This month, I’ve been busy with new projects and wrapping up existing works. I finished my studies at the Objectivist Academic Center (OAC) and gave a couple of workshops on media and marketing at CareerCamp. Earlier in the month, I attended the annual Objectivist Conference (OCON) in San Diego, where I saw author and professor C. Bradley Thompson, who teaches political science at Clemson University, give a scathing account of today’s government-controlled education. Dr. Thompson is executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and his general lecture received a well-deserved standing ovation. Given today’s rotten “public education” system, as evidenced by the cesspool Penn State and countless other facts, scandals and millions of functionally illiterate graduates, and his case for capitalism and call to action, I was glad to be first on my feet. He also gave a moving tribute to our mutual friend, the late John Lewis, during The Ayn Rand Institute’s memorial service at OCON, which was sorrowful and inspiring. Dr. Lewis granted an interview to me before he died and this month I submitted the interview for consideration of the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize for Journalism (the interview is posted here). My projects are variously on pause or moving ahead surely and steadily, as I learned from John Lewis, who recommended me to the OAC, nothing if not to press on in making progress step by step, with the committment – in the everlasting words of Winston Churchill evoked at the memorial by Trevor Conn, Dr. Lewis’s stepson – to never surrender. I’ll try to post a review of this weekend’s movie The Dark Knight Rises – the most anticipated motion picture this year – in the coming weeks. In the meantime, read my 2005 interview with its creator (and, contrary to what the president says, a creator creates his own work and deserves the credit) Christopher Nolan (we talked about his first caped crusader series installment, Batman Begins) here.
