Idiom for the Day: Johnny on the spot

Johnny on the spot:

A person who is always available; ready, willing, and able to do what needs to be done.

Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling” – PM

The Prime Minister has released a statement on the Second World War code-breaker, Alan Turing, recognising the “appalling” way he was treated for being gay.

Alan Turing, a mathematician most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes, was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ in 1952 and sentenced to chemical castration.

Gordon Brown’s statement came in response to a petition posted on the Number 10 website which has received thousands of signatures in recent months.

The Statement

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing. Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. 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. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later. Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction. I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue. But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

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source

Idiom for the Day: Ill At Ease

Ill at ease

If someone is ill at ease, they are worried or uncomfortable.

Were The World Mine (2008)

Were The World Mine Poster

Were the World Mine (2008) is a musical film directed by Tom Gustafson, and written by Cory James Krueckeberg and Tom Gustafson. Were the World Mine is a magical story of empowerment that culminates in a touching love story, inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Were the World Mine stars Tanner Cohen, Wendy Robie, Broadway star Judy McLane, soap opera legend Jill Larson, Nathaniel David Becker, and Zelda Williams.

Timothy is an openly gay student at a private boy’s school. Although now in his senior year, he is still persecuted by the aggressive rugby team. Timothy lives with his mother, who is struggling with her son’s sexuality, and his father is not a part of his life. Timothy is cast as Puck in the senior play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. While reviewing his lines, he discovers the recipe for a magical flower wielding the power of love. Timothy utilizes the flower to have the bigoted town take a ‘walk in his shoes’. The entire town is thrown into chaos as previously heterosexual community members fall in love with their same-sex friends, bosses and co-workers. The school drama teacher guides Timothy towards the question of whether his actions have caused more harm than good. This film features several musical numbers.

Cast:

Tanner Cohen as Timothy
Wendy Robie as Ms. Tebbit
Judy McLane as Donna
Zelda Williams as Frankie
Jill Larson as Nora
Ricky Goldman as Max
Nathaniel David Becker as Jonathon
Christian Stolte as Coach Driskill
David Darlow as Dr. Bellinger
Brad Bukauskas as Cole
Parker Croft as Cooper
Reid Dawson as Russ
Waymon Arnette as Henry
Yoni Solomon as Bradley
Alexander Aguilar as Taylor
Zach Gray as Ian
Colleen Skemp as Becky
Julia Black as Crystal

Were The World Mine Scene

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Were The World Mine is a great movie, to be honest, I don’t like musical, because I find it kinda tacky, but this movie is not tacky at all, the stories are really imaginative and the music are great, I like the songs featured in the movie. Tanner Cohen did a great job in this movie, he and Nathaniel David Becker have a good chemistry going on in the movie, love them both

A picture of Tanner Cohen

Tanner Cohen

One of Nathaniel David Becker

Nathaniel David Becker

and Zelda Williams because she’s just awesome

Zelda Williams

Fave quote:

Donna: My son? He’s a fairy.
Woman: A fairy?
Donna: Yeah, in a play.
Woman: Ohh…
[laughing]
Donna: Well, in real life too.

Trailer

and here’s the video of Tanner Cohen and Nathaniel David Becker sing Were The World Mine

Idiom for the Day: Half a Mind

Half a mind

If you have half a mind to do something, you haven’t decided to do it, but are thinking seriously about doing it.

Wedding Wars (2006)

Wedding Wars is a 2006 LGBT romantic comedy film about gay marriage, but also family and politics. It handles a very sensitive emotional issue both lightly and seriously. It stars John Stamos as the lead character, wedding planner Shel, Eric Dane as his brother, James Brolin as the Governor of Maine, Bonnie Somerville as the Governor’s daughter, a gay marriage supporter, and Sean Maher as Ted, boyfriend of Shel (Stamos). It premiered on Monday, December 11, 2006 on the A&E Network.

Wedding Wars Poster

It was well-received by gay audiences and Stamos appeared on the cover of The Advocate to promote the film. Although it is not the first television movie to have gay themes, it is the first about gay marriage.

Cast:

Eric Dane as Ben
John Stamos as Shel
James Brolin as Governor Welling
Bonnie Somerville as Maggie
Sean Maher as Ted

Wedding Wars Scene

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I watched this movie on the DVD, and I found this movie quite hilarious, I like the way they portrayed a serious issue (equality on marriage) in a humorical kind of way.

Quote I like in the movie:

But you hate camping! It will be cold, and there’ll be bug, and Heath Ledger won’t come and cuddle with you.

