Reasonably Logical

Since I see folks are hitting this blog (from search engines) looking for info on tomorrow’s racism forum, here’s the mass mail from the other day. I encourage everyone to attend. I will be.

“A Forum on Racism, Power and Privilege at UIUC”
Thursday, February 1 from 4 to 6 p.m
Foellinger Auditorium

To Members of the Campus Community:

We try to minimize the number of messages we send to the campus via mass mail, but I feel strongly that the following message rises to a level of importance that it is appropriate to share through this system.

On this Thursday, February 1, “A Forum on Racism, Power and Privilege at UIUC” will be held in Foellinger Auditorium from 4 to 6 p.m. I want to thank the students who organized the event, and I invite everyone in the campus community to attend. There will be an opportunity for members of the audience to offer their thoughts, as well as to pose questions to a panel of campus and university officials.

These are important issues that merit broad discussion, and I hope you will set aside time to participate.

Sincerely,

Richard Herman
Chancellor

These briefs are from a selection of GLBT related court cases. My thanks to TJ Hawk for providing them

Arnold v. Arnold — Whether a child can associate with LGBT people
Bottoms v. Bottoms — Maternal grandmother sues for custody; lesbian mother found to be unfit, appealed.
MD 2006 Conway v Deane — Scientific evidence that Gay and Lesbian Parents raise children that are equally well adjusted.
Cox v. Florida, 2005 — Gay parent adoption
ARK DHS v. Howard — Gay parent foster care & adoption
Gay Straight Alliance, Fox,et al vs. Salt Lake Schools — equal access to support groups at school.
E.O v. L.M., MA 1999 — Same sex parents custody and visitation rights

NOTE: Please do not bookmark these links. The location of the files may change. Please bookmark this page instead.

I’m happy to host other court briefs. Feel free to send them to me at reames@uiuc.edu.

The summer camp I staffed last August has gone national. I was a cabin counselor last year, and have every intention of going back this year. I strongly recommend the camp for anyone who might be interested.

Also if you notice, two of the press photos posted were mine. Cool!

NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 25, 2007

Triangle Foundation Announces National Summer Camp for GLBT Youth

DETROIT – Straight kids aren’t the only ones who get to go to camp anymore. Triangle Foundation, in cooperation with national supporting organizations National Gay and Lesbian Task Force; the National Youth Advocacy Coalition; Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays; and the National Center for Transgender Equality, has announced that the second annual Camping.OUT will be open to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and allied youth from across the United States.

“Camping.OUT was the one place where I didn’t have to worry about what I said and if people were going to like me. For once I was accepted for who I was” said Robert Proffer, a participant at Camping.OUT 2006.

This year’s camp, which will be held in Michigan from Aug. 14 – 19, will build upon the success of last years Camping.OUT, according to coordinator Greg Varnum.

“Our camp offers campers the opportunity to decide what programs they want to participate in each day,” said Varnum. “They may decide to go swimming or canoeing in the morning, for example, and then have a group conversation about leadership facilitated by a nationally-known GLBT activist in the afternoon. The young people who attended last year’s camp loved the format—but most importantly they loved the freedom to be open and out—to play, to think out loud together, to relax and be themselves. We’re looking forward to offering the Camping.OUT experience to even more youth from around the country this year.”

The camp will be open to youth aged 13 - 17 and will provide a welcoming, accepting place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied youth to have fun, make friends and expand their leadership and activism skills. The camp is running an Early Bird Registration special of $475 through March 1 – but no young person will be turned away for lack of funds, said Varnum.

“Triangle is currently raising funds for Camping.OUT to make sure that any young person who wants to come, can,” Varnum said.

For more information on Camping.OUT, or to make a donation to allow a young GLBT or allied youth to come to the camp, visit www.campingout.org or contact Greg Varnum at greg@tri.org or (313) 537-3323, ext. 108.

—-

2006 Camping.OUT press photos are available for download on our web site at: www.campingout.org
2007 Camping.OUT updates will also be posted to the site.

For more information contact:
Greg Varnum - Triangle Foundation - (313) 537-3323, ext. 108 or greg@tri.org
Roberta Sklar - National Gay and Lesbian Task Force - (646) 358-1465 or rsklar@thetaskforce.org
Jean-Marie Navetta - Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) - (202) 467-8180 ext. 213 or jnavetta@pflag.org

This sounds like a program with a lot of potential. Homelessness is a huge problem in the LGBT youth community and this is one of the most revolutionary programs I’ve heard of. Studies have shown that as much as 45% of the homeless youth population is LGBT.

