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ktarlow — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:55:06 -0400

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Best commercial I’ve seen in a while. I enjoy it every...

ktarlow — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:54:08 -0400

Best commercial I’ve seen in a while. I enjoy it every time it comes on.

Y’all should check out my latest design project, The Art...

ktarlow — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 17:13:34 -0400

Y’all should check out my latest design project, The Art of Drink.

"Schooling is different than education. Education is the lifelong habit of learning. Schooling is the..."

ktarlow — Sun, 27 May 2012 15:38:16 -0400

“Schooling is different than education. Education is the lifelong habit of learning. Schooling is the institutional matrix that receives that desire and destributes it with state backing.”

- Michael Eric Dyson

via

via

ktarlow — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:26:14 -0400

via

Congratulations, Kelsey!

ktarlow — Sun, 20 May 2012 12:33:11 -0400

Congratulations, Kelsey!

Happy Birthday, Malcolm X

ktarlow — Sat, 19 May 2012 22:01:00 -0400

Melissa Harris-Perry: Happy Birthday, Malcolm X (MSNBC)

Today is the birthday of Malcolm X. He would have been 87 years old.

Malcolm rarely receives the kind of mainstream press attention that his better known counterpart, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. does. And perhaps that is best. Unlike King, Malcolm has been not been subjected to the ahistorical nostalgia machine of American hero-making. His radicalism remains intact.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Marable Manning

"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it..."

ktarlow — Sat, 19 May 2012 22:00:00 -0400

“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”

- Malcolm X

Slinky Physics

ktarlow — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:59:36 -0400

via

Since its debut in 1943, over 250 million Slinkys have been sold. (Which means hundreds of millions of lost productivity hours due to Slinky untangling, amirite?)

James Buchanan: Our REAL first gay president

ktarlow — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:25:00 -0400

I have no adjectives to describe the latest cover of Newsweek, which declares Obama “the first gay president” after he personally endorsed same-sex marriage.

I’ll just let the rainbow halo speak for itself.

Usually this is where I’d post a picture of said cover, but I refuse to perpetuate that crap. Google it if you haven’t seen it already and you want to feel sad about American print media.

On a less disappointing and more historical note, George Mason University’s History News Network just ran an illuminating article about the real first gay president of the United States. (Hint: it is not Barack Obama)

Our real first gay president (History News Network via Salon)

There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was gay, before, during and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too — he was not far into the closet.

Today, I know no historian who has studied the matter and thinks Buchanan was heterosexual. Fifteen years ago, historian John Howard, author of “Men Like That,” a pioneering study of queer culture in Mississippi, shared with me the key documents, including Buchanan’s May 13, 1844, letter to a Mrs. Roosevelt. Describing his deteriorating social life after his great love, William Rufus King, senator from Alabama, had moved to Paris to become our ambassador to France, Buchanan wrote:

I am now “solitary and alone,” having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.

Despite such evidence, one reason why Americans find it hard to believe Buchanan could have been gay is that we have a touching belief in progress. Our high school history textbooks’ overall story line is, “We started out great and have been getting better ever since,” more or less automatically. Thus we must be more tolerant now than we were way back in the middle of the 19th century! Buchanan could not have been gay then, else we would not seem more tolerant now.

This is a great, great article. Read it!

And if you needed any more convincing that Newsweek has in fact degenerated into a vulgar peddler of sensationalistic tripe:

The Most Controversial Newsweek Covers [Slideshow] (Mediaite)

Good lord.

"I’m broke but I’m happy, I’m poor but I’m kind, I’m short but..."

ktarlow — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:06:24 -0400

“I’m broke but I’m happy, I’m poor but I’m kind, I’m short but I’m healthy, yeah.”

- Alanis Morissette

"Congratulations, North Carolina. Last night you struck a decisive blow for loneliness. And tonight,..."

ktarlow — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:10:00 -0400

“Congratulations, North Carolina. Last night you struck a decisive blow for loneliness. And tonight, as you go to sleep beside your heterosexual life mate, you can rest assured that all across your great state a gay man or a lesbian woman is crying themselves to sleep in solitude, and making your relationship stronger with every tear.”

- Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report, 5/9/12)

The Pacific Ocean is big.

ktarlow — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:49:33 -0400

The Pacific Ocean is big.

This is how a global nuclear disaster will happen

ktarlow — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:43:00 -0400

All of the experts seem to agree on one thing. The state of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan is unacceptably precarious.

