A retired teacher was arrested after she repeatedly ignored a judge's order to stop feeding black bears in back yard. When police officers arrived at her home to arrest her, the 81-year-old reportedly threatened to kill them.

Mary Musselman has been illegally feeding bears in the yard of her Sebring, Florida home since at least early 2013; at some point in the year, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission euthanized a bear she'd repeatedly fed with dog food out of concern that the bear had become dangerously comfortable around humans.

"Feeding bears results in bears losing their fear of people," Gary Morse, an FWC spokesperson, told ABC Action News, adding that his department went the "extra mile" to educate Musselman about the dangers of feeding bears. Still, she refused to stop, telling police that she was worried the bears wouldn't survive without her help.

FWC officers returned to her home in November to find that she was regularly feeding at least two bears. "We are talking about putting out as many as 17 or 18 bowls of dog food," Morse said.

Officers gave her more information, including educational videos. Again, she failed to heed their warnings. Then, on December 6, she was summoned to court where a judge ordered her to stop and placed her on probation.

Two weeks later, she returned to court, where she again admitted to feeding the bears. A week later, after officers found further evidence of beer feeding, the judge ordered her arrest.

Mussleman reportedly threatened to kill the FWC officers who arrived at her home and resisted arrest.

She's currently in jail facing charges of violating parole and battery on a lawman, and is being held without bond. Her next court appearance is scheduled for March 3.

"I think it is outrageous," Karron Tedder, Musselman's former student, told ABC Action News. "This is out of her character to act as she did."

[h/t Fark]

Makers began as a documentary about the history of women's equality developed by AOL and PBS, but seems to have morphed into a brand of its own. Next week, Makers is hosting a three-day conference where Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt, Tim Armstrong, and others plan to "reset the agenda for women in the workplace in the 21st century."

Where does one gather to hit the restart on the stagnant wage gap and institutionalized sexism for the next 86 years? At "the picturesque Terranea Resort, located on a breathtaking stretch of Pacific coastline," of course. The revolution also has time for "Sunrise Yoga" classes in the morning. Work-life balance, ladies and billionaires.

Like all great equal rights initiatives, this one is also invite-only:

Participants include: Sheryl Sandberg (COO, Facebook), Gloria Steinem (activist, author), Eric Schmidt (Google), Gabby Giffords, Martha Stewart (founder, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia), Tim Armstrong (CEO, AOL), Christy Haubegger (Founder, Latina Magazine), Anne Fulenwider (EIC, Marie Claire), Chelsea Handler (TV host, author), Megan Smith (GoogleX) [Ed. note: Kara Swisher's wife], Val Demings (Orlando's Chief of Police), Bob Moritz (CEO, PwC), and many more. The conference will be emceed by tectonic thinker Kara Swisher, Silicon Valley's leading journalist and co-creator of Re/code (formerly The Wall Street Journal's 'All Things D').

Obviously no one's resetting any kind of agenda without a late night talk show host and the CEO of an accounting firm. That's just Feminism 101. But Washington Monthly points out that Makers might have missed a spot:

But funnily enough, do you know who was not invited to lollapalooza that's going to like, totally, revolutionize women's working lives? Labor unions, that's who!

That doesn't make Makers' mission any less ambitious. Sessions include "Brand Maker: Living IN Your Brand," "The Third Metric: Mindfulness," and "Getting Out of the Box," which does not appear to be a double entendre.

Although Makers the documentary was a joint project between PBS and AOL, it looks like the latter is running the conference. Questions from Valleywag to registration@makers.com got a bounce-back from postmaster@teamaol.com informing us that: "Your message can't be delivered because delivery to this address is restricted."

Man, these new top-down, corporate feminist movements really don't care to hear from those of us at the bottom.

A California teacher who was outed in a YouTube video by a former student who accused her of molesting her has been charged with sexual abuse.

The former teacher, Andrea Michelle Cardosa, was charged with abusing two girls over a 13-year-period while teaching at schools they attended in Riverside and Perris, both suburbs east of Los Angeles, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Riverside County District Attorney's office.

Cardosa faces a total of 16 counts of child sex abuse—five counts of aggravated sexual assault on a child and 11 counts of lewd acts on a child.

Investigators said the charges stemmed from a video posted on YouTube in video called "A call to my childhood rapist teacher," posted in January. In the video, which has been seen more than one million times, a woman identified as "Jamie X" confronts Cardosa via telephone. The video is believed to have prompted a second victim to come forward as well.

In the video, Jamie X also expresses her frustration that the statute of limitations has expired; however, the district attorney's office said that is not the case:

Because the five aggravated sexual assault charges carry a life sentence, the statute of limitations does not apply though the alleged crimes took place between 1997 and 2001, district attorney's spokesman [Hall] said.

