In the trailer for the new Atlas Shrugged movie, at about the 48 second mark, someone tells the steel magnate Hank Rearden that people think his only goal is to make money. “My only goal is to make money,” Readen cheekily replies.

It’s been over a decade and a half since I read Rand’s novel, [...]

Spectacular photo of Chicago from the International Space Station (HT: David Stendahl):

A few highlights:
– Charlie Rose’s interview with Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew. Charlie let Yew talk, which was good. Yew offered his insights into the current situation in North Africa & the Middle East as well as China & East Asia, India, and of course Singapore.
– Lunch with the FT: Roger Waters. The [...]

…I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
[...]

I had Real Time with Bill Maher on TV while doing some work overnight, and one of Bill’s guests was the actress Ellen Page (the pregnant girl in Juno; Kitty Pride in the X-Men, etc.). She was promoting a documentary about bees, and the gist of their discussion about it was that the bees were [...]

I had the pleasure of meeting Jesse Middleton, co-founder of GetMinders1 and WeWork Labs for dinner Tuesday night at The Meatball Shop. Over drinks during our ~1.5 hour wait for a table, Jesse brought up South by Southwest, which he attended. That reminded me of this memorable tweet of his from the conference:

Our conversation [...]

Reading Real Clear Politics a couple of weeks ago, I saw a link from its sister site, Real Clear Religion to the video below, of atheists Christopher Hitchens¹ and Sam Harris debating two rabbis about whether there is an afterlife. Shakespeare comes up in this literate and entertaining debate, along with Spinoza a couple of contemporary philosophers with whom I was unfamiliar.

One of the contemporary philosophers mentioned in this discussion (by Sam Harris, I think) had an interesting theory: that all of us actually exist within a computer, built by some future generation (the theory actually sounded semi-plausible as it was fleshed out in the clip). That reminded me of the digital afterlife proposed in Ron Moore’s recently canceled SyFy show, the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica. As with Moore’s previous series…