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Introducing myself: Shlomi Fish

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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

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Welcome, Shlomi!

 

(Tel Aviv is one my favorite cities.) :)

Hi, Tony.

 

Thanks! I am glad you like Tel Aviv so much. I like living here, too, as most of the commerce, the good restaurants, and the interesting people are here (I'm not too big into the nighttime party life (I cannot stand pubs, and prefer restaurants or coffee shops), but that's part of its charm. Nevertheless, I feel like I've been a bit burned out here and need a physical change of scenery. I'm looking for a good place to move to which is: 1) Warm enough 2) No long nights during the winter 3) Where most significant people have a good grasp of English (though I will probably still want to learn the foreign language). 4) Where it's intellectually stimulating (lots of diversity of various cultures, a good Internet connection, attractive females, intelligent people, etc.).

 

Anyway, how is life in South Africa?

 

-- Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi: Yes - it is sort of 'intense' over there. It's like being in a constant war-zone where every single person is an intellectual and has his or her (strong) opinion. Great to visit, but could wear one down after a while I guess.

Have you considered Costa Rica?  No joke, I have. You'll get by on English and pick up some Spanish, (um - the language) and they encourage immigration.

Do not even dream about any place in Africa, especially RSA. is my advice. It will still get worse, before it improves - and then wake up to find China owns big parts of it.

 

Be well.

Edited by whYNOT
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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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

Shlomo,  have you considered a possible diagnosis of Aspberger's syndrome?   What you have written seems to show some of the external behavioral markers of A.S.    You might want to look into that.

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Shlomo,  have you considered a possible diagnosis of Aspberger's syndrome?   What you have written seems to show some of the external behavioral markers of A.S.    You might want to look into that.

Hi,

 

first of all, my name is "Shlomi" and not "Shlomo" (long story here - see http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/ ), and a lot of speakers of languages written using the Latin alphabet get it wrong ("Schlomi" is also common). If you want you can call me "Rindolf" or "Rin" instead.

 

Some people told me they suspect I have Asperger, but:

 

1. I was told that Normal -> Asperger -> Autism is a continuum and there are many levels of it.

 

2. Many men with Asperger lead perfectly normal life. I met some people on IRC (= Internet chat) who told me they were diagnosed with Asperger's or suspected it to be the case, and they seemed perfectly normal, emoting, etc. I too (despite all my fauults) feel a wealth of good and bad emotions, and am able to eventually cope with most everyday situations.

 

3. I was told that Asperger was recently removed from the list of known and detected psychomedical defects.

 

4. Many geeks diagnosed themselves with Asperger (or previously ADHD or whatever) or got these diagnosed, but it's easy to be diagnosed as such because the tests are not accurate.

 

5. What I do know is that in the past I had clinical depressions, hypomanias and even some manias, which might give me the psychiatric label “Manic-depressive” or “Bipolar”, but otherwise as my psychotherapist says won't help with curing the psychological core of the problem (and despite popular belief, medication is usually ineffective for treating people even with clinical depressions, which are the common cold of psychomedical problems, though medication do help some people). During hypomanias (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypomania ) I exhibit symptoms of self-grandiosity, ego-Mania, self-publicity, hypersexuality, euphoria, a large amount of very good (although often irrational or farfetched) ideas for stories, essays, etc. and also a desire to write them a lot. Hypomanias are extremely common among creative people and my father told me that a study found that 50% of the authors of English literature were diagnosed as Bipolar.

 

Anyway, I found several ways to better deal with hypomanias, including Cognitive Therapy, reading the book Feeling Good, and my interest in various pieces of old and especially new philosophy and artworks (which to be good must reflect an inner philosophy), which made me reach various conclusions and insights. In a way, I feel that my writing is a kind of therapy for me, because it makes me reach newer conclusions that allow me to become a better and a stronger person (because passive learning is not enough and you learn more first by implementing something and even more by teaching it). I also now realise that despite being a computer geek, and mostly a person without social life up to this point, I should socialise more (in the so called "real life" - not on the Internet) by joining various clubs of my various interests, maybe joining some support groups of people with Bippolar disorder, play basketball (which I was never really very good at, but was my favourite sport), and even go on some dates. Tel Aviv is a great city for doing all that, and I should exploit that more.

 

I hope I made myself clear.

 

Regards,

 

-- Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi: Yes - it is sort of 'intense' over there. It's like being in a constant war-zone where every single person is an intellectual and has his or her (strong) opinion. Great to visit, but could wear one down after a while I guess.

Have you considered Costa Rica?  No joke, I have. You'll get by on English and pick up some Spanish, (um - the language) and they encourage immigration.

Do not even dream about any place in Africa, especially RSA. is my advice. It will still get worse, before it improves - and then wake up to find China owns big parts of it.

 

Be well.

Hi whyNOT - I see - that's sad.

 

As an Objectivist, I think unilateral or bilateral disarming is stupid and irrational and does not work this way (and it is possible Israelis will be better off if everyone - Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, - I don't have double standards - etc. could easily get a licence for an unconcealed gun), but the RSA violence is silly. I heard many Bohrs are now Christian-oriented Neo-Nazis even though the original Hitlerian Nazis supposedly opposed all forms of institutionalised religions, and I'm not sure there's an easy solution for all this, except possibly for enlightening them about how stupid this whole ordeal is. The majority of RSA's inhabitants are probably peaceful and rational, but the minority is the problem (as is always).

 

Anyway, I think I'll just stay here in Tel Aviv and just socialise more and also get more sports done along with other people (basketball/soccer/etc.), and also work on better publicity and advertising of my stories and essays (because I think and was told that they are great but deserve much more recognition). So far I mostly resisted buying web ads, but now I think there's nothing wrong with them, and I have some cash to spare for that. The difference between a good artist who did not receive enough recognition and a great artist who has become a highly reverred phenomenon, is usually because the latter one has better worked on marketing, which is incredibly hard, but also incredibly fun and very rewarding, and it's often and usually a honest, and what I call “humble” marketing. I'm tired of playing the role of the Invisible (see http://buffyfanfiction.wikia.com/wiki/Selina_Mandrake_-_The_Slayer#The_Selinaverse for what I mean by that - sort of like John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, only less of a real jerk/asshole. ), and want to step into the limelight.

 

Regards,

 

-- Shlomi Fish

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Hi,

 

first of all, my name is "Shlomi" and not "Shlomo" (long story here - see http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/ ), and a lot of speakers of languages written using the Latin alphabet get it wrong ("Schlomi" is also common). If you want you can call me "Rindolf" or "Rin" instead.

 

Some people told me they suspect I have Asperger, but:

 

1. I was told that Normal -> Asperger -> Autism is a continuum and there are many levels of it.

 

2. Many men with Asperger lead perfectly normal life. I met some people on IRC (= Internet chat) who told me they were diagnosed with Asperger's or suspected it to be the case, and they seemed perfectly normal, emoting, etc. I too (despite all my fauults) feel a wealth of good and bad emotions, and am able to eventually cope with most everyday situations.

 

3. I was told that Asperger was recently removed from the list of known and detected psychomedical defects.

 

4. Many geeks diagnosed themselves with Asperger (or previously ADHD or whatever) or got these diagnosed, but it's easy to be diagnosed as such because the tests are not accurate.

 

5. What I do know is that in the past I had clinical depressions, hypomanias and even some manias, which might give me the psychiatric label “Manic-depressive” or “Bipolar”, but otherwise as my psychotherapist says won't help with curing the psychological core of the problem (and despite popular belief, medication is usually ineffective for treating people even with clinical depressions, which are the common cold of psychomedical problems, though medication do help some people). During hypomanias (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypomania ) I exhibit symptoms of self-grandiosity, ego-Mania, self-publicity, hypersexuality, euphoria, a large amount of very good (although often irrational or farfetched) ideas for stories, essays, etc. and also a desire to write them a lot. Hypomanias are extremely common among creative people and my father told me that a study found that 50% of the authors of English literature were diagnosed as Bipolar.

 

Anyway, I found several ways to better deal with hypomanias, including Cognitive Therapy, reading the book Feeling Good, and my interest in various pieces of old and especially new philosophy and artworks (which to be good must reflect an inner philosophy), which made me reach various conclusions and insights. In a way, I feel that my writing is a kind of therapy for me, because it makes me reach newer conclusions that allow me to become a better and a stronger person (because passive learning is not enough and you learn more first by implementing something and even more by teaching it). I also now realise that despite being a computer geek, and mostly a person without social life up to this point, I should socialise more (in the so called "real life" - not on the Internet) by joining various clubs of my various interests, maybe joining some support groups of people with Bippolar disorder, play basketball (which I was never really very good at, but was my favourite sport), and even go on some dates. Tel Aviv is a great city for doing all that, and I should exploit that more.

 

I hope I made myself clear.

 

Regards,

 

-- Shlomi Fish

Under the new DMV Aspberger's has been folded in with Autism. 

 

I am an Aspie myself.  While it created some difficulties when I was young,  it put me an an advantageous position in applied math and computer software design and testing.  If I were religious I would say computers and math are G-D's gift to the Aspies.  Being what I am,  I had the perfect "head" for ferreting out errors in both my work and in other people's.  They used to bring me in just to wreck systems.  Not a bug was safe once I entered the building. 

 

When you described some things about your self I picked on some possible markers since I am familiar with them first hand. 

 

An aside question:  why schlomi as opposed to schlomo which is a more common Hebrew name?

 

Lech b'shalom.

 

ruveyn1

Edited by ruveyn1
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Since I know a bit about Aspergers due to my own studies in psychology (partially as a student) I figure I should comment on those 5 points you made.

 

1. It's not really a continuum because autism is a totally different type of functioning in some regards compared to non-autistics. Aspergers is a type of autism in that sense where it is not merely an only slightly autistic person that is mostly a normal person. It's an entire condition in its own right, not just funny behavior.

 

2. Yes, people with Aspergers can and do lead normal lives, but I will say interactions online don't give a full sense of a person's behavior.

 

3. Actually, Aspergers is no longer simply Aspergers. Instead, for the DSM-V, it will be categorized as Autistic Spectrum Disorder. ASD is maybe what you heard about a continuum.

 

4. I think Aspergers is probably really easy to wrongly diagnose. It's one thing to understand social interactions yet not conform to them, and one thing to literally not get a full understanding of social interactions easily thus end up not conforming to social standards. Aspergers is not "social awkwardness" disorder. Many tests are probably inaccurate as you say. People say it comes with obsessions, but often that seems to be a misunderstanding. Aspergers leads to obsessions, but not all obsessions are from Aspergers. Sometimes it's just curiosity.

 

5. If you do have issues of some kind, it sounds like you're taking care of yourself well!

 

Anyways, welcome. I'll hopefully read something of yours that you posted soon.

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Hi ruveyn1,

 

thanks for your message. I see about that thing for Asperger's but I'll comment about my name.

 

Under the new DMV Aspberger's has been folded in with Autism. 

 

I am an Aspie myself.  While it created some difficulties when I was young,  it put me an an advantageous position in applied math and computer software design and testing.  If I were religious I would say computers and math are G-D's gift to the Aspies.  Being what I am,  I had the perfect "head" for ferreting out errors in both my work and in other people's.  They used to bring me in just to wreck systems.  Not a bug was safe once I entered the building. 

 

When you described some things about your self I picked on some possible markers since I am familiar with them first hand. 

 

An aside question:  why schlomi as opposed to schlomo which is a more common Hebrew name?

 

OK, here goes. First of all I should note that we prefer spelling it as "Shlomi" (using the English spelling) than as "Schlomi" (using the German spelling). My late grandfather's family name was "Fish" instead of "Fisch" as well, so that what we use.

