On Track to the Outgames: Part 7

With only 50 days to go before the opening ceremony of this year’s World Outgames, here’s a look back at the sport and cultural festival of the previous games held in Copenhagen in 2009.

There was a more varied international content to the cultural festival than at previous games. This variety was reflected in it’s title – OutCities – a plural title indicating Copenhagen was not the only city to be celebrating. Performers and artists from Melbourne, Rio, Antwerp, Mexico City, Arhus and Tel Aviv were located around the city centre and many lgbt performers from each country made an appearance. A variety of other events were also on offer, ranging from the QueerTango, OutChoir and Out in Leather festivals, as well as cinema and theatre.

There were more sports at the Copenhagen games than in the first in Montréal. Thirty-eight sports were available to athletes, with the usual swimming and athletics events being well subscribed. Copenhagen also introduced several sports new to the Outgames (World or Continental) – climbing, curling and floorball. As in previous games several international lgbt governing bodies also used the Outgames as their annual world championships.

One of the challenges encountered by many lgbt athletes when attending events such at the Outgames, Gay Games or EuroGames is often the absence of a playing partner or team to play with in some events. Badminton players, for example, would arrive from the other side of the world and not know who his/her doubles team-mate would be, if any. Quite often the draw to pair up players didn’t take place until the morning of the competition. It is not unknown for two players who had never met until a couple of hours before their first match as a team to go on to win a medal. This has often led to some very creative team names. One water polo team at Copenhagen had members from West Hollywood Aquatics, Atlanta, New York, and Queer Aquatics Utah. They abbreviated their name to W.A.N.Q.!

Officially there were 6,500 athletes, 89% of whom identified themselves as members of the lgbt community. According to Tommy Kristoffersen, Outgames Sports Co-ordinator, there were 13 transgender athletes, the largest number recorded at an international multi-sport festival.

International sporting governing bodies have yet to agree on the criteria for inclusion of transgender athletes. The Outgames had generally followed the Olympic policy which set strict regulations on which gender-based contest (male or female) the athlete could compete, according to the transition stage of the specific trans athlete – if they were allowed to compete at all.

At the Copenhagen Outgames a Canadian trans athlete, Jennifer McCreath, competed in the marathon and swimming contests. She had to compete in the female competition, even though she had not fully transitioned. The timing equipment used for international sport only records male or female results – there is no third setting. Jennifer’s finishing times in both the marathon and swimming were, accordingly, recorded as female results.

After some discussion with the organisers Jennifer suggested the Outgames adopt a third gender category. They agreed, and an interim policy was adopted on-site with an official published policy statement coming a few months later.

As the only transgender athlete in both of her events Jennifer was recognised as the gold medal winner. However, for the time being at least, the International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics Association (IGLA), who were using the Outgames as their world championship meet, awarded her the silver medal as second-place finisher in her women’s category. The IGLA had no third gender category.

There were many sporting achievements throughout the Outgames, too many to list, but here is a small selection.

Confusion and controversy reigned at the men’s volleyball contest. The organisers decided to re-organise the categories for the final medal round. The teams quickly objects, complained, and presented a petition.

As expected, Canada took a clean sweep of gold medals in all 3 categories in curling. Of the 8 teams in the competition, the Canadians had 6, the other 2 were both Danish.

AIDS campaigner and US reality tv star Jack Mackenroth won a total of 8 swimming medals – 2 gold, 4 silver and 2 bronze.

One of several all-straight teams won a silver medal. Team SAS, a Danish female handball team, were beaten in the final by fellow Danes Team Panic.

As mentioned last time, 58-year-old American runner Dean Koga won a gold medal in his gage group in the 200 meters the day after being injured in a bomb attack at the track.

The oldest known competitor was 86-year-old Robert Lornezen in the bridge tournament.

