Category Archives: Ayn Rand

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer interviews Rob Tarr, an expert on economics, about how Ayn Rands philosophical approach to economics can help us understand the nature and causes of inflation.

Among the topics covered:

Mentioned in the discussion are Rands lecture Egalitarianism and Inflation, her book Philosophy: Who Needs It (in which the lecture is reprinted), the bound volume of her periodical the Ayn Rand Letter (in which it first appeared) and Tarrs essay Economic Theory and Conceptions of Value: Rand and the Austrians versus the Mainstream from the book Foundations of a Free Society, edited by Gregory Salmieri and Robert Mayhew.

The podcast was recorded on March 19, 2022 and was broadcast on March 30, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device onApple Podcasts,Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcastshere.

Podcast audio:

If you value the ideas presented here, please become an ARI Member today.

Read the original here:

Understanding the Roots of the New Inflation: With Rob Tarr - New Ideal

EXCLUSIVE: First Wind Film Development has optioned TV rights to Rick Bleiweiss recently published debut mystery novel Pignon Scorbion and the Barbershop Detectives, withBrendan Deneen and Josh Stanton of Blackstone Publishing attached to produce the adaptation.

The book is set in 1910, inthe small English municipality of Haxford, which has a new Chief Police Inspector. At first, the dapper and unflappable Pignon Scorbion, a Brit of Egyptian and Haitian descent, strikes something of an odd figure among the locals. But it isnt long before Haxford finds itself very much in need of a detective.Investigating a trio of crimes whose origins span half a century, Scorbion interviews a parade of people with potential motives, but with every apparent clue, new surprises come to light. And just as it seems nothing can derail Scorbion, in walks Thelma Smithdazzling, whip-smart, and newly single. Has Scorbion finally met his match?

Bleiweiss spent the majority of his career in the music industry as a recording artist, Grammy-nominated producer, recorded songwriter and record label senior executive, working with superstar acts and contributing to film soundtracks. He has written numerous newspaper columns and magazine articles, had chapters in anthologies, and has a story in the upcoming collection Hotel California. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, Historical Novel Society, and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, among other organizations.

First Wind Film Development focuses on new premium content origination and package development for producers and authors. Based in the EU and UK, and formed in 2016 by three colleagues formerly working with United Artists Europe, the company developed the recently released feature documentary Meeting Gorbachev, on the life of Mikhail Gorbachev, directed by Werner Herzog and Andr Singer. FWFD has multiple projects in development for different film and TV markets, including Those Bloody Women, based on activist Emily Hobhouses 1902 memoir, The Brunt of Waran authentic insight into the life and suffering of women and children in the Boer War.

Deneen is aformer Scott Rudin Productions and Miramax/Dimension exec whorecently joined Blackstone and launched its in-house film and TV division, which currently has projects in development with Netflix, Paramount, Amblin, Roadside Attractions, Genre Arts, 6th & Idaho and Makeready.

One of the largest independent audiobook publishers in the U.S., Blackstones catalog counts over 13,000 audiobook titles from such authors as Ayn Rand, Gabriel Garca Mrquez, Pablo Neruda, C.S. Lewis, Don Winslow and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Its print and eBook imprint releases count over 80 titles a year by both new and established writers including James Clavell, Rex Pickett, P.C. Cast, Catherine Coulter, Norman Reedus and Karin Slaughter.

Bleiweiss is repped byNicole Resciniti at the Seymour Agency.

Go here to read the rest:

First Wind Film Development To Adapt Rick Bleiweiss Blackstone Novel Pignon Scorbion And The Barbershop Detectives For TV - Deadline

AUBURN When I was in fourth grade, I reached college level reading. My first favorite book was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I carried a thesaurus with me like most children would carry a common pencil bag and I had the wildest dreams of becoming the next J.K. Rowling.

When we are kids, we are taught the importance of a proper education. Go to school, get good grades, excel in projects and sports and social activities, but we are never told how hard it can be to get there. Nobody tells you how often you stay up late at night, questioning yourself and your worth while you watch your peers excel.

One of my fondest memories was when my family and I had first moved into our home in Auburn. It became my beacon of light, where I had my very own room to play school with my sisters. I had an easel, desks for them to sit at, notebooks to grade papers, the works.

It truly fostered my dreams, to feel important and smart, to be seen in a way that I could be proud of myself for. I became encompassed in the idea that one day, I too could be a remarkable author who allowed young girls like me to escape into a world of their choosing, with little to no consequence.

