• • Rumor Roundup: Celebrating Diwali White House Style and Ben Lerer’s Beer Pong Skills 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Ayndroids Among Us It seems tech world conscience [...] Anil Dash had quite the interesting conversation recently. “Odd FB exchange with a founder who says 80% of U.S. are worthless & just take,” he tweeted, adding that he “Blocked me when I asked why his homepage doesn’t say that.” Unfortunately, Mr. Dash didn’t reveal the unnamed founder’s identity, other than to clarify it wasn’t a Facebooker and he’d started “a few companies.” Perhaps we’ll just dub this mystery man John Galt, which would surely delight him to no end.      View blog reactions

• • Overpowering 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Paul Ryan  | Jenny Turner on Paul Ryan’s lodestar, Ayn Rand (LRB, 1 December 2005): “…But really, storytelling was Rand’s talent, and it is in her novels that her vision takes its truest shape. In Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, power, greed, life’s grandeur flow hot and red in thrilling descriptions of urban and industrial landscapes, all ‘girders, cranes and trusses’ and ‘glowing cylinders’ and ‘fountains of sparks’ and ‘black coils of steam’. She’s good at sublimes, in other words, physical and elemental, the awe and terror as great as in any Romantic view of rocks and hills.”      View blog reactions