Baby Owl Dances To Monster Mash Because It's Halloween

Oakley the owl, right, and his stuffed counterpart
grove to "The Monster Mash."  

This video is a few years old, but you can't beat a baby owl dancing to Monster Mash on Halloween.

The baby owl is named Oakley and he liked to cuddle with his favorite stuffed owl.

Oakley was raised at the Eagle Valley Raptor Center in Kansas and has since been released to the wild.

Watch:

Bryan Wilson, TEXAS LAW HAWK!!!!!

Texas Law Hawk!!  

Some ads for lawyers are, um, interesting, and we think we found the most insane one we've seen in quite awhile.

Introducing Bryan Wilson, Texas Law Hawk!!!!!!!!

You have to give the young attorney points for enthusiasm and he parades and runs around Fort Worth, doing wheelies on mini bikes, displaying more flag images than every Fourth of July that ever existed combined, and yelling until his voice gives out. I think.

I wonder if his performance is similar in a courtroom.

Fort Worth Weekly says the ads seem to work. Wilson's phone has been ringing off the hook with potential clients, some from as far away as Florida. However, he only practices in Tarrant County, Texas.

I guess people want a madcap lawyer representing them instead of somebody, um, sober. Go figure.

In any event, you'll be stunned, or thrilled or something, with this ad from TEXAS LAW HAWK!!!!!!

Will Wheaton's Warning To Not Write For Free Makes Him My New Best Friend.

Wil Wheaton Vs. Huffington Post. I'd say Wheaton won. 

Wil Wheaton caused a big stir this week and it has me totally cheering for him.

For the uninitiated, Wil Wheaton was a child actor in the movie "Stand  By Me," has since been in the series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and has had a recurring role in TV's "The Big Bang Theory."

He's also a very popular blogger, gamer, tech geek and pretty much a Renaissance guy.

Anyway, in his blog, he said this week that Huffington Post offered to publish an earlier Wheaton blog post about the seven things he did to reboot his life.

Very nice. But when Wheaton asked Huffington Post how much he would be paid for the Huffington's Post publication of the blog post, the Huffington Post said nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada.

An editor wrote, (insultingly in my opinion, but Wheaton was professional and nice about it) that Wheaton and other would-be bloggers should contribute for free, because the "exposure" Huffington Post will give to the writer.

Wheaton Tweeted about this to his three million or so followers (Disclosure: Including me). One of his posts said "If you write something that an editor thinks is worth being published, you are worth being paid for it. Period."

Wheaton also nicely expounded on this topic through his blog. 

This had me cheering wildly for Wheaton.

There are dissents. Salon reported that Internet entrepreneur Damon Brown says that people beginning their careers sometimes need to work for free, and you're not being cheated if you volunteer work at some charitable organization.

Which is totally true.

But writers, photographers, graphic designers, musicians and others who do need to get their names out there also need to make a living.

Says Salon:

"They constantly, in a digital age that has already destabilized their earnings, are asked to do it for free. For a brand. For a friend. For any number of reasons, but often, the hustle is that the gratis work will serve as 'free advertising' for work someone else is supposed to pay them to do, somewhere down the road."

In other words, the gratis work is a scammy merry go round in which everybody expects free work from writers and artists and such. So how are they actually supposed to make a living?

I know it's sometimes easier said than done, but I won't work for free, unless it's for charity or you really, really want to help a friend. If I ever need to promote myself I'll do so through blogs, social media,  a web site, maybe good old fashioned advertising.

Besides, if you're that good and need exposure, you'll get it through people citing your great work, like Wheaton's blog. 

Wow! Big Switzerland Rock Slide Caught On Camera

A huge rock on a Swiss mountain, seconds before it collapsed
it blasted into a valley below.  

Glad nobody was beneath this cliff.

A huge chunk of rock on a Swiss mountain gave way recently, and luckily, geologists were there to film it.

According to the Telegraph UK, (I'm not linking to it because it's got an obnoxious autoplay), geologist had detected signs that a big chunk of the Rock of Mel Niva was about to let go.

A small village far below was evacuated just in case and the geologists set up their cameras.

