MetaFilter posts tagged with 1979

Fastnet, Force 10

the man of twists and turns — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 14:58:54 -0800

The Fastnet Race is a biennial sailing race from Cowes to Fastnet Rock to Plymouth, in England. In 1979, it was the venue for one of the most famous storms and greatest disasters in yacht-racing history. There were 15 deaths, and one man left for dead as his crewmates got into a liferaft.

According to the race inquiry, 70 per cent of the entrants faced Force 11 or above with winds of 55 knot or more and waves of 30 feet or more. Many faced waves of more than 40 feet. Close to half the boats reported a knock-down to horizontal or almost horizontal, a third reported that their boat rolled beyond horizontal. Most terrible of all, one eighth of the fleet were capsized entirely and dismasted.

The boats most affected by the storm were the 35' and under group, as the larger boats has enough speed to get out of the way of the storm. Tenacious, Ted Turner's yacht, was the winner on corrected time. Turner: "The '79 race had the roughest conditions I can remember when actually racing".(PDF) Here's an interview with two J30 skippers in the race. The BBC has an hour-long recreation of the race. The findings resulted in increased safety standard for offshore races. The definitive account is John Rousmaniere's Fastnet Force 10 The "force" referred to is the Beaufort scale.

Robert Fripp's "Exposure"

Egg Shen — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 20:49:57 -0800

Can I play you... um... some of the new things I've been doing, which I think could be commercial? "You Burn Me Up, I'm A Cigarette" "Breathless" "Disengage" "North Star" "Chicago" "NY3" "Mary" "Exposure" "Hååden Two" "Urban Landscape" "I May Not Have Had Enough Of Me But I've Had Enough Of You" "First Inaugural Address to the I.A.C.E. Sherborne House"/"Water Music I"/"Here Comes The Flood"/"Water Music II"/"Postscript"

Kirby's CIA Connection

wittgenstein — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:49:46 -0800

How Jack Kirby helped the CIA rescue diplomats in 1979 I got the idea for this post from this book that I am currently devouring.

V'Ger is that which seeks the Creator

Artw — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:09:10 -0800

In 2273, after having been thought lost in a black hole, Voyager 6 returned to Federation space as V'Ger, the massive and menacing spaceship at the heart of Star Trek: The Motion Picture... Designing the Living Machine - concept art for V'Ger, Redesigning the Walk to V’Ger, The Lighting and Photography of Star Trek's "V'ger", working on the interior of V'ger, V'ger External View, V'Ger - Spock Mindmeld Model Piece (scroll way down) (may contain Darth Vader and Miss Piggy), animating the "V'ger Probe", V'ger rear view.

The Dinner Party

kinnakeet — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 08:57:13 -0800

Feminist banquet or confrontational gynocentrism? You decide. From 1974 to 1979 Judy Chicago orchestrated the creation of The Dinner Party, a collaboration with hundreds of artists, craftspeople and volunteers. Now permanently installed at the Brooklyn Museum, this project has sparked controversy, analysis and discussion, and was considered quite shocking when initially unveiled. Originally conceived as "twenty-five women who were eaten alive," the project symbolically presents 39 women, arranged in three groups of 13, as place settings created individually for each. You are invited to browse the individual place settings here. A personal note: I viewed this with my family during its initial tour. My father, who was easily embarrassed, could not leave the gallery fast enough.

Party like it's 1978, or 1993, or 2000, or maybe even 2011.

filthy light thief — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:19:18 -0800

It's New Years Eve (or already the first day of the new year, depending on where you are), and you may be looking for something other than the radio to play for a countdown. Head backwards, then, to cruise into the 80s with the Grateful Dead for the closing of Winterland. Or join the Janglers to say goodby to 1993 and hello to 1994 at Peabody's Downunder. You can check out twelve hours of Essential Mixing and relive the transition from 2000 to 2001. Get closer to the present day with some big band and swing into 2010 in style. Say hello to 2011 with B.A.G.S. (Bullman, Ashworth, Guggino, Sipe), spend an hour and a half with Blu Mar Ten or six and a half hours with Mr Scruff. And if you're looking for something new for tonight, try some mixes from Redondo, Montreal Funk Monkeys, and a countdown minimix from DJ Raymix.

80 Blocks from Tiffany's: they were criminals, but they were also charming

filthy light thief — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:30:41 -0800

80 Blocks from Tiffany’s was what The Warriors, the cultish and campy Hollywood street gang movie involving roller skates and a race to Coney Island, could never be. It was real. Shot over the course of a couple of weeks in the summer of ’79 (as the seeds of hip-hop culture were slowly sprouting in the BX), 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s, produced by Lorne Michaels [and directed by SNL director Gary Weis], veers away from the social commentary typically associated with gang exposés. Instead, the 60-minute documentary focuses on the personalities behind the news reports, including a tough NYPD detective from the Bronx Youth Gang Task Force and a sympathetic community activist. Quoted from the introduction to an interview with Gary Weis.