It has been 14 months since the massive 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country and triggered a triple-meltdown at the Daiichi plant. Japan is still trying to understand the short-term and long-term health consequences of the largest nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl, although the psychological scars of the disaster are already evident. And while much of the 12-mile “exclusion zone” around the power plant is likely to remain uninhabited for decades, there is potential for a much larger disaster that could wreak nuclear havoc on a global scale.

The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb (AlterNet)

It all comes down to reactor 4 at the Daiichi plant in Fukushima.

Note that this is not one of the three reactors that experienced a meltdown in the days after the 2011 earthquake (those are reactors 1, 2, and 3). However a large batch of spent radioactive fuel rods was moved into storage facility at unit 4 just before the earthquake and tsunami.

This radioactive waste sits in an elevated pool in a warehouse that was badly damaged during the disaster. Should the warehouse sustain any further earthquake damage, the containment pool might fail and expose the fuel rods to the air.

And the probability of another strong earthquake near the crippled facility is high:

[Nuclear waste expert Robert Alvarez] said that the urgency of the situation is underscored by the ongoing seismic activity around northeast Japan, in which 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 to 5.7 have occurred off the northeast coast of Honshu between April 14 and April 17.

“This has been the norm since 3/11/11 and larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant,” Alvarez added.

A recent study published in the journal Solid Earth, which used data from over 6,000 earthquakes, confirms the expectation of larger quakes in closer proximity to the Fukushima Daiichi site. In part, this conclusion is predicated on the discovery that the earthquake that initiated last year’s disaster caused a seismic fault close to the nuclear plant to reactivate.

Should this all too likely scenario occur, and the spent fuel rods become exposed, the consequences would be unprecedented in the post-atomic era.

Alvarez warns that if there is another large earthquake or event that causes this pool to drain of water, which keeps the fuel rods from overheating and igniting, it could cause a catastrophic fire releasing 10 times more cesium-137 than was released at Chernobyl.

As the author notes, the radioactive cesium-137 isotope has a half-life of 30 years, and can remain dangerous for centuries.

But the real doomsday scenario involves the fire from unit 4 spreading to the other six waste storage facilities at the Daiichi plant. Such a disaster would release the radiation equivalent to 85 Chernobyls — radiation that would spread “thousands of miles,” affecting both hemispheres.

In a statement released by his office, [U.S. Senator and senior member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Ron Wyden] replied, “The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States.”

So why is this urgent situation so under-reported?

Nuclear waste experts say it would expose the fact that the same design flaw lies in wait — and has been for decades — at dozens of U.S. nuclear facilities. And that’s not something the [U.S. Nuclear Regulator Commission], which is routinely accused of promoting the nuclear industry rather than adequately regulating it, nor the pro-nuclear Obama administration, want to broadcast to the American public.

…

There are 31 G.E. Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors (BRWs) in the U.S., the type used at Fukushima. All of these reactors, which comprise just under a third of all nuclear reactors in the U.S., store their spent fuel in elevated pools located outside the primary, or reinforced, containment that protects the reactor core. Thus, the outside structure, the building ostensibly protecting the storage pools, is much weaker, in most cases about as sturdy, experts describe in interviews with AlterNet, as a structure one would find housing a car dealership or a Wal-Mart.

These vulnerable elevated pools were only ever supposed to be temporary storage facilities, but ever since the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project was killed by the Obama administration, the pools have effectively become permanent.

Experts say the only near-term answer to better protect our nation’s existing spent nuclear fuel is dry cask storage. But there’s one catch: the nuclear industry doesn’t want to incur the expense, which is about $1 million per cask.

“So now they’re stuck,” said Alvarez, “The NRC has made this policy decision, which the industry is very violently opposed to changing because it saves them a ton of money. And if they have to go to dry hardened storage onsite, they’re going to have to fork over several hundred million dollars per reactor to do this.”

He also pointed out that the contents of the nine dry casks at the Fukushima Daiichi site were undamaged by the disaster.

The Japanese Punk Band Giving Voice to ‘Generation Fukushima’ (The Atlantic)

Japan’s Generation Y became Generation Fukushima very quickly over the past year. So what are the visible effects? For one, Japan’s famously non-political youth and even more non-political pop culture are suddenly experiencing a surge in poignant political expression. Powered by the same media platforms that have recently brought about revolutions in other parts of the world, artists with messages, especially anti-nuclear messages, are suddenly getting massive exposure in Japan.

