Welcome to the Age of Authoritarianism – Sponsored by the 1 Percent

The 21st century is seeing the spread of the authoritarian principle that far from being the origin of authority …

The recent troubles in Ferguson and elsewhere have highlighted not only America’s deep and pervasive racism, but the growth of the American police state, a police increasingly difficult to tell apart from our military not only in clothing but in equipment, as the above photo shows.

What we were worrying about in 2011 at the height of the Occupy Movement continues to be a cause for worry today at the height of the I Can’t Breathe movement.

Fox News can spin our fears (and so make a mockery of them) as really having to do with attacks on so-called “freedom of religion” and the “right to bear arms” but these are not the essence of the police state despite what happened to a gun rights activist in Houston when he ran afoul of a bullying cop.

We cannot compare what happened to the open carry advocate to what happened to Michael Brown. If, as Open Carry Texas insists, the Houston cop is a felon for demanding ID, how is it that Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson Police Department, or NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who actually killed the people they confronted, are not?

Edward Snowden said the surveillance state “undermines the entire system of justice,” but it is not only the justice system under attack, but the idea of democracy itself.

The 18th century saw the spread of democracy, of the principle that political power derives not from dog, not from kings, but from the will of the people. But the 21st century is seeing the spread of the authoritarian principle that far from being the origin of authority, people must obey authority

Having defeated the Soviet Union, the United States has begun to look more, not less, like its former adversary, which epitomized the idea that everybody is equal, except for those who are not.

We’ve seen the Supreme Court destroy the Constitution by handing our democracy over to corporations. Mitt Romney said, “Corporations are people, my friend,” and the Supreme Court agreed.

We don’t get to vote for corporations. We have no control over corporations. If corporations control our government, as is increasingly the case, where does that leave “We the People”?

We have already seen that the filthy rich will stop at nothing to make themselves even richer – and at our expense.

As Bernie Sanders puts it, “Many people think Congress regulates Wall Street, but in fact it is Wall Street that regulates Congress.”

This is a mockery of the very principals of democracy. The people, increasingly, do not wield power, but must yield to power. Speaking truth to power carries with it increasingly stiff penalties.

It is not simply that we are surveilled down to the last private detail of our lives everywhere we go, but try to surveil authority and see what happens. Look how far the First Amendment gets you even in the United States – the origin of the 18th century’s democratic wave – if you film police engaged in abusive and freedom-violating behavior.

This is despite, we are reminded, repeated court rulings (and the Department of Justice) have upheld a citizen’s right to record the police. Technically we have that right; but exercising it will get you beat and arrested. Even if you’re a journalist. Even with freedom of the press.

BraveNewFilms shows us how “Protect & Serve” became “Search & Destroy,” a War on Drugs followed by a War on Terror:

They show us how poverty has now become a crime:

Just this past weekend, as Revolution News puts it,

Berkeley protesters got the crap kicked out of them by police this weekend as thousands of students took to the streets to participate in #BlackLivesMatter protests that have erupted across the country after 2 grand juries refused to indict police officers in cases of police brutality against unarmed black men.

The mainstream, that is to say, corporate media, focuses on the violence of the demonstrations while ignoring the violence of the authorities, who are often responsible for the violence in the first place.

And it’s not just the United States. Edward Snowden says surveillance is far worse in Britain with its “system of regulation where anything goes,” and punishing people for “Disobedience to authority” has become all the rage in Europe as well:

In Spain, a draconian new “gag law,” which, Revolution News reports, “essentially legalizes human rights abuses.” Distributing or even taking images like the photo below “can get you a 30.000€ fine.”

Human Rights Watch reports that fear of home-grown terrorism in Europe has driven authorities to abandon any idea of winning hearts and minds, and “engaging in the battle of ideas” has now become less and intellectual exercise and more a physical, a euphemism for brutality while mass surveillance has become endemic.

We all remember how the authorities responded to the largely peaceful Occupy Movement. Not only were the demonstrators demonized but the authorities targeted the media, attempting to keep them away from the protestors. The police restricted who would have access to the demonstrations and, more importantly, to the police response.

We hear a lot about private use of drones, or their use by corporations, but it’s the official use of drones we should be worrying about.

We are essentially terrorists now to our own government if we so much as raise our voices in opposition, or attempt to exercise or supposedly inalienable right to free speech.

Human Rights Watch’s Benjamin Ward points out that,

Terrorism is a tactic of the weak—asymmetric warfare designed to provoke a strategic over-reaction. When it succeeds, societies become more closed and rights are curtailed, especially for groups perceived to be associated with the threat. If European governments forget the hard-learned lessons of the last decade and return again to anything-goes, abusive measures, Europeans will be less safe, not more, and those who threaten will be the victors.

Another concern is that our governments are doing the enemy’s work for them. If we dismantle our own democracy in fear for our democracy, what are we left defending? We are supposed to be exporting democracy, not importing oligarchy, theocracy, and totalitarianism.

The Alien and Sedition Acts confirmed from our earliest days as a republic that we were willing to curtail freedom to protect it, a tendency confirmed by Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, and again, by 2001’s Patriot Act. While all these are done in the name of the people, they are done to the people. The dichotomy is glaring.

While it is wrong for Wall Street to control our government, it is far more wrong for our government to control us, because that means corporations truly are people and that – necessarily – we are not.