Cardosa is currently held on $5 million bail and is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday. So far, details of the investigation have traced the abuse as far back as 1997.

Riverside detectives investigated allegations that Cardosa had illegal sexual contact with the first accuser from 1997 to 2001, when the victim was a middle school student in Riverside and continuing when she was in high school. The second accuser is alleged to have been victimized when she was a high school student in Perris, in Riverside County, in 2009 or 2010.

Cardosa's lawyer, Randy Collins, said he had not yet seen any evidence from prosecutors beyond the charges themselves. He said he planned to immediately seek a reduction in bail and will file a motion seeking to have the charges dismissed on grounds the alleged acts were outside the statute of limitations.

Image via Riverside County Sheriff

Today in Thought Catalog Headlines: "Dear Women, Please Stop. Just Really, Stop."

After a recent Dublin performance of The Risen People, a drama about the country's oppressed working poor in 1913, the audience got to hear about a very different kind of oppression–one the speaker accused them of acting out every day.

"I'm not going to compare myself to Dublin workers in 1913, but I do know what it feels like to be put in your place," explained drag performer Rory O'Neill, as alter-ego Panti Bliss, during a ten-minute speech after the show. O'Neill has been in the headlines in Ireland lately for accusing several prominent newspaper columnists of homophobia during a television appearance last month. (The columnists settled out of court for libel damages.)

"For the last three weeks, I have been lectured to by heterosexual people about what homophobia is and about who is allowed to identify it," explained O'Neill. "That feels oppressive." All the seemingly little things–calling someone a fag, televised debates among heterosexuals about whether non-straight people should get equal rights–those are oppressive.

"I hate myself because I fucking check myself when standing at pedestrian crossings," he passionately intones. "And sometimes I hate you for doing that to me."

[A 14-year-old Gwen Stefani meets Sting to get an autograph backstage. Stefani, who posted this image on her Twitter account, captions the photo, "chunky me 1983." Image via @gwenstefani/Twitter.]

Time Inc. entered “a restructuring process” on Tuesday—which almost certainly means hundreds and hundreds of layoffs at the magazine conglomerate.

Last week, Medium editor Arikia Millikan published a bizarre essay about an “important war correspondent” who gave her a “red-blooded introduction to journalism” by drinking with her, seducing her, maybe sleeping with her, and telling her all of his secrets—including marital infidelity and a suicide attempt involving a shotgun. It’s supposedly a story of how “Tom Random,” the name she gives her famous mentor, exploited Millikan’s naiveté. Turns out that most or all of it is horseshit, and its author won’t say what—if anything—actually happened.

Medium’s billionaire founder, Ev Williams, hasn’t hidden his journalistic ambitions for the tastefully-designed site, so we decided to go looking for the identity of “Tom Random,” and quickly found that the essay’s details suggested that “Tom Random” could be Dexter Filkins, the former New York Times correspondent and current New Yorker staff writer. Many in New York’s media circles came to the same conclusion.

(Some clues, for instance: The illustration that graces the Medium essay is actually based on a well-known photo of Filkins that ran in Vanity Fair—requiring Millikan to note that the “image bears no relation to the subject” at the bottom of the post. And Millikan, whose LinkedIn profile describes her as a former “science and technology” researcher for Nate Silver at the time he was shacked up at the Times, writes that she used to “fantasize about walking over from [her] post as science intern” to say hi to her mentor, who apparently sat near Millikan’s favorite columnist.)

When we asked Millikan, however, she denied that he was Filkins. When we noted all the clues that seemed to point to him, Millikan explained the liberties she took with her story: She changed some, or all, of the details.

Nowhere in her essay does Millikan disclose that she altered any details pertaining to “Tom Random”—a fairly normal custom when writing about individuals while trying to protect their identity, and essentially obligatory when the alterations are substantial.

But on Friday she told Gawker that she altered multiple significant details about “Random” and her relationship with him. During the same conversation, she refused to disclose the nature or scope of the fictions she introduced.

“I changed the details so that nobody could figure out who he was,” Millikan said. “Lots of people contacted me and said, Wow, this is a lot like something that happened to me, I wonder if it’s the same person.” Via email, she added, “He clearly has enough problems in his life.... And anyway I didn’t write this for revenge. Mostly just for peace of mind.”

As for the illustration, she says: “I literally just typed ‘war correspondent’ into Google image search, found that pic and liked it, and tweaked it out in Photoshop as much as I could to distort it without losing the shape of the buildings in back.”

OK, it wasn’t Filkins. But Millikan declined to stand by any of the elements of the story that we asked about—including those she presents as documentary evidence. She declined to say, for example, whether she changed the language of her IM chats with “Tom Random,” which she quotes at length. Nor would she confirm whether crucial details were based in reality.

