"And, why," Lucy says, "a lamp post!" The lamp post shines like a monument to industry.

Aslan Shrugged 1 2 3 4 [via a review of Atlas Shrugged in The Valve]
posted on Jul 16, 2007 - View this thread

The Ayn Rand Institute held their yearly confab in Telluride, CO, near the purported location of the fiction Gault's Gulch of Atlas Shrugged, celebrating the 50th anniversary of one of the most turgid novels of all time. Part of the program included a panel of academics discussing their experiences "as objectivists." The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the state of objectivism in academe. Rand Grants are up, tenure is tendentious, and a for-profit Founders Institute appears to be foundering. (more inside)
posted on Jul 14, 2007 - View this thread

Atlas Shrugged is again in the pipeline to be made into a movie. BACK in the 1970s Albert S. Ruddy, the producer of “The Godfather,” first approached Ayn Rand to make a movie of her novel “Atlas Shrugged.” But Rand, who had fled the Soviet Union and gone on to inspire capitalists and egoists everywhere, worried aloud, apparently in all seriousness, that the Soviets might try to take over Paramount to block the project.
posted on Jan 20, 2007 - View this thread

Keep on Shrugging: apparently the planned film of Ayn Rand's much-beloved Atlas Shrugged -- a chief vehicle for her philosophy "Objectivism" -- is moving ahead. It's now planned as a trilogy and has a studio, a (draft) script, funding, and (tentatively) Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart (the star) -- she's apparently a big fan. For background, here's the Objectivism Mockery links page, including the brilliant, now-vanished "Objectifism."
posted on Jul 13, 2006 - View this thread

An interview with Brad Bird.

Bird: Some people said it was Ayn Rand or something like that, which is ridiculous. Other people threw Nietzsche around, which I also find ridiculous. But I think the vast majority of people took it the way I intended. Some people said it was sort of a right-wing feeling, but I think that's as silly of an analysis as saying The Iron Giant was left-wing. I'm definitely a centrist and feel like both parties can be absurd.
posted on Mar 14, 2005 - View this thread

The U.S should not help tsunami victims according to those ever-thoughtful fellows at the Ayn Rand Institute. Why not? Because, Objectively speaking, altruism is evil, especially collective altruism.
posted on Dec 31, 2004 - View this thread

WHO IS BOB PARR? Critics, bloggers and other commentators have, usually off-handedly, linked The Incredibles to Ayn Rand. Well, it turns out the Objectivists are taking the comparison quite seriously. Yet the more exact, direct forebear of "if everybody's special, then nobody is" is clearly... Gilbert & Sullivan, no?
posted on Nov 28, 2004 - View this thread

10 Easy Steps to Objectivism. When you have achieved true Objectivistivity, join Friend Bear on a visit to the Objectivist Theme Park, so that you too can be one with Ayn Rand's Floating Head.
posted on Feb 18, 2004 - View this thread

I'll take "Western Superiority Complexes" for $500, Alex... Let the wars begin: The ever controversial Ayn Rand Institute suggests that on the eve of Columbus Day we reject revisionist Politically Correct history that Columbus was a butcher. By what justification could we state that Western Civilization is superior to others? Is multiculturalism a bad idea? Does this suggest we have a 'right' to wipe out peoples inferior to us? Darwinism at its potential worst--or a scary reality to admit?
posted on Oct 11, 2002 - View this thread

Why Do They Hate Us? A fine essay by Robert Tracinski about the mindset of university intellectuals. The closing line sums it up concisely; "It is the job of university intellectuals to understand, to transmit and to defend the intellectual achievements of 2,500 years of Western civilization. We can now see clearly that today's academics have betrayed that sacred trust. We must seek out better guardians of reason and progress."
posted on Oct 12, 2001 - View this thread

Crime or War? Dianne Durante: "If it was a crime by an individual, like the Oklahoma City bombing, then we would gather the evidence and bring the perpetrator to trial. If it was a crime by individuals sponsored and abetted by a foreign government, then it was an act of war, and is a matter for military action: immediate and decisive. If the attack was in fact government-sponsored, then capturing and punishing individual killers is less crucial than preventing further attacks by the foreign government."
posted on Sep 17, 2001 - View this thread

These aren't your father's Objectivists -- they're WACKY! They like wacky rock music! They care for wacky birds! Being Objectivists, they believe themselves to be pundits -- but WACKY ones! I mean, look at these costumes -- these are Objectivists who knows how to have fun!
posted on Jul 22, 2001 - View this thread