Last Stop on the Comet

Well, I finished the book. (Actually, I finished it a while ago.) My thoughts? The story is good - so good, in fact, that I still like it after slogging my way through the entire book. The biggest problem? Objectivism! Ayn, we all pretty much had that philosophical shit down by page 500. Did you slack off on it and pick up the story instead? Oh no, you piled it on thicker. I won't even go into the multitude of reasons Objectivism would never work, but hey; in a perfect world, right? Also, your heroes need to lighten up every once in a while. The good guys are always dour and serious; they need to loosen up and have fun. Yeesh.

Atlas Shrugged in Three Stanzas

Oval oval oval push pull push pull…
Words unroll from our fingers.
A splash of leaves through the windowpanes,
A smell of tar from the streets:
Apple, arrival, the railroad, shoe.

The words, like bees in a sweet ink, cluster and drone,
Indifferent, indelible,
A hum and a hum:
Back stairsteps to God, ropes to the glass eye:
Vineyard, informer, the chair, the throne.

Mojo and numberless, breaths
From the wet mountains and green mouths; rustlings,
Sure sleights of hand,
The news that arrives from nowhere:
Angel, omega, silence, silence…

-Charles Wright, 1945

(via Making Light)

Question Three

Are we living under the umbrella of a State Science Institute that's headed by the media? See this. The "give equal time to refutation of pretty-much-accepted theories" smacks of the "let the little guys produce as much steel" idea.

Question Two

Is Bill Gates the Hank Rearden of today? He's got, arguably, the industry stranglehold (definitely minus the sexiness).

Question One

What would Ayn have thought of open source stylings? What if the procedure of making Rearden Metal had been released Creative Commons?

Discuss.

The Untrained Eye

On the way home from the movie tonight, I saw: A train, stopped (dead in its tracks!) not 30 feet from a railroad crossing. The caboose of a train, parked close to a crossing, a single red light blinking on it (Rudolph in reverse). And, a street called Copper Avenue. Big images, brought together in a trijunction of omens.

Objective Fists

Welcome to Ayn Random, a blog for the systematic discussion of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged!