Category Archives: Site Announcements

Exciting Changes on the Horizon for the Atlasphere

It’s time to rejoice! The website is being updated as we speak and we will be rolling out the new changes shortly after the new year. We are modernizing your ability to chat and network as well as optimizing the site for mobile and creating phone apps.

My name is Heather Wagenhals and I am the new publisher and Editor-in-chief for the Atlasphere. The Atlasphere founder Joshua Zader created a vibrant community for admirers of Ayn Rand’s work to share ideas and connect with others personally, professionally, and romantically. My job is to enhance your experience while you are here so you have the ability to make meaningful connections.

Please update your profiles and send me a message to introduce yourself. I am Heather Wags in the directory. Additionally, if you would like to be a contributor to the Atlasphere, submit your ideas for blog posts here or featured columns here.

Help Joshua Lipana fight cancer

From Craig Biddle at The Objective Standard:

My good friend Joshua Lipana, assistant editor of TOS Blog and a highly valued contributor to The Objective Standard, has been diagnosed with cancer, specifically T-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, at the young age of 20. Joshua asked me to refrain from making an announcement about this until his doctors gained a better understanding of his situation and prognosis. They now have.

Joshua lives in Quezon City, Philippines, and has been in The Medical City Hospital, in Pasig City, for 46 days, undergoing many tests and procedures. He has recently had two sessions of chemotherapy and is scheduled for several more in the weeks to come. His loving mother, Arleen Lipana, has been by his side the whole time.

Although the side effects of the chemo are dreadful, the treatment appears to be reducing the large tumor in Joshua’s left lung, and the doctors are extremely optimistic about his future. He may be able to return home as soon as next week, which would make him very happy.

If you would like to email Joshua, you may do so at jlipana@theobjectivestandard.com. But please understand that he may not be able to reply to emails at this time.

Joshua does not have insurance to cover the numerous expenses involved in his hospital stay, tests, and treatments, so I will organize a money bomb in the near future to help defray these costs. I’ll let you know when that is underway.

Joshua is one of the greatest champions of reason and technology I’ve ever known (see his blog posts for an indication). I hope the values he defends so unwaveringly will enable him to live a long and happy life. That is what he deserves.

Biddle has now set up the account to support Joshua’s medical expenses. You can make your donation here.

New article in TIME magazine online about the Atlasphere and the Atlas Shrugged movie

Time.com just published an article about the Atlasphere as well as the Atlas Shrugged movie, penned by Claire Suddath, who spent this week talking with members of our dating service.

Her article is titled “Single Objectivist Seeks Same” and begins:

Let me get one thing out of the way: I have never read Ayn Rand. In fact, until recently I was one of those uneducated boors who thought the author’s first name was pronounced Ann. A few of her readers have corrected me over the years, but for some reason, I assumed they were joking â?? which is also what I assumed when they told me that they’d just read a great book about government intervention in the railroad industry. (That book is now a movie, Atlas Shrugged: Part I, opening Friday in the U.S.)

But then my editor asked me to look into the dating website the Atlasphere, on which Randians can search for their soul mate among fellow objectivists. I didn’t have time to read all 1,200 pages of Atlas Shrugged or even the 680-page The Fountainhead beforehand, so I did what any self-respecting journalist would do: I called up a friend. “Quick, can you explain Ayn Rand’s personal philosophy to me in one sentence?” I asked Fahad Siadat, a professional musician who just finished reading Atlas Shrugged. I know this because he’d cornered me at a dinner party and told me all about it. Which is what people tend to do when they’ve just discovered Ayn Rand.

See the full article for more.

New feature: Browse sites and blogs for free

We’ve made some experimental changes to the Atlasphere’s member directory pages:

  1. Unpaid members can now see full names
  2. Unpaid members can now browse all member blogs
  3. Unpaid members can now browse all member websites

Previously, these features were available only to paid subscribers.

There are thousands of member blogs and websites listed in the Atlasphere directory, so this opens up a significant new channel for interaction, even among members with no paid subscription.

We hope you find these new features useful and welcome your feedback about this or any other aspect of the Atlasphere.

Comments are now enabled

We’ve enabled comments here on the Ayn Rand Meta-Blog, on an experimental basis. For now, they are enabled for new posts, including those from the past week or two. If it proves worthwhile we may enable comments on older posts as well.

Let us know what you think … in the comments below. :-)

Announcing the Atlas Shrugged movie blog

Hans Schantz and I have launched a new blog exclusively devoted to covering the Atlas Shrugged movie, at Atlas-Shrugged-Movie.com.

For those not already familiar with Hans, he has done some excellent work already covering the Atlas movie, including interviewing screenwriter Brian O’Toole and creating an excellent Atlas Shrugged chronology, outlining the dates of major events in the novel itself. I’m pleased to have his help covering the movie.

The Atlasphere’s meta-bloggers will continue covering any major developments in the movie, but this new blog will become our primary repository for Atlas Shrugged movie news and discussion.

Recent posts there include a preview (in text and photos) of the Atlas Shrugged movie, an interview with screenwriter Brian O’Toole, and a post with a link to the new official Atlas Shrugged – Part I movie website (a splash page, for now, enabling you to sign up for announcements).

Comments are enabled on this new blog and we look forward to hearing your thoughts as more and more information about the new movie becomes available.

If you’re as excited about the movie as we are and would like to join Hans and me as a co-blogger at the Atlas Shrugged movie blog, let me know.

Got ideas for improving the Atlasphere?

Now that our new site design is (mostly) in place, we’re sizing up our options for additional upgrades to the Atlasphere. And a group of us will be prioritizing these ideas over the coming months. But first, we’d like to hear your ideas: What would you like to see at the Atlasphere?

We have over 21,000 members now, and the technical capacity to do almost anything imaginable â?? so in a sense, the sky is the limit. Should we start focusing more on intellectual activism? Make it easy for members to create their own forums? Help members form and publicize local social/study/activism groups? Make it easy to advertise your company’s products or services on the Atlasphere?

What features would be most inspiring to you personally? We look forward to seeing your ideas and votes, over at Google Moderator.