Did “Tom Random” actually separate from his wife? Did “Tom Random” actually report from Baghdad? Was “Tom Random” an “important war correspondent” in the first place? Millikan wouldn’t say.

“This person could have been one of a hundred people, and it probably is,” the author explained. Later, via email, she added: “You’re wasting your time and my coworkers’ time. Please be professional.”

“Medium expects all of our paid contributors to meet accepted journalistic standards,” a representative for the site told Gawker. “We stand by her story.”

Filkins did not respond to multiple emails.

Update: After this post was published, Millikan removed the photo of Filkins from her essay without noting why. (Citing copyright infringement, the photographer, Ashley Gilbertson, asked Millikan to remove the photo on Twitter.)

To contact the author of this post, email trotter@gawker.com

[Photo credit: Shutterstock]

The Wall Street Journal, which combines some of the world's finest news reporting with an opinion section run by C. Montgomery Burns, continues to steadily whip a dead horse by the name of "Progressives Are Like Hitler."

To recap the Very Recent History of the Wall Street Journal's engagement with the "Class War Is Like the Holocaust" meme, a brief recap:

1. On January 24, the WSJ publishes a letter to the editor from wealthy venture capitalist Tom Perkins in which Perkins bleats, "I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.'"

2. The sane portions of America have a good laugh at this crazy old coot. (He is not targeted for genocide, however.)

3. The WSJ's opinion section editors, upset with the scorn heaped upon this offensively out-of-touch zillionaire, run their own editorial in support of Perkins, using his lunatic rants as a jumping off point for their own set of complaints about the mythical tyranny of The Left. "Maybe the critics are afraid that Mr. Perkins is onto something about the left's political method," they suggested. Maybe!

4.That was not enough of this topic. The discourse must continue! Today, the WSJ publishes an op-ed by Harvard professor of "Yiddish and comparative literature" Ruth Wisse, in which she argues that—surprise—Tom Perkins really was onto something with his "Occupy Wall Street Is Like the Brownshirts" screed.

The parallel that Tom Perkins drew in his letter was especially irksome to his respondents on the left, many of whom are supporters of President Obama's sallies against Wall Street and the "one percent." These critics might profitably consult Robert Wistrich, today's leading historian of anti-Semitism. His "From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel" (2012) documents the often profound anti-Semitism that has affected socialists and leftists from Karl Marx to today's anti-Israel movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions. It was Marx who said, "The bill of exchange is the Jew's actual god," putting a Jewish face on capitalism and accusing both Judaism and capitalism of converting man and nature into "alienable and saleable objects."

Herein lies one structural connection between a politics of blame directed specifically at Jews and a politics of grievance directed against "the rich." The ranks of those harping on "unfairly" high earners include figures in American political life at all levels who have been entrusted with the care of our open society; in channeling blame for today's deep-rooted and seemingly intractable problems toward the beneficiaries of that society's competitive freedoms, they are playing with fire.

In case you didn't get that argument, it went: People who thought that Tom Perkins' letter was not reasonable—>Obama supporters—> leftists—>socialists—>Karl Marx—>anti-Semitic Communists—>anyone "channeling blame" towards the rich for today's problems.

Of course. Why would anyone blame the people who own all the wealth and control all the resources and guide our political and economic systems for things that happen in our society? That's just not fair.

Harvard graduates are invited to jump in and explain the merits of Prof. Wisse's arguments in the comment section below. The rest of you, go back to Germany.

[Photo:AP]

Woody Allen's lawyers and friends are quick to argue that the latest round of child abuse accusations against the actor are perfectly timed to destroy what should have been a fruitful awards season. But the real truth is that these allegations, these stories, and Allen's history with young women have been a matter of public record for at least 20 years.

Joe Coscarelli at The Daily Intelligencer undertook the unenviable task of rounding up a history of allegations against the actor as well as his inappropriate behavior with—and references to—young women. Here is a sampling of what he found.

From Jim Jerome's profile of Woody Allen in the October 4, 1976 People Magazine issue:

"I try to have sex only with women I like a lot," Woody explains solemnly. "Otherwise I find it fairly mechanical." (He has little interest in family life: "It's no accomplishment to have or raise kids. Any fool can do it.")

He goes on: "I'm open-minded about sex. I'm not above reproach; if anything, I'm below reproach. I mean, if I was caught in a love nest with 15 12-year-old girls tomorrow, people would think, yeah, I always knew that about him." Allen pauses. "Nothing I could come up with would surprise anyone," he ventures helplessly. "I admit to it all."

From the introduction to Maureen Orth's 1992 Vanity Fair article "Mia's Story":

There was an unwritten rule in Mia Farrow's house that Woody Allen was never supposed to be left alone with their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan.

