To a certain type of person, the picture of reality painted by modern science of a materialist and uncaring universe devoid of the divine is an almost unbearably depressing thing. (For the record, I'm pretty much one of those people myself.) The author of this essay strikes me as being such a person, and the essay as being his attempt to grapple with fearing death and continuing to have a religious impulse, and nevertheless believing what he does about the nature of the universe. Almost no one... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 6:34 PM on October 9, 2008

(I should note that when I said in my last comment that Yudkowsky may have come to a more sophisticated form of his religion, I meant a more sophisticated form of transhumanism, not that transhumanism is more sophisticated than the Orthodox Judaism he left behind. Evaluating both strictly as religions, I'd say Orthodox Judaism is by far the more sophisticated of the two- not even a contest there, really.)

Ryvar: Exactly. We find ourselves... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 12:46 AM on October 10, 2008

Though I'm not entirely with nasreddin, as I'm a regular voter and will be voting a straight Democratic ticket in this election, I think I'm actually a lot closer to his position than anyone else's here. The thing is, I do believe the American political system is fundamentally broken, and fundamentally opposed to my own values.

I don't at all agree with the Nader line that the Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same- they clearly aren't, and the Democrats are... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 9:52 PM on October 1, 2008

The Dalai Lama is very good at seeming like a nice guy, but imagine someone funded by China who wanted the US to give up a third of its lands to create an "autonomous state" that recreated a mythical version of the Incan Empire, and you might understand why the Chinese think the Dalai Lama isn't such a nice guy.

What homunculus said on this. It leaves out quite a lot of relevant facts- if the people living on that third of American lands... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 10:03 PM on August 28, 2008

As for Human Rights Watch, it's a lovely name, but they're another front of the extremely rightwing National Endowment for Democracy.

Oh my, so Human Rights Watch is a right-wing front group now? Wow. It's funny, because usually when I seen HRW attacked, it's American wingnuts going on about how they're a bunch of America-hating commie leftists out to smear our brave soldiers protecting us from the inhuman terrorists in Gitmo.
All I can... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 3:14 AM on August 29, 2008

a louis wain cat, the CIA got subtle when it created the NED. It lets the iron fist pummel while the velvet glove strokes. If you want a clearer example of how false divisions work, just watch the Democrats and the Republicans: the Republicans say, "The war in Iraq is a good war, so we'll keep fighting until we've won." The Democrats say, "The war in Iraq is a bad war, so we'll keep fighting until we've won."

I don't disagree on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 11:07 PM on August 30, 2008

shetterly: Just to note that the Tibet situation is not nearly as simplistic as rightwingers would have you believe: Michael Parenti's Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth.

The argument Parenti makes in that article, like pretty much every argument against Tibetan independence/autonomy I've ever seen that isn't "they're Chinese whether they like it or not", basically boils down to the same one as that old favorite of Iraq war supporters-... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 2:34 AM on August 12, 2008

The Iraq War analogy falls apart: historically, Tibet was part of China. The Dalai Lama's title, given to him by a Chinese emperor, reflects that fact.

Though there's certainly a case for it, that's... rather debatable (for balance, here's the Tibetan side of that), and even if for the sake of argument one accepts the Chinese take on it completely, I'm not sure it necessarily proves that much. Using that as the determining factor, China has just as... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 6:07 AM on August 12, 2008

shetterly: a louis wain cat, good warlord link! But what you call the Tibetan side is the CIA/Dalai Lama side--it's rather like linking to a Cuba site created by the people who had benefited under Batista's dictatorship. It's only "a" Tibetan side, not "the" Tibetan side.

