Brewer's ad turns Snow White into Ho White

A new ad from Australia's Jamieson Brewery shows a whole different side of Disney's Snow White. They've turned her into "Ho White," a floozy who lounges around naked in bed, blowing smoke rings, next to her brood of shag-mates, the Seven Dwarfs. See the full ad here. Created by an agency called The Foundry, the ad is part of a campaign that positions the brewer's raspberry ale as "Anything but sweet." According to Sydney's Daily Telegraph, the dwarfs were given new names like Filthy, Smarmy and Randy. We wouldn't know, because The Foundry has pulled the campaign materials off its Web site after admitting, somewhat ominously, that the agency had "a little bit of contact" with Disney about the ad.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Colorado ski town legalizes pot

AP – Joe Warner with the Denver paper Westword examines marijuana at Lotus Medical in Denver on Monday, Oct. …

DENVER – The Colorado ski town of Breckenridge has voted overwhelmingly to legalize marijuana.

Early returns Tuesday night showed the proposal winning with 72 percent of the vote. The measure would allow adults over 21 to have up to 1 ounce of marijuana.

The measure is largely symbolic because pot possession remains a state crime for people without medical clearance. But supporters said they wanted to send a message to local law enforcement to stop busting small-time pot smokers.

The vote comes as communities nationwide are struggling with how to enforce pot laws at a time when medical marijuana has surged in popularity.

Leapin' lizards! ABC's 'V' premiere lands big ratings

UPDATED: They came, they saw, they conquered primetime.

ABC's "V" premiere was Tuesday's highest-rated program in the adult demo, cracking usual leader CBS' drama-series choke-hold on the evening.

"V" was seen by 14.3 million viewers and had a 5.2 rating among adults 18-49.

That's the biggest scripted series premiere rating for a freshman show this fall. And particularly impressive for a show that's self-starting ABC's lineup (it's the highest-rated 8 p.m. drama series debut since ... ABC's "Lost," actually). Compared to the "Shark Tank" average in the time period, "V" was up a rather dizzying 213%.

"V" bested tough competition from "NCIS" (20.2 million, 4.3), which nonetheless ranked as the evening's most-watched show. The alien invasion drama gained 6% from its first half hour to its second.

Critics were a bit all over the map on "V", ranging from a rave in USA Today to NY Times calling it slapdash and formulaic to Hollywood Reporter landing somewhere in between. (Most agreed, however, that the scene below rocked).

Since a dissatisfied ABC changed showrunners on the series after seeing the first four episodes, it should be interesting to see if "V" is able to maintain its ratings strength over the coming weeks. If it does, ABC will bring back the show starting with Episode 5 in March. ABC's other new sci-fi drama, "FlashForward," also launched strong in an 8 p.m. slot, but has since softened in the ratings amid some viewer frustration and a showrunner shakeup.

The 8 p.m. "V" surge put ABC just a tenth of a point behind CBS for the nightly win. "NCIS" wasn't impacted much by "V," slouching 9% from its last original airing two weeks ago. "NCIS: Los Angeles" (15.3 million, 3.6) was down 8%. "Good Wife" (12.2 million, 2.7) won 10 p.m. and slipped a tenth.

After "V," audiences didn't stick around to boost ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" (15.1 million, 3.1), which was only up a tenth -- very different crowds. "The Forgotten" (7.3 million, 1.9) was down a tenth.

NBC's two-hour "Biggest Loser" (9.1 million, 3.5) was down 10%. The Jay Leno Show" (6 million, 2.0) had a welcome rise from last Tuesday -- up 11%. Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance" (6.1 million, 2.4) slipped a tenth. The CW's "90210" (1.9 million, 1.0) was on par while "Melrose Place" (1.5 million, 0.8) gained a bit.

Maine says 'NO to Same Sex Marriage - YES TO POT!'

Michael Lehet

It looks like the folks up in Maine want to be able to sit back, roll up a big doobie and smoke while they tell the homosexuals "You can't get married, nah nah nah na na na."

According to the Bangor Daily News Election Results page, 87% of the precincts have reported in and the current vote is at 52.75% of Mainers saying that they don't want to allow same-sex marriage compared to 47.25% who do want to support it. A difference of only 5.5% not a landslide, not a major victory but a very narrow margin.

The count is 266,324 voting YES to rescind the law and 238,595 a difference of only 27,729 votes, and there are still 65 precincts with almost 100,000 registered voters who haven't weighed in yet. But it looks as though "results are official."

What Maine was able to pass though was the Maine Medical Marijuana Act, Question 5, by an almost 60% favorable vote. Maine already had Medical Marijuana laws on the books thanks to a 1999 initiative that passed with a 61% vote, in 2002 it was amended by a State Bill that doubled the legal amount of pot that one could possess. Now they've passed a law similar to California's where dispensaries can be created to distribute marijuana.

