BROAD CAST 11 SEPTEMBER 2009: Alan Turing, Roma, Government Transparency, Maira Kalman, Migrating Birds, and the Failure of Reparative Therapy

(Alan Turing)

Many historians credit the cracking of the German Enigma code by English mathematician Alan Turing with eventual Allied victory in World War II. At the very least, this breakthrough turned the tide of the war and saved untold thousands of lives.

After the war, Turing went on to invent the Turing machine, which is considered the basis of all modern computing.

For his accomplishments, in 1952 Turing was convicted of "gross indecency" because he admitted to having a gay relationship. Just that -- he loved a man. The punishment for that crime was either a prison sentence or chemical castration. Turing chose castration. Two years later, at age 41, he committed suicide.

If you don't know about Turing's contribution to our freedom and our current ability to communicate via the internet, consider the reasons for why he has been relegated to obscurity -- why Quentin Tarantino will likely never make a movie based on his life. Why we don't have a "Turing Day" or a Turing monument on our national plaza near other World War II honorees.

In an effort to remedy this injustice, last month computer programmer John Graham-Cumming started an online petition to campaign for Alan Turing's recognition. The petition swiftly drew more than 30,000 signatures, including those of scientist Richard Dawkins, actor Stephen Fry, author Ian McEwan and philosopher A.C. Grayling. Now, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued a posthumous apology for the "appalling" treatment of Alan Turing.

According to an article by Hilary Whiteman for CNN Europe, Brown stated "He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely."

(The Bombe decoding machine created by Alan Turing to crack German Enigma code.)




During an August concert in Bucharest, Romania, singer/performer Madonna featured Roma musicians and a Roma dancers in her show. Roma people are often called Gypsies, though their preferred name for themselves is Rom or Roma. However, when during the concert Madonna paused to speak out against the way these people are discriminated against in Eastern Europe, she was booed by thousands in the crowd of 60,000.

According to the 365Gay article reporting on this incident, "There are officially some 500,000 Roma in Romania, but the real number could be around 2 million." Roma were among those singled out for internment and slaughter by the Nazis during World War II.

(Gay activist steps between pair of police horses to be interviewed during New York demonstration in 1971; photo by Grey Villet, from Life photo archives.)

The National Black Justice Coalition has issued a statement celebrating the recent American Psychological Association (APA) declaration that "health professionals should avoid telling clients they can change their sexual orientation". NBJC Interim Executive Director Dr. Sylvia Rhue commented: "This report is a long overdue repudiation of the 'reparative therapy' movement that is based in fear, error, discarded psychoblunder from the 1950's, and bad theology. The 'ex-gay' movement has done untold damage to thousands of people."

In a related story, the Denver Post reports "Focus on the Family will shed its controversial 'Love Won Out' program for transforming homosexuals into heterosexuals because of budget troubles."

(Image from Philips Habitat Lighting.)

In conservation news, Utne Reader reports "European researchers recently sought to stem the mortality rate of birds migrating over the North Sea, where lights from oil and gas rigs can distract and disorient the fair-feathered travelers. After finding that blue light and green light are much less disconcerting to birds than the red and white lights favored by these sites, the researchers worked with a Dutch oil and gas company to swap them out."

(Sun in Hands, photo from Stopped Time, Part 5 series.)