After my mother and her ex-husband split up, we fell into financial hardship. Not the normal kind of hardships, but the really nitty-gritty not having a bed to sleep on, going to foodbanks twice a week so we could eat kind of hardships.

After a while, I became academically discouraged. Its easy for you to lose yourself when youre told over and over again Im not sure why you care so much, or Why bother? With every positive step I took, I felt I was dragged another five steps back.

Because of this, I truly lost track of what I wanted in life. Being so focused on my home life, I felt I didnt have room for homework or general studies. My day-to-day life just blurred together, and before I knew it, I was dropping out.

I tried for years to rekindle the flame of my inquisitive spirit. I stayed late after school to get homework done, I did extra credit projects to make up for the ones I had missed out on earlier in the year, and I regularly attended the Boys and Girls Club in Auburn, which had a study group that I was supposed to be involved in. Instead, I used it as a safe place to be with my friends.

For a long time I carried a sense of sadness around with me. I put myself in a little box labeled never to graduate, and convinced myself thats where I would end up staying. Just a girl working a 9-to-5, making sure her babies are fed.

Surely though, miraculous things happen in this world. Roses do bloom from concrete, just as I did when I joined the Wayfinder Schools Passages program. Its like a fog simply lifted from my vision one day, and I realized this is not who I want to be anymore. I can do this. For me and for my boys.

After years of hard work and self criticism, on June 8, 2022, my jagged path to a cap and gown is coming to an end. Finally, I will be making a speech on stage in front of my loved ones, holding a diploma, and wearing a smile.

Not only have I learned so much about academics and the world itself in this program, but I have absolutely found myself again. Im rooting for myself to keep going, and pursue the dreams I never thought possible, even though I didnt take the traditional route of education. You can, too.

Brianna Robinson dropped out of Lewiston High School her sophomore year. After graduating from Wayfinder Schools this June, she plans to study forensic science at Central Maine Community College in Auburn.

Invalid username/password.

Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.

Previous

Next

Go here to see the original:

'My jagged path to cap and gown': Reflections from a 23-year-old expectant high school graduate - Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel

In the short amount of time Ive written for Above the Law, Ive gotten a couple of emails, occasionally sprinkled with the word libtard, that bemoan the Leviathan power wielded solely by left-wing media and Gen Zers with neopronouns: cancel culture. But that accusation has always struck me as odd, given that the first thing that comes to my mind is some dude bringing up Grimace to shut down conversations involving accountability when he gets caught doing a prejudice in public.

For the record, I do occasionally read right-wing media outlets just for a bit of balance and the things you can get canceled for on that side boggle my mind.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is basically the next Supreme Court Justice. You know it, I know it, hell, Socrates probably does too. But nothing, and I mean nothing, is gonna prevent these snowflakes from looking up Hail Mary dirt to keep Justice Jackson from becoming a thing:

As Breitbart News previously reported, Jackson has made a note in her opinions to employ the term noncitizen or undocumented non-citizens rather than the terms alien or illegal aliens that are regularly used in court and in federal statutes. SOURCE

American citizens who oppose judges abusing their power to assist illegal immigrant invaders and hardened criminals are encouraged to contact their US Senators, especially Susan Collins (R-ME), to oppose the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The libs have been dragged through the mud for bringing up Booze McGees sexual conduct at his confirmation and Amy Coney Barretts lack of judicial experience at hers, but could you imagine the backlash if one of the arguments in the final hours before their confirmation was that they opted to use a way of referring to people that didnt spring to mind Marvin the Martian? That level of gall and audacity is a right-wing affair through and through.

Have you ever really sat back and thought about what the political and interpersonal strategies of canceling would look like? Libertarianism is cancel cultures ethos raised to an aesthetic ideal. No really, what are the myriad contemporary treatises on the virtues of Negative Liberty other than extended rants on policing who can or cant do what and how cool armed revolution is when you dont get your way? Those arent the words they use, its something more along these lines:

Any act directed against a person, apart from the cases and without the forms determined by law, is arbitrary and tyrannical; if attempt is made to execute such act by force, the person who is the object thereof has the right to resist it by force.

But lets be clear, this lofty language gets applied to any and everything they dont like: vaccine mandates, helmet laws, seat belt requirements, whatever its like a defiant toddler read a bit of Ayn Rand and was let loose upon the world.