Frying Dutchman, a Kyoto-based band virtually unknown a year ago, is behind what has perhaps become the anthem of the post-Fukushima youth movement. The song “humanERROR,” a poetic rant which, if nothing else, clearly articulates the narrative embraced by many Japanese, has become an internet sensation over the past three months.

Japan switches off last nuclear power plant; will it cope? (Reuters)

Japan shuts down its last working nuclear power reactor this weekend just over a year after a tsunami scarred the nation and if it survives the summer without major electricity shortages, producers fear the plants will stay offline for good.

The shutdown leaves Japan without nuclear power for the first time since 1970 and has put electricity producers on the defensive. Public opposition to nuclear power could become more deeply entrenched if non-nuclear generation proves enough to meet Japan’s needs in the peak-demand summer months.

…

Nuclear power provided almost 30 percent of the electricity to keep the $5 trillion economy going before the March 11, 2011 disaster that killed almost 16,000 people and left more than 3,000 missing.

A year on, the level of public concern about the safety of the industry is such that the government is still struggling to come up with a long-term energy policy, a delay having a profound impact on the economy and underlining just how costly it will be to contemplate a nuclear-power-free future.

Having boomed in recent decades on the exports prowess of big brands like Sony, Toyota and Canon, the economy suffered its first trade deficit in more than three decades in 2011 as power producers spent billions of dollars on oil-and-gas imports to fuel extra generation capacity.

Our political future: Voting for inflexible positions rather than leaders

ktarlow — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:58:00 -0400

Tonight, six-term U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) lost his reelection primary to conservative challenger and Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock.

It should be noted that the Senator of 36 years lost the primary handily. Indiana Republican voters broke for Mourdock by a twenty point margin.

After conceding the race, Lugar’s office released the following statement. I’m posting it in its entirety because I think it describes the current state of U.S. politics better than anything or anyone I’ve recently encountered.

Prepared Statement of Senator Richard G. Lugar on the Concluded Indiana Senate Primary

May 8, 2012

I would like to comment on the Senate race just concluded and the direction of American politics and the Republican Party. I would reiterate from my earlier statement that I have no regrets about choosing to run for office. My health is excellent, I believe that I have been a very effective Senator for Hoosiers and for the country, and I know that the next six years would have been a time of great achievement. Further, I believed that vital national priorities, including job creation, deficit reduction, energy security, agriculture reform, and the Nunn-Lugar program, would benefit from my continued service as a Senator. These goals were worth the risk of an electoral defeat and the costs of a hard campaign.

Analysts will speculate about whether our campaign strategies were wise. Much of this will be based on conjecture by pundits who don’t fully appreciate the choices we had to make based on resource limits, polling data, and other factors. They also will speculate whether we were guilty of overconfidence.

The truth is that the headwinds in this race were abundantly apparent long before Richard Mourdock announced his candidacy. One does not highlight such headwinds publically when one is waging a campaign. But I knew that I would face an extremely strong anti-incumbent mood following a recession. I knew that my work with then-Senator Barack Obama would be used against me, even if our relationship were overhyped. I also knew from the races in 2010 that I was a likely target of Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and other Super Pacs dedicated to defeating at least one Republican as a purification exercise to enhance their influence over other Republican legislators.

We undertook this campaign soberly and we worked very hard in 2010, 2011, and 2012 to overcome these challenges. There never was a moment when my campaign took anything for granted. This is why we put so much effort into our get out the vote operations.

Ultimately, the re-election of an incumbent to Congress usually comes down to whether voters agree with the positions the incumbent has taken. I knew that I had cast recent votes that would be unpopular with some Republicans and that would be targeted by outside groups.

These included my votes for the TARP program, for government support of the auto industry, for the START Treaty, and for the confirmations of Justices Sotomayor and Kagan. I also advanced several propositions that were considered heretical by some, including the thought that Congressional earmarks saved no money and turned spending power over to unelected bureaucrats and that the country should explore options for immigration reform.

It was apparent that these positions would be attacked in a Republican primary. But I believe that they were the right votes for the country, and I stand by them without regrets, as I have throughout the campaign.

From time to time during the last two years I heard from well-meaning individuals who suggested that I ought to consider running as an independent. My response was always the same: I am a Republican now and always have been. I have no desire to run as anything else. All my life, I have believed in the Republican principles of small government, low taxes, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and trade expansion. According to Congressional Quarterly vote studies, I supported President Reagan more often than any other Senator. I want to see a Republican elected President, and I want to see a Republican majority in the Congress. I hope my opponent wins in November to help give my friend Mitch McConnell a majority.