Every year the Sunlight Foundation has a contest called Apps for America, seeking web applications whose purpose is to enhance the usefulness and transparency of government data. Clicking on the line above will give you a list of all this year's applications. Below is an abstract of the list and brief description -- for more information, check out the Sunlight Foundation. (The three applications in bold at the top are the winners this year.) Be sure to bookmark this fantastic resource and pass it on.
ThisWeKnow -- ThisWeKnow sheds light on what the government knows about every community
DataMasher -- DataMasher lets you take state level data sets and mashem
GovPulse -- The Federal Registry at your fingertips. Over 1,000,000 pages finally accessible. View, explore, search, locate and take the pulse of your government.
Data.gov Catalog Dashboard -- A look at the Data.gov Catalog
Jobs In The USA -- Statistics of importance to the American Worker including stimulus money impacts.
Fund Flows -- Visualizer for comparing government procurements by geographic area.
GovStats.org -- Understand US Government economic statistics through easy interactive charts
USASpendingwatch.net -- Adding Political Context to USA Federal Spending
loquake -- location based earthquake lookup
House Scoreboard -- Just how representative is the House?
Jobless -- Compare jobless rates by region over time
DataRemix -- A community documented catalog of public data sets and developer tools
Pattrends -- Getting trends out of patents
Local Recovery -- Find out how much Recovery Act money has been spent at your current location
Wiki MapMaker -- Making custom, dynamic maps for Wikipedia
simpler/gov -- Simpler/gov is a platform that connects people and data. It is available to every local government that wants to share data and connect with the public.
Refugee Flow -- Uses Hans Rosling's Trendalyzer Software to Display Time-Series Asylum Grantee Data by Country Against GDP Per Capita Values and Freedom House's "Civil Liberties" Scores
Local Spending -- Find out how much federal money is being spent at your current location...
Budget -- Explore the federal budget.
Quakespotter -- Earthquakes rumble across a 3D globe. Tweets and maps pinpoint the action. Donations carry the day.
Superfund Finder -- Have you ever wondered how many Superfund sites are located near your home, your work, your loved ones? Now with Superfund Finder you can find out with help from data.gov, Google Maps & geolocation support in Firefox 3.5, iPhone & Android mobile browsers.
Geodata Explorer -- Visualize census data at a neighborhood level
Maps for America: EPA Edition -- Explore the relative chronic health risks, hazard levels and toxic release volumes across the country. Maps for America combines population, toxic chemical release reports, and chemical toxicity into easy to navigate maps.
Data-Gov Wiki -- Our Data-gov Wiki is the delivery site for a project where we investigate the role of linked data in producing, processing and utilizing the government datasets found in data.gov.
Congressional140.com -- Integrating top contractors for each congress member's state.
Goodness500 -- Goodness500.org ranks the largest companies in the world based on corporate social responsibility.
WaterGoodness -- WaterGoodness.org is a free website shining a bright light on America’s waters, both what flows from your tap, and your local bay/lake/pond/reservoir/river/ocean/stream. We show a mix of government and crowdsourced water quality data on a Google map.
SpendTrend.us -- Use SpendTrend.us to easily search government contracts for spending trends.
UsaOpenGov -- Provides help in identifying and fixing crippled data and APIs
yourCPI.com -- yourCPI.com produces visualizations of custom consumer price indexes (CPIs). Its custom CPIs are generated by mashing up demographic groups' average expenditures with consumer goods' price changes.
Eureka Invention Generator -- Eureka generates random inventions by analyzing the word frequencies of US patent application abstracts.
Disasters Map -- Maps, history and real-time comments to the natural disasters with Twitter and Capitol Words.
AHDI Calculator -- AHDI Calculator is a web-based application support expert user formulate the AHDI for their sake of research and improve the advance concept mining of AHDI to discover new social indicators
Employment market explorer -- Employment Market explorer is tool designed to help people understand local employment market, giving them a chance to compare local, regional and state unemployment rates and analyze the labor market dynamics.
Data.gov Time Machine -- new and interesting look for any historical data - time series in dynamic
GreenSpace Map -- GreenSpace Map is a web based and mobile application that allows the user to identify all of the EPA Featured Environmental Interests sites relative to a specifed location.
Fedtastic -- Fedtastic is a dynamic portal to government information referenced in the data.gov catalog and other sources.
Bernie - The Federal Register Watcher -- Post community comments on new Federal Register items, and keep track of your favorite agencies with Atom Feeds.
Quake Alert -- Find out which friends might be affected by recent earthquakes. See the Google Maps mashup and opt-in to receive Facebook notifications.
AlexLIb -- AlexLib is a KM/research tool which permits the user to create an ontology to search data.gov and everything else on the web at the same time. The search bot is a web page which only requires refreshing the page to (re)search.
typologies of intellectual property -- An interactive visualization of intellectual property.
D.C. Historic Tours -- Free Tour Planner of the Nation's Capital
MAICgregator -- MAICgregator is a Firefox extension that aggregates information about colleges and universities embedded in the military-academic-industrial complex (MAIC)
Top Dangerous Mines -- A website showing a real-time list of the most dangerous mines in the US based on recent earthquake data.
FlyOnTime.us -- Find the most on-time flight from one city to another.
FBI Fugitive Concentration -- Play Concentration with photos of FBI Fugitives

(By Maira Kalman from her "Can Do" column.)

And, finally, I can never say enough good things about Maira Kalman. We are now lucky enough to have her publishing a blog at the New York Times called "And The Pursuit of Happiness". Pursue your own happiness by reading her.

(By Maira Kalman from her "I Lift My Lamp Beside The Golden Door" column.)

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog. Hat tip to Calico, commenter at Dykes To Watch Out For, for the lead about Alan Turing.]

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THE RED QUEEN

(Maggie in Winter of 1983, San Francisco)

This is a short-short story that is, once again, mostly true. This is how I first heard of AIDS -- though once it had a name at all, it was called GRID for a while, Gay-Related Infectious Disorder.

The Red Queen was Arthur Evans.