From the September 21, 1992 New York Magazine article "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Woody and Mia (But Were Afraid to Ask)," acquaintances discuss Allen's behavior toward his daughter:

From the start, Farrow's friends say, Allen seemed "obsessed" by the little girl. He would arrive at Mia's house at six in the morning and sit on the end of Dylan's bed, staring at her until she woke up. He insisted that she be kept up until he got home in the evening to tuck her in. He was reluctant to leave her alone at school. His behavior struck several parents of other children as odd.

From the May 1993 Sun-Sentinel article "Woody Allen, My Pen Pal," writer Nancy Jo Sales discusses her private correspondence with Allen, then 42, when she was a 13-year-old girl. She begins, "The year I was 13, my only friend was a famous man who lived far away and wrote me letters in plain brown envelopes that I told my mother were from "a girl from camp." He wrote:

Dear Nancy,

Hard to believe you're 13! When I was 13 I couldn't dress myself, and here you write about one of life's deepest philosophical problems, i.e., existential boredom. I guess it's hard for me to imagine a 13-year-old quoting anything but Batman — but T. Mann? Anyway, there's too much wrong with the world to ever get too relaxed and happy. The more natural state, and the better one, I think, is one of some anxiety and tension over man`s plight in this mysterious universe ...

Next time you write, if you ever do, please list some of the books you've enjoyed and movies, and which music you've liked, and also the things you dislike and have no patience with. And tell me what kind of place Coral Gables is. What school do you go to? What hobbies do you have? How old are your parents and what do they do? What are your moods like? Are you energetic? Are you an early riser? Are you "into clothes" ... At the moment, I am re- filming some parts of my next film, which have not come out so good.

Best, Woody.

Sales and Allen also met in person when she was young:

I met Woody only once. I was visiting Manhattan with two older companions on a cold, clammy day, and I had left a note at his building. To my delight he called my hotel 10 minutes later asking me to come over. But at the last minute I became panic-stricken at the thought of seeing Woody Allen in person, knowing that an epistolary relationship is fragile, like a delicate fern that crumples when touched.

My knees shaking, I finally tottered into his penthouse on a pair of too-tall Katharine Hepburn sandals. I remember how pale his skin was behind the trademark glasses, how translucent he looked, like a corpse or an angel. I couldn`t say a word, and my companions filled in the silence with aimless chatter while Woody, wearing his very same clothes from Annie Hall, sat Indian-style in an armchair, nodding politely and trying to catch my eye.

There's also this graphic molestation scene written by Allen in his 2011 play Honeymoon Hotel:

Triggerish, FWIW. Here's a graphic WA joke about child molestation from Honeymoon Motel, a 1-act produced 3 yrs ago: pic.twitter.com/at1Z7DrXxd

— emilynussbaum (@emilynussbaum) February 4, 2014

And of course there's 2013's Vanity Fair story on the family, and then there's all this creepy shit from his movies.

That being said, an older man playing pen pal to a young girl proves nothing but questionable judgment. The same can be said for a man who, after being accused of molestation, then goes on to makes jokes about the act in his work. However, as Allen defenders take the stage, they seem to be clinging to the belief that these allegations are new and purposely timed. On The View Monday, Barbara Walters argued: "But she's doing it now because he's up for an award, so the question is does your personal life interfere with the award?"

And on Today Tuesday morning, Allen's lawyer Elkin Abramowitz agreed with Walters, stating that these allegations are surfacing because "Woody Allen is now riding high" thanks to the acclaim he's receiving for his latest work Blue Jasmine.

Maybe the lawyers and friends are right; maybe this "brouhaha" is all just a renewed "ploy" timed to destroy Allen's Oscar chances. However, there's also the chance—a very good chance—that because Dylan Farrow has finally shared her own version of the events, a version that seems to correspond to an already-existing record, that people are now just more willing to listen.

[Image via AP]

At least one Democratic senator is willing to deport Justin Bieber. We can make this happen, America.

Now that the third season of Sherlock has aired, Benedict Cumberbatch has some free time. So he did what anyone in his position would do: He stopped by Sesame Street to help "solve" a math problem.

Sure, Cumberbatch's work with Count Von Count isn't as impressive as his R. Kelly impersonation, but it's certainly more educational.

[h/t Daily Dot]

It's an astounding sight: Buddha carved into a tall rock formation at the Ngyen Khag Taktsang Monastery in China. People talked breathlessly about how they visited the place, saw it with their own eyes. Except that they didn't. Because it's a fake. And this is the guy who faked it.

The creator of this photoshopped landscape goes by the handle Archistophanes on Twitter, and prefers to remain anonymous. He's part of an art collective known as Reality Cues, whose Graffiti Lab project plays with landscape and architecture, conjuring images that exist only in the mind and on their computers. I talked with him recently about what it's like to see one of your fakes go viral, to watch the internet treat your manipulated images as fact.

