3/23/2006

Benjamin Franklin

Filed under: Books, General — josiah @ 12:35 am

I’m reading a biography of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin is totally awesome when it comes to how unselfish he is with certain ideas and inventions. Lightning rods and the Franklin stove could have made him plenty of money- but those were his free ideas. He didn’t shy away from printing press royalties he earned from others, but it enabled him to retire in his 30s(?). Hopefully I’ll be able to retire by then. Ha. I haven’t finished the Biography yet, but Franklin is talking to the French about financing something.. let’s see what Ben’s up to next…

2/23/2006

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged

Filed under: Books, General — josiah @ 8:43 pm

I was reading this book and need to finish it. I was roughly on page 721 where Dagny finds the hidden town in the desert. insert lame book review here when I’m done reading it

Updated: February 2006

Who is John Galt?

As much as I liked this book, having a abridged version (gasp) may make it more accessible to people who view a 1,000+ page book as too long. Was this book ultimately a criticism to socialism/Big Government? Or does this book just provide the reader a future world corrupted, but then fixed by the super capitalists?

It is ironic to read about government corruption fixed by capitalists. Maybe that is why this book was hard to follow. Corrupt government officials looting American’s money, totally independent of big business. But hardcore capitalists with inventions and business partners (read: cronies) save America through invention, reasoning, and hard work. Your head will spin, and you’ll say, “Today, the government AND Big Business capitalists loot America’s profits and resources.” Gosh that makes sense, they were fighting in the book- perhaps the equilibrium for America is for the government to become a corporation. It’s a good thing we haven’t gotten to that point in OUR Utopia, we just raised the minimum wage.. 9 years ago?

What also strikes me as odd about the general mood of the population in the book is they seem to be coherent of their surroundings. Maybe not at first, but when wake up they do seem to not be apathetic, and stop buying the propaganda that gets pushed to the papers. Ok, maybe their food has to run out and some people starve, but they riot and they burn government buildings. I guess this is one of the ways this book is romantic, Americans revolting against crooks and looters.

The reader is left with the impression the dystopia can be fixed by citizen revolts and reasonable thinking on the behalf of the capitalists. Capitalists in the book, arguable having excellent reasoning and deduction skills, destroy the government looters way of life through the use of logic. Ok, while I’ll admit that some capitalists have excellent inventions and some even have reasoning skills, where does it end? What happens when the logical capitalists become corrupted? Why didn’t Ayn write “Atlas Shrugged 2: The rise of the capitalist dictatorship” where Bill Gates becomes president. Oh, that’s right, Ayn thought her perfect characters were not corruptible and could never be dishonest.

Review: Romantic novel about capitalists. The romance is strictly business. Err, about business. Ok, it is a love story about business types saving the world. But there is very little love in the book, mostly business. Got it?

5/30/2005

Book review: 1984

Filed under: Books, General — josiah @ 12:36 am

Goerge Orwell, 1984. This is an awesome book, it is surprisingly relevent to today’s society. There is no copyright, you may just read it from the online link. Here is a cool quote from Bush (during a Roveless ad-lib section of cheerleading) which dovetails with theme of the book:
(Definition of Propaganda)
President Participates in Social Security Conversation in New York, Greece Athena Middle and High School, Greece, New York, May 24th 2005 (Whitehouse link)

I’ll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)

1/17/2005

Anthem – Ayn Rand

Filed under: Books — josiah @ 9:43 pm

Anthem has a great content-to-length ratio. It also is remarkably spot on with the commentary on today’s society (written in the 40’s?). Classify under 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451.

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