THE RED QUEEN

In 1980, everyone wants Alby. “Everyone” is her girlfriend Randy, of course, plus the other two young dykes in Randy’s household, Francie and Leo. Alby is over there all the time. Their Victorian apartment has three bedrooms and no living room, but the entry foyer at the top of the stairs is huge and opens onto the kitchen, also big and bright. This serves as their common space unless it’s sunny, when you’ll find them on the balcony off Francie’s room, three stories above Castro Street between 18th and 19th – Faggot Central. They spend entire afternoons on the balcony, naked, young, hairy, with Alby at their core, the object of all desire.

Alby has two roommates of her own; they all moved here from a separatist land collective in Colorado. They live in a railroad flat near the original Levi Strauss factory in the Mission. She’s not going home a lot right now because her roommates, who are a couple, fight every day. Whatever they tell you they are fighting about, what’s really up is monogamy. They agreed to monogamy back in Colorado, when the number of out women in their small town was a list you could put on paper, and besides, they were newly in love. Two years later in Lesbos by the Bay, they are reduced to making three-month fidelity contracts. Another contract is coming due.

Jude, her middle class roommate, keeps saying Okay, let’s GO for it, let’s have three months of NON-monogamy. Lee, her working class roommate, is itching to cut loose, even bought a black leather jacket although she’s too pale to look good in it. What’s stopping her is: the idea of someone else being with Jude makes her flat-out crazy. She’s trying to figure out a way to have her cake but keep Jude on bread and water. This week her plan was based on class, how Jude’s privilege should keep her at home working on “issues” while Lee gets to experiment with the notion of “plenty”. When Lee runs this theory by Alby, Alby just busts out laughing. Since Alby has the impeccable credentials of having been raised poor, Lee knows it’s back to the old drawing board.

Alby and Randy are nonmonogamous but it’s not so hard for them because Alby mostly doesn’t care who Randy wanders off with, except for that weekend she spent with the woman from a CETA training, a new dyke from Oregon who wound up giving them both Trichomonas. That pissed Alby off. Alby’s slept with her ex twice and messed around with lots of women from their political group since she and Randy got together, and Randy is real relaxed about it all. But Randy draws a line about Alby going after women from Randy’s “inner circle”, says that’s incestuous. The inner circle includes Randy’s roommate Leo.

Leo wants to be a star, and is extroverted in the way that makes her friends thinks they’ve wandered into a rehearsal when they are with her. Her hair curls no matter how short she cuts it and is the color of strong red zinger tea. She earns enough to pay for rent, veggies, and tap lessons by working three nights a week as a stripper for the Mitchell Brothers. Alby doesn’t like to think about Leo stripping, and instead focuses on the hilarious skits Leo writes and performs at benefits. Leo saves the abandoned shopping lists she finds in carts at grocery stores and creates characters around these fragments of a stranger’s life. Alby’s favorite is the woman who sweeps into the store wearing a power suit and no smile. Her heels click rapidly against the floor like a playing card in a kid’s bicycle spoke. Her voice is impatient as she calls out the only items on her list: “TRIScuits………..”Summer’s Eve.”

Years later, Alby would think of Leo as a butch who cleaned up well. But in those days, well-bred political dykes didn’t let butch and femme have even a chair in the corner. By the time Alby will bring herself to admit that Leo’s bulging biceps and tucked in shirts are what really does it for her, Leo is living in Los Angeles and has made an appearance on the Gong Show. She was supposed to have been in some terrible Olivia Newton John movie, but Alby sat through it twice and never spotted Leo. She isn’t in the L.A. phone book. At least not under Schacter, her real name. Her stripper name was Leo Rising, but that isn’t listed, either.

Back to 1980. Randy’s other roommate, Francie, works part-time at a rock and bead store in the Haight. She plays the dulcimer and sings them stuff at night like “Blow the Candles Out” or “Matty Grove”. Alby keeps pestering her to change the pronouns in Matty Grove, it has the potential to be a great dyke ballad, but Francie refuses to butcher a classic, she says. Well, see if that attitude gets HER into Alby’s pants. Francie came right out with her attraction to Alby, asked if there was a chance. Alby used Randy’s no-inner-circle rule with a rueful grin, but softened it by giving Francie a back rub. Francie’s hair is too long for Alby anyhow.

Randy’s room has a bed that is bigger than a twin but smaller than a double. Alby complains about how little room there is to sleep in. Randy says Alby should be glad she has a bed at all – Randy is only 18 and barely getting by. She also says what’s the problem with spooning together all night?