I don't claim what I linked is unbiased, and granted that it's basically the Tibetan exile viewpoint- but I do have the impression that what's presented there is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 6:53 PM on August 12, 2008

1. Bringing back the abusive theocracy of pre-invasion tibet.

This is not even close to what the imaginary headline described, and it is not the goal of the movement for Tibetan autonomy/independence at all. If by some miracle that headline ever came true, I am almost positive that a restoration of theocratic feudalism in Tibet would not be the result of it. Here's a quote from the Dalai Lama, from what's really quite a negative article on him:... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 6:36 PM on June 9, 2008

Thanks for this post- in all that's been going on, the voices and experiences of the Tibetans themselves don't get enough exposure, and I'm glad to see them getting some. For all the focus that there's been on Chinese opinion in the present controversy, it seems to me that the most important thing by far (from a moral standpoint, at any rate) is what the Tibetans themselves feel about their situation, and I've seen nothing to give me the impression that they're happy about it.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 10:12 PM on May 6, 2008

vorfeed said a lot of what I would say here, but I wanted to go a bit more into the why the growling/"cookie monster" vocal style is used at all. Bookhouse is quite right, that if one is familiar with a style and fond of it, one perceives a great deal more variation within it, and that's the place I'm coming from with metal and that particular vocal style. I'm not sure how well I can communicate this, but to take a shot at it-

What I would say is that a lot of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 2:24 PM on April 22, 2008

Pastabagel: But I love threads like this because without them I'd never hear about bands like Om And Agalloch.

If you like Opeth and Agalloch (and Agalloch is one of my very favorite bands of all, by the way) I'd recommend Orphaned Land, who I linked to in my last post- I'd compare them to those two, but with traditional Middle Eastern folk music in place of the more Western styles of folk the other two bands work into their music. If that sounds at... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 1:55 AM on April 23, 2008

As far as female vocalists who do "dirty" vocals go, there's quite a few, actually- not an especially large number, but it's not hugely unusual. As ignignokt mentioned, Arch Enemy is probably the most famous and popular band to use a female growler, but there's a bunch of others, in a pretty diverse range of sub-genres: the black metal band Opera IX on their first three albums, the Kyrgyztani (the main part of the band is from there, anyway- metal is an amazingly worldwide sort of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 3:49 AM on April 23, 2008

I'm not sure how well this article will go over here, but I appreciated it at least- thanks for posting it, and for mentioning the post I did about Jeffers as well. It was interesting reading, though not being a paleoconservative/Old Right type myself, I didn't agree with all of it- I felt it tried a little too hard to claim Jeffers for the Old Right when I don't think he can really be pigeonholed that easily, but I do think it's pretty safe to say that if you had to categorize him politically,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 10:19 PM on December 23, 2007

Ah, GNXP. I wish I could recall where it was, exactly, but in some other blog's comment section, I remember seeing the founders of GNXP arguing that while of course there were bad things about apartheid, South Africa would have been a lot better off if it had stayed in place. I wasn't able to find that again, but here's a post from them about South Africa, entitled "South Africa's Coming Collapse." And here's a quote from that post:

Those who argue... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 6:43 PM on November 18, 2007

I have come across this blog before, and it's worth pointing out that the author is very far right indeed, if in a more sophisticated way than one usually sees. See this post to get an idea of what I mean. Also note the link to Steve Sailer in the blogroll.

I don't mean this as a way of saying that he shouldn't be read, or anything, but it's worth keeping in mind. I might have a longer response to some things if I find the time and inclination...... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 4:14 PM on October 29, 2007

The first Peanuts strips I read were the old ones, fortunately- my mom had a collection of old books from the 60s and 70s. I actually learned to read largely through them. Even as a kid, I somewhat preferred the ones from that period, and in retrospect, the difference in quality between those and what came later is staggering.

On Calvin and Hobbes- I'm with the majority here in being glad that Watterson didn't sell out, but I think it's almost a moot question, as I don't... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 10:50 PM on October 13, 2007

stammer: Even the preachy ones were still amazing to read - no other cartoonist had anything approaching Watterson's sense of timing and body language.

That's true, definitely- there's one in particular that I was thinking of that doesn't have much of a joke, (it's basically just Calvin's dad complaining about TV news programs invading people's privacy) but the body language and timing in that strip are indeed note-perfect. Even that hypothetical... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 4:08 PM on October 14, 2007

Is there a warrant to your "myth" claim, or are you just trying to get a rise out of people?

