This little girl is already an accomplished artist at eight-years old

I first saw Autumn a year ago on TV when her paintings started selling big time. She’s truly an amazing, unique, and natural artist. Some people are born with this kind of talent…but not many. She’s unique in her vision and application. No formal training. At five years-old, she asked her Dad if she could have painting supplies and immediately turned out masterpieces!

I imagine her parents are proud of her talent. Dad owns an art gallery, and the family home is covered with paintings by the masters. Autumn grew up looking at those great paintings, so it’s fair to say early influence had a lot to do with her interest in painting. If you’re an art collector you might want to purchase one of her paintings now, they go for about $20,000 each. Years from now, that purchase is bound to increase in value.

  

This car was spotted at the Eureka Target parking lot yesterday

The question is …what’s their house look like?

Fraud franchise: Armenian gangsters busted in largest Medicare scam ever

Authorities are accusing a network of Armenian gangsters and associates

“A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program's history, U.S. authorities said Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere charged 73 people. Most of the defendants were captured during raids Wednesday morning in New York City and Los Angeles, but there also were arrests in New Mexico, Georgia and Ohio.

The scheme's scope and sophistication "puts the traditional Mafia to shame," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a Manhattan news conference. "They ran a veritable fraud franchise."

Mid term elections draw near as candidates circus continues

               

The Merry Game of politics, so much like circuses, is really about entertainment. Don’t let the hollow rhetoric you hear detract from how amusing our clown-like candidates are. Meg and Jerry are both In search of a game-changer in California and the GOP groups plan $50 million advertising drive 

Then we have clowns garnering our support Candidates go from rich to regular, with a little help or warnings like Keeping an eye on South Carolina , or predictions like Poll: Republicans likely to take House, or how desperate the Democrats are when The first lady hits the stump to get voter turnout.

Meanwhile, Across the U.S., long recovery looks like recession No wonder Americans are pessimistic and unhappy ... We are entering a period of austerity

We might as well enjoy the antics of our would-be public servants. For example, how about  Christine O'Donnell - Delaware Candidate for the Senate? Witchcraft…hmmmmmm. That’s special. I hear she’s just like you and me (sans practicing witchcraft and being against masturbation).

 

Pumpkin chic: there’s more than one way to carve a pumpkin

 

 

 

 

It just takes an imagination, a carving knife, and the will to experiment to make a great Jack-O-Lantern

image source

As It Stands goes au natural…

DID YOU KNOW?

The blue morpho butterfly, which lives in Central and South America, has tiny ears on its wings and can distinguish between high- and low-pitch sounds.

The butterfly may use its ears to listen for nearby predatory birds.

The ochre starfish or sea star pumps itself up with cold seawater to lower its body temperature when exposed to the sun at low tide.

It is equivalent to a human drinking 1.8 gallons of water before heading into the midday sun, scientists say.

Bagheera kiplingi, a jumping arachnid from Central America, is the first known vegetarian spider.

It eats nectar-filled leaf tips rather than other animals.

 

The eyes of the mantis shrimp possess a feature that could make DVDs and CDs perform better.

By emulating this structure, which displays color wavelengths at all ranges, developers could create a new category of optical devices.

Alert! Be on the look out for two people in gorilla costumes and third one in chicken suit

I guess the Halloween pranks are coming early to one little town in Suffolk County. I know it’s not funny, but the idea of three costumed thugs stealing a person’s bike while they’re on it is kinda bizarre. Don’t you think?

Can you envision the person in the chicken suit barreling down the road on the purloined bicycle? Didn’t this person think anyone would notice the costume? Or, is it possible that was the whole point? Punks will be punks at any time of the year.

(AP) Police say the thieves who stole a New York teenager's bicycle were, well, animals.

Suffolk County police say two people in gorilla costumes and a third in a chicken suit took the boy's bike Monday in Rocky Point, on the north shore of Long Island.

Police say the three confronted him while he was riding along Route 25A around 1:15 p.m. Police say one of the gorilla-suit suspects punched the teen in the head and knocked him off his bike, and the person in a chicken costume rode off on it. The ape-suit duo ran away.

The teen was treated at a hospital for minor injuries. He's been released.

Detectives are searching for the suspects.

Mati Suri Illusion is unsettling…like it’s suppose to be

Seeing an optical illusion in this “new” poster for “Mati Suri” the movie, shouldn’t be too hard.

It works in the same way the Premonition poster did, only there are skulls.

This is my last movie poster for the day…

In honor of endless summers and surfers…

With this Indian Summer were experiencing in Humboldt County, I thought it would be fun to share an iconic surfing poster in honor of THE ENDLESS SUMMER. If you recall seeing this poster when it came out, then your a Boomer like me…

 

poster source

U.S. failure to retaliate for USS Cole attack rankled then — and now

Declassified docs show U.S. officials urged Clinton, Bush to strike al-Qaida

The US government failed to go after Bin Laden when they knew (almost immediately) that his followers were responsible for the attack on the USS Cole.

Two presidents let the ball drop and the next terrorist attack (perhaps emboldened by their success with the Cole) was 9/11. If our top leaders would have listened to their security sources, and Yemen officials who captured two of the terrorists, we would have struck the al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan right after the Cole attack. But no.

Instead, President Clinton, and Bush, spewed plenty of patriotic rhetoric and then did absolutely nothing after the Cole attack. Zero. Nada. Both presidents claim they didn’t have surefire evidence of who attacked the Cole. This claim is bullshit, as the released documents show in this article. Was the fate of the 9/11 victims assured because of this terrorist success? You have to wonder.

Here’s some really cool tree houses for adults who never grew up

Children’s play and children‘s joy in tree houses are eternal.

So eternal, that some adults build them in honor of their childhood.

Some of them are restaurants and hotels with magnificent views and the twittering of birds instead of alarm clocks. Some are comfortable homes for the holidays and some are primary homes.

 GO HERE TO SEE MORE EXAMPLES