In the spirit of balance, the next time a crowd member or two doesnt sit idly by at a Yale talk where some dude defends state-sanctioned murder on the basis of gender or something, try not to make lefties the face of canceling? I mean its not like were the ones burning books or anything.

Disqualified! Bidens Supreme Court Nominee Helps Illegal Alien Dealer [ Americansforlegalimmigration]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord in the Facebook groupLaw School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim,a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email atcwilliams@abovethelaw.comand by tweet at@WritesForRent.

More here:

Don't Believe The Hype: The Left Wish They Ran Cancel Culture Like This - Above the Law

GB News backer John Malone, who is the largest landowner in the US, is in the running to buy Channel 4.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has said that the privatisation of Channel 4 would be bad for journalism. The channel, which was founded in 1982 to make content for under-served communities, could be sold for around 1 bn to the right wing US telecoms tycoon John Malone, one of the backers of GB News.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said in a tweet that government ownership is holding Channel 4 back from competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon.

In 2015, when the Tories first started looking at privatising Channel 4, Politico reported that The buzz among TV executives in London is that Discovery, the pay-TV group part-owned by billionaire John Malone, is interested in buying Channel 4 if the government decides to privatize. In 2014 Discovery tried to buy Channel 5, but lost out to its rival Viacom.

Malone is the largest shareholder and sits on the board of Discovery, a company which has been looking to expand its UK assets for a number of years. In 2017 the Guardian reported that Discovery has eyed numerous assets in the UK, including expressing interest to the government in buying Channel 4 when it was being considered for a 1bn privatisation.

Malone is yet another right wing libertarian tycoon, in a similar mould to Charles Koch, the oil baron who has funnelled millions of dollars into the supporting right wing think tanks like the Institute for Humane Studies, the Ayn Rand Institute, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute.

Malone has also sat on the board of directors at the Cato Institute, and donated $250,000 to Donald Trumps inauguration in 2017. He owns Liberty Media, which has investments in TV, Formula One and Baseball, and is also the largest private landowner in the US, with 2.2 million acres. At one time Malone also owned a sizeable stake in Rupert Murdochs News Corporation.

His empire also includes parts of ITV (hes the biggest shareholder), GB News, Eurosport, and Virgin Media, among TV and broadband operations in 30 territories, mostly in Europe. At 80 years old, Malone is a decade younger than Rupert Murdoch, who has been slowly relinquishing control of his companies to his sons.

Malones company Discovery is poised to take control of WarnerMedia, which owns CNN, later this year. Malone has said that he wants CNN to become more politically centrist. Malone seems to be on a spree of acquisitions in the past few years, and has also been floated as a potential buyer for Channel 4 by OpenDemocracy.

The New Yorker has said that the merger between Discovery and WarnerMedia is an entry into the streaming market for Malone, who is aiming to compete with Netflix and Amazon. This accords with Nadine Dorries suggesting that she wants to see Channel 4 competing with the established streaming services.

However, Channel 4 was originally established to serve under-represented groups, and support the UKs film and television industries with subsidiary companies like Film 4. Taking away its public service remit would mean that Channel 4 would be less likely to champion things like the Paralympics, its coverage of which has helped to change attitudes towards disability in the UK.

Competing with streaming services like Netflix would be a totally different kind of market competition, which could see the channel become more populist in its output.

In 2014, The Independent reported that David Abraham, the Chief Executive of Channel 4, warned of the risk that British television could wither under the dominant influence of American media moguls including Rupert Murdoch and Virgin media owner John Malone.

Abraham said Malone was nicknamed Darth Vader by Al Gore, currently holds a net debt of $41bn and famously hates to pay tax.

The sale of British creative industries to big US tycoons isnt going to lead to a destruction of the industry overnight, but it could lead to a slow reduction in especially the more public service oriented aspects of Channel 4s output, as well as to a change in the output of its news channel, creating a more homogenised and US-influenced media landscape in the UK.

John Lubbock leads on the Right-Watch project at Left Foot Forward

As youre here, we have something to ask you. What we do here to deliver real news is more important than ever. But theres a problem: we need readers like you to chip in to help us survive. We deliver progressive, independent media, that challenges the rights hateful rhetoric. Together we can find the stories that get lost.