Try here, for starters, and he has a whole bunch of other posts on the subject here. I would regard most pro-DDT claims with great skepticism, as there are a bunch of right-wing anti-environmentalists who are downright obsessed with this issue and have poured a great deal of money and effort into spreading the gospel of DDT. And they are not people... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 1:54 AM on August 20, 2007

For those who were dismissing the last link I posted because the blogger is a computer scientist, here's some posts on the subject by an entomologist. Some interesting things there, including a link to a summary of a Lancet article indicating that it's not exactly that good for humans, either.

Neither I nor the bloggers I linked to are saying that DDT should never be used under any circumstances, but there are a bunch of half-truths and flat out lies surrounding the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 5:23 PM on August 20, 2007

Oh, what a glorious world they promise, the de Greys and Kurzweils, the immortalists, futurists and transhumanists, the techno-optimist libertarians, the believers in the "Proactionary Principle", the Extropians and Singularitarians, who tell us that in the future we shall be immortal, that we shall conquer the stars, become like gods and achieve complete dominion over nature.

How thrilling it all is, the prospect that humankind shall conquer Death itself! Of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 11:59 PM on August 19, 2007

Oh God, not Spiked Online again.

PeterMcdermott already linked to some stuff on the history of the Spiked Online crowd (AKA Living Marxism, and before that the Revolutionary Communist Party), so I won't go over that territory again, but I would like to point out that, in addition to being global warming deniers, they also, in their Living Marxism days, thought it would make for some really nifty and thought-provoking contrarianism to deny both Milosevic's atrocities and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 11:07 PM on August 12, 2007

So... yeah.

I'd considered making a Louis Wain FPP, but I'd figured that it had been done before (if a very long time ago and not this throughly), and besides, me doing one would have been just a little too ridiculously eponysterical. In any case, this is certainly the most complete of them, and better than I think I could have done.

If anyone's interested in learning more about him, probably the definitive book on Wain is this one by Rodney... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 1:43 PM on August 12, 2007

In response to prostyle- the long-held idea inspired by the Maclay exhibit that Wain's work became progressively more abstract as he became more schizophrenic isn't really true, and he was indeed still producing conventional pictures during that period, but I wouldn't say that the sentence you struck through is false- his art really is noticeably different post-schizophrenia. The wallpaper/psychedelic cats, as far as I know, only show up after he became fully schizophrenic, and the more... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 3:11 PM on August 12, 2007

Ranging from narrative epics to short lyrics, his poetry is steeped in his worldview of intense love for the natural world(especially hawks) and disdain for what he dubbed "human solipsism". His work was greatly inspired by the beauty of the Big Sur region, where he lived in a house that he built out of the granite rocks on the shore. Links to some of his poems follow:

Hurt Hawks
Shine, Perishing Republic
The Purse-Seine
Ave... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 12:11 AM on August 9, 2007

Yes, I really like that one and I wanted to include it, but the one site I found it on hit me with a pop-up(despite the fact that I had them blocked) that crashed my browser, so I regretfully decided to leave it out and spare other people's computers. Anyway, thanks for posting it in the thread- it's one of my favorites as well.
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 12:28 AM on August 9, 2007

That the torture methods used by the American government were based on Soviet ones came as no surprise to me when I heard about it. I think I've linked it here before, but here's a passage from The Gulag Archipelago on Soviet interrogation techniques.

I read that quite a while before this came out, and I was amazed by how perfectly what was described there matched up with all the things that were being revealed about American torture methods- forced standing, sleep... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 1:20 AM on August 1, 2007

So, even if I wouldn't call myself a primitivist or neo-tribalist or what-have-you, there are a couple of things that make me much more sympathetic to them than, it seems, almost everyone who's posted in this thread thus far. One is that my politics are a very deep shade of green indeed. I am not an environmentalist of the sort that is concerned with the issue only as far as it relates to the interest of humanity and no further- I am an environmentalist of the quasi-religious... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 2:20 AM on July 15, 2007

(never mind. it would have been this, and it turns out it would have been a double.)
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 2:40 AM on July 15, 2007

Wow, that's the most intemperate I've ever seen jefgodesky get in one of these threads.

