8 years ago (2014), on this day (April 6), Johnny Depp attended the Press Conference of “Transcendence”, at the Four Seasons Hotel, in Beverly Hills, California.
Johnny Depp, 8 years ago(2014), on this day (April 6), through the lens of Vera Anderson during the Press Conference of “Transcendence” at the Four Seasons Hotel, in Beverly Hills, California.
Prince Henry the Navigator died on this day in history, 13 November 1460. He was instrumental in the rise of maritime exploration and was a key figure in initiating the Age of Discovery.
Campus Scene during Shootings at Kent State University, Records of U.S. Attorneys, National Archives at Chicago, NARA ID 2723186.
Map of Site of Shootings at Kent State University, President Nixon’s Commission on Campus Unrest. 6/13/-12/1970, NARA ID 596837.
KENT STATE SHOOTING #OTD 1970
In the midst of Vietnam War, President Nixon televised his decision to initiate the Cambodian campaign. This apparent expansion of the war detonated an explosion of antiwar activity that escalated to a national crisis when 4 students were shot at a protest at Kent State University in Ohio.
Affidavit of student shot, Donald S. Mackenzie, NARA ID 596838.
Telegram from Doris and Arthur Krause to President Ford re: the Pardon of Former President Nixon, Ford Library, NARA ID 16637619.
Did you know…?
- While Nixon spoke of initiatingthe Cambodian campaign, he had been secretly bombing Cambodia since mid-March 1969—an escalation of a covert bombing campaign started by President Johnson in 1965.
- Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed students. There were over 1,300 armed troops, armored personnel carriers, mortar launchers, and helicopters.
- 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds, killing 4 students and wounding 9—one paralyzed for life (Dean Kahler).
- Two of the students murdered weren’t protesters; they were walking to class, and one of those was ROTC and planned to enter the military.
- Following this shooting, an estimated 4 million striking students shut down 800 campuses nationwide.
- According to a Gallup Poll, 58 % of Americans blamed the studentsfor the violence at Kent State.
- Dean Kahler, who was shot and paralyzed during the attack, came out of an induced coma to read a letter that began: “Dear communist hippie radical, I hope by the time you read this, you are dead.”
- President Nixon responded to the shootings stating: “When dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.”
- President Nixon’s Commission on Campus Unrest concluded: “the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted and inexcusable.”
- A federal grand jury indicted 8 guardsmen, but found they were not subject to criminal prosecution because they acted in self defense.
A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1924, American art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Though known primarily as an art critic, Danto also made considerable contributions to the philosophy of history and the philosophy of action.
“Arthur Danto writes for the left-liberal magazine The Nation and is a very well-known philosopher and theorist of contemporary art, particularly of what he sees as the break in art production set in train by Andy Warhol. If Warhol’s Brillo Pad boxes cannot be visually distinguished from actual Brillo Pad boxes, he argues, it follows that art cannot be defined in terms of its visual distinctiveness, and must instead be characterized philosophically. […]
Danto’s After the End of Art claims that the character of art has changed radically since the 1970s and the last gasp of the avant-garde, and is now properly post-historical. Modernist and avant-garde views were tied to an idea of historical progress – towards formal abstraction, perhaps, or the merging of art and life. For Danto, in contrast, ‘life really begins when the story comes to an end’, and those who now expect art to progress have missed the point, which is that the final synthesis has been reached. While Danto does not mention him, this stance is close to that of Francis Fukuyama’s political views in his widely publicized book The End of History and the Last Man, and is based on the same Hegelian contention that, while of course events continue to occur, History has come to a close; that we are settled for ever with a version of the system which now sustains us. Similarly, for Danto, once art had passed through the black night of the 1970s (which he compares, with its dreadful politically engaged work, to the Dark Ages), it emerged onto the sunny Elysian Fields of universal permissiveness, never to leave. And in those fields, any mixing of styles or patching together of narratives is as good in principle as any other.” — From ‘Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction’ by Julian Stallabrass
A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1643, English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and philosopher Sir Isaac Newton was born.
“According to the calendar then in use in England, Newton was born on Christmas Day 1642 (4 January 1643 in most of Continental Europe). The first decade of his life witnessed the horror of the civil wars between parliamentary and royalist forces in the 1640s, culminating in the beheading of Charles I in January 1649. His uncle and stepfather were rectors of local parishes, and they seem to have existed without much harassment from the church authorities convened by Parliament to check for religious ‘abuses’. In his second decade he lived under the radical Protestant Commonwealth, which was replaced in 1660 when Charles II was restored to the throne. Newton was born into a relatively prosperous family and was brought up in a devout atmosphere. His father, also Isaac, was a yeoman farmer who in December 1639 inherited both land and a handsome manor in the Lincolnshire parish of Woolsthorpe. His mother, Hannah Ayscough, came from the lower gentry and (as was common for the period) seems to have been educated at only a rudimentary level. Nevertheless, her brother William had graduated from Trinity College Cambridge in the 1630s and would be influential in directing Newton to the same institution.