The nation with the most medals was the USA with 513 in total (243 gold, 151 silver, 119 bronze), followed by Germany with 306 (130 gold, 101 silver, 75 bronze) and then the Netherlands with 248 (112 gold, 67 silver, 69 bronze). Host Denmark came next with 218 (93 gold, 67 silver, 58 bronze). These places are the same whichever way you count medals – by the overall total, or by total gold medals first.

Masters of Maths

There’s an old legend which tells how a mathematician invented the game of chess. You probably know a version of it. It begins with an eastern emperor (sometimes Persian, sometimes Indian, sometimes Chinese) offering a reward of gold to anyone who solves a problem in warfare strategy. One version says a mathematician invented chess in the process. The emperor is so pleased that he gives him the gold, but the wily mathematician turns it down and suggests rice grains instead. He asks for one grain of rice to be placed on the corner square of the chessboard, and that double the amount be placed on the next square, and so on, until all the squares are accounted for. The emperor agrees, unaware of the implications.

Less than one third around the board the rive grains are having to be carried in in wheelbarrows.  By the end there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains in total (if I’ve got my sums right). The mathematician may not have any gold, but he’s got enough rice to live on for the rest of his life.

This legend links chess and maths like no other, and it seems that people good at one are likely to be good at the other. And to illustrate this I’ve chosen some gay chess masters (no women, I’m afraid – still looking) who have successfully combined both.

 

The first is Ron Buckmire, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Occidental College, California (whom I mentioned briefly during Black History Month). Grenadan-born Ron’s interest in chess began at school in neighbouring Barbados. It wasn’t long before Ron was competing in national and international championships. My earlier reference to him mentioned his win against international chess master Geoffrey Lawton in 14 moves  at the age of 17. Here is that match in full. If you don’t understand the notation you can follow the match move by move by clicking on the “forward” button on that webpage. Even though Ron no longer plays in championships he still has International Chess Master status. It’s no surprise to learnt that he’s Grenada’s highest ever ranking chess player.

I’ve no record in my Gay Games database of Ron entering any of the chess tournaments held a three Gay Games, but I can tell you that Tigran Spaan, another Chess Master, who studied maths and computer science at the University of Amsterdam, won 2 chess gold medals at the Sydney Gay Games in 2002 (the 2002 female champion is currently Professor of Law in Melbourne, so no maths link there). At the last appearance of chess at the Gay Games in Cologne 2010 Tigran was not so successful and only went home with a bronze. He also won a bronze at the 2004 Eurogames in Munich. Spaan founded an IT company in 2000 called Gridline. He is still involved with chess and the Gay Games was a member of the organisation bidding to host the 2018 Gay Games in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, that bid fell in last week’s round of voting.

Chess is well-known for the names of it’s opening moves, often named after the players who used them most successfully. One of these openings is called Santasiere’s Folly, named after Anthony Santasiere.

Of Italian ancestry Anthony Santasiere was born in New York City in 1904. He was the 12^th of 13 children in a poor family. Despite this he developed many varied artistic interests which he pursued for the rest of his life – piano playing, painting, cooking, poetry writing, playing bridge, and, of course, chess. An elderly, rich chess fan called Alrick Man paid for Anthony’s college education on condition that Anthony spends part of the summer at his estate. It was there that Anthony developed his interest in chess.

His first success in chess, as has often been the case in many chess masters, was as a teenager. At the age of 16 he was awarded a special prize for winning all his games in the Metropolitan League. The American Chess Bulltein dubbed him “the boy wonder”. Anthony won his first title, the prestigious Marshall Chess Club Championships, the following year, and was captain of the club’s tournament team.

Anthony became a teacher after receiving an MA degree from the College of the City of New York. He  spent then next 34 years teaching maths, primarily at the Angelo Patri Middle School in the Bronx. He began writing for the American Chess Bulletin at about the same time.  For over 30 years his outspoken opinions of fellow chess players gave him a reputation for harsh personal criticism. He was also often harsh in his criticism of the use of several popular opening moves and the players who used them. His own favourite opening move was also criticised by others. It was a great rival, Reuben Fine, who christened this move at Santasiere’s Folly, indicating his own opinion of the move. Nevertheless, Anthony was a popular chess player. No more so than in his Manhattan apartment where he hosted dinners and chess matches to many fellow players.

