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Hi all, my name is Shlomi Fish (or שלומי פיש in the Hebrew alphabet), and I'm a (male) writer (of both fiction and non-fiction) and software developer, raised and living in Tel Aviv, Israel. You can learn more about me and see the various online resources that I created on my home-site. I have written several works of fiction and humour inspired by Objectivism and many other sources of influence and published them on my personal web site, under Creative Commons licences. Among them I can mention: The One with the Fountainhead - a two-part episode of the television show Friends that parodies and modernises Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Was read and enjoyed in the past by people who were not familiar with the show. The Enemy and How I Helped to Fight it - my first substantial novella, this is a surrealistic political satire of Middle Eastern national politics written from the perspective of an Objectivist. The Human Hacking Field Guide - a story about several teenagers in the vicinity of 2005 Los Angeles who extensively deal with open source hacking, as well as their love lives, and reflections about various aspects of popular culture. While emulating commercially produced stories for adolescent girls in form, it was liked by many people who now despise the genre, and it is the closest story to resembling romanticist realism, that I have ever written. I also have my own Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode there, and a parody and reflection upon Buffy the Vampire Slayer titled “Selina Mandrake - The Slayer” (though they both share many concepts from my personal associations and crazy imagination), and they both also reflect my personal philosophy. I should note that I don't think philosophy has reached its natural end in Ayn Rand (or that she was the Omega) and have been constantly inspired by many other ideas and idea systems, both old and new, and both real and fictional. I call my current philosophy “Rindolfism”, after "Rindolf" which is my IRC nickname, which is easier for some English speakers to digest than "Shlomi" or "Shlomif", and it is a dynamic philosophy (subject to change and hopefully improvement in time), and I don't need followers as much as I need people who will build upon it, improve it, compete with me, or even sharply criticise some aspects of it (so I'll know how to improve). See Lawrence Lessig’s quote from “Remix” about why I feel this way. In any case, I am a 1977-born Jewish Israeli male, currently single, graduated from the Technion (in Haifa, Israel) in Electrical Engineering in 2003/2004, had problems maintaining the same job as a software developer for various reasons, and often found that I am productive doing open source and text and media-authoring work, than actually working as a hired employee. I have been susceptible to clinical depressions, hypomanias ("below-mania") and even a few manias (which proved to be nasty), which has interfered with my ability to work and maintain a job, but on the other hand, proved a lot of inspiration for my stories and other works. I find it easier to network with other people using with the various Internet means, than I do in real life, and tends to prefer and be good at doing more “spiritual” stuff like writing code and text, than more tangible and physical stuff. I hope to prove myself of utility and inspiration here and you can contact me using many means including E-mail and some forms of instant messaging (IM) in case you need to reach me. Best regards — Shlomi Fish

I don't usually do introductions so if this is too brief, ask away. I'm willing to answer anything. My name is Richard Ellis Novak. I was born and raised in Nevada. I'm a writer and an illustrator; my illustrations run the spectrum from traditional fine art such as watercolor and oil paintings, to photomanipulation aided by software. I am married to Vivian, a Filipina (see my icon). Together we have two little girls and we are due to have a little boy in February 2013. I live in Guam, and I'm set to move in late 2013 or early 2014. Politically I'm a conservative libertarian hybrid; I think every law should be based on Constitutional authority. I'm also a capitalist, obviously. I'm writing a children's book (and you can find posts regarding that in the Productivity Forum) and hope to sell it when I'm done. I grew up agnostic based mainly on the idea that there was so much disagreement between the various religious factions out there, but they one thing most of them had in common was a belief in some higher power. As I got older the belief in some all-knowing, all-powerful creator seemed less and less logical to me. The only creators I can say I've seen are men creating the world we live in. Not the dirt or the trees or the animals, but the steel, the structures, and the things we use animals for. We are the creators, I thought. It was several years ago I picked up Atlas Shrugged for the first time, and what I read was shocking. It shocked me that there was someone else out there who thought the way I did. More shocking still was how fine a point she had honed into her beliefs. Ayn Rand spoke to me from the grave through her writing. I did not feel alone in my beliefs anymore. I am, in addition to being an author and illustrator, an avid shooter (pistol, rifle, shotgun, and archery) and I love cooking. I love much classical music, thrash metal, and the occasional old school rap. That's me. It's good to be here.

HI there, new to this forum (or any other Objectivism forum). So figure probably best to post here before I starting some debate on another forum as this post is intended to set some premises about me, my exprience with O'ism and how I found Ayn Rand's Writing. My background is Russian Jewish (Ukrianian Jewish to be precise but I speak Russian not Ukranian). Shortly after the break up of the USSR my family immigrated to Israel, and from there we moved to England and subsequently Canada. When I identify myself as Jewish it is purely ethnical not religious (as on would identify himself as Irish, Italian, Persian or Korean), but this is for a completely different post. My first encounter with Ayn Rand's writing was while I was working as a mover as a summer job during university. When moving one house I found The Fountainhead lying on top of the bed. Considering that everything else was packed (including the bedsheets) I do wonder now whether it was left there on purpose. Having both heard of the title and the author somewhere but couldn't place where I read the back cover, and was intrigued. However never seemed to be able to get up to reading it (I believe some new Dune books came out (the Butlerian Jihad ones) and I was too busy with school/work. A few years later my best friend game me her copy. She lived in New York for a few years so we haven't discussed the book at all, she just thought it would be a book I love. And sure enough I did. I read it while working in a states on a really boring QA job, took me just a few days. My first words about it were - ' I've never read a book so long, that simply could not have been written any shorter.' However I recognized something in the book that was truly familiar, something that I knew all my life but never been able to acknowledge it.It took me a while to finish Atlas Shrugged (I read primarily on my commute to/from work and I cannot read if I am driving). However with that booked there was no going back. It was like reading Jules Verne who was able to concieve of a rocket to the moon way before any space travel research. The way the world was at the beginning of Atlas shrugged seems like just a few years away from what we will have now. Since then I have read Anthem, and We the Living and working my way through Back to the Primitive and will read everything else. I must preface that I do not consider myself a philosopher, my background is in Computer Science, however I made a decision during university to not work as a programmer, and went into Analytics (QA, BA, currently Leading a team of Reporting Analysts). Both my parents are also Computer Engineers, (and combine with being born and raised under communism), as such philosophy or politics were never much of a discussion in my house. So my experience in proper Philosophy is quite limited (forewarning if I make crappy arguments). I consider Objectivism simply the only right way to live, and something that I have known since way before reading her books, just never had a way to frame it in words or coherent ideas. So right now I do still feel a bit of a noob in terms Objectivism. But what makes me want to go beyond simply reading books though is in part fear of the world in Atlas Shrugged, in part trying to answer the many Whys? Why do I believe in the necessity to vote, yet there is no political party that represents what I want. Why do people of my generation want to spend their days freezing their assess off instead of working hard to have a better future. Why when the government does purely socialistic moves does capitalism get the blame. Why does not one think it is wrong how at the RNC they can talk about freedom and then have mass prayer a few moment later. Etc Etc etc. I've been reading these forums for a few days now and really like the community. I feel there is a very good array of rational people here which will make for interesting discussions.

Hello everyone, I joined a while back but have just been lurking here and there so I decided to finally say hi and join in the fun. I'm fairly new to Rand. I started with AS about 3 months ago and realized that she had words for something I'd always been trying to grasp. I've finished about 75% of her published works since then. (I don't sleep much) I look forward to chatting with you all.

Hey, just joined. I've read a lot of books about Objectivism and I joined to learn more. I'm 38, I live in North Carolina, and I'm a web designer. That's about it.