"I started to play with search entries: what was popular on Tumblr, or what images come up first on a Google image search," he explained, describing how he got the idea for the monastery in the first place. The undoctored image was floating around under the hashtag #landscape. "Monumental architecture or sculptures are also hugely popular so I glued two together."

But despite the original landscape image's popularity, the new image that he had created started to pop up much more often. Which was part of the point.

"What interests me is how often someone can see an image and not realize that some change has transpired," Archistophanes said. "At some point the original has been swapped out and a new 'improved' version is in its place."

Two more readily apparent Archistophanes creations.

I asked if any of his other clearly photoshopped creations had gone viral. This, of course, was a stupid question. One person's obvious fake is another person's proof that the world truly is a beautiful and magical place.

"I like that you say 'clearly photoshopped' because to me they are all clearly photoshopped," he said. One creation called Long Forgotten Temple of Lysistrata (above left) was another viral hit. Even the Han Solo in carbonite stuck in a Frank Gehry building (above right) has been passed around on Tumblr as real.

One of the things that most amazes people who unknowingly pass along the doctored monastery photo as real, Archistophanes noted, is how difficult it would be to actually build something like that. It seems to instill a sense of hope, aside from simple awe.

"People defend it against accusations of Photoshop," Archistophanes said. It's clear that the manipulated photo inspires people who are looking for that particular brand of inspiration in their daily lives.

"Someone was defending that it could physically be built," he said. "[The person defending the authenticity of the monastery image] said something like: people can do great things when they get together to accomplish goals."

That seems to be why these images go viral; why they're passed around like the internet's native currency. With all the shittiness, outrage, and despair in the world, we want to believe that humanity can still achieve great things—that building something beautiful is not outside of our reach.

Which in turn means that as long as there are people like Archistophanes in the world, whether their intent is virality or just art, there will be plenty of fake images to believe in for years to come.

Images: Buddha at Ngyen Khag Taktsang Monastery by Reality Cues; Long Forgotten Temple of Lysistrata by Reality Cues; Frank Gehry Strikes Back: Carbonite Tower by Reality Cues

Walking into the event, the men at the escalators were quick to ask, "Do you want to do the red carpet? Because if you want to do the red carpet, you must go downstairs." Down an escalator and through the hall, the red carpet—a thing one might do—sat in between two sliding glass doors. It looked like red Astroturf and was flanked by cheap lattice covered in faux moss. The rug seemed ashamed. The reporters lining the carpet were largely of the "local news" variety. No one cares about the Writers Guild Awards.

When guests approached the carpet, the event coordinators again asked if they were sure they wanted to "go down." A dare for narcissists; a warning for the terrified. At this point a guest could enter the sad 30-foot long gauntlet while the reporters asked questions, or turn around and run out the sliding door. Or, for the particularly anxious and cornered, there was a third option: run forward beyond the carpet and shamefully slink behind it, thus avoiding the embarrassment of both "doing the carpet" or going outside and being asked again if you wanted to "do it."

All while wearing a gown you've already ripped.

On to the cocktails. Like a sad daytime reception where the wedding party is off taking pictures, everyone stood inside drinking cheap wine, eyes peeled toward the entrance, hoping to see a familiar face, wishing they hadn't arrived so early. A few waiters walked around with a tray of watermelon covered in a dollop of white sauce, an appetizer so uninspired even a group of writers couldn't muster enthusiasm for free food.

On occasion, a cameraman would approach a group and ask, "Nominee?" When you shook your head no, the camera disappeared quickly.

The bars never got too crowded, but the signs made it clear that "Host Bar Ends at 5." A year spent writing, a year of guild dues, and only one hour of open bar. Right before five, like most of the other men in the lobby, Alex Trebek ordered a glass of wine at the bar and Drew Carey grabbed a drink for his much younger date, her breasts playing peek-a-boo behind straining sequins.

Most people in the room looked unfamiliar, vaguely normal, and ready to go home.

Inside the ballroom, everyone moseyed to their assigned seats. Salad, rolls, two bottles of wine, and typical banquet fare crowded the round tables. Issues of Variety and Written By (a terrible magazine written by and for writers) covered the seats.

As the normal people shoved carbs and butter into their mouths, the slightly less normal people made the rounds. Spike Jonze was the only person in the room who looked good, really good, in his suit. The Parks and Recreation tables seemed to be having the most fun. David O. Russell posed for pictures, lots of fucking pictures. Everyone else ate warmed-over chicken.