Time magazine on homosexuality: the '50s through the '70s

Jaltcoh — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:41:59 -0800

Time's comprehensive archives allow us to see how the magazine's discussions of homosexuality have evolved from pathologizing and stereotyping . . . to awkward attempts to view gays humanely while continuing to refer to their sexual orientation as a disease . . . to a gradual acceptance of gays as upstanding members of society who are struggling for equal rights. Articles from 1956, 1966, 1969, 1975, and 1979 inside. Dec. 10, 1956 - Curable Disease? [via a deleted post from earlier today]

What is homosexuality? Is it curable? Some recent misleading propaganda alleges that homosexuality is an incurable, hereditary condition, and that the homosexual way of life is therefore "normal" for an unspecified proportion of the population . . . Not so says Manhattan Psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler. In Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? (Hill and Wang; $5), published last week, he swiftly demolishes some popular misconceptions . . . Homosexuality, says Analyst Bergler, is neither a "biologically determined destiny, nor incomprehensible ill luck." In Freudian terms he traces a complicated pattern of the development of homosexuality from infantile frustrations, through "pleasure in displeasure." to unconscious psychic masochism. The full-grown homosexual, as Bergler sees him, wallows in self-pity and continually provokes hostility to ensure himself more opportunities for self pity he "collects" injustices—sometimes real, often fancied; he is full of defensive malice and flippancy, covering his depression and guilt with extreme narcissism and superciliousness. He refuses to acknowledge accepted standards even in nonsexual matters, assuming that homosexuals have a right to cut moral corners as compensation for their "suffering." He is generally unreliable, in an essentially psychopathic way.

Jan. 21, 1966 - The Homosexual in America

Beset by inner conflicts, the homosexual is unsure of his position in society, ambivalent about his attitudes and identity—but he gains a certain amount of security through the fact that society is equally ambivalent about him. A vast majority of people retain a deep loathing toward him, but there is a growing mixture of tolerance, empathy or apathy. Society is torn between condemnation and compassion, fear and curiosity, between attempts to turn the problem into a joke and the knowledge that it is anything but funny, between the deviate's plea to be treated just like everybody else and the knowledge that he simply is not like everybody else . . . Homosexuals are present in every walk of life, on any social level, often anxiously camouflaged; the camouflage will sometimes even include a wife and children, and psychoanalysts are busy treating wives who have suddenly discovered a husband's homosexuality. But increasingly, deviates are out in the open, particularly in fashion and the arts. Women and homosexual men work together designing, marketing, retailing, and wrapping it all up in the fashion magazines. The interior decorator and the stockbroker's wife conspire over curtains . . . Most will still assert that homosexuality is an offense against God and man, but usually with qualifications. Says Los Angeles Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy: "The Lord made man and woman, and this implies a sexual relationship and sexual harmony which is in the center of nature." He is echoed by Harvard Divinity School's Harvey Cox, who, from a theological viewpoint, sees "the man-woman relationship as a model of the God-man relationship." Lack of procreation or of marriage vows is not the issue; even Roman Catholic authorities hold that an illicit hetero sexual affair has a degree of "authentication," while a homosexual relationship involves only "negation." Roman Catholic thought generally agrees that homosexuality is of and in itself wrong because, as New York's Msgr. Thomas McGovern says, it is "inordinate, having no direction toward a proper aim." Even in purely nonreligious terms, homosexuality represents a misuse of the sexual faculty and, in the words of one Catholic educator, of "human construction." It is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. As such it deserves fairness, compassion, understanding and, when possible, treatment. But it deserves no encouragement, no glamorization, no rationalization, no fake status as minority martyrdom, no sophistry about simple differences in taste—and, above all, no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness.