We have see how far governments are willing to go to suppress our freedoms in their supposed defense. The question is, just how far are We the People not only willing, but able to go, to protect ourselves, as Thomas Jefferson would have put it, from our governments?

In other words, from the 1 Percent, who, while railing against government controls, control our governments, and through that control, you and me?

Noam Chomsky: Reagan Was an ‘Extreme Racist’ Who Re-Enslaved African Americans

The famed scholar blames the drug war for subjugating African Americans.

In an interview with GRITtv’s Laura Flanders, linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky discussed how the events in Ferguson, Missouri and the protests that followed demonstrate just how little race relations in the United States have advanced since the end of the Civil War.
“This is a very racist society,” Chomsky said, “it’s pretty shocking. What’s happened to African-Americans in the last 30 years is similar to what [Douglas Blackmon in Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II] describes happening in the late 19th Century.”
Blackmon’s book describes what he calls the “Age of Neoslavery,” in which newly freed slaves found themselves entangled in a legal system built upon involuntary servitude — which included the selling of black men convicted of crimes like vagrancy and changing employers without receiving permission.
“The constitutional amendments that were supposed to free African-American slaves did something for about 10 years, then there was a North-South compact that granted the former the slave-owning states the right to do whatever they wanted,” he explained. “And what they did was criminalize black life, and that created a kind of slave force. It threw mostly black males into jail, where they became a perfect labor force, much better than slaves.”
“If you’re a slave owner, you have to pay for — you have to keep your ‘capital’ alive. But if the state does it for you, that’s terrific. No strikes, no disobedience, the perfect labor force. A lot of the American Industrial Revolution in the late 19th, early 20th Century was based on that. It pretty must lasted until World War II.”
“After that,” Chomsky said, “African-Americans had about two decades in which they had a shot of entering [American] society. A black worker could get a job in an auto plant, as the unions were still functioning, and he could buy a small house and send his kid to college. But by the 1970s and 1980s it’s going back to the criminalization of black life.”
“It’s called the drug war, and it’s a racist war. Ronald Reagan was an extreme racist — though he denied it — but the whole drug war is designed, from policing to eventual release from prison, to make it impossible for black men and, increasingly, women to be part of [American] society.”
“In fact,” he continued, “if you look at American history, the first slaves came over in 1619, and that’s half a millennium. There have only been three or four decades in which African-Americans have had a limited degree of freedom — not entirely, but at least some.”
“They have been re-criminalized and turned into a slave labor force — that’s prison labor,” Chomsky concluded. “This is American history. To break out of that is no small trick.”

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The dangerous myth at the heart of wingnut ideology

The wingnuts believe the separation of cult and state is a modern conceit. It couldn't be further from the truth

by Amanda Marcotte

Rick Santorum is a terrible person, but when it comes to being a conduit for some of the hoariest, long-standing myths of the wingnuts, he’s ol’ reliable. His latest bleatings are of particular interest, because, without meaning to, Santorum managed to articulate one of the biggest lies that has fueled the wingnuts for decades now: The myth that America was “supposed” to be a theocracy, but somehow lost its way.
In a conference call with members of the wingnut christian cabal STAND America, a caller went on a rant about how Democrats are pushing a secret agenda to push “a number of the tenets of The Communist Manifesto,” a book the caller seemed to believe was about “amnesty, the elevation of pornography, homosexuality, gay marriage, voter fraud, open borders, mass self-importation of illegal immigrants and things of that nature.” (Zero of these issues are mentioned in The Communist Manifesto, a book about the role of labor in capitalist societies.)
Santorum latched onto this old-fashioned red-baiting and said, “The words ‘separation of church and state’ is not in the U.S. Constitution, but it was in the constitution of the former Soviet Union. That’s where it very, very comfortably sat, not in ours.”
This myth–that separation of church and state is a modern invention created by communists/liberals/atheists and shoved down the throats of a christian America until it forgot its theocratic roots–is a popular one on the right, perhaps the defining myth that created the modern conservative movement. It’s also pure malarkey. Even just reading the first amendment to the Constitution shows that this line is self-serving nonsense dished out by people who wish to believe they are patriots while standing against America’s grand tradition of secularism. The Constitution explicitly prohibits any law “respecting an establishment of religion,” a phrase that is so obviously about the separation of church and state that even the most literal-minded among us can get that.
But even if you are remarkably dim-witted, Thomas Jefferson was happy to spell it out in a letter reassuring the Danbury baptists that the U.S. government intended to be secular: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his dog, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Cult and State.”
A look at history tells us two important things that wingnut christians spend their lives refusing to believe. One, the founders clearly and unmistakably believed, correctly, that freedom of religion is incompatible with state-sponsored religion. Two, many christians at the time agreed, believing that faith was stronger and more sincere if it is freely chosen instead of compelled by the government.
But it’s more than just wishful thinking that leads modern conservatives to lie to themselves and others about these basic facts. The invocation of “communism” gives the game away, because it was fear of communism, more than any other factor, that allowed theocrats to really gain a toehold in modern America. During the mid-century, anti-communist fever caused many Americans to look for any and every way to distinguish ourselves culturally from the communists and religiosity, because communism is an atheist ideology, seemed like an ideal way.