Were not bankrolled by billionaire donors, but rely on readers chipping in whatever they can afford to protect our independence. What we do isnt free, and we run on a shoestring. Can you help by chipping in as little as 1 a week to help us survive? Whatever you can donate, were so grateful - and we will ensure your money goes as far as possible to deliver hard-hitting news.

Go here to read the rest:

Who is John Malone, the 'Cable Cowboy' and GB News backer who could buy Channel 4? - Left Foot Forward

There are no new Mozart symphonies to hear or paintings by Mark Rothko to see. Part of the sadness that comes from learning that an artist is gone involves the absence of getting to experience something new from them. At least, thats how things usually go. But every once in a while, a previously-unseen work by a renowned creator is uncovered, or an incomplete posthumous work gets a technological boost and finds its ending.

When it comes to architects, some of the disciplines most revered figures left behind a host of unrealized projects. Consider the case of Frank Lloyd Wright, who died in 1959 at the age of 91. Wrights body of work has many highlights, but it also included a number of projects that were never actually built. And while some unbuilt structures go on to be built long after they were first designed, a significant group remain in a more nebulous state.

In the years since Wrights death, several museum shows (and some unlikelier venues) have invoked and displayed his unbuilt designs. Unpacking the Archive, an exhibit at MoMA on the 150th anniversary of Wrights birth, featured a number of designs for buildings that never were. Justin Davidsons 2009 New York article on a Guggenheim retrospective of Wrights work alludes to Wrights 1947 plan for a section of Pittsburgh.

Wrights civic-center project was an inspiring and slightly lunatic plana Guggenheim Museum on steroids, a vertical strip mall, a pleasure dome that would make a Dubai emir blush, Davidson writes. Still, it leaves you wondering about what might have been. The Scottish writer Grant Morrison also worked an unbuilt Wright design in this case, for a city on Ellis Island into a 2005 DC Comics crossover event.

All told, 660 of Wrights planned buildings exist only on paper. What happens, though, when decades-old plans converge with present-day technology? Sometimes, the results can offer a glimpse into buildings that never were and give us a sense of what were missing from the Wright archives.

Floor plan for the Devin house.

Angi

An initiative from Angi applied 3-D visualization technology to show what a trio of Wright-designed homes would look like had they been built. The projects include a lodge at Lake Tahoe and homes for Aline Devlin and Ayn Rand. And while the buildings do not exist in the physical world, these images do a good job of filling that void. Its worth mentioning that Angis project isnt the only one to fit this description; an ongoing effort from David Romero also seeks to evoke Wrights designs via modern technology.

The team were shocked to find out how many Frank Lloyd Wright creations never went as far as to be built, Kaitlyn Pacheco, Content Editor at Angi, told InsideHook. That was the moment that sparked inspiration to bring some of Frank Lloyd Wrights unbuilt homes to life for the first time.

This blend of old and now required some challenges. The most challenging part was designing the floor plans, Pacheco said. In some cases, the team working on this project had to engage in a deeper look at Wrights work to make a best guess about what might be the most ideal choice for a particular space.

The design team followed the plans and sketches as closely as possible, but some parts required additional research and an understanding of how existing Frank Lloyd Wright houses are built, Pacheco added. With regards to the interiors, the research team took inspiration from famous Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, like Taliesin West and Hollyhock House.

The exterior of the Devin house.

Angi

These three projects span Wrights career, with the design for the Devin home known as Mrs. David Devin House dating back to the 1890s, while the lodge and the space intended for Ayn Rand both emerged decades later in Wrights career, in the 1920s and 1940s, respectively.

Of those three buildings, one stood out as the most difficult to realize. Mrs. David Devin House was more challenging than the other two to digitally construct, because that particular design looked so different to many of the other houses weve seen from Frank Lloyd Wright, Pacheco said.

But that also had its benefits, ultimately endearing itself to the team engaged in the project. That one became our favorite because it stands out as different to the typical style that Frank Lloyd Wright is known for, Pacheco explained.

Working on the project also led the team to have a greater appreciation for architects full array of designs, whether built or not. It made the team realize that Frank Lloyd Wright has a truly impressive body of work and his status as one of the worlds most respected architects was definitely earned, said Pacheco. The team also began to feel a deeper appreciation for the versatility of Frank Lloyd Wrights work, from castle-like structures to modernist homes.

The unbuilt Lake Tahoe lodge.