When Russell finally sat down at table 26, someone next to him busted out a bottle of Tequila Fortaleza and laughingly told a tablemate, "You think I'd drink the shwag they serve here?" (Oh, the laughter!) Russell knocked back his table's entire bottle of red, and spent the entire ceremony texting, whispering to Ellison, and getting back rubs from his ex-wife Janet Grillo.

Awards were given. Speeches were long. The winners were mostly male and white. The tiny handful who weren't were an occasion for a general sense of pride in progress and embarrassment at its lack. The wine bottles ran out and were never re-filled; the chairs got harder; the man next to me was playing Candy Crush. At some point, it was obvious Nikki Finke knew all the winners and was tweeting them out early.

With 30 minutes left in the ceremony and an empty bottle of tequila in front of him, everyone in the room but Russell, who spent more than a few minutes napping in his chair, knew he'd be losing to Spike Jonze.

And only four hours after cocktails began, it was all over. The more famous people stayed after to mingle and take pictures, but everyone else left as soon as possible, going down escalators, through lobbies, past groups of men in hockey jerseys, and outside into the year's first night of rain in Los Angeles. But no one cared because anywhere, even walking through rainy downtown LA Live looking for your $25 parking spot, was better than being back inside the Diamond Ballroom.

[Photo by Getty]

A former Motown Museum employee made an unusual—and very valuable—discovery after he returned from the estate sale of a Detroit musician: Inside a record, which he'd purchased for just 50 cents, the man found Marvin Gaye's 1964 passport.

In an Antiques Roadshow that aired on February 3, the man recounted his find to appraiser Laura Woolley.

After a Motown musician had passed, we had gone to their house to pick up some items that the family wanted to donate to the museum, and they had said, "Is there anything else you wanted? "Because otherwise, it's going to be in the estate sale this weekend." She said, "No," and I said, "What about these albums and records?"

The man didn't take any back to the museum, but he later returned to the sale and bought several albums and 45s. The albums were 50 cents each, and the 45s cost just a quarter. "When I got home, I was going through them and out of an album fell this passport," the man said, laughing. "And so it literally fell into my hands."

It's turned out to be a very valuable find. "I wouldn't put less than $20,000 on the passport if you were to insure it," Wooley told the man.

His response? "Are you kidding me? I never would have thought. I mean, I'm just shocked. I mean... wow. Oh gosh, thank you."

[h/t Spin]

Budweiser was one of the consensus winners of Super Bowl XLVIII's ad spree, partly on the strength of this tribute to a soldier returning home. But the tear-jerker also might be a rule-breaker: It violated some sacred military edicts, and the beer-maker needed special permissions to pull it off.

The minute-long video documents a trip by 1st Lt. Chuck Nadd to his hometown, Winter Park, Florida. Budweiser takes part in that homecoming, carting around town on the company's signature clydesdale-driven tank carriage as the townsfolk applaud him, Big Fish-style, a heroic stand-in for Our Troops, Our Country, and Our Beer.

The ad involved 60 production workers, a Veterans of Foreign Wars promotion won by Nadd's partner, and a Bud-chartered private jet to fly Nadd—a 2011 West Point grad and helo pilot—from his New York base, Ft. Drum, to Florida. (Did you think he was coming straight back from Afghanistan? Not exactly.)

It's lovely—some might even say saccharine or kitschy—and it's gotten 8.3 million views on YouTube. It also is a big federal no-no, as Foreign Policy contributor Phillip Carter points out.

First, there's a violation of the military's ethics regulations, which explicitly state that Department of Defense personnel cannot "suggest official endorsement or preferential treatment" of any "non-Federal entity, event, product, service, or enterprise" As Carter makes clear, "Under this regulation, the Army cannot legally endorse Budweiser, nor allow its active-duty personnel to participate in their ads (let alone wear their uniforms), any more than the Army can endorse Gatorade or Nike."

There's also the military's approach to the glorification of booze, although Carter seems to be on slightly shakier ground here. The Army's guidance on substance abuse states: "At all levels alcohol will not be glamorized nor made the center of attention at any military function."

Carter acknowledges that military brass can waive these rules when they see fit, and that's what appears to have happened in this case:

I sent a detailed list of questions about how, and why, the Army seems to have ignored both sets of policies. An Army spokesman said the ad had been vetted, and that Army officials concluded that Ladd's appearance in uniform while on duty did not constitute "official support to or otherwise partner[ing] with" Budweiser or the Veterans of Foreign Wars in the spot's production. This logic persuaded the Army's top leaders that it would be OK to raise a toast to Budweiser.

But Carter notes, most importantly, that whether or not the military bent its own rules backwards to accommodate the Official Beer of Major League Baseball and America in general, there's unequivocal evidence that veterans have serious alcohol problems—problems that contribute to the out-of-control incidence of vet suicides, as well as post-traumatic stress and a host of other emotional and physical issues.

