Stretching gender boundaries

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Former French Olympic swimmer Casey Legler is a male model. But she is a cisgender female.

 

 

 

photo Casey-Legler-wearing-Give-001_zpscdtoy6y0.jpgThere is another video here...with more of Casey's story.

... I was in Brooklyn and there were, you know, this group of kids that was like coming down, as they do - where I come from we call them "the children", so all of like the gays and the queers - you know, the children, the kids. And they're walking down the street and one of them was particularly loud. And she was talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, and then suddenly she goes, "I know who you are!" And she looks at me and she goes, "Thank you for doing what you're doing." And she tears up and she says, "You're making it OK for me to be here." At the end of the day, that's what I'm in the business of. Like, that's it. Like, if the image of me out there in the world makes it easier for one more kid to think that there's some f**king place for them, then that's the business I'm into.

--Legler

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Treatment of transgender youth

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photo Transgender-Students-Prom-638x425_zpsgs4qho9g.jpgThe Endocrine Society held their 97th annual meeting last weekend in San Diego. At that meeting Dr. Maja Marinkovich, MD, pediatric endocrinologist and Medical Director of the Gender Management Clinic at Rady's Children's Hospital of San Diego, an affiliate of UCSD, presented a new study which confirmed that the mental health of transgender youth improves with recognition and treatment of their gender dysphoria.

Ignoring it does not make it go away.

The photo is of transgender teens Isaac and Jacob preparing for a prom in Kansas City.

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Sunday Train: Five Levels of US Intercity Rail Policy

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In Sunday Train last week, I referred to the Bipartisan Majority to Authorize the funding of Amtrak as "Good News". One commentator in the discussion in one of the crossposts pointed out that the news wasn't all that particularly good, since continued funding on this basis over the indefinite future will spell serious trouble for the system as a whole.

Now, as I suggested more than once, the "good news" last week certainly was not unqualified good news ... that is, to say it was "qualified" good news was already taking on board the bad electoral news for Amtrak in the continued Republican House Majority combined with a new Republican Senate Majority, which opened the door to some of the deep, slashing cuts to Amtrak that some on the Republican side have long hoped to make. So the "qualified good news" was that in going for a total defunding of Amtrak, the radical reactionary wing of the Republican party overplayed its hand, opening the way for a majority of House Republicans, along with basically the entire Democratic caucus, to authorize the continued funding of Amtrak at just about the levels that have been in place over the past four years.

But that was set against the bad news of the INDOT refusing to continue the Hoosier State service on the ground of basically not being allowed to have its cake and eat it too ... insisting on acting like the organization putting together a passenger rail service, without being treated as a passenger railway. And so I started thinking about the Hoosier State / Cardinal corridor in the context of, on one hand, the very low bar for "good news" in transport funding with this Congress, versus the tremendous need we have for a massive wave of investment in transport that can be powered by sustainable, renewable energy. And to organize my thinking, I started to sort it out into five levels:

  • Level 0: "Very Much Worse";
  • Level 1: "Barely Scraping By";
  • Level 2: "A Basic Skeleton Service Done Right"
  • Level 3: "Incremental Growth"
  • Level 4: "Aggressive Growth"

More about the five levels ... below the fold.

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The Breakfast Club (more Irish)

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Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungover  we've been bailed out we're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it's PhilJD's fault.

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The Breakfast Club (3.14.15 Super Pi Day)

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Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungover  we've been bailed out we're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and
weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our
boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late,
it's PhilJD's fault.

photo 807561379_e6771a7c8e_zps7668d00e.jpg
    

Pi mathematical constant photo 200px-Pi-unrolled-720_zpsc86fcb4a.gif Today is Pi (π) Day, how could we live without it. So let's celebrate π on it's day
3.14. This year it's even more special because today's date is 3.14.15
matching the first five digits of the mathematical constant. The next
Super Pie Day won't happen for another 100 years.

As you remember from grammar school math, π is the mathematical
constant consisting of the main numbers 3, 1 and 4. According to the
Wikipedia of π, "it is the the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, and is approximately equal to 3.14159."

It has been represented by the Greek letter "π"
since the mid-18th century, though it is also sometimes written as pi. π
is an irrational number, which means that it cannot be expressed
exactly as a ratio of two integers (such as 22/7 or other fractions that
are commonly used to approximate π); consequently, its decimal
representation never ends and never settles into a permanent repeating
pattern. The digits appear to be randomly distributed, although no proof
of this has yet been discovered. π is a transcendental number - a
number that is not the root of any nonzero polynomial having rational
coefficients. The transcendence of π implies that it is impossible to
solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle with a compass and
straight-edge.

OK, enough of that. Let's get on to the party part.

It's earliest known celebration was in California where in 1988 at the
San Francisco Exploratorium physicist Larry Shaw along with the staff
and the public marched around one of its circular spaces eating fruit
pies. In 2009. The US House of Representatives passed a non-binding
resolution declaring 3.14 π (Pi) Day. And in 2010, a French computer
scientist claimed to have calculated pi to almost 2.7 trillion digits.

Coincidentally, it is also the birthday of theoretical physicist
Albert Einstein. So at Princeton University in New Jersey there are numerous celebrations around both events that also include an Albert Einstein look alike contest.

Besides the partying at Princeton, here's what is going on
elsewhere to celebrate this mathematical necessity that drives
mathematicians nuts.