Angi

Architects are predominantly remembered by the buildings that theyve left behind. But this project also serves as a vital reminder that never-built structures also offer their own insights.

By exploring the unbuilt projects of an architect, people can learn more about who that particular architect was and build a bigger picture of their career, Pacheco said. Sometimes its the dusty unused plans that really bring an artists vision to life and attract more fans long after the artist has passed away.

Could some of these designs end up manifesting in the physical world? It wouldnt be unheard of: in 2013, a house Wright designed in 1939 was built on the campus of Florida Southern University. Perhaps these particular renderings are just a few years away from being realized somewhere in the world.

This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.

Follow this link:

Frank Lloyd Wright Left 660 Unbuilt Designs And an Innovative New Project Brings Three of Those to Life - InsideHook

The smallest minority on earth is the individual, said Ayn Rand. Yet, today it seems that individuals are increasingly grouped into boxes based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or gender, which can weaken ones spirit of self-determination.

This is the topic of my LiberatED podcast conversation this week with David Morales, author of the outstanding new book, American Familia: A Memoir of Perseverance.

Morales spent his childhood in Puerto Rico and moved to Massachusetts when he was 11, where he was surrounded by the love of his family, but also widespread poverty and despair. Determined not to be a statistic and instead to seize the opportunity this country offers, Morales began embracing an attitude of self-reliance and self-improvement in his early teen years that would ultimately lead to his personal and professional success. His tenacity and grit enabled Morales to rise above his modest beginnings and achieve the American Dream.

This is the greatest country on the planet and you can do anything here. Do not let yourself be put in a box, said Morales during our podcast discussion.

This message of individual self-reliance and personal responsibility echoes throughout American Familia, which is told as a series of conversations between Morales and his two young sons. He writes: Our sons will also fully understand that the freedoms and opportunities they enjoy in America will not come from the color of their skin, or their ethnic heritage, but rather from their faith, work ethic, grit, skill, and their willingness to assume personal responsibility. Anthony and Alexander know well that character matters more than skin color or ethnicity. That they enjoy constitutional freedoms not available in any other country. That as Americans, they can live, pray, and learn freely, as well as pursue better for themselves with self-reliance, perseverance, and faith. Only in America can one go from living on the third floor of a triple-decker in a small, working-class urban city to a successful career and prosperous life in one generation. I believe in the promise of the United States of America.

Its an uplifting message about the power of the individual at a time when individualism is frequently disparaged in favor of collectivism. Morales reminds all of us that the only obstacle in front of you is the mirror, the person in the mirror. You.

You can listen to this inspiring episode of the LiberatED podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts, or visit liberatedpocast.com.

Read more:

American Familia: David Morales on Grit, Self-Reliance, and the American Dream | Kerry McDonald - Foundation for Economic Education

Rather as everybody supposedly thinks they have a book in them, I wonder if every novelist thinks their mind holds unbuilt architecture. I know I do. Not the technical stuff, obviously. The trigonometry and structural engineering. I mean the exciting freehand sketching bit at the start. The dreaming into existence of a building that didnt exist before.

Of course, conjuring fictional structures on the page is about a lot more than simply satisfying unrealised ambitions: buildings have done an awful lot of work in many a fiction, shaping and expressing characters lives, concretising themes, rooting narratives in time and place.

My debut novel, Peterdown, involved imagining many such buildings. In the universe of the novel, a new five-runway airport has been built in the Thames estuary, and work is about to start on a Japanese-style bullet trainline that will connect the airport up to the regions. My fictional town, Peterdown has been chosen as the site of the railways splitter station, but to make way for the station a building in the town will have to be knocked down. On the shortlist alongside a digital arts centre, and a dilapidated football stadium is the Larkspur Hill, a sprawling brutalist housing estate that I was free to dream into existence without having to worry about budgets, planning restrictions, or whether or not it might blow over in the wind.

Needless to say, the estate is in fine company when it comes to fictional buildings. Here are some of my favourites.

1. Howards End by EM ForsterOne may as well begin with Howards End, one of the most lovingly described buildings in all literature. It is old and little, and altogether delightful red brick theres a very big wych-elm leaning a little over the house, and standing on the boundary between garden and meadow. It is modelled consciously on Rooks Nest, the house in Hertfordshire where Forster lived as a child, and as Oliver Stallybrass says, it: carries as great a structural load of values as any house in fiction. Forster was unambiguous as to its significance to his vision: In these English farms, if anywhere, one might see life steadily and see it whole.