Newton’s father, apparently unable to sign his name, died in early October 1642, almost three months before the birth of his son. Newton told Conduitt that he had been a tiny and sick baby, thought to be unlikely to survive; two women sent to get help from a local gentlewoman stopped to sit down on the way there, as they were certain the baby would be dead on their return. Surviving against the odds, Newton was brought up by his mother until the age of 3, when she was approached with an offer of marriage by Barnabas Smith, an ageing vicar of a local parish. Smith was wealthy, and they married in January 1646 after he had promised to leave some land to her first born. Spending most of her time with her new spouse, she produced three more children before his death in 1653 (one of whom would be the mother of Catherine Conduitt). Although John Conduitt waxed lyrical about Hannah’s general virtues, and was careful to point out that she was ‘an indulgent parent’ to all the children, he emphasized that young Isaac was her favourite. Whatever the truth of this, Newton’s own evidence indicates that, as a teenager, he had an extremely difficult relationship with his mother, and historians have always found it difficult to make Conduitt’s account tally with the fact that for seven years Newton was effectively left in Woolsthorpe to be brought up by his maternal grandmother.” — From ‘Newton: A Very Short Introduction’ by Robert Iliffe
A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1963, American actor and film producer Brad Pitt was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
“And, of course, artistic and literary reinterpretations of the Trojan War and the fate of its better-known participants, including Odysseus, have been produced and reproduced over the centuries, up to and including the present. Thus, we have not only the later Greek playwrights and the Roman poets but also Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Camille Saint-Saëns’s opera Hélène (1904), James Joyce's Ulysses, and the silver screen’s various takes on the epic, with numerous films appearing since the early twentieth century featuring the Trojan War, Helen, Achilles, Odysseus, and/or the Trojan Horse.
Some of these later works contain parts that may be considered inaccurate or unfaithful to Homer in details or plot—the 2004 Hollywood blockbuster movie, for instance, has no gods or goddesses in sight; Brad Pitt anachronistically placing coins on the closed eyes of dead Patroclus five hundred years before such currency is invented in Lydia ca. 700 BCE; and both Agamemnon and Menelaus killed at Troy while Paris/Alexander is not, thereby changing the familiar Homeric/Epic Cycle version—but this is a long-standing tradition going back to the Greek playwrights who followed Homer and who also felt free to change some of the details. More importantly, each has reinterpreted the story in its own way, with changes and nuances frequently reflecting the angst and desires of that particular age, such as medieval Christianity for Chaucer, the Elizabethan worldview for Shakespeare, and the Iraq war for Troy director Wolfgang Peterson.” — From ‘The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction’ by Eric H. Cline
A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1964, Time magazine published a review of Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp,” calling her “one of Manhattan’s brightest intellectuals.”
“Indeed, decadence has enjoyed a considerable afterlife in that over-the-top culture known as camp, which the critic Susan Sontag helpfully clarified as an ability to discriminate between inferior art and deliberately inferior art—‘the good taste of bad taste.’
That definition of camp should not be taken as a definition of decadence, although the camp sensibility does demonstrate the conflicted attitude toward modernity that we have identified with decadence. Our initial attempt to define decadence was etymological and historical, and that effort remains meaningful. But decadence is more than decline, decay, and degeneration, whether artistic, historical, or social. We need to keep those meanings in mind, certainly, while also keeping in mind a number of nuances and implications. Think of decadence as an ornate, highly artificial object that resembles nothing in nature, represented on a slide projected through an old-fashioned magic lantern, seen through a series of colored filters, each color representing a different aspect of decadence. The object, in other words, takes on a different coloration depending on the filter. One filter darkens the object and makes decadence look like pessimism; another gives it a luscious hue that makes it look like hedonism; a mottled, greenish filter turns the object rotten, suggesting degeneration; still another imparts a lavender glow and connotes, somehow, “the love that dare not speak its name” (the phrase Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s lover, used to describe homosexuality). But whatever coloration decadence takes, it is typically the expression—the projection—of urban experience.” — From ‘Decadence: A Very Short Introduction’ by David Weir
A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1954, the first Burger King was opened in Miami, Florida.