Anthony retired from teaching in 1961 and moved to Florida. There, in a slightly more accepting atmosphere, he made less of an effort to hide his sexuality from friends. For 15 years he lived with his younger partner, Hector. It was often a tempestuous relationship, for Hector was a compulsive cleaner and Anthony was not.

Anthony’s health as he grew older meant he had to stop playing chess, and he died following a heart attack in 1977.

There’s so much more to Anthony Santasiere’s life, as indeed there is to Ron’s and Tigran’s. For now it is only needs me to point out that chess and maths have played important parts in all of their lives.

Getting it Straight About - the Apple Logo

Its strange how quickly some urban myths and common misconceptions can spread. Unfortunately, most of them are much slower to correct. One, however, seems to have corrected itself in a relatively short time – the link between the Apple computer logo and Alan Turing.

First of all, what is the connection? The tragic end to Turing’s life was caused by his homosexuality. More accurately, it was caused by British society’s attitudes to homosexuality. After Turing was arrested and convicted for gross indecency he was given a choice – imprisonment, or organo-therapy. Turing chose the latter.

Organo-therapy involved the injection and ingestion of female hormones, notably oestrogen. Research into this treatment was basic and not extensively tested. Turing became, in effect, a guinea pig. But it was also thought that it would lead to a lessening of mental activity. Having his body altered was bad enough, but Turing also had to face the reality of a stagnation in his mental capacity.

Although Turing carried on vital research, mostly into morphogenesis (the presence of mathematical patterns in nature, of which I’ll write more about in November), he became more depressed by his treatment, both medical and personal, and decided to commit suicide.

Who knows why he chose to inject an apple with cyanide and eat it. Some have suggested he got the idea from a scene in Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”, which he’d seen a short time beforehand. Turing was found on 8^th June, 59 years ago this morning, with the half-eaten apple near his bed.

It is no wonder that the lgbt community began to link the manner of his death to the Apple logo.

The familiar Apple logo with a bite out of it first appeared in 1977. In those days of glam rock and post 60s psychedelic design the logo was originally depicted in rainbow colours (shown here), not, as Jean-Louis Gasée (former Apple executive) said “in the wrong order”, but in the correct order starting with green at the top to emphasise the green leaf. In a world of bright logos and branding this first Apple logo became an instant hit with consumers.

But why an apple? The answer comes from the company’s first logo in 1976.

In a retro design by Ronald Wayne that looks more like a Victorian bookplate than a logo, the figure of Sir Isaac Newton is shown sitting under his apple tree, a solitary apple highlighted on a branch. Newton’s famous work on rainbows automatically inspired Rob Janoff to come up with the rainbow apple (the rainbow and Newton, an asexual and probably gay-inclined man, will be mentioned again in October – my meteorology month).

The bite from the apple logo was only introduced after it was remarked that the fruit could easily be mistaken for a tomato or cherry. So the bite (nothing to do with computer bytes) was added (or was it taken away?).

The rainbow apple logo was used up to 1997, when design had moved away from psychodelia and into simpler shapes. What could be more simpler than turning the apple into monochrome.

The urban myth of Alan Turing’s death inspiring the Apple logo, although relatively short-lived, still lingers in people’s minds. So much so, that as recently as last year an apple with a bite was used on the cover of a biography of Turing. It remains one of those ironic connections between unrelated ideas that the human mind so often makes – seeing links and patterns in things that aren’t there. Turing, with his pioneering work on morphogenesis, may well have been amused.

Perhaps Turing would be even more amused by the fact that the Chief Executive Officer of Apple, Tim Cook, is an openly gay man and one of the most influential men on the planet.

Flower Power - A Man With Real Flower Power!