This is why, for instance, the phrase “under dog” wasn’t added to the Pledge of Allegiance,which was written in 1892, until the year 1954, at the height of Cold War paranoia. Indeed, it’s also not a coincidence that the same conservatives who were highly paranoid about communism infiltrating American society at that time also became the backbone of the burgeoning religious right. Communism became such an excellent pretext to push for theocratic government at home that many conservatives have probably forgotten that it really was just a pretext.

Believing that secularism is a recent invention of liberals–or worse, of secret communists working a very long takeover of the U.S. from the inside–is convenient for conservatives, but the truth of the matter is that secularism is a very long tradition indeed. This isn’t just because the founders said so when they wrote the Constitution, either. As documented by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the belief that school prayer was widely accepted and normal right up until the Supreme Court banned it in 1962 is false. Secularism was baked into the idea of public education right from the beginning, when “Horace Mann, the father of our public school system, championed the elimination of sectarianism from American schools.”
Which isn’t to say there was never any Bible teaching or prayer in schools, of course. Sadly, this country has always been plagued by theocrats who want to use taxpayer dollars to push their religion and they frequently get away with it. Plus, most education prior to the establishment of the public school system was religious in nature, with kids learning to read from christian texts, and it took awhile to unlearn those habits. But, as FFRF lays out, bans on prayer and Bible readings in schools were the norm by the end of the late 19th century and luminaries like Theodore Roosevelt would often say things like it is “not our business to have the protestant bible or the catholic vulgate or the talmud read in these schools.”
Any honest reading of American history does not suggest a christian nation that has had secularism forced on it in recent years by liberal forces, but the opposite. Ours is a country that has always been basically secular but has always had to contend with a loud-mouthed minority of theocrats who periodically succeed at using government to push religion until the forces of secularism beat them back again. It’s obvious why wingnut christians would like to believe otherwise. Believing they’re an oppressed group being denied their birthright is a lot more fun than accepting that they are an oppressive group trying to steal basic freedoms from everyone else. But just because they wish it doesn’t make it so.

Rachel Maddow Blasts The Media For Trying To Turn Liberal Democrats Into teabaggers

Rachel Maddow called out the mainstream political media for trying to turn liberals like Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi into teabaggers.

Maddow said,

One of the main most basic reforms. One of the most necessary things that we did to protect ourselves from another total collapse of the financial system to insulate taxpayers so that we didn’t have to pay for what the banks did wrong, finally. That is what they just undid. That is why Democrats got so mad. It’s a really simple idea. It’s called Section 716 of The Dodd-Frank Act, and the banks hate it. Of course they do. Who wouldn’t want the United States taxpayers to promise to come and rescue you if you lost money? You can keep all the upside, but if it goes south, the taxpayers will pay. Who wouldn’t want that?

But that simple thing. That’s the basis of the giant fight in Washington that took the whole Beltway by surprise. And because that’s what the fight was about, that’s why the headliner in the Democratic Party leading the fight was seen to Sen. Elizabeth Warren. It’s not just that she is a liberal, and Democrats like her, and everybody knows her name. It’s subject specific. This is her wheelhouse. This is how she came to Washington in the first place, right? Elizabeth Warren first became known as a public figure because she was tapped by President Obama to oversee the bailout. I mean, her outrage over the banks screwing the taxpayers is the whole reason why she got into politics.

….

This is a substantive fight about a specific thing. This is not just liberals blowing off steam.

The Beltway has been saying oh, look liberals blowing off steam. That’s not what this is. The Beltway wants the left and right to be mirror images of each other. What’s the lefty version of the tea party? They want the center to always be correct, and they want the ideological edges to always be equally crazy and impractical in just the same way. But it’s almost never what’s going on, and it’s not what’s going on here.

….

The people who revolted inside the Beltway were not, HEY BELTWAY, were not the Democratic equivalent of Michele Bachmann, and Steve King, and Louie Gohmert. The people who revolted inside the Democratic Party. It’s not a mirror image. They weren’t the fringe of the party like the revolters on the right….This wasn’t the Louie Gohmert fringe of the Democratic Party. This was the leadership and most of the Democratic Party, who all said no against the wishes of their own White House.

Maddow made two points. The liberal Democratic pushback is based on policy, not ideology. The Democrats who revolted aren’t a fringe movement. Beyond what Maddow said, I would add that what is going on with the government funding bill is the physical movement of the Democratic Party to the left.

The people who are standing up against the policy riders in this bill are going to agree with their party probably ninety percent or more of the time. The Democratic Party is not divided like the Republicans, but Democrats are signaling that the party is moving to the left. The same behavior occurred when President Obama teamed up with congressional liberals to kill a bill that would have given hundreds of millions of dollars in permanent tax cuts to corporations.

The mainstream press is now saying that Elizabeth Warren is the new Ted Cruz, but this comparison is completely wrong. Cruz is a self-serving grandstander, who is trying get elected president by opposing everything and causing chaos. Warren and the Democrats are fighting because they disagree with something in the government funding bill.

Mainstream media laziness is one of the main reasons why the public is poorly informed. When journalists who are supposed to be political reporters insist on painting by the numbers instead of thinking, the result is poor coverage that misses the point of the issues of our day.

