It's that time again, folks. Time to celebrate the birth of Sergei Rachmaninoff. I have my Steinway loaded with his sheet music and I'll be listening to him all month. Enjoy, Soloists.

Fred

All, or certainly most, Objectivists agree that Kant says we CREATE the phenomenal world. For the latest installment of this claim, see Peikoff’s THE DIM HYPOTHESIS, p.

"The aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have regarded with the commiseration their history inspires.

Francis I: Pope of the Poor
By Edward Hudgins

March 21, 2012 -- Francis I, the newly installed Pope, has called on Catholics to protect all humanity, “especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison.”

If the Pope really wants to see a world in which all people can prosper, he needs to understand that the route to that goal is not government redistribution of wealth or even private charity. It is free markets.

Atlas Shrugged Part III - It's Official

It's official - Atlas Shrugged Part III will begin shooting later this year with release scheduled for mid 2014.

From the press release:

[Also posted at pc.blogspot.com]

Don Watkins, a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center, has published a new article titled “To Protect the Defenseless, We Must Abolish the Minimum Wage.”

Press Release
Stephen Berry
Housing

Berry Welcomes Housing Affordability Working Group

Vanquishing Earth Hour Darkness
By Edward Hudgins

March 21, 2013 -- What a sorry spectacle! People in the world’s most developed countries turn off their brains and thus are guilt-tripped by environmentalists into turning off their lights for Earth Hour on Saturday. They visit upon themselves the curse of darkness that the poor in less developed countries pray will be lifted with an abundant supply of inexpensive electricity.

I suppose this has become a bit of a theme for me lately.

Livestream Event: Dr. Yaron Brook Debates for Capitalism at North Carolina State University!

We are writing to let you know of an upcoming free Livestreamed event, happening Wednesday, March 20!

Capitalism vs. the Mixed Economy: Which System Is Better?
A Debate
Dr. Yaron Brook vs. Dr. Karl Smith
Moderated by Dr. Andrew J. Taylor

Diana West writes:

Lawrence Krauss, another of the "new atheists" I wrote about the other day, experienced an example of the sort of sexual apartheid that deluded Westerners are prepared to go along with so as not to offend those of certain views:

Altho' most people don't realize it, the Pope and the Catholic Church are true philosophical powerhouses and world leaders.

CPAC, Social Conservatives: Wrong on Gays
By Edward Hudgins

March 11, 2013 -- In the wake of the Republicans' 2012 disaster at the polls, the civil war between the GOP’s various factions is in full swing. And the sex obsession of social conservatives, their opposition to conservative gays even being part of the movement, has disgusted and alienated a generation of new voters. If this brand of conservative ends up dominating the GOP and the movement, both will find themselves in the dustbin of history.

http://eagnews.org/wisconsin-e...

Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, and Don Watkins, a fellow at ARC, have published a new article titled “'Give Back' Is One of the World's Most Impoverishing Commands.”

Press Release
Stephen Berry
Housing

Len Brown Makes up Numbers to Defend the Impossible

A prominent Christian intellectual debates an associate of The Ayn Rand Institute on February 8th, 2013 at the University of Texas, USA:

Methven Limited, a designer, manufacturer and supplier of showerheads, faucets and hot water valves, is a publicly-listed company with a market capitalization of NZ$91,250,583.

Hugo Chávez: Dead Demagogue
By Edward Hudgins

March 8, 2013 -- The world is thankfully rid of Hugo Chávez, the president and strongman demagogue of Venezuela. But it is not rid of the problems he exploited—and often created—nor of the morally shameless individuals who pimped for him in the United States.

This is an excerpt from a speech of Theodore Roosevelt given in the guildhall of London in May 1910.

One of the "new Atheists", Victor Stenger, who is a retired research physicist and now full-time writer, is someone whom I follow quite a bit and I have read several of his books.

Rand Paul, one of the few Americans who stood his ground against an American dictator. The silence of the rest of America is utterly devastating.

"In an ultra-high vacuum chamber chilled to 10 degrees above absolute zero (10 Kelvin), Seol Kim and Ralf Kaiser of the Hawaiian team simulated an icy snowball in space including carbon dioxide, ammon

And Australia's and Europe's...

Press Release
Stephen Berry
Public Transport

Tram Service Savings to be Commended!

Two years ago in his blogpost "The Virtue of Selffulness" (http://www.solopassion.com/nod...), Lindsay Perigo advocated for Objectivists to abandon the fight to (re-)establish Ayn Rand's correct(ed) meanings for the terms 'Altruism' and 'Selfishness' and to instead direct one's efforts towards employing neologisms such as 'Sacrificism' and 'Selffulness'.

R.I.P. Doreen Kimura.

Once again Diana West gets to the heart of the matter.