Category: News

Forwarded from Nathaniel Branden:
Greetings, Friends,
I am overcoming my natural reticence so that I can tell you about a dialogue that I recently recorded with my friend, Ken Wilber, entitled “The Nathaniel Branden Story.”
Ken Wilber, as you may know, is regarded by many as the world’s leading integral philosopher, where “integral” means comprehensive and inclusive-an attempt to include all perspectives in a larger picture. I regard him was one of the most brilliant minds I have ever encountered.
If you are familiar with Ken’s ideas, you know that he and I have our disagreements, much as I admire his work. (I discuss some of our differences in The Art of Living Consciously, which didn’t stop him from praising the book wildly during our talks. He is a man of deeply generous spirit.) That we should be able to have this incredible dialogue is an example, I think, of the integral spirit in action.
Continue reading “Ken Wilber Interviews Nathaniel Branden”

As many of you know, Ayn Rand is quite popular in India, and the Atlasphere has more members from India than from any other non-U.S. country.
Atlasphere member (and Liberty English Camp founder) Stephen Browne forwards the following news about the Liberty Institute in Delhi, India:

Liberty Institute, a Delhi-based think tank, won the [$10,000] Templeton Freedom Prize for Excellence in Promoting Liberty in the Social Entrepreneurship category for its Language of Liberty Summer Camp held in June 2003.
The month-long camp enabled low-income students from rural Himalayan villages in Nainital District, of the northern state of Uttaranchal, to learn English in an interactive manner, while discussing the ideas freedom, dignity and responsibility. The students were exposed to computers for the first time, and got a glimpse of the enormous opportunities that English and IT could open for them. The project demonstrated the tremendous awareness and demand for functional educational skills even among poor village communities, and reflected their willingness to meet part of the costs for value added education. The camp had to accommodate 120 students instead of 60 initially estimated.
Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute says, ?Projects such as this provide an opportunity for those who want to uphold individual freedom and human dignity, to take our case to the wider audiences. Demand for basic education can be met substantially through market economics, even for the poor, if the policy framework is conducive towards educational entrepreneurs.?
As a think tank Liberty Institute seeks to improve public understanding of the market forces, and advocate policies that would best harness the power of the market to meet the needs of the people. In this, the poor and the deprived are the natural allies of pro-market advocates, since they have anything to lose but their poverty. The summer camp project is a micro-level manifestation of principles, policies and practices of liberty ? of entrepreneurship, responsibility, and market.

Our congratulations to the Liberty Institute!

From a posting to Russell Whitaker’s Survival Arts blog, the next printing of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead is scheduled for next week.
Sponsors are being sought. Glenn Cripe (a partner in the printing) writes:

We are also looking for sponsors. For $500, you get your name in all future editions of the books, a few free copies for your own use, a tax deduction, our undying gratitude, plus the chance to participate in changing the course of history! Inquiries should be sent to randinrussia@yahoo.com.

In case you can read Russian, the cover for volume 1 of Atlas Shrugged is given below:

Federal Reserve chairman (and former Ayn Rand associate) Alan Greenspan warns a Senate committee about the “math gap”:

Alan Greenspan has added a new twist to the ongoing debate on jobs outsourcing. Last week, the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman told the Senate Banking Committee that the real threat to the standard of living in the United States came not from jobs leaving for cheaper Asian locations. The bigger worry, he said, was a drop in U.S. educational standards.
U.S. students ranked 19th in a 1999 study of mathematical ability among eighth-graders in 38 countries. Four years earlier, as fourth-graders, the same cohort of U.S. students had ranked seventh. Students from Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan completed the Top 5 list of 1999. China and India did not participate in the study.
“What will ultimately determine” the “standard of living of this country is the skill of the people,” Greenspan told the Senate committee. “We do something wrong, which obviously people in Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan do far better. Teaching in these strange, exotic places seems for some reason to be far better than we can do it.”

Also amusing is Andy Mukherjee’s observation that because of the education system in Singapore, Greenspan’s own career choices might not have been possible in that country.