Celebrating Pi Day, a sweet time for scientists and pie lovers By Steve Rubenstein. SFGate

It took the ancient Greeks and the infinite
power of the circle to make it happen, but the California Academy of
Sciences is opening four minutes early on Saturday.

It's going to open at 9:26 a.m. instead of 9:30 a.m. And the reason
for that is because pi, the ancient ratio that specifies how many times
longer the circumference of a circle is than its diameter, is 3.1415926
... , with a particular emphasis on the 926. [..]

At the California Academy of Sciences, after throwing open the
doors four minutes early, astronomers will celebrate by joining visitors
in the dropping of Popsicle sticks. It's a mathematical game in which
the sticks are used to model the mathematical formula for pi. The best
way to find out how that works, academy insiders say, is to show up and
drop a few sticks yourself.

While astronomers are dropping Popsicle sticks, other astronomers at the Golden Gate Park academy will hold a "Pi in the Sky" lecture in which they will explain how they
use pi to calculate the volume of planets outside the solar system. Pi
works not only on Earth, but billions of light-years from Earth, too.

About 3.14 miles to the east, the Exploratorium is trying to one
up the academy, pi-wise. Admission will be free, all Pi Day long.

'Super Pi Day' - 3.14.15 - will feature weddings, food specials as math nerds celebrate once-a-century date By Sasha Goldstein, New York Daily News

Dana Emanuel and Byron Clarke both love pie -
she the food, he the numerical constant (spelled pi). And Saturday's
date, 3.14.15, dubbed "Super Pi Day," happens to be the first five
digits of the infinite number, which represents the ratio of a circle's
circumference to its diameter and remains the same no matter the size of
the circle.

The date won't come around again for 100 years, so the couple decided
it was a "no brainer," set the date and printed off circular wedding
invitations to dash off to dozens of family and friends. The nuptials
will bring them full circle after they got engaged on June 28 last year -
6.28, or two pi. [..]

- Runners on New York City's Roosevelt Island will take off on a
3.14-mile course at exactly 9:26:53 a.m. Saturday on what is billed as a
"Girls Prep Ultimate Pi Day Pi K."

- A variety of events will honor the Pi Day of the Century at Manhattan's Museum of Mathematics on East 26th St.

- The math whizzes over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will let prospective students know if they've been admitted beginning
at 9:26 a.m. on Saturday. The prestigious school announced the date with
a two-minute video showing drones delivering the decisions.

- Greenwich Village pizzeria Ribalta will offer diners $3.14 off their bill if they wish their server a Happy Pi Day.

- The American Pie Council has an activity packet filled (pdf) with pi- and pie-related fun, games and food ideas.

- Pie cups at all Hill Country Chicken locations will be on sale for $3.14 on Saturday.

- Pie Corps in Greenpoint will offer a 10-inch pie for $31.41, while a 4-inch mini pie will fetch $3.14, according to DNAinfo.com, which highlighted five city spots featuring Pi Day pie specials.

In 2010's "Moment of Geek", Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC's "The
Rachel Maddow Show," featured a math student teacher, Teresa Miller,
from the University of New Mexico with a hula hoop and a Rubic's Cube
that was quite amazing.

 


 

I was never that energetic as a math student. Teresa should be a great math and phys ed teacher.

So, whatever you do today, eat something round and remember π.

Breakfast Tunes

 


 

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

 

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Albert Einstein

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#WeJustNeedToPee, #Occupotty, #TransLivesMatter

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I don't use twitter myself. And I've never ever taken a selfie. And I spent the entirety of January and February working on the autobiography project. So I'm probably quite slow on the uptake and late with the info.

Apparently the bathroom selfie campaign has gone viral.

The problem is simple. The question is simple. But the issue is apparently too complex for some people to figure out.

So I guess it is up to me to try to 'splain, it Lucy.

Visual aids probably work best.

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The Breakfast Club (Come Ye To The Fair!)

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Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungover  we've been bailed out we're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and
weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our
boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late,
it's PhilJD's fault.
photo 807561379_e6771a7c8e_zps7668d00e.jpg
   

This Day in History

 

 

 

  

 

 

   

Uncle Sam cartoon debuts; Brigadoon opens on Broadway; Deadly rampage at Scottish elementary school.

Breakfast Tunes

 

 

 

  

 

 

   

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

 

Grifters Gonna Grift

And media organizations like Politico make it so damn easy because it's their grift too.

Atrios

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Fox News "doctor" calls transpeople bullies -- State Legislators reveal the real bullies

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Tuesday On Fox & Friends (which I do not watch), noted transphobic "doctor" Keith Ablow and legal analyst Arthur Aidala discussed the Planet Fitness story with that quintessential intellectual, Elizabeth Hasselback in the show's legal insanity segment.

In the past Ablow has stated his position that "he is not convinced that transgender identity is real.

Because people are “not settled on the fact that when somebody says, declares, ‘I am of this gender,’ but they are anatomically and genetically of another gender,” Ablow said the gym should have been more forgiving to the woman who complained. “They need to account for that and not judge the folks who feel exposed.

--Ablow

Aidala said that from a legal standpoint, under Michigan law, the gym had every right to act as they did in revoking the disruptive woman's membership.

[W]e get tongue-tied, we can’t say the obvious, which is this is craziness! You’re kicking out members because they feel uncomfortable that someone who seems to be a man to them, and is genetically, is looking at them naked?!”

“We are being bullied into accepting things that are untrue to our core feelings."

--Ablow

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