Creation Stories: Stanley Hauerwas, Same-Sex Marriage, and Narrative in Law and Theology

When I think about--members of my own staff who are incredibly committed, in monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together. When I think about--those soldiers or airmen or marines or--sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf--and yet, feel constrained, even now that Don't Ask, Don't Tell is gone, because--they're not able to--commit themselves in a marriage ... At a certain point, I've just concluded that--for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that--I think same-sex couples should be able to get married. (1) President Barack Obama I INTRODUCTION On June 24, 2011 New York became the most recent, and largest, state in the United States to legalize same-sex marriage. (2) More recently, and perhaps importantly, President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, after a very public "evolution" on the subject. (3) Even more recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that the Defense of Marriage Act violated the Constitution. (4) Along with the recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denying a rehearing of its decision invalidating California's constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage, a seismic shift has occurred in the gay marriage movement. (5) In some quarters, the successful push to legalize same-sex marriage is seen as the culmination of the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality. (6) The success of the campaign to legalize same-sex marriage might be understood as the ratification of the LGBT equality movement's goal of making the lives of LGBT individuals less foreign to those within the larger political community. (7) The translation of LGBT lives to the larger public has been one of the most significant strategies of the mainstream LGBT equality movement. Advocates for LGBT equality have argued that eradicating prejudice against LGBT persons rests on the LGBT community's ability to undermine stereotypes of LGBT persons held by the straight community. (8) Narrative has been a central mechanism by which advocates of LGBT equality have sought to undermine stereotypes about LGBT people because of its capacity to draw others into participation in, and identification with, the LGBT community. (9) The turn to narrative is not unique to the movement for LGBT equality. In the areas of gender and race, proponents of progressive social reform have turned toward narrative as a way of providing a framework through which the experiences of "outsiders" might be understood by "insiders." (10) Advocates who have sought to highlight issues of racial and gender inequity have enlisted narratives through which the experiences of racial and gender hierarchies might be understood. (11) The commitment to narrative also represents an intellectual challenge to the capacity of abstract principles such as anti-discrimination, equality, or accommodation to embody the specificity of the experience of individuals who live without the presumptions that attend life as a male, as a white person, or as an able-bodied person. (12) Narrative challenges the capacity of legal or doctrinal categories to dislodge dominant, prejudicial perspectives and presumptions. (13) The recourse to narrative serves the twin goals of demonstrating the "outsider" status of certain identity categories and experiences, (14) and deploying the "outsider" perspective to undermine the dominant position of the "insider" perspective as it relates to the distribution of societal goods--including nonmaterial goods. (15) Within the academic community, the use of narrative had special significance in the work of a subgroup of progressive legal scholars, who had grown disillusioned by the limits of even transformative legal and social change. These scholars, whose work ranges across gender, (16) race, (17) and sexuality, (18) deploy narratives to call into question the success of commitments to formal equality in the contexts of race and gender.

Chuck for delicate drills

Development of oil film technique to couple power between drive spindle and drill chuck for delicate drilling operations is discussed. Oil film permits application of sufficient pressure, but stops rotating when drill jams. Illustration of equipment is provided

Brane World Cosmic String Interaction

It is shown that brane world gravity produces an attractive force between cosmic strings, in contrast to conventional Einstein gravity. This force is sufficient for stable bound states of Type II strings (which normally repel each other) to form. There is a small separation between the strings, giving them a rope-like structure. At astronomical scales these `cosmic ropes' resemble higher winding number strings, and so all brane world cosmic strings are effectively Type I.Comment: 5 page

The graceful exit in pre-big bang string cosmology

We re-examine the graceful exit problem in the pre-big bang scenario of string cosmology, by considering the most general time-dependent classical correction to the Lagrangian with up to four derivatives. By including possible forms for quantum loop corrections we examine the allowed region of parameter space for the coupling constants which enable our solutions to link smoothly the two asymptotic low-energy branches of the pre-big bang scenario, and observe that these solutions can satisfy recently proposed entropic bounds on viable singularity free cosmologies.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, JHEP class. Added new section on the classical correction and reference

Instrument calibrates low gas-rate flowmeters

Electronically measuring the transit time of a soap bubble carried by the gas stream between two fixed points in a burette calibrates flowmeters used for measuring low gas-flow rates

Cosmological perturbations and the transition from contraction to expansion

We investigate both analytically and numerically the evolution of scalar perturbations generated in models which exhibit a smooth transition from a contracting to an expanding Friedmann universe. We find that the resulting spectral index in the late radiation dominated universe depends on which of the $\Psi$ or \$zeta$ variables passes regularly through the transition. The results can be parameterized through the exponent $q$ defining the rate of contraction of the universe. For $q \geq -1/2$ we find that there are no stable cases where both variables are regular during the transition. In particular, for $0<q\ll 1$, we find that the resulting spectral index is close to scale invariant if $\Psi$ is regular, whereas it has a steep blue behavior if $\zeta$ is regular. We also show that as long as $q\leqslant 1$, perturbations arising from the Bardeen potential remain small during contraction in the sense that there exists a gauge in which all the metric and matter perturbation variables are small.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figures. Version to appear in Phys. Rev. D. Slight modifications, but no change in the conclusio

Tunable diode laser heterodyne radiometer measurement of atmospheric absorption of solar radiation

A tunable infrared heterodyne radiometer (TIHR) which uses a diode laser as the local oscillator is described as well as methods for the evaluation of the excess noise characteristics of the tunable diode laser. Preliminary atmospheric absorption data taken with the TIHR are presented and show the capability of the TIHR for making the highest resolution atmospheric measurements to date

Quotient groups of the fundamental groups of certain strata of the moduli space of quadratic differentials

In this paper, we study fundamental groups of strata of the moduli space of quadratic differentials. We use certain properties of the Abel-Jacobi map, combined with local surgeries on quadratic differentials, to construct quotient groups of the fundamental groups for a particular family of strata.Comment: 43 pages, 7 figures. Version 2: Minor typos fixed, Section 3 removed and may now be found in arXiv:0804.043