SEPTEMBER 28, 2012

Song of the Day: Empire State of Mind features the words and music of Alexander Shuckburgh, Angela Hunte and Jane't "Jnay" Sewell-Ulepic, Bert Keyes and Sylvia Robinson (a sample from their "Love on a Two-Way Street"), Alicia Keys and Shawn Corey Carter, otherwise known as Jay-Z, both of whom perform on the recording. Tonight, Jay-Z opens up eight concert dates at Brooklyn's new entertainment arena: the Barclays Center, where Jay-Z's basketball team, the newly named Brooklyn Nets, will open their season in October. Professional sports will return to Brooklyn for the first time since Dem Bums left. This is a paean to the city where Jay-Z was born. And any song with a shout out to Sinatra gets Two Thumbs Up in my book, any day. Tonight, Brooklyn gives the Empire State another jewel in its crown. Check out the official video.

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Song of the Day: Bad, words and music by Michael Jackson, is the title track to MJ's "Bad" album, which, on this date twenty-five years ago, debuted atop the Billboard 200 album chart. The video, directed by Martin Scorsese, features choreography that is a paean to the great musical, "West Side Story." The 25th aniversary of the album's release (officially, on 31 August 1987) is being commemorated this year by "Bad 25", a special remix 3-CD re-release package, and a Spike Lee-directed documentary, which premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. The original music video was filmed at the Brooklyn subway station at Hoyt-Schermerhorn. And the track includes a hot solo by one of my all-time favorite jazz organ players, Jimmy Smith. Check out the full music video version, the short-form music video, the Kids version, the 12" remix, the David Guetta remix, the Electro Mix by Ballistic, the new Afrojack remix, featuring Pitbull and DJ Buddha, and cover versions by country artist Ray Stevens, "Weird Al" Yankovic (a "Fat" parody), the Chipmunks, Sammy Davis, Jr., and the cast from "Glee".

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

Song of the Day: Smash ("Let Me Be Your Star"), words and music by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, is the central melodic motif of the NBC show, "Smash." I truly enjoyed Season One (its songs and soundtrack too) and look forward to the next season. This song was heard throughout the series, but was performed in a smashing duet in the pilot episode by Megan Hilty (as character Ivy Lynn) and Katharine McPhee (as character Karen Cartwright). Check out the single from the "Smash" cast album and a version performed by Megan Hilty on New Year's Eve with Carson Daly. The show has already received a Creative Arts Emmy Award for Best Choreography (beating another of my favorite shows: "So You Think You Can Dance") and this song is nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Music and Lyrics. Tonight is a night full of stars on the Primetime Emmy Awards.

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

Song of the Day: Smash ("Touch Me"), words and music by Ryan Tedder and Brent Kutzle (of OneRepublic), Bonnie McKee and Noel Zancanella, graced "The Coup," one of the episodes from NBC's fine musical series, "Smash." This song, sung by "American Idol" alumnus Katharine McPhee, is a really good dance track. Check out the full song, the Jody Den Broeder Radio Edit, Jump Smokers Extended Mix, and the version seen on the show.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

Song of the Day: National Geographic ("Fanfare") [YouTube clip at that link], composed by the immortal Elmer Bernstein, is one of those themes that is heard a few times before getting eternally embedded in one's brain. Da da da daaaaaaaaaaaaa da... It was once voted by Fast Company Magazine [YouTube clip at that link] as one of the most addictive sounds in all the world. Check out the abbreviated version of memory [YouTube link] that opened every "National Geographic" special of my youth (and I still get the Society's magazine).

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

Song of the Day: The 4:30 Movie ("Moving Pictures") [YouTube clip at that link], composed by Joe Raposo, opened up one of the most memorable New York tri-state area film shows of the 1960s and 1970s, when local networks actually showed movies instead of talk shows during the day. I remember it when it was a 90-minute show on WABC-TV, and it would typically devote a whole week to the airing of classic genres or actors, or classic films, such as "Ben-Hur." The theme music still brings a big smile to my face.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

Song of the Day: Chiller Theatre ("Horror Upon Horror") [YouTube clip at that link], composed by Wilfred Josephs, was the opening theme music for the Saturday night WPIX-TV classic horror movie show. The theme made the hair of many New York tri-state area kids of the 1960s stand on end (including this one). The show was hosted early on by the great Zacherley before switching to the film montage of memory, with clips from such films as "Plan 9 from Outer Space," "The Cyclops," and "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman." There were other memorable "Chiller Theatre" openings, but this one was the real ... chiller.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2012