The rock let go, carving a path through the forest 1,000 feet down the mountain. The rocks missed the village and everything there is OK.

Here's dramatic the video, shot from two angles:

Shoot! We're Going To Carve A Pumpkin!

Kirsten Joy Weiss shows off the Jack O'Lantern
she made by repeatedly shooting it. 

I betcha a lot if people have carved or will carve a Jack O' Lantern for their Halloween celebrations this week.  

If you haven't I can show you one pumpkin carving method that I don't recommend. Unless you're a total expert like Kirstin Joy Weiss.

Weiss is a well known sharpshooter, and she shows us how she carves a pumpkin by repeatedly shooting it.

Don't try this at home! The Consumer Products Safety Commission says there are about 4,000 injuries annually from carving pumpkins. Shooting would just make the carnage worse.

Even so, as you'll see in the video below, the the gunshot Jack O'Lantern turns out looking not half bad.

Here's the video:

Schools And Authority Figures Contnue To Torture Teens Because What The Hell.

Aliya May, 14, left and her mother Karrie. Aliya faces
felony charges for throwing a baby carrot at a teacher.  

In the never ending quest of schools and authority figures to screw kids we have a few more examples:

CARROT TOSS VIOLENCE:

In Henrico County, Virginia, we have the case of a bratty 14 year old girl who threw a baby carrot at a teacher and hit the educator in the face.

The teacher wasn't hurt, but yeah, we need to get this girl in trouble. Detention! A letter of apology. Maybe even suspension from school for a coupla days.

All those ideas seem perfectly reasonable to me. But in the zeal of zero tolerance that I always whine about, we have to go much, much further than that.

We have to charge the kid with assault and battery with a weapon. We MUST ruin the kid's life because she stupidly threw a 1.75-inch long carrot.

After all, we shouldn't worry about gun violence. Who cares if 30,000 people or so die in gun violence each year. We shouldn't worry about guns. We should worry about carrots.

Television station WTVR even turned to legal expert Todd Stone to analyze this complex carrot law enforcement situation.

"If it's a soft carrot, it may not be as offensive.....But if it's a raw carrot, you don't have to have an injury or show you were hurt to prove a battery. It just has to be an offensive, vindictive touch. That's what the law says."

Got that? You can throw cooked carrots at your teacher, but throw a raw one, no matter how small, and you will spend years, YEARS in jail.

BoingBoing joked that something called The National Root Vegetable Association (There's an Association for everything) helpfully weighed in on this crisis.

Echoing the National Rifle Association in a tongue in cheek way, the National Root Vegetable Association says although it does seem like the time for a political debate on carrot violence, this question would not have arisen had teachers armed themselves and were trained in the use of small taproots and rhizomes.

The school district involved declined to comment, as dumb school districts always do when confronted by reporters reporting on administrators killing behavioral gnats with nuclear bombs.

GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP DISCOURAGED

Over in Iowa, high school student Zach Hougland was doing well in a cross country running race and was nearing the finish line recently. Yay! Go Zach!

Iowa high school cross country
 runner Zach Hougland was disqualified
from a future competition for aiding a member
of an opposing team who needed help.  n

But at that point,  he saw that a competitor from another school, Garret Hinson, was in distress and crawling on his knees.

Hougland helped Hinson to his feet and held him up as both crossed the finish line.

Great sportsmanship Zach! It was inspiring. But not to race officials. They disqualified both Hougland and Hinson because the moment was "interference" that "violated state rules" for helping another runner across the finish line.

It's not as if he was cheating to help his own team. And if other runs zipped past the two to finish, so be it

But I guess state high school athletic officials would hate to instill any sense of kindness or morality into any kids. We're all in it for ourselves, right?

Although Hougland was disqualified, he'll be able to run in a subsequent race because his team overall did well enough to qualify.

DRIVERS LICENSE DOUBLE

Meanwhile, in Georgia, twin sisters Alicia and Alicen Kennedy went to the DMV to get their drivers learners permits, says television station WIAT. 

They needed their photos taken, and Georgia DMV has super nifty camera with a computer that recognizes faces. This is handy if somebody's trying to get an illegal ID or is otherwise up to no good.

