Ayn Rand's ex-"partner" still alive and opining!

I can't believe it -- a relic from the very foundation period of Randian economics is still alive, and he has offered some comments about the new movie based on her epic novel Atlas Shrugged.

Nathaniel Branden (born Nathan Blumenthal in 1930) was many things to and with Ayn Rand -- including her co-revolutionary in busting up eternal standards in the morality of sex. He'll never be my greatest hero, and God knows there are many 81-year-olds around, but Rand's thought and legacy are essentially un-PC so it's exciting in a way to know the #2 person in the original movement is still out there and being usefully heard from.

Branden's Wikipedia page is loathsome so let's jump right to the main link:

Nathaniel Branden on the Atlas Shrugged Movie and His Own Life's Legacy as Ayn Rand's Primary Exponent
http://dailybell.ch/2238/Anthony-Wile-with-Nathaniel-Branden-on-the-Atlas-Shrugged-Movie-and-His-Own-Lifes-Legacy-as-Ayn-Rands-Primary-Exponent.html

.................Here's something bizarre I just watched on a borrowed TV. I don't believe in reincarnation -- such phenomena are, IMHO, demonic manifestations or in many cases fraud -- so who knows what's really going on here:

http://www.findadeath.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30133
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-uneXplained/162566533804805?sk=info

One day in the middle of a small rural town in Oklahoma, a five year old boy begins telling his mother extensive details about his 1930's life in Hollywood. He was rich. He had a big house with a swimming pool. Rita Hayworth made him "icy drinks". The mother checks out a couple of Hollywood library books. Then on a random page with a black and white film still that had no captions, the boy points to a man in a hat and screams, "That's me! You found me mommy! That's me, and that's George!" The man in the hat was a mysterious actor and his friend "George" later turned out to be George Raft in Paramount's 1932 film "Night After Night". This is the amazing true story of a young family's emotional journey to unravel and understand their son's previous life identity. With by far the most unbelievable and haunting American child reincarnation case to ever unfold in front of Bio's cameras, this is truly "The uneXplained".

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One day in the middle of a small rural town in Oklahoma, a five year old boy begins telling his mother extensive details about his 1930's life in Hollywood. He was rich. He had a big house with a swimming pool. Rita Hayworth made him "icy drinks". The mother checks out a couple of Hollywood library books. Then on a random page with a black and white film still that had no captions, the boy points to a man in a hat and screams, "That's me! You found me mommy! That's me, and that's George!" The... (read more)

................Also on the tube tonight were two Sixty Minutes reports of keen interest: the perils of "beneficial" re-use of coal burning residue, and the oil sands in Canada as a new hope for ameriKa's oil needs. I had no idea there was such a problem with the former (one power company laid out a swath of the highly toxic stuff in Virginia and built a golf course on top of it) and was in many ways pleasantly stunned about the latter subject.

Last I seem to have heard, the oil sands were a distant dream in terms of fuel supply. Nobody knew how to extract the crude affordably and the environmental impact was greatly feared. But suddenly it's operating at full tilt, its viability a given. The largest trucks in the world are hauling 10,000 pounds of it at a time. Billions and billions of dollars in investment and development are being poured into the project, with the nearest town, population 70,000, experiencing a sort of black gold rush. Scientists assert that there are multiple trillions of barrels' worth of crude to be had, a supply that dwarfs our main current supplier, Saudi Arabia.

T. Boone Pickens was interviewed repeatedly in the segment agreeing it's the wave of the future. A non-wacko environmentalist warned of a terrible impact on the biosphere. All this will only encourage ameriKa to go on consuming oil as if there's no tomorrow, leading to more pollution. She disputed an entrepreneur's claim that the entire area being mined will be reforested by the companies involved and fully back to nature in 20 years.

If she's wrong about that part, this could be very exciting news indeed. The comic relief is that several times in the show, the Sixty Minutes cast indicated they still believe anthropogenic global warning!

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