AYN RAND - A SENSE OF LIFE
is the first authorized film look at the life and work of the controversial Russian-born author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged." Narrated by Emmy Award-wining actress Sharon Gless, the documentary offers millions of fans the opportunity to relive the drama of Ayn Rand..s life and fiction: from her early childhood and escape from Soviet Russia to her struggle and triumph as an American writer whose book sales exceed 300,000 copies annually after five decades in print. Drawing from personal papers and public archives across two continents, the film combines fact, literary fiction and an intimate weave of interviews with Rand..s intellectual heir Leonard Peikoff, television journalist Mike Wallace, as well as rare photos, archival footage and an original film-noir scene from her 1934 play, "Ideal." Official Website
America Versus Americans
View more talks from philosopher Leonard Peikoff at The Ayn Rand Institute website (free registration required).
Yaron Brook is the President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute. This clip is taken from a talk entitled "Democracy vs. Victory: Why the 'Forward Strategy of Freedom' Had to Fail." This talk and many others can be viewed at The Ayn Rand Institute website (free registration required).
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The Science of Living Longer
In this third episode of the Charlie Rose Science Series, we examine the science of living longer with Paul Nurse of The Rockefeller University, Leonard Guarente of M.I.T., Cynthia Kenyon of UC San Francisco, Richard Weindruch of the Wisconsin National Primate Center, Robert Butler, President of the International Longevity Center, Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Sue Levkoff of Harvard Medical School.
Ending Aging
"Aubrey de Grey, British biogerontologist and founder of SENS, controversially claims to have created a roadmap to defeat biological aging. In this talk, he argues that aging - like other diseases - can be cured, and that humans can live for centuries, if only we approach the aging process as "an engineering problem."
DISCLAIMER: The presence of this video on my site does not necessarily imply my endorsement or positive estimate of the feasibility of every one of the specific technical proposals of the SENS program.
I have included this talk because de Grey's essential ideas--that aging can and should be CURED--are urgently needed in today's culture if any of us alive today are to benefit from the enormous potential of aging research.
Scientifically, it is now clear that aging is not the unalterable fate of a living animal, that it is a plastic, modifiable process with fully intelligible causes--and the rapid progress being made in understanding those causes is allowing us to intervene in the process. We have already extended the lifespan of rodents by 50%, roundworms by over
We know that the accumulation of unrepaired damage is not a biologically necessary law of nature, but is rather a byproduct of evolutionary constraints that have simply not allowed the right conditions for higher animals to develop sufficient repair mechanisms. It is entirely possible, in principle, to either effect that repair ourselves or to prevent the damage from occurring in the first place.
Ethically, it is of life or death importance to recognize the fact that human life extension is profoundly and unqualifiedly morally good, and radically extending the human lifespan will be the greatest achievement in the history of science. By the principle of the individual's inalienable right to life, individuals must be left free to pursue this research and eventually to make use of it to preserve their own lives and values.
Do You Want to Live Forever?
Intervention in the aging process to extend human life is both scientifically possible and morally good. I endorse completely this much of Aubrey de Grey's view. See my comments on the above video for elaboration.
Burt Rutan: Entrepreneurs are the future of space flight
"In this passionate talk, legendary spacecraft designer Burt Rutan lambastes the US government-funded space program for stagnating: "Houston, we have a problem. We're entering a second generation of no progress." He calls for entrepreneurs to lead the next wave of space exploration, funding new crafts, new (manned) missions, and entirely new approaches to space exploration."
"Burt Rutan is widely regarded as one of the world's most important industrial designers, and his prolific contributions to air- and spacecraft design have driven the industry forward for decades. His two companies, Rutan Aircraft Factory and Scaled Composites, have developed and flight-tested more new types of aircraft than the rest of the US industry combined. He has himself designed hundreds of aircraft, including the famous Voyager, which his brother piloted on a record-breaking nine-day nonstop flight around the world."
Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West - Abridged Version
This is a 12-minute ABRIDGED version of the multi-award winning documentary, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West - a riveting new documentary that exposes the threat of Radical Islam in a way never seen before.
This featurette was designed to give the viewer an overview of the scope of the film - and the threat of Radical Islam.
The film and filmmakers have been featured on major CNN, MSNBC, Fox TV and other top US radio & TV talkshows.
To view these interviews, as well as clips from the film, visit: www.ObsessionTheMovie.com.
Brainwashing 101
Brainwashing 101, directed by Evan Coyne Maloney and executive-produced by Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg, is a 46-minute documentary illustrating the political environments on three United States university campuses. The film examines the possible use of institutional mechanisms such as speech codes to punish students who express political views that are unpopular within academia. Brainwashing 101 includes comments from Glenn Reynolds, the founder of Instapundit and Greg Lukianoff, then the Director of Legal and Public Advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a civil liberties organization that was founded to protect academic freedom of students and professors.
The film premiered at the American Film Renaissance festival in Dallas on September 11, 2004 and was later shown at the Liberty Film Festival in Los Angeles, which named Brainwashing 101 one of the Top 10 Documentaries of 2004.
North Korea, Children of the Secret State
"Children of the Secret State' is an investigation into North Korea, considered by many as the last Stalinist dictatorship, a hidden and sealed country riddled with propaganda and saturated with hostility to democracy and the West.
Joe Layburn and the Hardcash team discovered a young North Korean, known by the pseudonym 'Ahn Chol', who has been filiming undercover so that the world can see what is going on in his native land: the country where his parents both starved to death.
His devastating footage shows some of the estimated 200,000 street children, mainly orphans, foraging for food in the mud and the gutters, ignored by the adults around them and ignored by the state which claims they are at its bosom...."
"He then speaks to people with first-hand knowledge of the situation in North Korea: a farmer, forced to grow opium to fund the army; an ex-soldier with tales of concentration camps and gruesome executions; and various people who have seen human flesh for sale."
From Hardcash Productions.
Cuban Healthcare Myths
Globalisation is Good - Johan Norberg on Globalization
"The world is an unequal and unjust place, in which some are born into wealth and some into hunger and misery. To explore why, in this controversial Channel Four documentary the young Swedish writer Johan Norberg takes the viewers on a journey to Taiwan, Vietnam, Kenya and Brussels to see the impact of globalisation, and the consequences of its absence. It makes the case that the problem in the world is not too much capitalism, globalisation and multinationals, but too little."
Norberg is not a consistent defender of individual rights and capitalism--his views on democracy are particularly mixed. This is nevertheless a powerful and fascinating film.