Democrats Score Major Win For Obama Nominees While Passing Government Funding Bill, 56-40

Democrats squeezed repugicans for a major victory on dozens of Obama nominees while passing the government funding bill

Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, Ed Markey, Ron Wyden, Amy Klobuchar and others voted against bill. Independent Bernie Sanders also voted against the bill. The repugicans Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tim Scott, Rand Paul, John McCain, Rob Portman, Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee were also among those who voted against the bill.

Members of the Democratic caucus were opposed to the bill because it weakened a regulation in the Dodd-Frank Act. Bernie Sanders opposed the bill because it slashed public employee pensions while also rolling back campaign finance laws.

A Democratic aide told The Hill that repugicans cut a deal to give Democrats everything they wanted as far as getting President Obama’s nominees confirmed, “It was a rout. They gave us everything.”

Everything in this case involves lifting the repugican filibuster on 24 Obama nominees.

It would be easy to overlook, but Senate Democrats have made sure that the nation will have a Surgeon General and several federal judges appointed.

Liberals fought the good fight, but in the end the dual pressures of wanting to avoid a government shutdown and a desire to go home for xmas was too much to overcome.

The good news is that the government will be funded through September 2015. The bad news is that the riders that repugicans attached to the bill will be their new way of getting their agenda passed.

This time a majority of Democrats felt that they had to go along with this odious bill. In the future, this tactic will be certain to face presidential vetoes and solid Democratic opposition.

The Truth Be Told

US Probation Office Recommends Ten Years In Prison For repugican Bob McDonnell

The U.S. probation office recommends that former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell spend at least ten years in prison for the eleven counts of corruption he was found guilty of committing. The probation office calculated a recommended sentence of between ten and thirteen years in prison for the disgraced public official. U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer is not required to issue a sentence within the guidelines. He can exercise discretion to decrease or increase the penalty. However, legal analysts have pointed out that Spencer has typically given sentences that fall within the guidelines suggested by the U.S. probation office.

About a year ago, McDonnell turned down an offer to take a plea agreement that would have cost him no more than three years behind bars. He could have pled guilty to a single count of lying to a bank and escaped with probation or a much shorter prison term. However, McDonnell rejected that deal. Now having been convicted of eleven separate charges, he could spend over a decade in prison for his crimes.

The ex-Governor is scheduled to be sentenced on January 6th of next year. His wife will have her sentence handed down on February 20th. McDonnell was once viewed as a rising star within the repugican cabal. His name was floated as a potential running mate for Mitt Romney in 2012, and at one time, he was listed as a potential future presidential candidate for the repugican cabal. As Governor of a large swing state, repugican agitators expected him to have a favorable resume for winning a national election. However, that was before his star power unraveled in the face of serious corruption charges. Now Robert McDonnell can look forward to spending time in prison. If the judge follows the sentencing recommendations, McDonnell may spend the next decade behind bars.

Congress Just Passed A Law Requiring Police Departments To Count How Many People They Shoot

by Nicole Flatow

This week as all eyes were on budget deal wrangling, with little attention and fanfare, Congress actually got something done to reform the police. It passed a bill that could result in complete, national data on police shootings and other deaths in law enforcement custody.
Right now, we have nothing close to that. Police departments are not required to report information about police to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Some do, others don’t, others submit it some years and not others or submit potentially incomplete numbers, making it near-impossible to know how many people police kill every year. Based on the figures that are reported to the federal government, ProPublica recently concluded that young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than whites.
Under the bill awaiting Obama’s signature, states receiving federal funds would be required to report every quarter on deaths in law enforcement custody. This includes not those who are killed by police during a stop, arrest, or other interaction. It also includes those who die in jail or prison. And it requires details about these shootings including gender, race, as well as at least some circumstances surrounding the death.
The bill is a reauthorization of legislation that expired in 2006. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) has been trying to revive it since then without success. Scott told the Washington Post the first time the bill passed in 2000, it took years before data started to come in, because of “the way government works,” and then the bill expired. But if states don’t report information, the federal government could use its power to withhold funds to force compliance. It passed the House last year, but finally moved through the Senate this week on the momentum of post-Ferguson outrage.
The bill also “[r]equires the Attorney General to study such information and report on means by which it can be used to reduce the number of such deaths.”

Georgia cops pay $100K for jailing woman who said "Fuck the police"

Amy Barnes was jailed and held in solitary in 2012 when she called out "fuck the police" as she bicycled past Cobb County cops who were questioning a suspect by the roadside.
Audio from one of the officers, recorded on the cruiser's dashcam, has him saying, "That ain't happening." The officers arrested Barnes for disorderly conduct, and rather than citing and releasing her, arrested her and jailed her for 24h, part of it in solitary confinement.
The judge in her case dismissed the charge. Barnes subsequently sued and won a $100,000 settlement from the county.

Counts says the settlement is reminder of everyone's constitutional rights.
"It's important to understand that people have a right to express their ideas and no matter how offensive it's not a basis for penalizing someone. And that's just wrong it violates the first amendment."
A Cobb county spokesman acknowledged "The commission did approve a settlement offer at Tuesdays meeting. And that the documents have not been executed."
Barnes has been involved in recent Atlanta protests and unrest surrounding police conduct in Ferguson and other incidents.

