PHOTO: (above left) the cover of a large-circulation business magazine ironically displayed an erect "up and to the right" graph on the July 15-21, 2013 issue, which convinced me that a clueless editor or a subversive gay art director is doing the magazine layout because in the previous printed issue (seen above right) Businessweek ran a gay marriage story on page 69 -- a common slang term for a homosexual act! (See the story by Jessica Grosse, "The Gay Wedding Gift is money. Here come the brides and grooms. Companies are hoping to profit from same-sex marriage," Businessweek magazine, July 8-14, 2013, p. 69 and published on line as "The $51 Billion Wedding Industry Toasts a Post-DOMA Bump," posted June 28, 2013)
Other loosely related notes on things I've recently read:
- Angelicque E. White, "'Gay widow'seeks marriage equality," Gazette-Times, July 19, 2013, p. A9 "Angelicque E. White is an assistant professor of Oceanography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at OSU"
- UPDATE: (July 24, 2013) the OSU student newspaper also reprinted the opinion by Angelicque E. White, assistant professor of Oceanography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at OSU, "'Gay Widow' calls for marriage equality," Barometer, July 24, 2012, p. 7 (not posted on Barometer Website)
- Rick Settersten, Oregon State University Professor of social and behavioral health sciences,Rick Settersten, "Commentary, A Patchwork of Rights, Gay Couples are still left out," Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2013, reprinted in Portland, Sunday Oregonian, July 21, 2013, p. B9
- Rick Settersten, Oregon State University Professor of social and behavioral health sciences was previously featured in the article by Bill Graves, "Oregon State University professor describes why today's youth take a slower path to adulthood," The Oregonian, December 23, 2010 "Author of many scientific articles and several other books, including "On the Frontier of Adulthood." Family: He and his partner of 25 years have a daughter, 11; son 7."
- David Crary, "Gay-Rights activists say marriage isn't only issue," July 18, 2013, printed in Oregonian, Jul. 21, 2013, p. A8 from "Some Gay-Rights Activists Regret Focus on Marriage," Associated Press, July 18, 2013
- Andy Humm, "Earliest Veterans of Marriage Fight Revel in Victory," gaycitynews.com posted July 10, 2013 - Andy Humm is a very good journalist and longtime reporter on gay issues, but his writing represents the typical back East bias that ignores the marriage activism of Jack Baker.
- Wayne Dynes, "Untitled," dyneslines.blogspot.com posted July. 21, 2013 - Wayne Dynes talks about the fault-line in America over gay marrage and says, ". . .the major phase of my gay activism and scholarship lasted from about 1970 to 1990, when the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality appeared. At the end of this period the ground began to shift, first with the rise of Queer Theory and the LGBT complex, and now with other factors. The following piece represents a preliminary effort to grapple with this latest set of changes." Wayne's post did a good job putting into context the latest buzzwords in the study of LGBT, which he notes is a new term that developed over the last few decades. He talked about the shift toward assuming sexual orientation and gender identity are "fluid and changing." Buzzwords are intersectionality, the idea of overlapping minority statuses, also anticategorical complexity, the idea that society arbitrarily defines categories, and intracategoical complexity. My interpretation, using the mathematical terminology of engineering systems modeling, is that sexual orientation and gender identity are not discrete variables (e.g. gay or straight, male or female) and are continuous variables (e.g. a continuous range from exclusively gay to bisexual to exclusively heterosexual -- an idea embraced by Kinsey, but ignored by early gay activists -- or a range from female to male -- an idea still resisted by the vast majority of society.) In engineering systems theory, the mathematics of discrete variables (such as computer logic that is represented by either a binary one or zero) and analog variables (such as the analog noise and power level of a Wi-Fi radio signal required for a digital computer to receive the correct discrete binary data of ones or zeros) are both useful and compatible models depending on what you are trying to do. I anticipate that the brains wetware (neural network of biological components) will be capable of analysis just as complex computer systems are analyzed. Anybody who has done complex engineering system analysis knows that only the most simple of systems have closed form and deterministic mathematical formulas that can predict how the system will behave. The more complex a system, the more it likely it will be described and analyzed using statistics, such the signal to noise ratio of a Wi-Fi radio signal correlates with the probability that a digital computer signal can be received correctly by a computer. Also, uses of digital electronics, which work on only discrete states of one or zero, can be analyzed with a stochastic system model because they are so complex that they can appear to be operating randomly. Likewise, even a digital coputer can suffer from a logic gate randomly failing that can't be fully corrected by the digital circuitry. (Digital error detection and correction has made computer networks feasible.) I suspect the analog brain wetware will be understood well enough someday to allow for it to be simulated, which will lead to the breakthroughs in understanding that digital computers have provided analog electronics, even though there will always be some random variation that is measured. Perhaps I can develop these thoughts in a future blog post if my vision and health hold OK.