As a bit of a change today we concentrate on a real person, not a mythological character, who has exercised his own Flower Power on the botanical world.

Last month was the 100^th year of the Chelsea Flower Show. For those who haven’t heard of it before, the Chelsea Flower Show is the UK’s most popular and important flower show of the year. Gardening programmes have always been popular on British television and whenever the Chelsea Flower Show is on millions of people tune in to see all the amazing and imaginative designs by horticulturalists from around the world. Winning one of the coveted gold medals or Best Garden in several categories is like winning a Wimbledon final.

The Chelsea Flower Show is organised by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) who judge the entrants’ garden designs and award prizes. This year the RHS invited a gay horticulturalist from Nottingham to be one of the judges. His name is Ian Cooke.

There has been a lot of controversy and criticism by some top designers at the show this year over the quality of judging. It’s all down to personal choice I expect. But I’d be very surprised if the Best Garden in Show, the Australian-designed sub-tropical garden, didn’t come top of Ian’s list.

Between 1994 and 2008 Ian Cooke was Grounds Manager at the University of Nottingham. At first you’d think this meant he was just a glorified gardener, but not so. The university has several large campus’s and extensive grounds and parkland. Ian had a team of 42 people to help keep all of these in trim.

One of the first things Ian did when he arrived in Nottingham was to bring his love of tropical and exotic plants into the flower beds. His influence can still be seen toady in the flower beds of Nottingham Castle, with intense reds and oranges, and tall exotic flowers in the centre of the beds. These have included floral statues of Robin Hood, Maid Marian and a knight on horseback.

Nottingham Castle gardens during Nottingham in Bloom.

You can just see the floral knight of horseback in the centre.

Photo © Nottinghamshire Life and Countryside

It wasn’t long before Ian’s designs were winning regional and national awards for his work at the university. Being responsible for four large areas of Nottingham’s green spaces Ian was roped in to join the design group of Nottingham in Bloom. Nottingham has always done well in the annual Britain in Bloom contest, organised by the RHS, and has won the “large city” category a record 18 times. In 2008, the RHS decided to hold its first Champion of Champions competition. Ian was chairman of the Nottingham in Bloom design group that year and, guess what? Nottingham won!

On his retirement from the University of Nottingham in 2008 Ian received one of the highest horticultural honours, the Associate of Honour of the RHS. There are only 100 living Associates of Honour at any one time, and Ian’s award came as a fitting tribute to his 14 year’s work in Nottingham, and his expertise on tropical plants.

Since retiring Ian has spent his time between Nottingham and California. It was Ian’s fascination with exotic plants that took him on a lecture and study tour of California in 2000, and he fell in love – with the state, and with his partner Philip, a Californian. Ian has written several books on exotic plants and still gives talks and lectures. And you can keep up to date on what Ian is doing by logging on to his website and see lots of photographs of his work.

It’s actually write a while since I’ve seen him around in Nottingham (I don’t know him personally, but I’ve seen him around the castle gardens when I worked there, and he’s one of those people you see on the scene from time to time), but his influence is, as I said earlier, still to be seen in Nottingham. Ian once called the particular style of horticulture that he helped to develop as “Nottingham Contemporary”. As well as the vibrant displays at the university and the castle this style also has room for the traditional floral bed, country gardens and hanging baskets.

If you visit Nottingham during the summer months please pop into the university grounds or the castle and have a look at Ian’s legacy, the Nottingham Contemporary floral style. The Nottingham in Bloom 2013 has begun this week in earnest with the streets beginning to fill with flowers and floral displays.

 

Heritage Spotlight - Bletchley Park

The work done by Alan Turing at Bletchley Park during World War II is well known. So well known, in fact, that it overshadows the work of the other code-breakers who worked there. Which is why I direct you to the website of the Bletchley Park Museum.

Turing wasn’t the only gay man at Bletchley Park. Here are three more gay code-breakers.