Woman awarded $100,000 in Free Speech settlement

Two brothers faked spoiled spuds in $2 million federal insurance swindle

In Fargo, North Dakota, two brothers were convicted this week of destroying potatoes so they could collect crop insurance payments. Their scheme defrauded the federal government of about $2 million, said prosecutors.
From the Associated Press:

Jurors found Aaron Johnson, 50, and Derek Johnson, 47, of the Cooperstown area, guilty of conspiring to receive illegal payments and giving false statements.
Prosecutors said the brothers exploited the federal government's crop insurance program, meant to help farmers recover from losses due to naturally occurring events, including bad weather and the wet breakdown of inner potatoes after harvest. Prosecutors said that among other things, the brothers used chemicals to accelerate deterioration.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nick Chase said that the crop insurance program is based on trust. "The fact that they so blatantly violated that trust makes me very pleased about the verdict," he said in a telephone interview after the verdict was announced

Father fined after three-year-old boy crashed his car into bus shelter

A father been ordered to pay 8,000 kronor (£650, $1,000) after his three-year-old son managed to hijack his car and drive into a bus shelter in central Gävle, Sweden.

The father was told to pay the 8,000 kronor for putting other people's lives in danger.
The incident occurred in mid-September, when the father briefly left the child unattended in the car.
The boy then managed to turn the ignition key and rammed the vehicle into a bus shelter. Two people sitting at the shelter and the three-year-old driver were all unhurt.

Preschool blames hand sanitizer for 4-year-old girl's drunkenness

The owner of an early childhood center in Invercargill, New Zealand, where a 4-year-old girl became grossly intoxicated says the girl consumed alcohol-based hand sanitizer and the center would not be using the product again. Jackie Woodward, owner of the Woodhouse Early Learning Center, has spoken of the "horrific" few days she and her staff have endured after the girl was hospitalized in a drunken stupor shortly after leaving the premises.

The girl was picked up by her mother, Terri Hawke, from the center at 5.30pm on Monday. But the mother soon became alarmed at her behavior and rushed her to hospital, where she collapsed into a nurse's arms and was later diagnosed as being intoxicated. Her alcohol reading was 188mg, nearly four times over the legal driving limit. Woodward said they believed the girl had climbed onto a bookshelf and reached the hand sanitizer connected to the wall above while the on-duty staff member was putting on a load of washing in another room.
There was "no liquor anywhere in the center at all" that the child could have got access to, she said. The mother has criticized Woodward's staff for failing to pick up that her daughter was drunk. Woodward said the only sign the girl was not acting normally was when she stumbled at about 5.15pm, but she put it down to the soles falling off her sandals. Woodward, who has removed the hand sanitizer from its position and put it in a locked room, said she would not be using the product again, instead sourcing non-alcoholic hand cleaning products.
"I had no idea it was 60 to 70 per cent alcohol content." She was relieved the child was okay. "That's the main thing for us." Doug Sellman, director of the National Addictions Center University of Otago, Christchurch, said an average-sized 4-year-old girl would need about 40ml, or eight teaspoons, of hand sanitizer to reach a 188mg level. If she had drunk wine she would have needed one glass to reach the 188mg level, and 1.5 small cans of beer would have been sufficient.

Random Celebrity Photos

Natalie Wood

Gingerbread Bakery Makes an Impressive Resume

Chef Thomas Keller owns the renowned Bouchon Bakery in Napa, California. Oliver Bernardino is a 23-year-old pastry cook in Vancouver who idolizes Keller and would love to work for him. Instead of sending a letter or a resume, Bernardino spent 70 hours baking and constructing an exact replica of the Bouchon Bakery out of gingerbread!

"I wanted to make something that I was truly inspired by, and would motivate me to bring out my best work," says Bernardino. So he meticulously studied the Bouchon Bakery cookbook, his own photos from the visit, and info on the Web to replicate the look, down to tiny details like a table stacked with Keller's signature TKOs, blue apron, and a roll of green painter's tape and a Sharpie, used in Keller's kitchens to mark containers. "It's a take on what I thought their version of a 'plate of cookies for Santa' would look like," he says. Other replica elements include a macaron tree, a stack of baguettes, and the bakery's signature yellow awnings. "I was also really happy with how the benches and garbage bins came out," he says.

Bernardino’s gingerbread bakery is now on display in an exhibit called Gingerbread Lane at the Vancouver Hyatt, to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Read more about it and see pictures from all angles at San Francisco Eater.

Hundreds of Beautiful Works of Trench Art

During World War I, soldiers were not always fighting. Sometimes, during idle moments, they might work on crafts using materials at hand. Some of these surviving works demonstrate impressive artistic skills, such as this engraved tobacco jar from the British Imperial War Museum. It was made by a Turkish prisoner of war using a British 13-pound shell case. Did you notice the color variation? That’s from copper and silver wire inlaid into the brass. You can view more examples of fine trench art at the website of the Imperial War Museum and Collectors Weekly. To examine truly outstanding works in the field, we highly recommend this Flickr photo set.

