The United States has never had a president go to prison. Neither a sitting president, nor a former one. Arguably there are a few who should have — although that’s another matter.

Donald Trump could change that. Perhaps that’s not surprising: Trump will already be remembered by history as the first president to be impeached twice, the first president to refuse to accept losing an election, the first president to lack any prior political or military experience and one of five presidents to be elected without winning the popular vote....

Originally posted on salon.com

Christopher Columbus, the notoriously tyrannical sea explorer who couldn’t tell the American continents from India, knew enough about lunar eclipses to literally save his life. The year was 1504 — a dozen after his famous sailing across the ocean blue — and Columbus was stranded with his men on the island now known as Jamaica....

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A grieving family in Africa had just lost a young child, between two and three years old. Devastated, they laid the corpse in the fetal position and gently rested the child’s head on a cushion of leaves. His body was tightly wrapped up and lovingly stored in a Kenyan cave.

Most remarkable of all is that this happened 78,000 years ago — 73,000 years before the invention of writing and the beginning of recorded history. ...

Originally posted on salon.com

I haven’t seen most of the movies nominated for best picture in this year’s Oscars, so I can’t say that “The Trial of the Chicago 7” deserves to win.

What I can say is that, despite its many inaccuracies, everyone who identifies as a progressive, liberal or leftist should see Aaron Sorkin’s film about the tumultuous political year of 1968. It...

Originally posted on salon.com

One environmental narrative, common to dystopian science fiction, goes like this: humans start to colonize the planet, and slowly take up more and more space until there’s nothing wild or untouched on Earth. Humanity’s infectious spread over the globe slowly eats the planet’s resources alive. 

As it turns out, this narrative is all wrong — at least for the past 12,000 years, according to a new study....

Originally posted on salon.com