• •US ‘fully supports’ Iraqi diplomatic effort involving Iran, Syria 
Susan Jones, Cybercast News Service Some Americans say the United States has no business negotiating with Iran and Syria -- its enemies. "These countries are responsible for the maiming and deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.     Share on Facebook

•Harris drawn to MBC, Staunton 
Steve Briggs, News Leader (Staunton, VA) Profile of office manager Mary Elizabeth Harris.Favorite books: I'm an avid reader. Right now I'm reading "Cash" by Johnny Cash, "Killing Rage: Ending Racism" by Bell Hooks, "The Color of Welfare," and I just finished "Atlas Shrugged."     Share on Facebook

•Music TV—White and wordy 
Caryn Brooks, Centre Daily (PA) [Rapper] John Brown (or the persona thereof) is the kind of guy whose seeming complete lack of self-awareness is wrapped in bulletproof hubris. He declares himself "an entity," not a rapper and presents himself as a walking business plan. Now, that kind of Ayn Randian self-determination is not out of place in the hip-hop world (see Jay-Z, Diddy, et al) but when the business plan in question is filled with buffoony bulletpoints, it's hard not be dismissive.     Share on Facebook

•The Lord (Black) is their shepherd 
Mark Fitzgerald, Editor & Publisher On a website run by Alastair Smith in support of Conrad Black.Smith's Web site approvingly quotes other like-minded figures such as Ayn Rand, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Maggie -- excuse me, Baroness -- Thatcher.     Share on Facebook

•A day with Stern and Suzuki 
Peter Foster, National Post (Toronto) Thomas Homer-Dixon and David Suzuki suggested at [a University of Toronto presentation] that what might be needed [to fight climate change] was to "curtail" the growth of developed countries, perhaps have a "steady-state economy." To anybody with the vaguest grasp of how economies work, this would amount essentially to outlawing mental activity. Indeed, it was exactly the suggestion of the villains in Ayn Rand's epic Atlas Shrugged.     Share on Facebook

•Angelina Jolie may join Council on Foreign Relations 
Jeff Musall, Associated Content In a role that might seem surprising, [Jolie] is slated to play the character of Dagny Taggart in the movie adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel "Atlas Shrugged" to begin production soon.     Share on Facebook

•My father, the socialist 
George Selgin, Free-Market News Network I gravitated to free-market economics, discovering Milton Friedman and the Austrians and also (for moral inspiration) Ayn Rand. Later I found two other students who shared my sympathies; I'm certain that they were the only ones in the whole student body. Back then, and quite unlike today, a student was more likely to be spotted carrying Mao's little red book than a dog-eared edition of Atlas Shrugged.     Share on Facebook

•Koch’s laws 
Daniel Fisher, Forbes Review of The Science of Success, by Charles Koch.Readers expecting a recipe book for business success will be disappointed, but those of a more philosophical bent will find Koch's observations fascinating. Not only has he digested the entire Ayn Rand syllabus of free market theory, but he's had the chance to put it to work from his headquarters on the plains north of Wichita.     Share on Facebook

• •Egocentrism: Just plain evil or necessary evil? 
Misbah Anjum, The Pine Log (Stephen F. Austin State U, Nacogoches, TX) Ayn Rand discusses the importance of ego in her book, The Anthem. The book revolves around a character who refers to himself as, much like everyone else in his society, we or us, never I or me. Rand grew up in a communist nation and much of her philosophy is centered around individualism. She portrays how ego is essential to society, how ego is the essence of individualism.     Share on Facebook

• •Ex-speaker Rants hunkers down 
Jennifer Jacobs, Des Moines Register (IA) On Iowa state representative Christopher Rants.Rants lends dog-eared copies of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" to the clerks [...]. "I tell them if they get it, and like it, they'll get more out of it than four years of college," said Rants, who has a Rearden Steel sticker on the window of his five-year-old Chrysler, another nod to Rand and free-market capitalism.     Share on Facebook