Oct. 24, 1969 - Homosexuality: Coming to Terms

Homosexuals—perhaps as many as 12 million American men and women —are one of the nation's most despised and harassed minority groups. A poll taken for CBS-TV not long ago revealed that two out of three Americans look on homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear, and one out of ten regards them with outright hatred. A majority considers homosexuality more dangerous to society than abortion, adultery or prostitution. Society's hostility toward the homosexual—particularly the male —leaves him wide open to blackmail and job discrimination . . . A far-reaching report on homosexuality for the Federal Government's National Institute of Mental Health, released this week, maintains that such hostility is unjustified by any dangers that homosexuality may pose for society. The 14-member task force that prepared the report was headed by U.C.L.A.'s Evelyn Hooker, an erudite, compassionate psychologist who is one of the nation's most distinguished researchers in the field. A majority of the panel, which included psychiatrists, sociologists, anthropologists, lawyers and a theologian, urges states to abolish the laws that make homosexual intercourse a crime for consenting adults in private.* More controversially, their report recommends that government and private employers "reassess" their current standards and implies that they should hire homosexuals who can pass normal screening procedures . . . The Hooker report's sobering implication that society has been grossly unfair to the homosexual is sure to stir controversy, and its recommendations are bound to be adopted only slowly. Still, the research makes clear that Americans can now recognize the diversity of homosexual life and understand that an undesirable handicap does not necessarily make everyone afflicted with it undesirable.

* [The Supreme Court prohibited such laws as unconstitutional in 2003.] Oct. 31, 1969 - Are Homosexuals Sick?

One of the crucial issues in the public discussion about homosexuality is whether or not the condition is a mental illness. To try to find out, TIME asked eight experts on homosexuality —including two admitted homosexuals —to discuss the subject at a symposium in New York City. The participants: Robin Fox, British-born anthropologist at Rutgers University; John Gagnon, sociologist at the State University of New York; Lionel Tiger, a Canadian sociologist also at Rutgers; . . . Dr. Charles Socarides, a psychoanalyst who has seen scores of homosexuals in therapy and is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx . . . Socarides: We do hear, from people who are in treatment, about their friends in homosexual life and some of these also come to us. They see around them a complete disaster to their lives. They see that the most meaningful human relationship is denied them—the male-female relationship. Tiger: There is a lack of a tragic sense here. All people have problems. I have all kinds of anxieties; everybody I know has anxieties. Some of them are severe; some of them are not severe. Often they are severe at different stages of the life cycle and for different reasons. To pick on homosexuals in this particular way . . . is to shortchange their option for their own personal destiny. Socarides: By God, they should live in the homosexual world if they want to! No one is arguing that point; no one is trying to say that a homosexual should be forced to seek help. Everybody is now saying that the homosexual needs compassion and understanding, the way the neurotic does or anybody else suffering from any illness. That is true. I agree with that.... Gagnon: I am troubled here by the sense of intellectual and historical narrowness. We should not get hung up on the 20th century nuclear family as the natural order of man, living in the suburbs and having three kids, or on the kind of Viennese-Jewish comparison that Freud really created. All of a sudden, I find a new penisology—that somehow the shape of the penis and of the vagina dictate the shape of human character. I have a minimum definition of mental health. You don't end up in a psychiatrist's office or in the hands of the police, you stay out of jail, you keep a job, you pay your taxes, and you don't worry people too much. That is called mental health . . . Fox: A psychoanalyst says that we are destined to heterosexual union, and anything that deviates from this must by definition be sick. This is nonsense even in animal terms. Animal communities can tolerate quite a lot of homosexual relationships. The beautiful paradigm of this is geese. Two male geese can form a bond that is exactly like the bond between males and females. They function as a male-female pair; and geese, as far as I can see, are a very successful species. So far as the two "married" individuals are concerned, they are engaged in what to them is a meaningful and satisfying relationship. What I would define as a sick person in sexual terms would be someone who could not go through the full sequence of sexual activity, from seeing and admiring to following, speaking, touching, and genital contact. A rapist, a person who makes obscene telephone calls—these seem to me sick people, and I don't think it matters a damn whether the other person is of the same sex or not.

Oct. 31, 1969 - The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood [cover image]

The case for greater tolerance of homosexuals is simple. Undue discrimination wastes talents that might be working for society. Police harassment, which still lingers in many cities and more small towns, despite a growing live-and-let-live attitude, wastes manpower and creates unnecessary suffering. The laws against homosexual acts also suggest that the nation cares more about enforcing private morality than it does about preventing violent crime. To be sure, it is likely that a more permissive atmosphere might convince many people, particularly adolescents, that a homosexual urge need not be resisted since the condition would, after all, be "respectable." On the other hand, greater tolerance might mitigate extreme fear of not being able to live up to exaggerated standards of heterosexual performance—and might thus reduce the number of committed homosexuals. A violently argued issue these days is whether the confirmed homosexual is mentally ill. Psychoanalysts insist that homosexuality is a form of sickness; * most homosexuals and many experts counter that the medical concept only removes the already fading stigma of sin, and replaces it with the charge—even more pejorative nowadays—that homosexuality is pathological. The answers will importantly influence society's underlying attitude (see TIME symposium). While homosexuality is a serious and sometimes crippling maladjustment, research has made clear that it is no longer necessary or morally justifiable to treat all inverts as outcasts. The challenge to American society is simultaneously to devise civilized ways of discouraging the condition and to alleviate the anguish of those who cannot be helped, or do not wish to be.

