The following is my draft script for the awards ceremony. Please recommend edits for consistency with Objectivism. The last part has references to Rand, and to William R. Thomas. I think I will also reference the Ayn Rand lexicon web site as well.

An anonymous person identifying himself/herself as Midas Mulligan from among the members of Galt’s Gulch Online has donated money toward Florida Tech’s Nanotechnology Minor Program. This is one of the reasons I advertised in the Galt’s Gulch Marketplace, so I thank both the donor and those involved with running the Galt’s Gulch Online web site:

http://www.galtsgulchonline.com

With thanks to Midas Mulligan, we are celebrating the first annual John Galt Academy Awards and Movie Night at Florida Tech on Wed. 3/30 in Olin Engg. 118 at 6:30 PM to honor those graduating with minors from our program, as well as three individuals whose research and development accomplishments have been particularly noteworthy.

The Kern Entrepeneurial Engineering Network (or KEEN) is co-sponsoring the event because I think that there is a lot of overlap between KEEN’s values and those embodied by John Galt.

http://engineeringunleashed.com/keen

KEEN was founded by the Kern Family. The values embodied by the Kern Family Foundation are forming good character, providing quality education, instilling an entrepreneurial mindset, and rediscovering the value of work. Notably, almost all of the universities funded by KEEN are private.

http://www.kffdn.org/

Other faculty on campus recently wrote a proposal funded by KEEN last summer, and I am starting to write one that will hopefully spread the nanotech minor curriculum that Prof. Kurt Winkelmann and I have developed to a much larger audience. The establishment of the John Galt Academy Awards and Movie Night at Florida Tech will further my own goals and KEEN’s goals of establishing the proper philosophy and mindset to accompany the technical skills incorporated throughout the rest of the Nanotechnology Minor Program curriculum, and hopefully the entire Florida Tech College of Engineering.

First, we will honor those who are completing the Nanotechnology Minor this semester. Please come up as you hear your name, take your certificate, and we will have a group photo after all eight honorees have received their certificates. Craig Boger, Chase Krause, Andrew McCaskill, TJ Peplinski, Kit Stewart, Brayden Thompson, Julia Worrell, and Zuhoor Yamani

Next, I am going to honor two individuals who have been in my research group. Clyde (Doug) Brown and Thaddeus Berger have been virtually inseparable over the past two and a half years. They have used 3D printing to print rocket propellant grains and provided the seeds for what will become a partnership between Florida Tech, a small rocket company, and a major aluminum manufacturer.

The third honoree is the person I have referred to occasionally as a future John Galt. His name is Carlos Gross-Jones. After designing and fabricating an electrospinner for the tissue engineering research of Dr. Chris Bashur and me, he then developed a prototype for an inexpensive atomic force microscope. After that, in a move worthy of John Galt, he left to get paid more by other faculty and staff within Florida Tech’s College of Engineering, while starting the development of a 3D printer of metals partially under my supervision.

After the awards are given, I will provide pizza, popcorn, and drinks to students who attend the ceremony. They have paid their tuition, and so I see no problem in declaring the food and drinks as part of a value-for-value exchange.

I have paid the producers of the Atlas Shrugged movie trilogy via Galt’s Gulch Online under the following terms for tonight’s movies. Students attending the ceremony will be able to watch all three movies in the AS trilogy, at my expense as part of their tuition value-for-my instruction plus Academy and Movie night value exchange. Faculty who attend are expected to pay on their own, as would guests of either faculty or students. I think Ayn Rand would consider anything else to be altruism, which she abhorred. I am recommending $10 per attendee. I have made a down payment of $250 for 25 attendees, with more to come if attendance exceeds expectations, plus any money that is collected from faculty and guests.

At this point, the students will probably be wondering “Who Is John Galt?” Galt is a fictional character from the book “Atlas Shrugged”, a novel by Ayn Rand, the founder of the Objectivist philosophy. In Greek mythology, Atlas holds up the world. Atlas Shrugged asks its readers to consider what would happen if producers decided to shrug or go on strike. The Objectivist philosophy is defined by Ayn Rand and summarized at William R. Thomas’ web site at The Atlas Society below as

http://atlassociety.org/objectivism/a...

"Question: What is Objectivism? Answer: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." — Ayn Rand, Appendix to Atlas Shrugged

Objectivism is the philosophy of rational individualism founded by Ayn Rand (1905-1982). In novels such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Rand dramatized her ideal man, the producer who lives by his own effort and does not give or receive the undeserved, who honors achievement and rejects envy. Rand laid out the details of her world-view in nonfiction books such as The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

Objectivism holds that there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness, but one cannot achieve happiness by wish or whim. Fundamentally, it requires rational respect for the facts of reality, including the facts about our human nature and needs. Happiness requires that one live by objective principles, including moral integrity and respect for the rights of others. Politically, Objectivists advocate laissez-faire capitalism. Under capitalism, a strictly limited government protects each person's rights to life, liberty, and property and forbids that anyone initiate force against anyone else. The heroes of Objectivism are achievers who build businesses, invent technologies, and create art and ideas, depending on their own talents and on trade with other independent people to reach their goals. Objectivism is optimistic, holding that the universe is open to human achievement and happiness, and that each person has within him the ability to live a rich, fulfilling, independent life."

The remainder of my introduction will be a summary of John Galt, on whom the award’s name is based, as well as some of the other movie characters so that the students can follow the movies a little better. I left this part off, because it would have exceeded the 5000 character limit.