Every Friday, Swimming in the Nile will bring you five links which will serve to titillate, educate or inspire. I’m also going to try and provide some video links to spice things up a little. Hopefully this, and the other more boring links will be talking points, of which you and your friends, online and offline, can discuss. It will even give you an opportunity to bring up Ayn Rand. If you are so inclined. So, without further ado, I bring you the latest Friday Link Roundup
- Steven Colbert talks about the recent Ayn Rand sales explosion and its link to the current financial crisis. Personally, I liked Atlas Shrugged, and I think everyone (Colbert included) is missing the point. It is not a criticism of poor people, rather a scathing attack on communism. Anyways, have a watch and tell us your opinion.
- Eric Carle (literary rock star and author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar) talks about his life, work and personal motivations.
- Author releases an entire crime novel through Twitter.
- NYT looks at our “Magnificent Bastard Tongue”
Well, that’s all for this week. Have a good one!
- Jordan
Regarding the first Stephen Colbert link.
The first comment poster on the video sums it up pretty good:
“He’s simplifying the message to prove a point about the commentators who cling to Rand’s message and relate it to our current economic troubles. The fact of the matter is they’re unrelatable. Rand’s world is far different from ours. In Rand’s book, the citizens are faced with uncontrolled government oppression.”
“But then we have our current circumstances, where some of our biggest ‘wealth makers’ have been creating fake wealth through dishonest business practices. As a result, they’ve nearly destroyed our economy, and as a result that puts our government in a really difficult position, where they have to raise taxes in some way in order to get us back on a forward path. The real monstrosity here is how the “conservative right” can have the balls to compare Ayn Rand’s world with ours, to claim that our poor are nothing but moochers and whiners, when our reality is exactly the opposite.”
very good point, thought i’d share
Wow, that is an excellent comment. It is very sad indeed to see a good book hijacked and then championed like this. The conservative media hits a new low.