But the Kennedy twins were totally on the up and up. But the computer/camera  that recognizes faces thought each sister was the same one person because they look so similar/

"Aftery try after try after try, the system just would not accept them and it kept saying that it was the same person, they finally said there was a problem and they had to call headquarters," said Wanda Kennedy, the twins' mother.

So I guess if you're an identical twin, only one member of the pair can drive a car in Georgia.

To be fair, the DMV is reportedly trying to make arrangements to ensure both teens get their learner's permit.

.

Take a close look at their picture. Can you tell them apart? The state of Georgia sure can’t.

A right of passage replaced by frustration as the twins got denied by the DMV, all because a camera could not tell one girl from the other.

“We gave her our paperwork but we didn’t even get a chance to take the test because she kept saying something was wrong with the computer,” twin, Alicia said.

That computer can recognize faces, a feature that comes in handy if somebody’s is trying to get an illegal ID It apparently is not programmed to detect twins.

Alicia said she took her picture several times and then had to sign her signature several more time. She says she felt like it was her fault.

“I was listening to her conversation with the person on the phone and it said that one of us popped up as a fraud,” Alicen explained.

“The other lady came back and said that when we were taking our pictures it was picking up as saying that we were one person instead of two different people,” Alicia said.

All of a sudden, a day that these girls had dreamed about was dashed. Their high hopes of hitting the open road, brought down by a machine that didn’t know what to make of them.

“Af

Carter asked the girls, “Is that crazy to you that you have to go prove that you’re two different people?” To which Alicia responded with, “We don’t look exactly alike so you would think the computer would pick up somewhat of a difference, but it can’t tell us apart.”

Now the girls have to regroup. They have to get ready for whatever the state says comes next, as they continue their quest to get behind the wheel.

“I want my permit, I don’t want to wait a whole other year,” Alicia said.

We spoke with a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Driver Services.

She says they have not heard of this happening before, but they do have a check box on the application asking if someone is a twin. The girls told me they didn’t see one.

After we picked up the story the DMV has been working with the teens to help this process move along as quickly as possible.

http://boingboing.net/2015/10/23/teen-faces-assault-charge.html

http://wbay.com/2015/10/23/twins-denied-drivers-permit-because-dmv-cant-tell-them-apart/

One More "Pharma Bro" Post As He Gets His Comeuppance, Again!

Maybe Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli won't make as many
ill-gotten dollars off his overpriced meds after a competitor
stepped in Friday with a much less expensive version.  

I know I've paid more attention to creepy "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli than he deserves, but I can't resist completing the arc of this story. At least for now.

To recap:

1. Shkreli, known as "Pharma Bro" because he's a young arrogant boy, essentially, raised the price of a medication many AIDS patients need by 5,000 percent to $750 a pill, just because he wanted to make TONS of money, and who cares if a few people died for want of medication as a result.

2. The Internet lit up with outrage at Pharma Bro, who backtracked and promised to reduce the price of the medication somewhat. So far, he hasn't.

3. Phama Bro gave a campaign donation of $2,700 to Bernie Sanders because he wanted to meet with him. Bernie told him to go pound sand, and gave the donation to a health center that helps AIDS patients.

4. Pharma Bro was then hopping mad at Bernie, the outrage, the world, and told the world via social media that he broke his wrist in anger. That might have been fake.

Now on to the update:

On Friday, the drugmaker Imprimis Pharmaceuticals said it would make its own version of the AIDS medication, called Daraprim, available for just $1 a pill, even less expensive than before Pharma Bro got his hands on it.

So Pharma Bro's business model has been upended, and he won't get as rich as he thought, apparently.

Poor baby.

Still, don't cry too hard for Shkreli the Pharma Bro. The altenative drug from Imprimis is not exactly the same as Daraprim, but it will do. Also, as Forbes notes, Imprimis is a "compounding" pharmaceutical company, which regulators don't trust.

Plus, as Forbes reminds us, there's always these business moves and sleights of hands that return these inexpensive drugs to other pharmaceutical companies, who again boost the prices for fun and profit.

But for now, we can dance on Pharma Bro's slightly smaller pile of ill-gotten money.