10 Things You May Not Know About Charles Darwin

by Christopher Klein

1. Darwin was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln.
Both Darwin and Lincoln were born on February 12, 1809, but in much different settings. While America’s 16th president was born in a rude log cabin in the Kentucky wilderness, Darwin was born in a grand Georgian house on an estate overlooking the River Severn and the medieval market town of Shrewsbury, England.
2. He waited more than 20 years to publish his groundbreaking theory on evolution.
Darwin’s five-year voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, which ended in 1836, provided him with invaluable research that contributed to the development of his theory of evolution and natural selection. Concerned, however, about the public and ecclesiastical acceptance of his deeply radical idea, he did not present his theory on evolution until 1858 when he made a joint announcement with British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who was about to go public with a similar concept to Darwin’s. The next year, Darwin published his seminal work, “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.”
3. Darwin suffered from chronic illnesses.
After returning from his trip around the world, Darwin began to suffer from exhaustion, eczema and chronic bouts of nausea, headaches and heart palpitations that would persist for the rest of his life. Some speculate that during his travels Darwin may have contracted a parasitic illness called Chagas disease that can eventually result in cardiac damage, which ultimately caused Darwin’s death.
Timothy Dickinson tells us about Charles Darwin and the depth of the human past.
4. He composed a pro/con list to decide on whether to marry.
Displaying a logical inclination even in matters of the heart, Darwin in 1838 composed a list with two columns delineating the upsides and downsides of marriage. In the “Marry” column: “children,” “constant companion (and friend in old age)…better than a dog anyhow” and “someone to take care of house.” In the “Not Marry” ledger: “freedom to go where one liked,” “conversation of clever men at clubs” and “loss of time.” Not on Darwin’s list, however, were family ties for he married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839.
5. He dropped out of medical school.
Darwin’s father was a successful doctor who groomed his son to follow in his footsteps. After spending the summer of 1825 serving as an apprentice in his father’s practice, he entered one of Britain’s top medical schools at the University of Edinburgh. Darwin, however, hated the sight of blood and was bored with the lectures. He left medical school and dashed his father’s dreams.
6. Darwin was a divinity student.
After leaving the University of Edinburgh, the man who would challenge the established religious dogma of creationism enrolled at Cambridge to study theology. “I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible,” he later wrote. However, Darwin’s faith began to waver after encountering the evils of slavery on his trip around the world and following the deaths of three of his children. Darwin, though, never characterized himself as an atheist. He instead referred to himself as an agnostic.

7. He dined on exotic animals.
Darwin not only studied an eclectic menagerie of animals from around the globe, he ate them as well. As a student at Cambridge, he formed the Gourmet Club, also known as the Glutton Club, for the purpose of dining on “birds and beasts, which were before unknown to human palate.” Darwin ate hawk and bittern but couldn’t choke down a brown owl that was served. While circumnavigating the globe on HMS Beagle, Darwin continued his adventurous eating by snacking on armadillo, ostrich and puma (“remarkably like veal in its taste,” he described).
8. He didn’t coin the phrase “survival of the fittest.”
Although associated with Darwin’s theory of natural selection, the phrase “survival of the fittest” was actually first used by English philosopher Herbert Spencer in his 1864 “Principles of Biology” to connect his economic and sociological theories with Darwin’s biological concepts. Darwin first adopted the phrase in his fifth edition of “The Origin of Species,” published in 1869, by writing of natural selection that “the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the survival of the fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”
9. Darwin is buried inside Westminster Abbey.
After Darwin passed away on April 19, 1882, his family began preparations to bury him in the village where he had spent the last 40 years of his life. However, Darwin’s friends and colleagues began a lobbying campaign to give him the high honor of burial inside London’s Westminster Abbey. After newspapers and the public joined the chorus, the Dean of Westminster gave his approval. A week after his death, Darwin was laid to rest in England’s most revered church near fellow scientists John Herschel and Isaac Newton.
10. Darwin appears on the 10-pound note.
Since 2000, a portrait of a bearded Darwin has appeared on the back of the British 10-pound note along with an image of HMS Beagle, a magnifying lens and flora and fauna seen on his travels. The Bank of England announced in 2013, however, that author Jane Austen will replace Darwin on the note, likely beginning in 2017.

Vikings and the little ice age

The end of beef and beer

by Karen Graham

While many of the stereotypical myths about Vikings being marauding adventurers have been proven to be just that, myths, there is one truth that is well documented. They knew how to win friends and influence people when they settled in a new land.

An ongoing archaeological dig of a farmstead called Hrísbrúin Mosfell Valley, in southwestern Iceland, led by Dr. Davide Zori, the archeological field director for the Mosfell Archaeological Project in Iceland, has shed some light on the Viking settlement there and how a changing climate may have changed their way of life., putting an end to brewing beer and raising cattle. The Mosfell Valley site includes a Viking Chief's 100-foot longhouse as well as a great hall where feasts were held. Carbon dating has shown the structures were built between the late 9th century and early 10th century. Further studies show the site was abandoned in the 11th century.

Site of Viking long house in Iceland.

The fascinating part of this story is the way archaeological evidence has been combined with ancient Viking historical texts to give us a picture of the group's culture. "These texts read almost like novels," Zori said in a statement. "They talk about daily life. Yes, the Vikings may have put axes to one another's heads, but these accounts also describe milking cows." It is believed by Zori, who is also an assistant professor at Baylor University, that the Vikings who settled in Iceland felt the need to keep up a "big man on the block" image like they had in Scandinavia. So to accomplish this, and keep up their political ambitions, they hosted large feasts with plenty of beer and beef. "It was somewhat like the barbecue here. You wanted a big steak on the grill," said Zori. Actually, what they were doing is a good political move in cementing relationships with equals and rivals. And it didn't hurt in spreading good will with laborers and supporters in the region. Of course, the changing climate would play a big role in changing how they lived and farmed.