 

Anyway, I was named after my other grandfather on my mother's side who died and whose name was “Shlomo” in Hebrew (and Suliman in Arabic - he immigrated to Israel from Iraq, along with his three children at the time, including my mother). However, my mother decided to pick a name with a more modern ring to it, so she used "Shlomi" (which means "Shalom-ful", "my shalom" or "The Shalom of Jehuvah" - they are all valid interpretations and  the word Shalom means many things including "well-being", "peace", "Harmony", "welfare", etc.). In addition to it, I have a younger cousin also called Shlomi (but with a different last name) and now one of my cousins' sons is called "Sol" which is also an echo to "Solomon" (but have other meanings).

 

As with names in other countries, there are many fashions to Israeli names, and they become trendier or less trendier. When Orthodox Jews lived in the diaspora they had a certain limited arsenal of acceptable names based on the kosher characters of the Bible, but after Israel/Palestine was colonolised by Jews, all hell broke loose and they started using many Hebrew names.

 

Anyway, some people who know me from the Internet Relay Chat call me "rindolf" (or "rin" for short) which some speakers of European and other languages find easier to digest than "Shlomi" or "shlomif" and I decided that I don't mind being called that. For the etymlogy of Rindolf, see:

 

http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/#origin_of_rindolf

 

Regards,

 

-- Shlomi Fish

 

Lech b'shalom.

 

Well, "Lech beshalom" kinda means "Go/walk in well-being/peace" and: 1) I'm not leaving 2) It's a more archaic form. You can simply say “Shalom” or “Lehith'raoth” (which hasn't entered the English lexicon yet), or maybe just something in English like "Take care" or "See you" or whatever. No need to be a Hebrewish elitist.

 

Bye, and take care.

 

Regards,

 

-- Shlomi Fish

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Hi Eiuol,

 

thanks for your message.

 


Since I know a bit about Aspergers due to my own studies in psychology (partially as a student) I figure I should comment on those 5 points you made.

 

1. It's not really a continuum because autism is a totally different type of functioning in some regards compared to non-autistics. Aspergers is a type of autism in that sense where it is not merely an only slightly autistic person that is mostly a normal person. It's an entire condition in its own right, not just funny behavior.

 

2. Yes, people with Aspergers can and do lead normal lives, but I will say interactions online don't give a full sense of a person's behavior.

 

3. Actually, Aspergers is no longer simply Aspergers. Instead, for the DSM-V, it will be categorized as Autistic Spectrum Disorder. ASD is maybe what you heard about a continuum.

 

4. I think Aspergers is probably really easy to wrongly diagnose. It's one thing to understand social interactions yet not conform to them, and one thing to literally not get a full understanding of social interactions easily thus end up not conforming to social standards. Aspergers is not "social awkwardness" disorder. Many tests are probably inaccurate as you say. People say it comes with obsessions, but often that seems to be a misunderstanding. Aspergers leads to obsessions, but not all obsessions are from Aspergers. Sometimes it's just curiosity.

 

5. If you do have issues of some kind, it sounds like you're taking care of yourself well!

 

Well, hopefully I do, but not without a cost - I still have hypomanias, and other people and my family notice that. My hand writing is usually very bad, but a few days ago, I wrote a note to myself with pretty good handwriting and was not trying too hard to write it properly. I also feel that writing my stories are a kind-of therapy for me, because they make me realise things about what I want to be or present the falsehoods I still believed in.

 

Anyway, I guess that for some people, you can only achieve progress with some hardship and pain along the way, and I'm not different.

 

Anyways, welcome. I'll hopefully read something of yours that you posted soon.

 

Thanks for that! I can be quite narcissitic when I'm hypomanic, but a lot of people liked my stories and thought they were great (or, alternatively, commented negatively on them, which either made me understand how to improve them, or which I sometimes took to my advantage). And I realise now (and always did) that perfection is in imperfection, and that I can easily let sub-optimal things remain in the stories I wrote.

 

Regards,

 

-- Shlomi Fish

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  • 2 weeks later...

Replying to myself, I should note that I discussed it with my psychotherapist (who met me in person many times) and he said that he believes I do not have Asperger's Syndrome, which he commented that indeed was part of the Autism spectrum. That put aside, I still can be self-centred (but certainly not selfish as in "having a complete disregard for others"), and self-promoting and at time a bit narcisstic, but these are parts of my character.

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