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Raquel (Rocki) Simões
hosthome@avenuesforyouth.org
612-522-1690, ext. 110

GLBT Host Home Program, a national model, is back
Senator Scott Dibble hosts a January 25, 2007 House Party to celebrate its relaunch

After a three year hiatus, the GLBT Host Home Program will again start matching homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth with adult community volunteers who will provide a roof over their heads and the support that comes from living together. Avenues for Homeless Youth, a youth shelter in north Minneapolis, has taken on stewardship for this very important community-based program. “This was an easy decision,” explains Wendi Heuermann, Executive Director of Avenues, “The GLBT Host Home Program only strengthens our ability to provide housing for homeless young people. It’s an honor to be involved with this program.”

Through community conversations in 1995-1996, a GLBT host home model was identified as one of the potential responses to GLBT youth homelessness. YouthLink, a nonprofit organization serving homeless and at-risk youth in Minneapolis, led the way by creating and supporting the program from 1998-2003. During that time, 50 youth secured host homes throughout the Twin Cities. For many of these young people, the GLBT Host Home Program provided an opportunity to build healthy and nurturing relationships with caring adults and to transition out of homelessness.

With the support of YouthLink and other community members, Avenues for Homeless Youth has now become the new home of the GLBT Host Home Program.

On January 25, 2007, State Senator Scott Dibble will host a community house party in support of the Program’s relaunch. “We will be celebrating a new begining for this important effort.,” says Sen. Dibble, “It is a vital component in our goal to end long term homelessness in Minnesota.” This community house party is for individuals interested in learning more about the program – either as potential hosts, donors or just as members of the caring public. From 5:00 pm until 7:00 pm, individuals are invited to come to the Grant Park Fireplace Room at the Grant Park Apartments, 500 E Grant Street in downtown Minneapolis.

The GLBT Host Home Program has long had a significant impact on those involved with it. According to Michelle Chalmers, who together with her partner welcomed several youth into their home, “Getting involved with this program was one of the best things that ever happened to us. Sometimes we had to look really hard, but we could see that we were making a positive difference.” Started in Minneapolis, it has also been a model for organizations in other cities that want to create something similar, such as the Ruth Ellis Center in Detroit, Michigan.

According to a new national report released by The Task Force, of the estimated 1.6 million homeless American youth, 42 percent are GLBT. “If you have an extra room in your house and an open heart, give us a call”, says Raquel Simões, GLBT Host Home Program Manager.

Contact information: Raquel (Rocki) Simões
hosthome@avenuesforyouth.org
612-522-1690, ext. 110

Event information: Thursday, January 25, 2007, 5:00pm – 7:00 pm.
Grant Park Fireplace Room at the Grant Park Apartments, 500 E Grant Street in downtown Minneapolis.

Parking on Portland Ave between 9th St and Grant St. Cash and credit cards accepted. Meters also available on Portland and Grant.

This post will most likely only make sense to people who have programmed in C/C++.

It seems like trying to prevent programmers (sometimes even good programmers) from using magic numbers is a never ending task. Today, I thought of a possible idea to prevent them or at least catch them fairly quickly. Basically, you could use a preprocessor to randomly select the numerical values for #defines on each compilation. This way ever built would be internally consistent, but any attempt to hardcode a magic number would quickly fail. (Note that I’m assuming a decent unit test suite to help locate/catch the errors.) Each time the system is built, the #defines change and all the magic numbers stop working. Now we have a bunch of test failures and can easily find the “brocken” code segment. So in a header file you’d have something like this:

FLAGS(name1, name2, name3)
OR
FLAG(name1)
FLAG(name2)
FLAG(name3)

which would be respectively processed to:

#define name1 random_int
#define name2 random_int + 1
#define name3 random_int + 2
OR
#define name1 random_int
#define name2 random_int2
#define name3 random_int3


You’d also need something to handle maskable flags. Currently you might have this in a header file:

#define flag1 0x01
#define flag2 0x02
#define flag3 0x04
foo(flag1 | flag2 | flag3, etc...);


You’d need to replace this with a method of auto generating the power of two masks. The new header might be:

MASKABLE_FLAGS(flag1, flag2, flag3)

The beuty of this is that all the existing tools, build structures, & code continues to work. The only thing that changes is that now the magic number usage gets quickly caught and filled as bugs. Combined with an IDE or compiler that warns on magic numbers, this might work for a fairly large software project.

Hey all. Welcome to my new blog. I’ll get around to writting something longer as way of a description latter, but for now I’m just going to be posting a few random items. When I see what type of stuff I actually tend to post on a regular basis, I’ll put up a real description.