Iceland may have looked much like it does today when the Viking first started their settlements.

When the Vikings first arrived in Iceland, according to the ancient texts, they found forested lowlands, lush pasture land and sheltered inlets from the sea. Barley seeds found on the earthen floors or refuse piles tell us they consumed the barley while pollen studies show they also grew barley. The grain could have been used for bread or porridge, but the "social value of beer makes it very likely it was used primarily to produce alcohol," Zori said. Shortly after the group of Vikings arrived in Iceland, the temperatures started dropping. Studies have shown that the cold summers and ice growth began abruptly between AD 1275 and 1300, followed by "a substantial intensification" from 1430 to 1455. This meant that the Vikings endured nine months of very cold winters and three months of weather just a little less cold than the winter months. The group had to keep their cattle indoors because there wasn't enough grazing grasses. Because they had to grow enough barley for their livestock and families, plus extra to brew beer, the weather put a big damper on feasting. It soon became impractical to keep so many cows, and sheep began to replace them. Sheep are better protected with their thick wool coats in winter weather and so they became sheepherders.

Ruins in Greenland.

This very same scenario was repeated in western Greenland and has been determined to be the reason for the departure of the Norse Vikings from their settlements. Yongsong Huang, of Brown University, a member of the research team who studied the Viking settlements in Greenland, said, "The lowered temperatures are the most likely explanation of their rapid departure from the area."

Have Scientists Found First Sign Of Dark Matter?

Dark matter is a kind of matter in astronomy and cosmology to account for gravitational effects that appear to be the result of invisible mass. It was first theorized more than 70 years ago, but after decades of searching, scientists believe they have seen the first sign of elusive Dark Matter.
Researchers at EPFL's Laboratory of Particle Physics and Cosmology in Switzerland and Leiden University in The Netherlands have picked up unexpected signals coming from a cluster of galaxies in the constellation Perseus and in the Andromeda galaxy.

Why Birds Don't Have Teeth

by Laura Geggel

An Archaeopteryx fossil discovered in Germany

Birds — like anteaters, baleen whales and turtles — don't have teeth. But this wasn't always the case. The common ancestor of all living birds sported a set of pearly whites 116 million years ago, a new study finds. In the study, researchers looked at the mutated remains of tooth genes in modern birds to figure out when birds developed "edentulism" — an absence of teeth. Ancient birds have left only a fragmented fossil record, but studying the genes of modern birds can help clarify how the bird lineage has changed over time.

"DNA from the crypt is a powerful tool for unlocking secrets of evolutionary history," Mark Springer, a professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside and one of the study's lead researchers, said in a statement.

Modern birds have curved beaks and a hearty digestive tract that help them grind and process food. But the 1861 finding of the fossil bird Archaeopteryx in Germany suggested that birds descended from toothed reptile ancestors, Springer said. And scientists now know that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs, carnivorous beasts such as Tyrannosaurus rex, which had a mouth full of sharp teeth.

But no one knew exactly what happened to the teeth in the evolution of these animals from then until now. "The history of tooth loss in the ancestry of modern birds has remained elusive for more than 150 years," Springer said.

In the new study, the researchers wondered whether the bird lineage lost its teeth in a single event, meaning the common ancestor of all birds did not have teeth, or whether edentulism happened independently, in different lines of birds throughout history, the researchers said.

To find out, they investigated the genes that govern tooth production. In vertebrates, tooth formation involves six genes that are crucial for the formation of enamel (the hard tissue that coats teeth) and dentin (the calcified stuff underneath it).

The researchers looked for mutations that might inactivate these six genes in the genomes of 48 bird species, which represent almost every order of living birds. A mutation in dentin- and enamel-related genes that was shared among bird species would indicate that their common ancestor had lost the ability to form teeth, the researchers said.

They found that all of the bird species had the same mutations in dentin- and enamel-related genes.

"The presence of several inactivating mutations that are shared by all 48 bird species suggests that the outer enamel covering of teeth was lost around 116 million years ago," Springer said.

The researchers also found mutations in the in the enamel and dentin genes of other vertebrates that don't have teeth or enamel, including turtles, armadillos, sloths, aardvarks and pangolins, which look like scaly anteaters. 

The closest living modern reptile relative of birds is the alligator, Springer said. "All six genes are functional in the American alligator," Springer said.

This tooth finding is one of many that came out of a large-scale scientific effort to study the evolution of birds. The findings of that effort were published today (Dec. 12) in the journal Science, and in several other journals.

Dog missing for three and a half years reunited with family

The Martinez family from Omaha, Nebraska, don't know where Sarge the German short haired pointer has been for the last three and a half years. At the moment, they don't care.

"I remember him playing with the kids, I remember him laying on their beds with them. You know I remember the day we got him." Harvey Martinez is still shocked Sarge somehow, found his way back home."It's something, we never thought we'd ever thought possible.
"We never thought we'd ever see him again." Sarge took off from home one day when the family lived in Plattsmouth, years ago. Harvey says his family searched for eight months with fliers and Craiglist posts. Sarge never turned up.