I can't blame him at all, really, I have to say. I think Omiewise's portrayal of him here has been just grossly insulting and wrong. I don't know jefgodesky or anything, but I've read a fair amount of his stuff, and that portrayal really bears no resemblance to anything of his that I've read. I mean, my impression is that the whole reason he's posting stuff on the Internet is because... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 3:43 PM on July 17, 2007

I am fascinated by how quickly the Internet has accelerated my transformation into a stereotypical crotchety old man. The popularity of Myspace alone helped speed the process up exponentially. I had already reached the stage of complaining about that new music kids listen to these days, and had projected that I would unironically begin a sentence with "back in my day" in a year's time.

However, with this thread and all the exciting new activities it has taught... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 2:19 AM on July 11, 2007

On the toxicity of melamine, I saw several articles a while back claiming that the deaths were mostly likely the result of interaction between melamine and cyanuric acid, which was also added to food to artificially increase protein readings. There's a New York Times article here on cyanuric acid being added to food in China, an AVMA press release on the cyanuric acid discovery here, and a Washington Post article here explaining how the interaction between the two chemicals proved fatal to pets.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 4:31 PM on June 4, 2007

So, I read the Caplan piece, and my thought on it is that, as ever, the Cato Institute fails to realize that many people disagree with them not because they don't understand economics, but because they simply value different things than the Cato Institute does. For example, I'm an environmentalist. The Cato Institute doesn't give a shit about the environment- or if they do, it's not in the same way as me at all. That being the case, I'm not going to support their policy prescriptions, because... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 12:48 AM on June 2, 2007

Brian B.: Embarrassing for you indeed. It's a comparative archive on Jews and Judaism with mostly Jewish authors. Please don't hurt them or destroy their books.

Okay, seriously, did you even look at the links page for that site? Stormfront, David Duke, various Holocaust deniers...

Somehow, I'm guessing your next rhetorical move here will be something about how the site's perspective is irrelevant and we're all being... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 3:33 PM on May 13, 2007

Brian B.: You are dismissing Shahak because of someone's archive that you aren't sure of?

Well, I called that one.

On Shahak, I think he was someone who rebelled against his culture and upbringing with a vengeance, and though that isn't necessarily a bad thing, I think he took it to an excessive degree, one that led him in an intellectually dishonest direction. In general, I think that if a sizable portion of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 4:36 PM on May 13, 2007

A few comments:

- This is AWESOME.

- According to one of the comments on the blog StopMakingSense linked, her character name is probably actually President Lum, which would explain the Urusei Yatsura music.

- Browsing through the poster's other videos, I found a sort of interview/promo thing with her here, which I imagine would be even more entertaining if I understood the language.

- Her blog... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 10:40 PM on May 12, 2007

People tend to view the whole "New Atheist" movement as being a left-wing progressive thing, but Christopher Hitchens and Sam "In Defense of Torture" Harris are good illustrations of the ways in which it could just as easily become, in essence, neoconservative or worse. I've gotten the impression that Hitchens has been such an enthusiastic supporter of the "War on Terror" largely because of his hatred of religion, and apparently justifies supporting Bush on the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 9:35 PM on April 27, 2007

The problem with a discussion like this is that people have a bunch of different definitions of what "authenticity" means. That may be a good reason to abandon the word, itself, but it seems to me that the article attacks one definition and takes that as a refutation of the others- for example, the article seems to argue that many of Leadbelly's songs originated with white musicians, making him inauthentic in that sense- so therefore, the manufactured pop of the Monkees is superior to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 11:47 AM on April 20, 2007

Miko: I think it is the same definition of authenticy, which is about the idea of realness. Leadbelly's perceived 'realness' partially stemmed from the fact that he was poor, black, once a prisoner. So people have, at times, felt that his music was somehow realer -- more keenly felt, more representative of a primitive community.

