HORROR BARBECUE

Turns out, the state really does prefer that its six million drivers scowl rather than smile for the camera.

In January, New Jersey launched new face-recognition software that forbids license applicants from smiling widely or making other exaggerated facial expressions that might confuse the computer.

No Smiling matter

You can not smile for your drivers license photo in New Jersey. The state that wants to be more and more like 1984.

The goal is to catch fraudsters. If a new photo, for example, matches an old one that carries a different name, a red flag goes up, and investigators step in.

"That could be someone trying to steal someone else's identity to get insurance benefits, or someone trying to get out of a DUI by getting a license under another name," said Mike Horan, spokesman for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. "This helps us weed out fraud."

If facial expressions vary greatly in photos of the same person, the software could incorrectly signal a problem, Horan said.

Slight smiles are OK. "Hey-I-won-the-lottery-type smiles" are not, Horan said. "To get an accurate photo, you don't want an excessively expressive face in the photo."

Pennsylvania and Delaware use the software, too. But "smile/no-smile is not a problem," said Jan McKnight, a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokeswoman. "You can smile in Pennsylvania."  -- keep reading story

Source: Philly.com

FLICKS.FLICKS.FLICKS

KALISPELL, Mont. - A 44-year old Kalispell man is dead after being hit on Highway 93 Sunday night. Troopers say Randy Lee Tenley was wearing an apparently store-bought ghillie suit when two vehicles struck him.

A ghillie suit is a type of three-dimensional camouflage, sometimes worn by military snipers. The suits are available online and at hunting shops. Troopers say the get-up played a big role in his death. They say he was in the right-hand lane of Highway 93 South when a 15-year old Somers girl hit him.

“He probably would not have been very easy to see at all,” said Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Jim Schneider.

Another car swerved, and a third car, troopers say driven by a 17-year old Somers girl, ran him over.

“It appears the pedestrian was well into the driving lane,” said Schneider. Officials closed Highway 93 for two hours on Sunday night, as firefighters directed traffic and officers investigated. What they found is troubling.

“According to his companions, he was out there in the ghillie suit attempting to incite a sighting of Bigfoot, to make people think they had seen a Sasquatch.

But, dispatchers received no calls of the sort, just the one that sent emergency crews rushing to the scene. Sunday night’s investigation is ongoing. Troopers say Tenley likely drank alcohol yesterday, but they’re still waiting on toxicology results to see if he was impaired.

big foot prank

GONE WRONG!

via: NBC Montana

The worst drought in modern history has destroyed more than half the nation's corn crop, pushing prices to record levels.

Livestock producers across the country are feeling the pinch as they struggle to feed their herds.

To cope, one Kentucky cattle farmer has begun feeding candy to his 1,400 cows.

"It’s so hard to make any money when corn is eight or nine dollars a bushel," said Nick Smith, co-owner of United Livestock Commodities in Mayfield, Ky.

The candy, which has been rejected from retail sale, makes up from 5% to 8% of the  cattle's feed ration, Smith said. The rest is a mixture of roughage and distillers grain, an ethanol byproduct.

And so far the candy's high caloric content is fattening up the cows quite nicely, he said in a phone interview.

"That's awfully creative," said Paul Cameron, managing partner of Mesquite Cattle Feeders, an operation that feeds up to 35,000 heads of cattle in Brawley, Calif. "He’s probably at an advantage by doing that."

Cameron, who also heads a California Cattlemen's Assn. feed committee, said he hasn't heard of livestock producers in this state using candy in their feed rations.

"I think that’s extremely unusual," he said. "I know there are people that feed vegetables and potatoes and stuff like that. And they’ll use stuff like that to offset the high price of grains, but I've never heard of that."

Smith, who said he is baffled by the some of the media attention, said his cows will be eating corn again as his farm is now harvesting the corn that they grow.

With corn prices going high after the historic drought, farmers will now feed their live stock candy? WTF!

COWS NOW

EATING CANDY

via: LA times

If I ruled the world...

Move over, Mayor Bloomberg. Your big-size soda ban was a great start, but, in the Great Soda Wars, you’ve been upstaged by Bolivia.

The central South American country has announced that it will ban the Coca-Cola company by the end of the year. Specifically, Bolivia’s Minister of External Affairs, David Choquehuanca, has said that Coca-Cola will be expelled on December 21 as that date is the same on which the Mayan calendar enters a new cycle. The reason: To celebrate the “end of capitalism.”

Forbes quotes Choquehuanca speaking at a political rally for Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales:

“The twenty-first of December 2012 is the end of selfishness, of division. The twenty-first of December has to be the end of Coca-Cola and the beginning of mocochinche (a local peach-flavored soft drink). “The planets will line up after 26,000 years. It is the end of capitalism and the beginning of communitarianism.”

STUPID COUNTRIES: 

BOLIVIA

Via:  alternatenewsmedia2012

keep reading this story 

"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”

- Ernest Hemingway

Wonderful photoshoot with Alysha Nett by Mr. Glass. View the set right here.

ROLLIN' 

ROSS

Rick Ross Makes the Cover of Rolling Stone.

via: The305