Despite all that, the military played along with Bud's jingoism. "Decades of research should have persuaded the Army to avoid getting in bed with Budweiser," he concludes, quite correctly. "Better for at-risk soldiers to hear a simple truth: This Bud isn't for you."

BMW drivers get accused of being dicks probably more than any other group of motorists, so critics of a popular Russian satirist may have found the most BMW-appropriate form of protest ever. Russia, everybody!

The New Republic reports that noted Twitter satirist and prominent Putin critic Katya Romanovskaya went outside last week in Moscow to find this 200 pound wooden dick (and balls, don't forget the balls) on the roof of her 3-Series sedan.

She and her co-author spent most of that day trying to get police to take the incident seriously, but they — and some onlookers — were too busy laughing and taking pictures. They ended up lugging it into their apartment and are currently deciding what to do with it. (I can think of a few things. HEY-OOOO!)

Who's the culprit, you ask? Probably some state-backed, pro-Putin youngsters, the magazine reports:

This is the kind of cockamamie (sorry) prank that reeks (sorry) of Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth group founded after Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2005. It was the Kremlin's way to engage the youth in politics by paying and brainwashing them to be their blunt instrument of revenge. These kids, often from poor families, have strange imaginations that center almost always on the scatalogical and the sexual. (They once used one prostitute named "Mumu" to lure various male opposition figures into bed in the same bugged apartment.) They manage to pull off these kinds of pranks by having the resources of the state at their disposal.

You have to admit that they put it on the right kind of car.

Photo credit Persident Roissi Facebook

1) Person Under Age 30 Writes About Dating Life or Lack Thereof.

2) Person Not on Their Deathbed Writes About What Love Means to Them

3) Person Who Has Not Had Sexual Experiences Wildly Different Than the Majority of the Population Writes About Sex

4) Cool Parent Writes About Parenting the Cool Way

5) Failed Business Person Writes Business Tips

6) Successful Business Person Writes Business Tips

7) Political Reporter Writes About a Campaign That Is Long Over and We Were Sick of It Even When It Was Happening

8) Person Who Works as a College Professor Writes a Bunch of Books All Set in Academia

9) Recent Graduate of a Highly Regarded Writing Program Writes About the Inner Turmoil of a Person Much Like Himself

10) Television Personality Clearly Does Not Actually Write This Book

11) Historian Writes Another God Damn Book About Abe Lincoln

12) Person Who Has Had Substance Abuse Issues Writes a Book With Stories that Do Not Differ Substantially From Those That Would Be Overheard at a Randomly Selected AA Meeting.

13) Uninteresting Person Writes Memoir

[Photo: Getty]

Leith, North Dakota, was once a ghost town. But recently, there's been a population boom: white supremacists have begun moving into the small town in an effort to take it over. Now, No Weather Productions is making a documentary about the town, its people, and its new tenants.

"Filmed in the days leading up to leader Craig Cobb's arrest for terrorizing the townspeople on an armed patrol," say the filmmakers. "Leith, N.D. is an eerie document of American DIY ideals played out in one of the most under populated states in the nation." The town's city council soon passed a number of measures to make sure Cobb's dream of a white separatist paradise never happens there. But just how close he came is eerie, indeed.

[via Uproxx]

The thing about Dylan Farrow's open letter accusing her father, Woody Allen, of sexual abuse is: There was not much really new about it. It was new that Dylan Farrow herself was signing her name to the accusations, but Vanity Fair had covered the case, in grim detail, more than two decades ago.

So the current crisis over how people are supposed to feel about Woody Allen is on some level odd. Woody Allen's status as an accused child molester has been a matter of public record since before Manhattan Murder Mystery came out. Anyone who didn't think about it before now had chosen not to think about it.

Not thinking about it is a popular and powerful choice. Which brings up another beloved American funnyman, Bill Cosby. Who doesn't love Bill Cosby? I grew up watching Fat Albert and eating Jell-O Pudding Pops, which is a cliché, but Bill Cosby is the creator of some of our most warming and affirming clichés. He is charming and iconic, one of the most culturally important and successful comedians ever, an elder statesman of the entertainment industry.

He's also someone who has been accused by multiple women of drugging them and sexually assaulting them. Here is one of his accusers, describing an incident:

Well, there were a number of people at the table, friends of his, and he said to me, yes, you do seem ill, you're slightly feverish, would you like to have some Contact? You know, the cold medicine. And I thought, why not, can't hurt. So he went into some sort of office area at the back of the restaurant and he produced two capsules in his hand. I thought nothing of it and I took the capsules. In about, I don't know, 20 to 30 minutes I felt great and then about 10 minutes after that I was almost literally face down on the table of this restaurant...