2. High-Rise by JG BallardForster was not alone in believing that buildings are places that can condition the characters of the people that live in them. Ballards unnamed high-rise, a 40-storey behemoth in glass and concrete, which stands near the river, a couple of miles west of the City of London, is a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. That these are gilded cages, owned and occupied by lawyers, doctors and academics, doesnt stop the residents descending into a state of orgiastic dog-barbecuing savagery: In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly free psychopathology.

3. The Cortlandt housing project in The Fountainhead by Ayn RandThe architect behind Ballards high-rise is given a rough old time, but Rand is much kinder to Howard Roark. His masterpiece is the Cortlandt housing project, which he designs as six buildings, 15 stories high, each made in the shape of an irregular star with arms extending from a central shaft The buildings, of poured concrete, were a complex modelling of simple structural features; there was no ornament; none was needed; the shapes had the beauty of sculpture. Unfortunately, when it is realised it has been traduced by a bunch of second-handers. Roark, being one of Rands typically ameliorative and compromising sorts, blows it up with a load of dynamite.

4. Mr Biswass house in A House for Mr Biswas by VS NaipaulNot all fictional buildings would require dynamite to knock them down. A single well-aimed kick would probably do the job for Mr Biswass house: two of the wooden pillars supporting the staircase landing were rotten, whittle away towards the bottom and green with damp at the lightest breeze the sloping corrugated iron sheets rose in the middle and gave snaps which were like metallic sighs. For all its faults, Biswass house is evidence that he is modern man, a self-authoring, property-owning individual, and it means he wont have lived without even attempting to lay claim to ones portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.

5. Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice by Jane AustenIts impossible, on a list such as this, to overlook Austen, with her keen eye for property and its central role in the British class system. Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey, so rich in gothic ornaments, might have worked, but Darcys pad Pemberley gets the nod: It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills Elizabeth was delighted. And who wouldnt be?

6. The Castle by Franz KafkaKafkas castle sits on a hill above a village: It was neither a stronghold nor a new mansion, but a rambling pile consisting of innumerable small buildings closely packed together and of one or two storeys. The protagonist Ks relationship to the castle might represent mans alienation in the face of totalising bureaucracies, or our never-satisfied yearning for religious salvation. Either way, its an exemplar of what David Foster Wallace identified as the central Kafka joke: That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. Which would make it an odd choice, youd have thought, as a source of inspiration for a real building, but the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill disagreed, using it as the template for an apartment block in 1968.

7. The Ministry of Love in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George OrwellYou get a better sense of the architecture of the Senate House-inspired Ministry of Truth an enormous pyramidical structure of glittering white concrete but it is The Ministry of Love, or Miniluv as its known in Newspeak, that stays with you longest. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-guns nests. The building has no windows and is home to the most famous room in all literature, located many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible to go. It is, of course, Room 101 and the thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.

8. 11 rue Simon-Crubellier in Life: A Users Manual by Georges PerecIt was hard to leave out the old tenement in Tom McCarthys splendid Remainder, but when it comes to buildings in experimental fiction it is difficult to look beyond the apartment block at 11 rue Simon-Crubellier. Using a staircase of questionable cleanliness, the reader roams around the building from the grand apartments of the lower floors with Louis XIII armchairs up to Smautf the butlers servants quarters in the eaves. The effect is akin to a cutaway illustration of a building where the front wall is removed allowing you to peer in at the outsized characters within.

9. The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis BorgesI have steered clear of fictional buildings in fantasy fiction as you could easily fill a Top 10 with them alone (Gormenghast, Bilbo Bagginss hole etc), but I couldnt not include Borges mind-bending Library of Babel. It is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The library is total and contains all possible books, including the autobiographies of the archangels and the treatise that Bede could have written (but did not). It can only be the handiwork of a god.

10. The Cathedral in The Spire by William GoldingIts a shame that Lord of the Flies swallows all the oxygen when it comes to William Golding because his other books deserve a lot more attention than they get, particularly his book about Neanderthals, The Inheritors, and, most of all, this visionary masterpiece. Almost all the action takes place in a fictional cathedral on to which a monomaniacal dean, Jocelin, is demanding that builders graft a new 400ft spire despite everyone warning him that the buildings foundations will never support such a weight. Throughout, the reader perceives the cathedral from the deans reverent perspective. It is, as he puts it, the bible in stone.

