big Government.”
For information about attending Burg’s two-day seminar, visit the Extreme Business Makeover web site, which describes the event, the bevy of business authorities who will be presenting there, and how to register.
UPDATE: Burg has written more about this upcoming seminar, and the topics that will be covered, in his February 5th Atlasphere column “Bringing Your Business to the Next Level.”
Travels and Travails of the "We the Living" Band
In November I finally bought a copy of the album Far from You and Your Everyday Noise by a new Wisconsin band called “The Profits” — since re-christened “We the Living” and scheduled to release their first national album under the We the Living name in March or so.
Their original album reveals an incredible musicality in their performances — mostly acoustic stuff in the vein of John Mayer or some U2 songs — and they happen to be Ayn Rand fans, too. In fact, lead singer and songwriter John Paul Roney is Sarah Saturday‘s younger brother.
Since buying their Far from You album, I’ve rarely taken it out of my CD player except to make copies for the kitchen and the car. It’s a delightful collection of songs, with catchy melodies, alternately witty and thought-provoking lyrics, and good production value for a first album.
Today I visited their blog and noticed this hilarious post from a few days ago, about their recent trip to the musical mecca of Los Angeles.
I plan to review their (old and new) albums soon for the Atlasphere. Meantime, give these guys a look. Their MySpace page has some good songs on it.
Better still, buy their album now and count yourself lucky to experience a truly talented and promising band while most of the world is still oblivious.
Ayn Rand In Hollywood Exhibit
An exhibit of Ayn Rand images and documents is on display at the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library through February 28, 2007.
“Utilizing images and documents from The Ayn Rand Archives, this exhibit documents Ayn Rand’s personal and professional activities in Hollywood, 1926â??51.”
In addition to rare photos and video, there are scheduled screenings of several films with screenplays by Ayn Rand. Also, the biographical documentary, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life will be shown January 13, 2007.
The library is located at 1623 N. Ivar Avenue, Hollywood, CA. Hours: Mon. 10-8, Tue. 10-8, Wed. 10-8, Thu. 10-8, Fri. 10-6, Sat. 10-6, Sun. 1-5
Are You a Wine Lover?
Happy holidays!
One reason why my own Ayn Rand meta-blogging has been sparse in recent months is that I’ve been working hard, together with Atlasphere programmer Marshall Sontag, to launch a new business in the wine industry.
Our new company, which we’ve named WineQ, is a “meta” wine club ($4.95/mo) that lets you queue up wines like movies, read plenty of reviews from other consumers while choosing your wines, and receive FREE shipping on orders of $35 or more.
Essentially, we allow people to create their own wine club: Instead of someone else choosing the wines you’re sent, you get to choose. Instead of someone else deciding how often your wines are sent, you get to choose. And instead of paying through the nose for shipping, you get shipping for free.
Shipping wine is costly, often amounting to a 30% markup on the wine you buy over the internet. Other e-tailers generally require you to order a bare minimum of $120 in wine to receive free shipping — so a lot of people are excited about our innovative business model.
See the write-ups we received, for example, at Winecast (WineQ: Wine Club 2.0?) and GoodGrape (The “Netflix Effect” and the World of Wine).
Currently we offer wines from a growing list of small California wineries, all of which are sent direct from the winery to the consumer (although, due to our unique business model, you can combine wines from different wineries into the same order).
Right now our selection is somewhat limited for East Coast customers, since not all of our wineries can ship to those states (e.g., New York). But wine lovers in most western and midwestern states will find plenty to enjoy, and in general our selection of participating wineries will be growing steadily over the coming months.
Our web site is at WineQ.com. Check it out if you’re a wine lover or know friends or family who might be interested!
You can enter the coupon code ATLASPHERE during registration or checkout to receive $10 off your first order, giving you a first month’s membership for free.
We also offer unusually good discounts on expedited shipping — $5 for 2-day and $10 for overnight — if you want some exceptional premium wines to round out your holiday dinner plans.