YouTube link.

"I never kept a dog afterwards because there's no dog that could ever replace him." It turns out, Harvey didn't have to. He recently saw a Facebook post from the Plattsmouth Animal Shelter about a stray dog. It was Sarge. "It's kind of like a giant Christmas present, for Christmas. It's still shocking to me," says Martinez.

Stray cat enjoyed $1,000 airport fish feast

A stray ginger cat sneaked into a seafood store at Vladivostok airport in eastern Russia and treated itself to fish from the deli counter. The animal's feast, which included squid and flatfish, was worth 60,000 roubles (£660, $1,000).

The feline burglar also went for the dried octopus - he tore up the packaging, but couldn't quite get to the food inside. The shop owners still had to count the cost because the packages were broken open.
The shop was forced to write off the entire fish counter the cat had laid its paws on, to comply with sanitary rules. The store was thoroughly disinfected afterwards, its owners have promised.

YouTube link.

The cat's feast was spotted and filmed by airport staff, who were amused by the gluttonous animal for some time before calling the shop owners. It's unknown how the cat managed to get into the store, although according to airport staff it's a local stray and sometimes wanders into the airport.

Woman reluctantly agrees to removal of 300 pet rats that run freely around her home

A Florida woman's home is inundated with hundreds of pet rats scurrying around. They're living in the walls and chewing through the furniture, and homeowner Florine Brown, 29, is reluctant to let them go. Inside Brown's St. Petersburg home, holes are in the furniture and a foul odor fills the air. ‘They have taken over. They're in every room pretty much around the house. They're in the kitchen, they're in the stairs, they're in my room,” said Brown. "It got really out of control, but I still wanted to keep them."

The rats are hiding in cabinets, scurrying under chairs and even poking their heads under stove burners. Brown loves these rodents. She started with three back in 2012, but they escaped and multiplied. Now there are around 300. Brown reasoned, "I didn't think of it as a big deal or a problem. I still don't, but it really got out of hand." A family member called local animal rescue groups. SPCA Tampa Bay, The Humane Society of Pinellas County, and the ASPCA are helping out.
Over the next few weeks, members from the agencies will safely remove the rats and take them to new homes. It's a slow process since there are so many rats, so officials say it may take around a month to complete. The rats are being captured alive and new homes must be found for them. Neighbors had tried to warn Brown to stop the rodents from mating. Already about 70 rats have been removed in the past few days, but there's a lot more work to do. "I love [the rats.] I have deep compassion for them," said Brown.

YouTube link. Additional news video.

"I just want them to go to good homes." Florine developed a close attachment to these rats after her grandparents died recently. “I lost my job and I was very depressed, and I wasn't working at the time, so I really depended on the rats a lot to get me by,” she said. She went through a bout of depression and she used them as a coping mechanism. But now the problem has got out of control, so the rats have got to go. An SPCA spokesperson says if you know someone who is hoarding animals, it's important to call animal rescue groups.

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Today in History

1862   Nathan Bedford Forrest crosses the Tennessee River at Clifton with 2,500 men to raid the communications around Vicksburg, Mississippi.  
1862   In New Orleans, Louisiana, Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler turns his command over to Nathaniel Banks. The citizens of New Orleans hold farewell parties for Butler, "The Beast" – but only after he leaves.
1864   The battle at Nashville begins.
1890   As U.S. Army soldiers attempt to arrest Sitting Bull at his cabin in Standing Rock, South Dakota, shooting breaks out and Lt. Bullhead shoots the great Sioux leader.  
1903   The British parliament places a 15-year ban on whale hunting in Norway.  
1920   China wins a place on the League Council; Austria is admitted.  
1924   The Soviet Union warns the United States against repeated entry of ships into Soviet territorial waters.  
1938   Washington sends its fourth note to Berlin demanding amnesty for Jews.
1944   The battle for Luzon begins.
1946   Vietnam leader Ho Chi Minh sends a note to the new French Premier, Leon Blum, asking for peace talks.  
1961   Adolf Eichmann, the former German Gestapo official accused of a major role in the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews, is sentenced by a Jerusalem court to be hanged.  
1965   The United States drops 12 tons of bombs on an industrial center near Haiphong Harbor, North Vietnam.
1967   President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the meat bill in the presence of Upton Sinclair, the author of the controversial book The Jungle.  
1972   The Commonwealth of Australia orders equal pay for women.
1973   The American Psychiatric Association votes 130 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders.  
1976   The oil tanker MV Argo Merchant causes one of the worst marine oil spills in history when it runs aground near Nantucket, Massachusetts.  
1978   US President Jimmy Carter announces the United States will recognize the People's Republic of China and will sever all relations with Taiwan.
1981   In what is often called the first modern suicide bombing, a suicide car bomb kills 61 people at the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon; Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon is among the casualties.  
1993   The Downing Street Declaration, issued jointly by UK and the Republic of Ireland, affirms the UK would transfer Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland only if a majority of Northern Ireland's people approved.  
2001   The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after an 11-year, $27 million project to fortify it without eliminating its famed lean.  
2005   F-22 Raptor Stealth fighter enters active service with the US Air Force.