One day Leo offers to swap her queen size bed with Randy. Leo is not simply between girlfriends, she never seems to have any – too busy working up her next gig. Alby is excited to sleep in Leo’s bed, even if Leo isn’t there. She and Randy have been bickering all day, and Randy is still a little huffy when they lay down, so Alby has to actually work at it to get Randy interested. Near the end, she keeps reminding herself to stay quiet, not because she worries about making noise but because she’s afraid she will say Leo’s name.

Alby hadn’t known Leo might have a crush back on her until last week. Francie let it slip, saying that nights when Alby isn’t there they sometimes all ask Randy questions about what Alby is like.

All?

Uh-hmm, Francie giggles.

In the morning Alby joins the coffee drinkers on the balcony. Coffee is all there is in the house. It’s chilly out here but the direct sun on her skin makes it bearable. Her cheeks are taut with dried eau d’Randee. When Leo suggests they all walk down the block for breakfast, the first thing Alby does is wash her face.

Next she buttons up the striped men’s shirt she got at St. Vincent’s, then steps into her white painter overalls. Her underwear is more of a debit than an asset at this point. She turns her ragg wool socks inside out to get another day out of them and laces her Vasqs tight. Since they are only going a block, she’s leaving her pack here, and in it her 9 mm. The steel toes of her Vasqs will have to be enough. She stands at the head of the stairs, considering the breeze coming up from the street, and goes back for old faithful, the baggy red wool pullover that is necessary even on (especially on) summer mornings in San Fran.

Her hair is too short to do anything but stick straight out, a dark walnut plush.

They’re all on the street waiting for her. Randy puts an arm around Alby’s waist inside the overalls. Alby’s other side is free, and she’s hoping Leo will claim it, but Francie scoots under Alby’s arm first. Leo takes left wing, and they sweep down the sidewalk. At 5’7”, Alby is six inches taller than any of the rest, and in public with her gang she often feels like Dorothy in Munchkinland. A very rough-looking Dorothy, with Munchkins who eat cunt.

No one mentions where they are going because it’s a given. Since Alby first started coming over, it’s always the Bakery Café. A year ago, a German establishment fag bought it and promptly fired all the waiters. Full of righteous honor, Alby and the others walk past the picket line that lasts for a few weeks, making a production of eating elsewhere. Leo calls the new owner “Gunter” and does a goosestep for the fired waiters, who cheer.

But restaurants where women are welcome are hard to come by in the Castro. The new waiters at the Bakery Café never make them wait half an hour just to get a menu like the snotty boys in some of the more expensive places. And breakfast is still a deal here. There is bacon for Alby, blintzes for the New Yorkers, and their non-political friends go there. After the picket line dried up, they wait almost a month, then sneak in as a group one Sunday morning without discussion or eye contact.

Before they reach the doorway to the Bakery, even Alby’s sleepy gaze notices a difference on the block. There are poppy-colored flyers on the wall around Hibernia Bank, across the street at the Chinese food place, and wrapped around poles. The Red Queen must have been out last night.

Alby and her friends know who the Red Queen is: One of the boys Leo went to camp with in upstate New York, Naphtali, is roommates with a man named Arthur. Arthur is a bespectacled Socialist faggot who will never pass as a Clone. Periodically his disillusionment with a movement that had such promise a decade earlier spills out of him in brilliant scathing diatribes which he prints on scarlet paper and wheatpastes all over the Castro. He uses the name “Red Queen” to keep everybody guessing. Alby loves his acid view, his battered hope, his East Coast rhetoric.

They stop by the nearest flyer, stapled to a light pole. Leo and Francie crowd in, and Alby touches Leo’s shoulder with her fingertips. Leo doesn’t look around. She has to get close to the print to read it – she refuses to wear her glasses – so to make up for blocking their view, she reads it out loud in one of her funniest voices.

But this one isn’t funny. This one is about how gay men are getting sick, are coming down with an impossibly rare form of cancer. One boy has even died from it. The Red Queen says something is afoot. He thinks there is a government connection. He thinks maybe it’s something in Rush or Locker Room. His words are almost shrieking. Alby stays with him until near the end, when he claims this cancer is contagious – can be spread from man to man.

Leo turns to face them. Alby feels a chill at her core, but she won’t show it to Leo. Instead, she rolls her eyes. Everybody knows cancer is NOT contagious, it wouldn’t be CANCER if it were CONTAGIOUS. Leo grins uncertainly. Randy is holding on tight. The Red Queen has really lost it this time.

Leo says, But the poppers thing, that sounds possible.

Alby agrees, Yeah, who knows what the fuck’s in them. But not cancer. And if there were something really contagious, we’d have heard, even from our fucked up media.

Randy says, No, not cancer.

Alby adds, Besides which, they only OD on poppers because they’re obsessed with sex, what do they expect?

They walk on into the restaurant.




-© 2008 Maggie Jochild; written 4 June 1999

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