Comments on: For the Love of Dear Old Fountainhead U.

By: totallyanon

totallyanon — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:36:56 +0000

i haven’t read all her stuff, but i read fountainhead and enjoyed it. i thought howard roark was a stud. perhaps fountainhead alone doesn’t fully illustrate all aspects of her philosophy, but i enjoyed the philosophical aspect of the book. the fact that keating was ‘popular’, but roark was ‘right’–i dig that aspect of it.

maybe rand’s philosophies aren’t implementable–i’d have to read more to intelligently answer that question. but i don’t think that her philosophy is “wrong” as james schmidt puts it.

By: bill

bill — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 08:04:28 +0000

“Simpsons did it.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/simpsons/episodeguide/season4/page3.shtml

By: james schmidt

james schmidt — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 02:41:07 +0000

Paul is right. Rand is wrong. Productivity has its place, but so does leisure and emotion. I’d be more for Rand if we lived in a world of equal opportunity. Until then, to freeze the status quo of the haves and the have nots, ultimately, is counterproductive because it is unsustainable in the realistic long run. Also, her books are rather boring and much too verbose. She’d have been more rational to write shorter novels which more people would be inclined to read, and potentially follow. However philosophilcally appealing might Rand’s vision be, it is completely impractical given the reality of human nature. People are not and will never be, as they “ought” to be. As such, Rand remains a sci-fi author, and no more. And by the way, totallyanon, this has nothing to do with with or right. It has to do with (the lack of) feasibility of fantastic ideas about human nature. THIS is why the North Carolina Board’s idea, is, well, idiotic.

By: Paul Gowder

Paul Gowder — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 16:11:29 +0000

totallyanon: It became fashionable to bash Ayn Rand when Ayn Rand wrote a pile of unreadable novels in order to express her nonsense, antisocial “philosophy.”

By: totallyanon

totallyanon — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 05:57:02 +0000

i’m sorry, when did it become fashionable to bash ayn rand? did i miss that transitional period,…or is concurring opinions just more idealogically left leaning than i thought?

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 23:03:10 +0000

Whatever you think of Rand, you have to check out the 1954 movie based on the Fountainhead…several architectural suggestions could follow, as well as a great camp viewing experience.

My favorite moment: when the hero (Roark?) proposes his bold new design for an office building (a glass box) and the old fuddy duddy committee of the establishment says, “That’s fine, Howard….but just add this greek colonnade to the front”….and deftly plops a half-Pantheon like structure in front of Roark’s model. That should definitely be the design of the student center.

By: Paul Tassin

Paul Tassin — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:18:11 +0000

I wonder if they plan to rely on gratuitous financial support from alumni …

By: Paul Gowder

Paul Gowder — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:51:58 +0000

Slogan: “[H]his ideal is death, his craving is to kill, his only satisfaction is to torture.”

Alternatively:

“[We] did not care to compete in terms of intelligence—[We] are now competing in terms of brutality.”

(Gotta love that John Galt nonsense.)

Mascot: A nestful of wasps.

Fight Song: Kill the Poor, by the Dead Kennedys. To wit:

Efficiency and progress is ours once more

Now that we have the Neutron bomb

It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done

Away with excess enemy

But no less value to property

No sense in war but perfect sense at home:

The sun beams down on a brand new day

No more welfare tax to pay

Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light

Jobless millions whisked away

At last we have more room to play

All systems go to kill the poor tonight

Gonna

Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor tonight

Behold the sparkle of champagne

The crime rate’s gone

Feel free again

O’ life’s a dream with you, Miss Lily White

Jane Fonda on the screen today

Convinced the liberals it’s okay

So let’s get dressed and dance away the night

While they:

Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor tonight

By: Jojo

Jojo — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 02:07:25 +0000

Mascot: Alan Greenspan.

Motto: “A predictable book is a great book.”

Fight Song: The music of “Ride of the Valkyries” with the lyrics of “We Are The Champions.”

By: Miriam Cherry

Miriam Cherry — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 01:33:38 +0000

Mascot: Lone wolf.

By: Belle Lettre

Belle Lettre — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 01:04:07 +0000

Fight Song: “Shrug, Atlas, Shrug!”

Mascot: John Galt, or a guy wearing a t-shirt with a big question mark on it.

Favored half-time show: John Galt and co-mascot Roark beating up FDR and LBJ dummies.

By: Miriam Cherry

Miriam Cherry — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:33:55 +0000

The fight song would be an “Anthem.”

By: jw

jw — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:01:44 +0000

Given that this appears to be a proposal for a state-sponsored school, the only fitting mascot would be a parasite, no?

By: Eh Nonymous

Eh Nonymous — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:58:19 +0000

Ayn Rand U: Devil take the hindmost.

Graduate from Ayn Rand: Never contribute anything to society for philanthropic reasons again.

ARU: Where “public service” is considered an oxymoron.

ARU: No, we don’t accept married students with kids.

Fight song? Anything by Rush, see The Spirit of Rand

In the 1988 book Rush Visions: the Official Biography, author Bill Banasiewicz notes that Peart and Lee bonded over Objectivist theory, turning the band from a fist-pumping precursor to Loverboy into the prog eggheads we know today. For its 1976 album 2112, dedicated to “the genius of Ayn Rand,” the band found an unlikely commercial breakthrough thanks to the 20-minute title track, a meandering, rocking, Lee-screeching novel about a man who gets smacked down by high priests after his discovery of a guitar threatens to undo a (presumably falsely) utopian society.

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand wrote that man has his “own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” Speaking of productive, Rush spent about the first 20 years of its career in a constant album-tour-album cycle. And speaking of reason, its songs were more likely likely to be about trees as an allegory for political and personal interaction (”The Trees,” from 1978’s Hemispheres) or about two-lanes wide airguns blasting at someone driving a sports car after vehicles have been banned (”Red Barchetta,” from 1981’s Moving Pictures) than about finding some hot tail after the gig.

Rush has the distinction of being the only rock group cited in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies—its Fall 2002 publication of “Rand, Rush and Rock” was then followed with a Rush-dedicated symposium, detailed in its Fall 2003 issue, on such topics as “Rand, Rush, and De-Totalizing the Utopianism of Progressive Rock.”