Personally, my favorite wines on our site so far are the Ceja 2003 Vino de Casa Red and Deerfield 2003 RedRex. If you’re more of a white wine person, I can’t say enough about the Ceja 2005 Vino de Casa White. (None of these wines are over $20.)
And you can find many other highly-rated selections on our recommendations page.
Enjoy!
Braveheart Scribe To Pen Atlas Shrugged Screenplay
Daily Variety reports that Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace has been signed by Lionsgate to write the movie version of Atlas Shrugged.
The story states that the writer-director of We Were Soldiers will “finish the adaptation before he starts production next year on Catherine the Great,” also with Jolie.
No reason for the switch from Contact adapter James Hart was given.
Daily Variety quotes Wallace as saying “I was fascinated by Rand’s book. It was original and provocative.”
Bernstein quoted on USA Today front page
Dr. Andrew Bernstein is quoted extensively in a front page article in USA Today about the soul of sport champions: Â
Andrew Bernstein, a philosophy professor at Marist College, believes he knows why sports stars are so immense-ly popular in modern culture: Humans have a deep yearning for the heroic â?? and for momentary glimpses of human perfection.
â??We recognize, at least at some gut level, that a great champion isn’t just supremely gifted,â? Bernstein says. â??The sheer will to excel is what we find so admirable.â?
â??The Greeks worshiped human excellence,â? Marist’s Bernstein says. â??The great athletes competed naked. The statues we have from the Greeks show human beingsas strong and beautiful and healthy. Michelangelo revived that in the Renaissance. This sort of wor-ship of the human body is almost religious.â?
Bernstein isn’t. He is an atheist who believes in the sanctity of human achievement. When Bernstein speaks of â??soul of a championâ? â?? he once wrote an open letter to Jordan with that title â?? he doesn’t mean soul in a religious sense.
â??It’s a spiritual thing,â? Bernstein says. â??It’s in someone’s moral character â?? some indefatigable quality that a person has that they’re not going to be denied.â?
Read the entire article.
Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Defies Chinese Censors
From a new article at the Guardian:
The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries.
Jimmy Wales, one of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing.
Wikipedia, a hugely popular reference tool in the West, has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia.
Wales is a long-time admirer of Ayn Rand’s writings, so his unwillingness to suffer censorsorship at the hands of Chinese bureaucrats shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
Perhaps he will even be able to change their mind:
Wales will meet senior Chinese officials in an attempt to persuade them to allow the website’s 1.3 million articles to appear there uncensored.
‘One of the points that I’m trying to push is that if there’s a small town in China that has a wonderful local tradition, that won’t make its way into Wikipedia because the people of China are not allowed to share their knowledge with the world. I think that’s an ironic side-effect and something the people in the censorship department need to have a much bigger awareness of: you’re not just preventing information about Falun Gong or whatever you’re upset about getting into China, you’re preventing the Chinese people speaking to the world.’
Props to Jimmy. See the full article for much more. (Hat tip: Instapundit)
Computers Are Finally Learning to Drive Cars
Last month, Wired magazine featured a terrific article on the long-elusive goal of developing artificial intelligence smart enough drive cars.
Computers have long been able to see the world. What they have lacked, up to this point, is the intelligence to comprehensively interpret what they see.
But that is fast becoming history.
The message is clear: Autonomous vehicles have arrived, and Stanley is their prophet. “This is a watershed moment – much more so than Deep Blue versus Kasparov,” says Justin Rattner, Intel’s R&D director. “Deep Blue was just processing power. It didn’t think. Stanley thinks. We’ve moved away from rule-based thinking in artificial intelligence. The new paradigm is based on probabilities. It’s based on statistical analysis of patterns. It is a better reflection of how our minds work.”
See the full article for more. It’s a terrific story of brilliant minds learning to understand how we actually evaluate the physical world — and programming computers to do something very similar.
For one Objectivist entrepreneur’s take on developing artificial intelligence, see the Atlasphere’s interview with Peter Voss.