Charles T.

I find that the best source for keeping up on the war in general and for hearing war-related news that you won't hear from the "mainstream media" is the John Batchelor radio show, which airs on WMAL radio in New York from 10pm to 1am each weeknight. He regularly interviews folks like McInerney, and talks with John Loftus every night. Loftus is the fellow who brought those Saddam transcripts to light in the first place. Batchelor himself is a typically inconsistent man, a religious conservative, but he is very pro-U.S. and "gung-ho" where the war is concerned, and understands clearly who our enemies are. He constantly draws attention to stories around the world involving the violation of individual rights and liberties. Here's a URL for WMAL where you can listen to the show (but be warned, it's AM radio, and the commercial breaks often seem interminable): http://www.wmal.com/

It's the cars! They hate the cars! Stay away from the cars! (Adapted from "The Jerk", an old Steve Martin film.)

Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto (The Emporer Concerto) Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major Shostakovich's "Festive Overture" Copland's "Appalachian Spring" Bizet's First Symphony For those who are unaware, you can sign up on "Listen Rhapsody" and stream 25 free tracks per month, no obligations of any kind. A good way to sample music.

Uh . . . ten dollars? Plus shipping.

"Hombre", starring Paul Newman. Not a perfect film, but as close to seeing an O'ist hero on the screen as I've seen, other than "The Fountainhead".

I would nominate as a "great photo" the one of the lone man standing in front of, and bringing to a standstill, an entire column of Chinese tanks in Tienenmen Square back in 1989. Here's a link to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Squ...rotests_of_1989 CT

There's a thread along these lines here: Enjoyable Movies

SciFi channel is currently re-running the series, and according to IMDB, "Serenity" is the first of three films.

I would suggest John Batchelor of ABC News Radio, though his show is a news program, not what I think of as "talk-radio", meaning: he does not take calls from listeners (which is one reason I like it). Ideologically, he doesn't add up to much, just a fairly typical religious Republican, full of lots of inconsistencies, but he supports the war, presses the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia are the sources of much of the world's heartache (but doesn't forget about China, France, and Russia), and presents the news with seriousness. His is a great program for staying "up on things". He's on the air for four hours, the last of which is mostly repeated segments from earlier in the show. He talks to authors, experts, analysts, etc. Some of his frequent guests include Victor Davis Hanson, George Friedman, John Loftus, Yosef Bodansky, Michael Ledeen, Bill Whalen. Usually he has a segment each night dealing with recent astronomical happenings, and occasionally he has one about movies. He also throws in segments where he interviews authors about their books, which might be about anything at all. His site is here. You can listen live here, 9pm to 1am EST every weeknight.

Until the flying cars are ready, I'll take one of these: Airscooter

Uh, you know, Howard "Reardon" Roark. Yeah, that's it.

All of the examples you cite are textbook illustrations of taking something out of context. Read the books, keep the whole context in mind, and you will, hopefully, come to understand that none of your examples are accurate descriptions of what is depicted in the books. No, everyone on welfare deserves to NOT be on welfare, since no one deserves to be robbed in order to fund welfare. What happens to ex-welfare recipients after having that source of unjust funding removed is their responsibility. You omit almost the entire set of circumstances, including what he was guarding and why. He might not even have known what he was guarding, actually, and it wouldn't make any difference. That's exactly why Dagny gives him, quite benevolently, the benefit of the doubt, and offers him a chance to walk away unharmed. He chose poorly, and Dagny had the right to shoot him. Reardon made that private property possible, and did so on certain terms. Those terms were violated, so he revoked his permission. The motivations of the individual characters involved makes it clear why the sex scenes go the way they do. The scenes in the books were mainly tense, charged, first encounters. Were you to extrapolate the lives of the characters beyond what is shown in the books, I doubt that after having been married for five years Rearden would still be throwing Dominique around as he did the first time, or that she throws things at him and resists him so energetically each time. In other words, it's not reasonable to conclude or imply that for Rand, sex is supposed to be generally an "almost rape-like" experience. Context, context, context.

I recently read that that whole "right-handed/left brain, left-handed/right brain" thing is a myth, just one of those stories that got started, and stuck. Has anybody else heard that? I'm pretty sure I read it in Michael Shermer's book, "The Borderlands of Science", but I don't have a copy so I can't confirm that. CT

Hey, Richard Roark, is your avatar a picture of you or of Vin Diesel? CT

Well, it's displaying the scroll bars normally now all of a sudden, though I made no relevant changes (that I am aware of) to my computer or browser. Odd.