“In low-status, low-pay service work, there may be little to smile about, but not to smile can be unforgivable. Some employers install ‘smile police’ to pose as customers, while others rely on spy cameras, the monitoring of phone calls, or customer satisfaction questionnaires. Still others go for a blunt, confrontational, approach: ‘I’ll go up in their faces and I go, “What is wrong?” ’ says a Brooklyn Burger King manager. ‘They look at me like they don’t know what I am doing. “What is wrong with your face?” I am smiling. You don’t know what it is like.’ […]
Workers of this sort may seek relief in a backstage zone, such as the galley area of an aircraft, the restaurant lobby, or staff rest-room. They are places where different emotion rules apply, a temporary amnesty from their usual emotional labours. There, the ‘obnoxious’ passenger, client, or customer can safely be derided, in the presence of a receptive audience of peers.
Some companies are keen to attract employees who are prepared to ‘really take on board’ and internalize the company’s message and training; to ‘really feel’ for the customer. The service worker is encouraged to fuse their personality with their work role; tosynchronize their feelings with the required corporate line. Those susceptible to such injunctions are well-inducted emotional labourers and less fazed by pressures or inconsistencies experienced by their surface-acting counterparts. But outside of work they can find it difficult to extract themselves from the roles in which they have become so engrossed.” — From ‘Work: A Very Short Introduction’ by Stephen Fineman
A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1920, Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong died. Meinong was known for his unique ontology, which claimed that everything that the universe contains everything that can be thought (even contradictions!) even if those things don’t exist, but merely “subsist.”
“Consider the proposition ‘the present king of France is wise’. This is perfectly meaningful, and because it is so it seems natural to ask whether it is true or false. And to this there seems an equally natural answer. There is no king of France at present; the subject term fails to refer to anything. Therefore, it seems that the proposition should be considered false. But there is a problem here, concerning how to demonstrate why it is false. This is because if in normal circumstances we say of something (call it ‘x’) that x is wise, the proposition ‘x is wise’ will be true if x is wise, and false if x is not wise. But what if there is no x? How can we say of something that does not exist that it either is or is not wise?
Initially Russell accepted a solution to this puzzle which had been proposed by the nineteenth‐century philosopher Alexius Meinong. This solution was to say that every expression with a referring or denoting function in a sentence does denote something, either an actually existing item, as with the table in ‘the table is brown’, or a ‘subsisting’ item, where by ‘subsistence’ is meant non‐actual existence – a kind of real but half or ‘courtesy’ existence. On this view, the universe contains everything that can be thought or talked about, including the present king of France; but only some of what the universe contains is actually existent. Accordingly the descriptive phrase ‘the present king of France’ does indeed denote, and what it denotes is a subsistent – that is a real but non‐actual – king of France.” — From ‘Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction’ by A.C. Grayling
A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1959, the United Nations adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, an expansion of the document first adopted by the League of Nations in 1924, in an attempt to protect and promote child rights all over the world.
“In addition to direct aid to children and their families, the United Nations has passed resolutions and initiated treaties establishing and attempting to enforce children’s rights. Going far beyond the 1924 and 1959 declarations, the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child offered a wide-ranging affirmation that the best interests of the child should guide all policies and decisions regarding childhood. The convention’s forty articles reflect all of the concerns, values, and issues that had swirled around the idea of childhood throughout the previous century, including health, education, freedom of speech and religion, and the right to a name and nationality. The UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child oversees the enforcement of its provisions. Although the United States was involved in the drafting of the convention, it remained the only nation not to have ratified it as of 2017. Although the convention’s many qualifications made it sound like an agreement among lawyers recognizing the complications of trying to issue dictums applicable to dozens of political and legal systems, it had far more teeth than other efforts to provide protection for all the world’s children.
In addition to primary care programs related to nutrition and health, the UN has worked to eliminate child marriage, provide standards for children’s rights within families and the treatment of refugees, eliminate child prostitution and child pornography, and discourage the exploitation of children in armed conflicts. Despite these efforts, and the decided improvements they brought to millions of children’s lives, economic, military, and environmental conditions keep many children in distress. In 2000 an estimated 100 million school-age children were out of school, 50 million were working in harsh conditions, 30 million were involved in sex trades, 150 million were malnourished, and millions more had been orphaned by or suffered from AIDS.” — From ‘The History of Childhood: A Very Short Introduction’ by James Marten
Wanda Gág, who was born on this day in 1893, is publicly on record as a feminist and standard bearer for the “New Woman”—a twentieth-century ideal emphasizing autonomy and individuality. Here she presents an image of herself engaged in the act of drawing this very work.