As the author says, he and his friends heard in the music "the forgotten pain of dead black men....fantasies of the romantic... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 3:31 PM on April 20, 2007

I don't know that I would call myself a primitivist, but I do have a lot more sympathy for their arguments than most here. (Mostly, what I am is an environmentalist of the tree-hugging deep green sort, and to paraphrase one noted primitivist, "I want to see a world where every year, there are more wild salmon than the year before." If that's possible to achieve in the context of our current civilization, wonderful, I'm all for it, and will support whatever might bring it about, but I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 7:25 PM on April 11, 2007

Abiezer: On a louis wain cat's point about authoritarian personality types, I can't say I've been overly troubled by this down the years, in so far as if you're hoping for a politics that can address common needs, you're going to be dealing with all sorts, and I'm less concerned by forceful people who at least subscribe to a something that in theory at least won't give them the chance to be Stalin (then I suppose we're back to the tyranny of structurelessness again).... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 10:35 PM on April 11, 2007

It's worth pointing out that Martin Durkin was part of a very odd little Trotskyist party called the Revolutionary Communist Party, who, from what I've read, reveled in taking contrarian positions on just about everything, to the point that they eventually evolved into the polar opposite of what their original ideology ostensibly was, becoming pro-corporate right-wing libertarian types. They were and are fervently anti-environmentalist, and their former members all seem to have gone on to become... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 5:40 PM on March 18, 2007

I'm with languagehat on this. It's interesting to compare the difference between the discussion of this issue as opposed to that of Japan's WW2 atrocities- Japan gets a lot of criticism for never making a direct apology, for not facing up to their history in the way Germany has, and for the whole Yasukuni thing, and rightly so, for the most part. Turkey, meanwhile, not only has not made even an indirect apology, but officially denies the Armenian Genocide even happened and throws people in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 11:01 PM on January 19, 2007

I happen to be one of ol' Joementum's constituents. He's pretty much the epitome of everything that's wrong with American political culture these days, as far as I'm concerned. Eternal pessimist that I am, I seriously doubt all of this will end with Ned Lamont in the Senate, but I'm going to make it to the voting booth on August 8 come hell or high water, all the same.

Ethereal Bligh: And I'd like to repeat that I support his defeat wholeheartedly and I'm one... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 11:44 PM on July 30, 2006

Ethereal Bligh: Seems to me that what they're saying there is far more nuanced than you are claiming.

I can't say that I'm seeing much nuance in that article. It's hard for me to see something which calls Joementum an "outstanding and respected U.S. Senator", praises his "utmost integrity" and claims that "we need more, not fewer, people with Joe Lieberman's character in the Democratic Party" as being anything but an... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 1:11 AM on July 31, 2006

I find this deeply unsurprising, myself. I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Mel Gibson's father is an open Holocaust denier.

Mel, for his part, hasn't exactly gone to great lengths to distance himself from his father's opinions on the subject. I'm sure it's the case that he wouldn't have said these things while sober, but I seriously doubt that what he said wasn't a reflection of what he actually believes.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 12:07 AM on July 30, 2006

Interesting article about very early Japanese animation here.
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 6:30 PM on July 24, 2006

I know the tradition of tanuki having giant testicles, which is why I wasn't sure that's what they were at first, but the article I linked mentioned this particular cartoon and said they were tanuki. Dunno. Maybe they couldn't get away with depicting them that way back in 1933...
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 6:44 PM on July 24, 2006

The thing which strikes me most about these is the utter banal normality of them. I agree with the earlier comparisons to Thomas Kinkade, actually. This is the kind of art, I imagine, that as a general rule, was(and is- not these specifically, but the general style) most appreciated by the average non-art-loving person.

drstein: Half of the paintings look like something you could go down to Tuesday Morning and buy. I wonder how many people would even recognize... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by a louis wain cat at 8:02 PM on July 16, 2006