•Jimbo, the jumbo techie to make it all easy 
Rachel Chitra, News Today (Chennai, India) Interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.Q: Being a fan of Ayn Rand and contributor to wiki, what would you say to more number of articles found on him [sic] in Wikipedia than any other contemporary writer? A: That's news to me. I must check that up.     Share on Facebook

• • •Shifting ideology: from Ayn Rand to Karl Marx 
Michael McLaskey, Arbiter Online (Boise State U) The biggest problem with Rand in action is that the rich just pick up their toys and go home.     Share on Facebook

•Michael Crichton 
Charley Reese, LewRockwell.com Hype and exaggeration seem to have infected every aspect of American life. In this atmosphere, Crichton is like Ayn Rand's fictional ideal man of reason. Look at the data. Apply reason. Make sure the data is correct.     Share on Facebook

•Left BioCon futurist scenario building 
J. Hughes, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies A response to “Our Biopolitical Future: Four Scenarios,” by Richard Hayes.[Hayes] sincerely wants the world of 1995 back, when anyone enthusiastic about the medical potentials of genetics or nanotechnology was very likely to list The Fountainhead as their favorite novel.     Share on Facebook

• •Half-page books: ‘Land of Liberty’ 
Bill Steigerwald, Tribune-Review (Pittsburgh) Interview with Brian Doherty, author of Radicals for Capitalism.Q: Of the big five of the libertarian movement – Von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard and Milton Friedman -- who is your favorite? A: Murray Rothbard, and I’ll tell you why. Rothbard, in one way, was the most distinctly libertarian of the libertarians. He was influenced a lot by both Mises and Rand, not so much by Hayek and Friedman. He brought together Mises’ deep economist’s understanding of why government economic intervention tends to fail and Ayn Rand’s sort of natural rights-based philosophy that argued that it is morally wrong for government to do certain things, whether or not it worked better -- even though it didn’t work better.     Share on Facebook

•Artful’s faves 
Linda Brazill, The Capital Times (Madison, WI) Article sidebar.Here are the movies that inspire interior designer Nate Berkus. "Auntie Mame," "Casino," "The Fountainhead," [...].     Share on Facebook

•Films furnish style ideas 
Linda Brazill, The Capital Times (Madison, WI) Movies offer us a smorgasbord of interiors of every style and period. We can laugh at them, love them or seriously study them to pick up tips to perk up our own homes. The January issue of House & Garden magazine [is] a special issue devoted to "25 Fabulous Movie Interiors," ranging from the obvious like "The Fountainhead" (1949) and "Auntie Mame" (1958) to the creepy ("A Clockwork Orange," 1971) and the unexpected (Jerry Lewis' "The Ladies Man," 1961).     Share on Facebook

•Houstonist bites: BJ’s Buffalo Chicken Pizza 
Hector Chavez, Houstonist The atmosphere and decor is sports bar meets Ayn Rand art deco.     Share on Facebook

•DVD review: Flight of Fury 
Bill James, Monsters and Critics As if there weren’t enough moments of mental dissonance in Flight of Fury, allow me to add another.  According to the General Barnes, the X-77 uses an electromagnetic pulse to attain its cloaked status.  And if you’re on your fifth Heineken, that may sound like the most brilliant notion since objectivism.  However, a quick Googling will bring about interesting points regarding the F-117’s navigational susceptibility to electromagnetic pulses, such as solar flares.     Share on Facebook

• •Burning questions 
J. C. Lockwood, North Shore Sunday (Lynnfield, MA) On a stage production of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.In literature as in life, government is notoriously inefficient [...]. Consider [....] Equality 7-2521, the hero from Ayn Rand’s “Anthem,” who lives in a society so collectivized that the word “I” does not exist. It is not known, who finds solace — and a bright future — in the bowels of the city, which have never been sanitized completely, and in information in libraries that the Council of Vocations foolishly allowed to exist, or never quite got around to destroying.     Share on Facebook