Song of the Day: The World at War ("Main Theme") [YouTube clip at that link], composed by Carl Davis, opened every episode of one of my favorite TV documentary film series. The series was narrated by the great Laurence Olivier, and this music captures the sadness and struggle of war. In honor of the upcoming Emmy Awards, I begin my mini-tribute to music on television.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2012

The other day, I announced a major collaborative project between The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Foundation and Pennsylvania State University Press. As part of that project, all of the journal's back issues will be accessible and fully searchable with state-of-the-art tools for those who have an online subscription.

Today, we have a special treat for long-time readers of the journal. For a while now, we have wanted to update the site to carry a very special video file that accompanied one of our issues from 2006. One of our most provocative essays was authored by Steven H. Shmurak for Volume 8, Number 1 (Issue #15), which was published in 2006.

Those who had JARS subscriptions received a hard copy of the journal with a very special CD-ROM included inside the back cover. As we indicate on the JARS "Table of Contents" featuring Shmurak's essay, "De-Mystifying Emotion: Introducing the Affect Theory of Silvan Tomkins to Objectivists" (now available as a PDF here):

This article features a special CD-ROM presentation, which is now available for download from the JARS archives. The media provides the raw data upon which the article is based. You can safely look at the Read Me Txt File, and the presentation of "The 9 Innate Affects -- S. S. Tomkins" in two formats: PC or Mac [watch or right-click and "save as" to your local computer]. Our special thanks to the author for providing this presentation for our archives, and for providing our readers with a multimedia experience. Readers who wish to have the original CD-ROM disc that accompanied this essay [it was in a pocket glued to the inside back cover of Issue #15] can purchase it with this issue for the same price of any hard copy back issue. See our subscription page.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2012

This year, as part of my annual series, "Remembering the World Trade Center," I created a pictorial of my visit to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. That pictorial can be found here.

And here is an index of all of the pieces I've written for this series:

2001: As It Happened . . .
2002: New York, New York
2003: Remembering the World Trade Center: A Tribute
2004: My Friend Ray
2005: Patrick Burke, Educator
2006: Cousin Scott
2007: Charlie: To Build and Rebuild
2008: Eddie Mecner, Firefighter
2009: Lenny: Losses and Loves
2010: Tim Drinan, Student
2011: Ten Years Later
2012: A Memorial for the Ages: A Pictorial

Never Forget.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2012

The new issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies will be on its way to subscribers within the next couple of weeks. And with it comes an announcement of a major breakthrough for the journal and for Rand scholarship as well.

First, let's take a look at the new issue, which is coming out in the thick of the U.S. Presidential campaign, and which includes a few essays that try to make sense of contemporary politics:

Preface - The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies: The Best is Yet to Come - Chris Matthew Sciabarra

The Logic of Liberty: Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and the Logical Structure of the Political Spectrum - Roger E. Bissell

Ayn Rand Shrugged: The Gap Between Ethical Egoism and Global Capitalism - Andre Santos Campos

A Defense of Rothbardian Ethics via a Mediation of Hoppe and Rand - Cade Share

Ayn Rand and Deducing �Ought� from �Is� - Lachlan Doughney

The Childs-Peikoff Hypothesis - Dennis C. Hardin

The JARS website features both abstracts and contributor biographies.

In keeping with our current policy of archiving back issues, fully accessible and free of charge to all those who visit our website, today marks the online debut of Volume 11, Number 1 (PDFs for each of the essays in that issue can be found at that link). That issue, dedicated to the memory of one of our founding Advisory Board members, philosopher John Hospers, features provocative essays by James Montmarquet, Samuel Bostaph, Robert Hartford, Walter Block, Robert L. Campbell, and Fred Seddon.

Our online publication of any issue lags behind the current issue by a full volume (about a year). Which means that those who wish to read the new JARS need to subscribe today!