If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.

This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of partisan majorities to achieve. The most consequential of these is stabilizing and reversing the Federal debt in an era when millions of baby boomers are retiring. There is little likelihood that either party will be able to impose their favored budget solutions on the other without some degree of compromise.

Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint. This shows up in countless vote studies that find diminishing intersections between Democrat and Republican positions. Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country. And partisan groups, including outside groups that spent millions against me in this race, are determined to see that this continues. They have worked to make it as difficult as possible for a legislator of either party to hold independent views or engage in constructive compromise. If that attitude prevails in American politics, our government will remain mired in the dysfunction we have witnessed during the last several years. And I believe that if this attitude expands in the Republican Party, we will be relegated to minority status. Parties don’t succeed for long if they stop appealing to voters who may disagree with them on some issues.

Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the people they represent their best judgment.

Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be ridiculed today - from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in his second term.

I don’t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.

I hope that as a nation we aspire to more than that. I hope we will demand judgment from our leaders. I continue to believe that Hoosiers value constructive leadership. I would not have run for office if I did not believe that.

As someone who has seen much in the politics of our country and our state, I am able to take the long view. I have not lost my enthusiasm for the role played by the United States Senate. Nor has my belief in conservative principles been diminished. I expect great things from my party and my country. I hope all who participated in this election share in this optimism.

For another perspective on the Senator’s defeat:

Why Lugar Lost (Huffington Post)

This article points out how out of touch with his constituents Lugar may have become in his sixth (and final) term. However it also highlights the role played by well-funded, ideologically conservative interest groups, and hints at the potential consequences of an increasingly polarized government.

Along with losing touch with his Republican base back home, Lugar made efforts in Washington to reach across the aisle and work with Democrats. Lugar worked with then-Senator Obama to pass the Lugar-Obama Proliferation and Threat Reduction Initiative, served as honorary co-chair of the Obama-Biden inauguration and supported liberal Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagen. Those admirable qualities put him on the radar screen of some very powerful conservative groups.

The forces that aligned against Lugar are impressive and politically deadly — Club For Growth, Tea Party Express, Freedom Works, Citizens United, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Indiana Right to Life. They recruited Mourdock to challenge Lugar. They helped him raise millions of dollars, made major third party expenditures on his behalf, and organized conservatives throughout Indiana. In all, outside groups poured over $2 million into Mourdock’s effort to oust Lugar.

Mourdock’s victory will stand as Exhibit A for 2012 on the growing power of outside interest groups. How will that impact the way he governs should Mourdock win this fall? Only time will tell but Mourdock’s stated position that he hopes to build a Republican majority so big that no one has to seek compromise with Democrats is music to the ears of his powerful conservative supporters.

Lugar Loses Primary Challenge in Indiana (NY Times)

Still, some Democrats, eager to hold onto the Senate, also seemed buoyed by the results here. With Mr. Lugar’s defeat, they see the glimmer of an opportunity to claim a Senate seat that the party had considered out of reach as long as he was in the running. The Democratic candidate, Representative Joe Donnelly, is thought to have a better chance with independents and moderate Republicans in November against Mr. Mourdock.

Almost immediately, Democrats began emphasizing Mr. Mourdock’s conservative views. “Hoosiers deserve real leadership that will reach across the aisle in Richard Lugar’s successor, not Richard Mourdock’s Tea Party extremism,” said Dan Parker, the chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party.

…

Mr. Mourdock, meanwhile, has said that bipartisanship has led the nation to the brink of bankruptcy, and that the nation’s current circumstances call for a time of confrontation, not collegiality.

I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand...

ktarlow — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:51:00 -0400

I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

Malcolm X

It’s the prettiest ice cream commercial you’ll watch...

ktarlow — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:32:34 -0400

It’s the prettiest ice cream commercial you’ll watch today.

From vimeo: Resonance is a collaborative project with over 30...

ktarlow — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:43:10 -0400

From vimeo:

Resonance is a collaborative project with over 30 independent visual and audio designers/studios. The aim was to explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways.

Maybe don’t watch this one under the influence of any consciousness-altering substances.

Eels Always Look Like They Just Told A Joke And Are Waiting For A Reaction

ktarlow — Wed, 02 May 2012 01:15:05 -0400

“Right?!?!”

This is an old one from Buzzfeed, bookmarked in my “Always good for a laugh” folder.

Education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and...

ktarlow — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:34:00 -0400

Education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.

W. E. B. Du Bois