John Stamos:

John Stamos

Eric Dane:

Eric Dane

Sean Maher:

Sean Maher

Trailer:

Gender bending

The evolution of homosexuality

Genes that make some people gay make their brothers and sisters fecund

THE evidence suggests that homosexual behaviour is partly genetic. Studies of identical twins, for example, show that if one of a pair (regardless of sex) is homosexual, the other has a 50% chance of being so, too. That observation, though, raises a worrying evolutionary question: how could a trait so at odds with reproductive success survive the ruthless imperatives of natural selection?

Various answers have been suggested. However, they all boil down to the idea that the relatives of those who are gay gain some advantage that allows genes predisposing people to homosexual behaviour to be passed on collaterally.

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One proposal is that the help provided by maiden aunts and bachelor uncles in caring and providing for the children of their brothers and sisters might suffice. That seems unlikely to be the whole story (the amount of help needed to compensate would be huge), though it might be a contributory factor. The other idea, since there is evidence that male homosexuals, at least, are more likely than average to come from large families, is that the genes for gayness bring reproductive advantage to those who have them but are not actually gay themselves. Originally, the thought was that whichever genes make men gay might make women more fecund, and possibly vice versa.

Brendan Zietsch of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, and his colleagues have, however, come up with a twist on this idea. In a paper to be published soon in Evolution and Human Behavior, they suggest the advantage accrues not to relatives of the opposite sex, but to those of the same one. They think that genes which cause men to be more feminine in appearance, outlook and behaviour and those that make women more masculine in those attributes, confer reproductive advantages as long as they do not push the individual possessing them all the way to homosexuality.

The straight truth

Other evidence does indeed show that homosexuals tend to be “gender atypical” in areas beside their choice of sexual partner. Gay men often see themselves as being more feminine than straight men do, and, mutatis mutandis, the same is true for lesbians. To a lesser extent, homosexuals tend to have gender-atypical careers, hobbies and other interests.

Personality tests also show differences, with gay men ranking higher than straight men in standardised tests for agreeableness, expressiveness, conscientiousness, openness to experience and neuroticism. Lesbians tend to be more assertive and less neurotic than straight women.

There are also data which suggest that having a more feminine personality might indeed give a heterosexual male an advantage. Though women prefer traditionally macho men at the time in their menstrual cycles when they are most fertile, at other times they are more attracted to those with feminine traits such as tenderness, considerateness and kindness, as well as those with feminised faces. The explanation usually advanced for this is that macho men will provide the sperm needed to make sexy sons, but the more feminised phenotype makes a better carer and provider—in other words an ideal husband. And, despite all the adultery and cuckoldry that goes on in the world, it is the husband who fathers most of the children.

As far as masculinised women are concerned, less research has been done on the advantages that their appearance and behaviour might bring. What data there are, however, suggest they tend to have more sexual partners than highly feminised women do. That may, Dr Zietsch speculates, reflect increased competitiveness or a willingness to engage in unrestrained sexual relations (ie, to behave in a male-like way) that other women do not share.

Dr Zietsch and his colleagues tested their idea by doing a twin study of their own. They asked 4,904 individual twins, not all of them identical, to fill out anonymous questionnaires about their sexual orientation, their gender self-identification and the number of opposite-sex partners they had had during the course of their lives. (They used this figure as a proxy for reproductive fitness, since modern birth-control techniques mask actual reproductive fitness.)

The rules of attraction

Their first observation was that the number of sexual partners an individual claimed did correlate with that individual’s “gender identity”. The more feminine a man, the more masculine a woman, the higher the hit rate with the opposite sex—though women of all gender identities reported fewer partners than men did. (This paradox is normal in such studies. It probably reflects either male boasting or female bashfulness, but though it affects totals it does not seem to affect trends.)

When the relationships between twins were included in the statistical analysis (all genes in common for identical twins; a 50% overlap for the non-identical) the team was able to show that both atypical gender identity and its influence on the number of people of the opposite sex an individual claimed to have seduced were under a significant amount of genetic control. More directly, the study showed that heterosexuals with a homosexual twin tend to have more sexual partners than heterosexuals with a heterosexual twin.

According to the final crunching of the numbers, genes explain 27% of an individual’s gender identity and 59% of the variation in the number of sexual partners that people have. The team also measured the genetic component of sexual orientation and came up with a figure of 47%—more or less the same, therefore, as that from previous studies. The idea that it is having fecund relatives that sustains homosexuality thus looks quite plausible.

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source

Which Brothers & Sisters Character Are You?

I’m Kevin, I mean, oh, how I love to become Kevin, lol

Idiom for the day: Get in on the ground floor

Get in on the ground floor

If you get in on the ground floor, you enter a project or venture at the start before people know how successful it might be.

Idiom for the day: Fat Chance

Fat chance!

This idiom is a way of telling someone they have no chance.