Good Living

A concise introduction to Ayn Rand's morality of egoism, the heart of her novel Atlas Shrugged.

Decorated eggs, the Easter Bunny, pretty dresses, lavish meals, Peeps, chocolates, extravagance, joy—religious claims to the holiday notwithstanding, Easter is a celebration of spring, fertility, and fun. People of faith are free to celebrate the alleged resurrection of Jesus. But people of reason ignore that myth and celebrate the secular…

[caption id="attachment_92906" align="alignnone" width="720"] Image by Gage Skidmore[/caption] The night after Andrew Breitbart died, I watched an episode of Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld in which Gavin McInnes told a delightful story about Breitbart. In an earlier episode of Red Eye, Gutfeld and McInnes had been mocking the idea of Donald…

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 and died last fall. In his short life, he revolutionized the world of personal computing, digital animation, music distribution, and portable computing. Today I pay tribute to Jobs by writing these words on my 24-inch iMac running the state-of-the-art Lion operating system,…

Daniel Wahl reviews Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long, by David Rock.

Daniel Wahl reviews Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney.

Drs. Ellen Kenner and Ed Locke discuss their new book The Selfish Path to Romance: How to Love with Passion and Reason, covering ground from how altruism destroys relationships, to why people settle for less-than-ideal partners, to how to ask your lover to experiment sexually.

According to Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, using contraception is “not okay” because it is somehow “counter to how things are supposed to be”; sex, according to this would-be leader of the free world, should be “for purposes of procreation,” not “simply [for] pleasure.” (Thanks to blogger Ace of Spades…

“Facebook Inc. filed for an initial public offering [IPO] that could value the company at between $75 billion to $100 billion,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The scope of the company is extraordinary: It “had 483 million daily active users on average in December 2011.” People use Facebook because it…

The realm of romance, like that of economics, is governed by Say’s Law. Supply constitutes demand. What you make of yourself (supply) is what you have to trade (demand).