Noel Currer-Briggs (1919-2004)

Noel was a respected genealogist who, late in his career, turned to research into the families of the Holy Grail legend and owners of the Turin Shroud. He arrived at Bletchley Park from the Filed Ambulance Corps in late 1941. His skills in languages (he was studying for a degree in Modern Languages at Cambridge University when he was called up for war service) made him ideal to work on German ciphers. Noel worked on the Enigma ciphers briefly and then on the Nazi naval Playfair ciphers used in the lead-up to an invasion of Sicily in 1943. It was this work which helped the Allies to counter Nazi movements. For this Noel received an honour for his work he refused to consider his work of any great significance – “I was never sure why!” he once said. He left Bletchley Park with the rank of Major. After becoming a gentleman farmer he turned to genealogy and wrote many family history books and was a consultant on Debrett’s Peerage. Like many gay men of his era he married. With his wife Barbara he ran an opera festival, and he was secretary of the Three Choirs Festival. Eventually Noel left his wife after accepting his sexuality. He made a couple of television and radio appearances in the days before genealogy was really popular, usually broadcasting on royal or peerage matters. Had he lived another couple of years he would surely have entered the spotlight in the furore surrounding “The Da Vinci Code”. With his popular eccentric personality and extensive knowledge of medieval Holy Grail legend and genealogy he would have become a star.

Bentley Bridgewater (1911-1996)

This Canadian-born son of an English barrister became one of the UK’s leading museum administrators. Bentley first joined the British Museum in 1937 and was it’s Secretary from 1948. In between these years he was seconded to the Foreign Office and sent as a cryptographer to Bletchley Park in 1942. Whilst at Bletchley he was the partner of Angus Wilson (below). They had both worked at the British Museum in different departments. At Bletchley they both worked in Hut 4, the Naval Section which included the Enigma work. Bentley didn’t work on the Enigma himself but on the RHV ciphers used by Nazi ice-breakers and u-boats who didn’t carry Enigma machines. During this period Angus Wilson went through a series of emotional problems, most often violent, and Bentley was the rock on which Angus could cling to. The Wrens often called them “The Heavenly Twins”. After the war Bentley returned to the British Museum and retired in 1973.

Sir Angus Wilson (1913-1991)

The most well-known of this Bletchley trio, Angus became a successful writer and was knighted in 1980 for services to literature. It had been suggested he become a cryptographer by a colleague in the British Museum cataloguing department who had already gone there. It was Angus’s adequate skills in Italian that placed him in the Naval Section working on Italian ciphers. He later went on to work on Japanese naval ciphers (he was an expert on Japanese call-signs) and the Nazi intelligence service codes. He ended his Bletchley Park career as a Communications Intelligence Officer. Gradually, the stress of the war took its toll on Angus and his increasingly alarming tantrums at Bletchley led to him being given psychiatric therapy. After the war Angus returned to his job at the British Museum, where he began writing short stories. As more of his stories became published he became a full-time writer and left the museum in 1955. His writing career took off and he became a popular raconteur and regular television chat show guest.

There are many Bletchley Park code-breakers – some still living – who are hardly known outside Bletchley circles. This small selection is my tribute to them all.



Bletchley Park



Ologies of the Month - Mathematics and Computer Technology

This month sees the 101^st anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing, the mathematician and code-breaker who formulated the principles of modern computer technology. To celebrate his legacy this month’s Ology will look at maths and includes some notable lgbt mathematicians and modern developments in computer technology made by lgbt engineers.

Mathematics was once part of the science of philosophy, at least for the Ancient Greeks. They invented the word after all - “mathematics” comes from the Greek word for science.

If you can call anyone a pioneer of maths in philosophy then it is Plato. However, Aristotle didn’t agree with most of his ideas and followers of each philosopher fought over the meaning of mathematics for centuries.

The use of mathematics is essential to all of the sciences. It is the way data is verified or records. If Baron Franz Nopcsa wanted to know if a dinosaur bone belonged to a species already known he would have measured it and compared the figures. If Edward Sagarin wanted to determine the chemical make-up of a perfume he would have compared the proportions of each component chemical.

