How many selfies have you posed for this week?

Were you confident? Did you squinch? Read more by Dan Solomon in Pocket.com.

What a difference fifty years makes!

The selfie showed he was not at the scene of the crime!

Do you take selfies? A man in Texas was saved by a selfie from having to spend a long time in prison. Read about it here and watch a video by an investigative reporter.

Selfies can sometimes be dangerous!

One of my sons has recently become fond of taking selfies. He likes to laugh, and to cause his friends to laugh. So my eyebrows were raised by this article in the Precog blog.

one particularly disturbing trend that has emerged lately is that of clicking dangerous selfies; proving to be so disastrous that during the year 2015 alone, there have been more deaths caused due to selfies than shark attacks all over the world. ...A selfie-related death can be defined as a death of an individual or group of people that could have been avoided had the individual(s) not been taking a selfie.

Russian authorities came up with a public awareness campaign to enlighten citizens of the hazardous implications of taking selfies [2]. Similarly, Mumbai police recently classified 16 zones across the city as No-Selfie zones, after a rise in the number of selfie casualties [3].

The reasons for these selfie casualties were found to broadly belong to the following categories (Figure 2):

Height Related – Selfie casualties caused due to people falling from an elevated location. [8]

Water Related – Selfie casualties caused due to drowning. [9]

Height and Water Related - Selfie casualties involving falling from elevated locations into a water body. [10]

Vehicle/Road Related– Selfie casualties caused due to vehicle accidents. [11]

Train Related– Selfie casualties caused due to being hit by a train.[12]

Weapons Related– Selfie casualties caused due to accidental firing of a weapon.[13]

Animal Related– Selfie casualties caused due to attack by an animal while taking the selfie with or near the animal.[14]

Electricity Related- Selfie casualties caused due to electrocution from live wires.[15]

Read more here.

Selfies

Apparently Amanda Carpenter likes to take selfies. This one was posted by Donald Trump LA on Twitter.

Can we stop with the selfies?

Story number one: Tobias Salinger reports for the New York Daily News that

Group selfies are spreading head lice infestations among teens, a Wisconsin pediatrician warned in a back-to-school interview with WBAY-TV on Monday. Dr. Sharon Rink of Appleton joined a growing group of experts who are concerned about so-called “social media lice.”

They blame teens’ head-to-head contact while taking pictures or looking at each other’s phones for an increase in head lice infestation in an age group thought to be less at-risk than younger children.

“Teenagers don’t usually get lice because they’re not sharing hats and things like that,” Rink told the TV station. “And lice can’t jump, so the only way they can transmit lice is touching their heads together, and that’s happening with all these photos.”

Read more here.

Stories number two, three, and four (all from California): A Lake Eksinore man's idea to take a selfie with a rattlesnake came back to bite him, and now he may lose his hand as a result. Read more here.


A California man who picked up a rattlesnake and tried to take a photo with it may lose his hand for his troubles. Read more here.

Recently, though, a San Diego man thought it might be an idea to take a selfie with a rattlesnake.

Some might think this has all the sense of taking a boa constrictor clubbing. However, as KGTV in San Diego reported, Todd Fassler picked a rattlesnake out of the brush and thought he might memorialize the event.

The snake had other ideas and bit him.

Fassler was taken to hospital. His medical expenses could be described as expensive. KGTV's Dan Haggerty tweeted Fassler's bill -- for $153,161.25. Of this, more than $83,000 was for "pharmacy." His case reportedly depleted the antivenom supplies at two local hospitals. Read more here.

Selfie soulmate

Are you jealous of your friends who have hot girlfriends who take good care of them? Create an imaginary girlfriend, take selfies, and post them at Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter!

The Japan Times has this story:

Keisuke Jinushi was tired of seeing social-networking snapshots of his friends with their girlfriends, at weddings or with their newborn children. He was single and felt like time was slipping away for him while everyone else was happily moving on with life. He wanted what they had, and to flaunt it on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. So, he decided to do something about it: He created an imaginary girlfriend.

The girlfriend gave him attention. She went on dates with him. She even fed him food. And to prove it, Jinushi went to unusual lengths to take selfies with her, which he posted on social-networkng services to show his friends. Everything was fake, but he succeeded in creating a whole new life for himself

Thanks to James Taranto