100 Books
Our friends at Amazon sent me an email with a link to the “100 Books To Read In A Lifetime.” My curiosity was peaked so I went to the link. Now I’ve read a lot of books, some of them even considered literature, but I wanted to know how many of these “Lifetime” books I had read. The first thing that struck me was how few I had read. I unofficial count was twenty out of the hundred. Many of these were kids books that I had read with my children while they were young. Some I wanted to count, but resisted as I had not read the books, but proof read book reports of many of these when my children read them for school.
Finally there is news that President Obama’s “stimulus” has had some positive effects on our economy. The usually Obama-cheer-leading Associated Press has produced a very deep “news” article boasting the fact that gasoline prices are finally coming down and some predict prices as low as $3.25 per gallon within a month. First I’ll believe and welcome that when I see it. Second there is a rather sinister reason for the recent price drop.
Way back in the early 1980s I worked at a restaurant atop Pittsburgh’s tallest building. The food was decent; the service was good; the view was awesome! The U.S. Steel Building now sports a “UPMC” (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) sign acknowledging their biggest client. The famed building was recently acquired by UBS Real Estate Securities Inc. based out of New York. 
provides a series of discussions supporting the ethic that a person who acts, quite naturally, in his self interest is in fact helping his fellow man and shows 
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was Ayn Rand’s first novel blows me away. She admits that many of the characters were influenced by her life. From her Forward;