I was never very good at maths. I often joke about preferring algebra because it used letters more than numbers! And when my nephew was young I always insisted he was older than me because his birthday was the month before mine! Both of these point out the joys of logic, another branch of mathematics that is, perhaps, the only thing that makes computers possible. Logic, like mathematics, was once considered part of philosophy. And to prove the illogical nature of my thinking on maths, one of my posts will be entitled “1+1=1”. All will become clear.

The use of mathematics in physics will be dealt with later in the year, but for this month I’ll look at two areas where maths is also useful. With Turing’s work at Bletchley Park as a code-breaker I’ll look at the work of other gay code-breakers who were there in my Heritage Spotlight. After all, breaking codes and ciphers is often a mathematical process. And I’ll have a look at another side-angle to maths with some links to chess.

To end the month I’ll celebrate the 35^th anniversary of the first appearance of Gilbert Baker’s Rainbow flag by seeing it enter the record books.

A Trio of Asia-Pacific Scientists

As promised, here is my tribute to lgbt scientists of Asia-Pacific heritage who are trying to discover more about Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Keeping with the Ology of the Month and providing the Molecule of the Week I’ll start with Dr. Benny Chan, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the College of New Jersey. The reason I haven’t done a Molecule of the Week illustration is because the molecule in question has such a long name that it won’t fit – dodacapotassium hexaniobium pentatriacontaselenide, or K12Nb6Se35.3 (don’t bother trying to pronounce it unless you’re into chemistry!). This molecule or compound, along with hexacaesium tetraniobium docosaselenide (C6Nb4Se22), was discovered by Dr. Chan in 2007.

Chan’s research involves looking for superconductors that operate at room temperature, and it was while doing this research that the two new compounds emerged. Studying the compound’s crystal structures may hold the key to creating room-temperature superconductors.

A scientist I mentioned in January during my astronomy series is Dr. Martin Lo. He is an astro-mathematician who discovered gravitational superhighways through the solar system created by the sun and planets which make it easier to plot and operate space probe missions.

NASA’s Genesis mission, a probe sent to collect solar wind particles in 2001, used Lo’s superhighways to get to a point in the Earth’s orbit where gravitational forces between the planet and the Sun balance each other and kept the probe in place. This point is called a Lagrange Point and all planets and moons have them. Using his research Lo was also able to explain some of the unusual orbits of what are called the Jupiter family of comets.

Speaking of Jupiter and Lagrange Points brings me to my third lgbt Asian-Pacific scientist – Mike Wong.

Planets like the Earth have 2 Lagrange Points – one which precedes us and one which is behind us. They are roughly 60 degrees in angle from the Sun. The diagram shows what I mean. Both of Jupiter’s Lagrange Points are populated by hundreds of asteroids. Astronomers name these two asteroid groups after soldiers or participants in the ancient Trojan Wars. The asteroids orbiting in the Lagrange Point in front of Jupiter are members of the Greek camp, and those in the Trojan camp orbit behind Jupiter – except 2! Before astronomers decided to divide the two camps one asteroid in the Greek asteroid camp was named after a Trojan – Hektor. To balance things out astronomers decided to name one of the Trojan camp asteroids after a Greek – Patroclus. I’ll probably treat the whole groups of asteroids separately in a future Star Gayzing post. But for now I’ll concentrate on asteroid Hektor.

What Mike Wong and his colleague Frank Marchis discovered in 2006 while working with the University of California, Berkeley, was that Hektor was not one but two asteroids! Occasionally asteroids have their own moon orbiting around them, or rather orbiting around each other in what astronomers call a binary asteroid. Mike’s discovery that Hektor was actually one such binary was the first discovery of it’s kind among the thousands of Trojan/Greek asteroids.

Mike’s main research is on Jupiter itself, and in the course of his post-doctoral work at NASA he discovered the presence of ammonia ice in Jupiter’s atmosphere.