Read the original:

Top 10 buildings in fiction - The Guardian

from Massimo Gaggi

Peter Thiel, former mentor of Mark Zuckerberg (who left), stayed behind in 2016. Now back, and with many millions of dollars he supports 16 Trumpian nominations

Convinced that the political establishment and globalization have failed and that the time has come to dismantle federal institutions, Peter Thiel, the arch-conservative billionaire from Silicon Valley who was a great supporter of Donald Trump in 2016, but in 2020 remained behind the lines, disappointed by the way of governing of the republican president, who has returned: since last autumn he has organized public and private meetings in which he transfers his philosophy of disruption professed as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

Venture capitalist of technology, but with a historical and philosophical university education, Thiel, who in his famous essay Zero to One (three million copies sold) argues that you have to have blind faith in technology, give all the power to start-ups and innovative entrepreneurs and accept monopolies (according to him, competition in hi-tech a waste of resources), he is now devoting much of his time and his immense resources to politics.

The way it moves sheds light (a sinister light) on what is happening on the conservative front. Not only the return of Trump and the ousting of Republican MPs who refused to consider Bidens election illegitimate: Spending tens of millions of dollars to support four Senate and 12 House nominations, Thiel now the largest Republican campaign backer along with Citadels Ken Griffin doesnt just help the former president get his revenge. Above all, he tries to replace conservative parliamentarians who respect the mechanisms of political representation with ultr determined to undermine the democratic parliamentary system. A goal that transpires from the political speeches he held behind closed doors, but also from public statements such as: My thoughts, apocalyptic but also full of hope that we have finally reached a breaking point in our situation. While the disapproval of the choice of his colleagues, the entrepreneurs of the social networks, to begin (belatedly) to hinder the spread of blatant falsehoods and narratives made of dark conspiracies, leaks from his better the conspiracy theories of the QAnon and Pizzagate (Democratic leaders accused of being pedophiles raping children in the back room of a Washington pizza place, ed) than a Ministry of Truth.

Against any kind of regulationconvinced that technological progress must be pursued relentlessly and without worrying about possible costs and dangers for society, Thiel a ultra-libertarian follower of Ayn Rand who also flirts with alt-right groups and it is easy, for example, to argue that the South African apartheid regime (which he did not support) was the most economically efficient. After all, since 2009 Thiel says he no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.

In 2016, called into the transition team preparing the new government after Trumps election, Thiel proposed interventions to disrupt the administration and choices by far-right men who frightened even Steve Bannon, then Mephistophelic right arm of the new president. Today, abandoned to his fate Mark Zuckerberg of whom he was the mentor since 2005 (he left the board of Meta-Facebook, while remaining a shareholder of the company), the entrepreneur of the ultra-secret technologies of Palantir (which he supplied to the CIA and the Pentagon), maximum guardian of the so-called surveillance capitalism thanks to the control of penetrating technologies such as facial recognition, ready for a full immersion in politics.

His standard bearers are two of his former employees: the fund manager and author of American Elegy JD Vance candidate for a senatorial seat in Ohio and the former general manager of his companies (and co-author of Zero to One) Blake Masters aiming to be an Arizona senator. But Thiel is also betting on Texas junkyard senator Ted Cruz, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, and candidates trying to oust Republican MPs who voted in favor of Donald Trumps impeachment.

February 15, 2022 (change February 15, 2022 | 22:34)

REPRODUCTION RESERVED

Visit link:

Trump can now count on Thiel, the hi-tech billionaire who finances his revenge Corriere.it - D1SoftballNews.com

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer, Mike Mazza and Agustina Vergara Cid address questions about Objectivism submitted by the podcasts audience.

Among the topics covered:

Mentioned in the discussion are the Ayn Rand Lexicon entries on Happiness and Objectivity, the books 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand and Facets of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoffs book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and Rands own Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

This episode was recorded on February 9, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device onApple Podcasts,Google Podcasts,SpotifyorStitcher. Watch previous episodeshere.

If youd like to ask a question to be answered on a future episode, please send an email to[emailprotected]with Podcast question in the subject header.

Podcast audio:

If you value the ideas presented here, please become an ARI Member today.

See the rest here:

Objectivism Q&A with Ben Bayer and Mike Mazza - New Ideal