* [The American Psychological Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973.] Sep. 8, 1975 - HOMOSEXUALITY: Gays on the March

As a civil rights issue, the argument of homosexual militants is persuasive: no one should be harassed by the law, evicted from his apartment, or prevented from earning a living because of the private sex acts he happens to perform with, as the famous phrase has it, consenting adults. (A case can be made against their employment in the armed forces, in education and perhaps certain other areas.) Moreover, it is one thing to remove legal discrimination against homosexuals. It is another to mandate approval. Homosexuals and their champions in effect admit this and even insist on it. Says Barbara Gittings, a Philadelphia librarian and lesbian: "What the homosexual wants, and here he is neither willing to compromise nor morally required to compromise—is acceptance of homosexuality as a way of life fully on a par with heterosexuality." It is this goal of full acceptance, which no known society past or present has granted to homosexuals, that makes many Americans apprehensive. So much so that it sometimes skews debates about basic American rights. Many fear the demands that seem to flow logically from the assertion that "gay is good." For instance: the legal right to marry; homosexual instruction in school sex courses; affirmative action or quotas in hiring; and gay love stories to go with heterosexual puppy-love stories in libraries and schools. The Task Force on Gay Liberation of the American Library Association has already begun such a campaign. Another concern is that homosexuality will spread, especially among the young, if social sanctions are removed. No one knows whether this is in fact happening in the U.S. Homosexuals point out that the countries that have relaxed strictures against homosexuals—such as England and Denmark—do not report any upsurge in the number of gays. Yet serious analysts are confused and divided on the question. And if some homosexuality, at least, comes from faulty child rearing, many think it makes less sense to celebrate the results than to try to strengthen the family.

Apr. 23, 1979 - How Gay Is Gay? [cover image]

Wandering into the New Town section of Chicago's North Side, a visitor quickly notices the changed city scene: male couples in tight jeans and with close-cropped hair walk together; the crowd watching a volleyball game in Lincoln Park is all male, so are most of the people taking the spring air on a strip of beach along Lake Michigan. In the past few years New Town has become Chicago's first center of open homosexual activity, with an initial result that could have been predicted a decade ago: last summer roving gangs of young toughs shouting anti-homosexual epithets beat up a number of men strolling the streets of the area late at night. What followed, however, would have been remarkable if not unthinkable in Chicago or in many other major American cities just a few years ago. Gay Life, a local homosexual weekly, organized street patrols to stop the assaults. They were also aided by "straight" volunteers from neighborhood community associations. Moreover, they were helped by the Chicago police. Says a rather astonished Grant Ford, publisher of Gay Life: "The community groups came to our help right away. They saw us as neighbors rather than gays. The police were even more amazing. They were totally cooperative." In its way, what happened in New Town symbolizes a national trend that is changing the lives of the American minority that forms the gay society. Homosexual men and women are coming out of the closet as never before to live openly. They are colonizing areas of big cities as their own turf, operating bars and even founding churches in conservative small towns, and setting up a nationwide network of organizations to offer counseling and companionship to those gays-still the vast majority-who continue to conceal their sexual orientation. As in New Town, gay people still encounter suspicion and hostility, and occasionally violence, and their campaign to live openly and freely is still far from won. But they are gaining a degree of acceptance and even sympathy from heterosexuals, many of whom are still unsure how to deal with them, that neither straights nor gays would have thought possible just the day before yesterday.

¿Qué es esto que ni siquiera

flatluigi — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:32:57 -0800

Stefania Rotolo performs live! _{(single-link incomprehensible YouTube video circa 1979)}

talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it.

flapjax at midnite — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:24:27 -0800

Everybody on the dance floor for two of the high masterpieces of disco from 1979: Lipps Inc.'s Funkytown and Anita Ward's Ring My Bell. Hey, Funkytown even has its own comprehensive website! No doubt about it, 1979 was a very BIG year for disco. Not everyone back in '79, though, was ready to shake their booty. Oh well. Doooooooooooooooooooooooo Wikipedia pages for Funkytown and Ring My Bell.

"The name of the photographer cannot be revealed at this time."

bardic — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 06:12:55 -0800

"'Who has this picture?' he asked, his voice rising. 'Nobody.'" He won a Pulitzer in 1980 for "Spot News Photography" , but didn't, or couldn't, take credit. (via [1] [2] [3])