He said, "Oh my, you must be more ill then we believed. I totally lost motor control; I was almost unable to hold my head up. I was very, very, very stoned. He took me into my apartment and then very helpfully and nicely was prepared to take off my clothes and help me into bed and pet me, and that's how the actual assault began.

She recounted this in an on-camera interview, under her own name, with Matt Lauer of the Today show, on February 10, 2005. The assault had allegedly happened back in the 1970s, but she said she had decided to come forward because another woman had accused Cosby of committing a similar assault in January of 2004.

That woman, in a lawsuit, said that Cosby offered her three pills of what he claimed was "herbal medication, which would help her relax," and insisted she take all three:

When Plaintiff advised Defendant she did not feel well, Defendant led Plaintiff to a sofa, because she could not walk on her own, where he laid her down, under the guise of "helping" her.

Subsequently, Defendant positioned himself behind Plaintiff on the sofa, touched her breasts and vaginal area, rubbed his penis against her hand, and digitally penetrated her.

Plaintiff remained in a semi-conscious state throughout the time of this ordeal.

At no time was Plaintiff capable of consent after the pills affected her, and at no time did she consent to Defendant's acts.

Lawyers for the woman filed a motion stating that they intended to call as witnesses the woman who'd given the Today show interview and nine separate Jane Does, from seven different states. Eventually the list grew to a reported 13 accusers. Two more of them put their names on the record, giving interviews to Philadelphia Magazine and later to People. Philadelphia summarized one of their stories:

They started an affair that lasted about six months. Cosby ended it without explanation. Then he called her one night in Denver, where she lived; they met backstage at a nightclub there, where he was performing. He said, "Here's your favorite coffee, something I made, to relax you." She drank it and soon began to feel woozy. Several hours later, she woke up in the backseat of her car, alone. She didn't know what had happened. Her clothes were a mess, her bra undone. Security guards came and said Cosby told them to get her home. She confronted him at his hotel. "You just had too much to drink," he told her.

The other accuser initially withheld the details of her story because of the pending lawsuit. Cosby ended up settling the suit, with the plaintiff agreeing not to discuss it further, after which the prospective witness went ahead and told her story to the magazines. Here's People's account, using her name, Barbara Bowman:

It was in a hotel in Reno, claims Bowman, that Cosby assaulted her one night in 1986. "He took my hand and his hand over it, and he masturbated with his hand over my hand," says Bowman, who, although terrified, kept quiet about the incident and continued as Cosby's protégé because, she says, "Who's gonna believe this? He was a powerful man. He was like the president." Before long she was alone with Cosby again in his Manhattan townhouse; she was given a glass of red wine, and "the next thing I know, I'm sick and I'm nauseous and I'm delusional and I'm limp and ... I can't think straight.... And I just came to, and I'm wearing a [men's] T-shirt that wasn't mine, and he was in a white robe."

A month or two later, she was in Atlantic City and says she was given another glass of red wine and felt "completely doped up again." Confused, Bowman somehow made it back to her room, but the next day Cosby summoned her to his suite. After she arrived, Bowman says, Cosby "threw me on the bed and braced his arm under my neck so I couldn't move my head, and he started trying to take his clothes off. I remember all the clinking of his belt buckle. And he was trying to take my pants down, and I was trying to keep them on." Bowman says that not long after she resisted the assault, Cosby cut off contact with her and had her escorted to the airport for a flight back to Denver.

To reiterate: This was in People magazine, published nationwide in December 2006. Four women said publicly, in major media outlets, that Bill Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them. This coverage was more recent and possibly more prominent that the coverage of the abuse allegations against Woody Allen.

And? Basically nobody wanted to live in a world where Bill Cosby was a sexual predator. It was too much to handle. The original Philadelphia Magazine story set off his accusers' testimony in italicized interludes, between long sections about the more digestible controversies around Cosby's lecture tour denouncing black cultural pathology. The usually unflinching Ta-Nehisi Coates, in an otherwise comprehensive 2008 Atlantic essay on the context and politics of Cosby's performance as a public moral scold, dropped a sentence about the lawsuit settlement and its accompanying accusations into parentheses near the end.

Conceptually, it was the sensible way to deal with it. No one was talking about it anymore. The whole thing had been, and it remained, something walled off from our collective understanding of Bill Cosby.

With shocking speed, it was effectively forgotten. When the subject came up today, more than half the Gawker staff had no memory of any sexual allegations against Bill Cosby. In 2009, Cosby was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for his distinguished achievements in humor. In 2010, he was honored with the Marian Anderson Award, for "critically acclaimed artists who have impacted society in a positive way, either through their work or their support for an important cause." In 2011, the Marian Anderson Award went to Mia Farrow.

[Photos via Getty]