The new issue includes a Preface, written by me, announcing a major breakthrough for the journal: a trailblazing partnership with Pennsylvania State University Press that will greatly expand the journal's scholarly reach. Here is what I have to say in the Preface (a PDF link to the full Preface can be found here):

In the Fall of 1999, the first issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (JARS) was published, beginning a biannual scholarly discussion of Ayn Rand: her work, her life, her impact, and her legacy. Since then, we have published over 250 essays, written by over 130 authors, working across many disciplines and specialties. Our essays have covered subjects in aesthetics, anthropology, biography, business ethics, computer science, cultural studies, economics, epistemology, ethics, feminist studies, history, intellectual history, law, literary craft, literature, metaphysics, methodology, ontology, pedagogy, philosophical biology, philosophical psychology, general philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, political economy, political philosophy, political theory, psychology, and sociology. We have featured symposia on Rand�s ethics and on Rand�s aesthetics, on Nietzsche and Rand, on Rand and Progressive Rock, on Rand�s literary and cultural impact and on �Rand Among the Austrians� (that is, the Austrian school of economics, which includes such thinkers as Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, etc.). Our content is now abstracted and indexed, in whole or in part, by nearly two dozen abstracting and indexing services, expanding our scholarly and institutional visibility.

Moreover, the journal has built a unique scholarly forum that welcomes those working from remarkably diverse interpretive and critical perspectives. Just a cursory look through our back catalogue reveals essays by such writers as the late libertarian philosopher John Hospers, laissez-faire economist George Reisman, and market anarchist Sheldon Richman, on the one hand, and the writings of American literary critic Gene Bell-Villada, philosopher Bill Martin (a self-described Maoist), and radical leftist Slovenian philosopher Slavoj �i�ek, on the other hand [names linked to JARS essays].

This new issue of our periodical begins our twelfth year of publication with the announcement of a major breakthrough that has the potential to enhance the quality of this publication and increase its scholarly reach. It will also guarantee the long-term historical preservation of our entire catalogue of back issues for the benefit of future generations of scholars.

The JARS Foundation and the Pennsylvania State University Press (PSUP) have entered into a formal collaborative agreement, commencing with the publication in 2013 of Volume 13, Number 1 (Issue 25), covering five years�and beyond.

Our Editorial Board will continue to solicit new articles and attract new writers, working closely with authors and peer readers toward the publication of essays of the finest quality and capacity for intellectual provocation. PSUP will take over the business end of the journal, while the Editorial Board will focus exclusively on the intellectual side of our project. PSUP will manage all aspects of distribution and subscription fulfillment in both print and online journal editions. Our arrangement with PSUP will also provide a more systematic framework for quality control, which will structure our workflow for the submission, double-blind peer review, and tracking of articles as they make their way to publication. And once our editorial work is done, we will submit approved, completed essays to the PSUP production department, which will provide a second level of copyediting and the typesetting of all content.

PSUP will set all institutional and individual pricing, which includes print-only, online-only, or print-and-online subscriptions, inside and outside the United States. There will be options for article downloads on a newly developed website. Indeed, a robust online edition of the journal will have the added, indispensable features and services on which the scholarly community relies, including XML codes on all files, which will be used to produce printable PDFs, as well as PDFs and html files for the web, all fully searchable.

PSUP has partnered with Project Muse and with JSTOR (both its Current Scholarship Program and back issue archive), making possible the extensive digital dissemination of PSUP journals. JARS will be potentially available to thousands of new readers from private and public, domestic and international institutions, corporations, and agencies.

The most important aspect of our collaboration, however, is our plan for the preservation of the journal and its trailblazing content. PSUP participates in CrossRef and all of its journals are now archived at Stanford�s CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe). In essence, JARS, including all of its back issues dating from its 1999 inception, will be a part of the dark archive at Stanford that will preserve its content for the use of scholars and historians in perpetuity.

The good news for subscribers is that there will be only a modest rise in subscription rates. Our domestic rates have been the same since our very first issue in 1999, and JARS will remain affordable for all those whose support we have valued deeply.

We will always be profoundly indebted to those who made this journal possible, especially to the late Bill Bradford [PDF link], whose vision continues to inspire us. We know that our new partnership with PSUP will vastly increase our exposure in the international community of scholars, providing a means for preserving all of the contributions of our authors, and a context for the ever-growing electronic dissemination of our content.

Taking a page from the songbook of Ol' Blue Eyes, I know that, for The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, "The Best is Yet to Come."

Announcement also posted on the Liberty & Power Group Blog.