So I guess the folks up in Maine like taking away people's rights to get married - but damn if they tell them they can't smoke pot!

A Solar Powered Monorail System For Bologna

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by Bridgette Meinhold, 11/02/09

Iosa Ghini Associati has designed the Energy Belt, a sleek solar-powered monorail system for Bologna, Italy that will connect the airport to the city center. The system’s smoothly sculpted lines run above the countryside, providing great views for travelers. The monorail will also provide infrastructure for other uses, namely a pedestrian walkway alongside the tracks and a solar system that runs along the rail’s southern face.

The Energy Belt was designed to speedily move people from the main train station in Bologna out to the airport with only one intermediate stop at Lazzaretto. It crosses over one major highway, spanning the stretch of road in a graceful arc. At each station a metal screen covered in vegetation protects passengers from the elements, and also helps filter the air, provide natural insulation and shade the platform.

The system is designed to operate using solar energy captured by photovoltaic panels placed at each monorail station and along the track’s south-facing side. Since the solar system installed directly on the monorail infrastructure, the landscape below is not disturbed with extra equipment. Running at a height from 7 meters up to 25 meters, the Energy Belt monorail is supported by slender piers, giving the system a very small footprint along its 5,084 meters of track.

Solar powered, direct, convenient, and fast – the monorail system offers an enticing option for travelers looking to take it easy rather than driving to the airport. Its highly probable that a monorail would be more expensive than a ground level light rail system, but where’s the novelty and graceful architecture in that?

+ Iosa Ghini Associati

Via Designboom

Meet Andrew Wiggins - The 13 Year Old Hoops Prodigy from Canada

November 3, 2009 - Allen Moll

Allen Moll is an avid NBA and College Basketball fan who watches and studies games religiously and coaches youth basketball in his native Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. Allen is a regular columnist for thehoopdoctors.com, Bleacherreport.com, UpperDeckblog.com, and his own blog, Hoops Haven .

At 6′6 and 195 pounds, Andrew Wiggins is literally and figuratively, a man amongst boys to his Middle School opponents and teammates. Wiggins has the size and game to probably be playing at the Division 1 collegiate level this season, but the NCAA will have to wait until at least 2014 to see the hard-court phenom in action since he is only 13 years old.

Although he is a native of Canada, Andrew has begun to make his presence felt across the US hoops landscape by showcasing his talents recently at the Scouts Focus Elite 80 Showcase which was held on the campus of Barton College in North Carolina. The showcase features some of the top seniors in the nation as well as a select few 8th and 9th graders. Amazingly, he already has a 36 inch vertical leap and wears a size 14 shoe. As for his game, he has college recruiters already lining up since he possesses great handles and has an already polished arsenal of drop steps and shoots jump hooks with both hands. As you could imagine, he regularly backs players down in the low post and shoots over smaller players his age. His coach for his AAU team, Canada Grassroots, thinks Andrew may be the best player he has ever seen at his young age. That’s saying allot since some of the top NCAA players have come through his program like, former UConn star Denham Brown, and current HS Class of 2010 Top 20 ranked players Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph.

Upon doing some research, Wiggins definitely has the athletic genes to go far in this game since his father is Mitchell Wiggins, who had a long professional basketball career playing in the NBA and European leagues, and his mother, Marita Payne, was a former Olympic track star for Canada. Both were stars in college at Florida State. Remember the name, we will definitely hear more of it in the future.

Check out some footage of Master Wiggins:

He has already been unfairly compared to Charlotte’s Tyson Chandler. Here is some footage of Chandler in middle school:

DIY Wrist-Mounted Flamethrower Lets You Pretend To Be An X-Man

Pyro was never my favorite of the X-Men, but that doesn't mean I'm not excited about this DIY project allowing me to mimic his powers. It's called Prometheus, and it's by far one of the best wrist-mounted flamethrowers I've seen.

We've seen this guy's work before, but nothing actually produced such a controlled flame or came with building instructions as detailed as Everett Bradford's new Prometheus Device. And while I know that Pyro technically controls fire rather than actually making it, short of mutant genetics, this project is as close as we'll get. And it's damn awesome. [Prometheus via Make]

Send an email to Rosa Golijan, the author of this post, at rgolijan@gizmodo.com.

If George Costanza had an iPhone, he'd use this app

Aaron Crowe

In one of the great "Seinfeld" episodes of season nine, the character George Costanza has a wallet so filled with receipts, business cards and other things such as packets of Sweet'N Low that he sits on an incline when he puts it in his back pocket.

Eventually it all blows away onto a snowy and wet New York City street, leaving George to try to scurry after all of the little slips of paper that burst out of what he calls his "organizer, secretary and a friend."

If I were the folks at Shoeboxed.com I'd be doing all I could to get Jerry Seinfeld to allow commercial use of that scene in promoting its new free app for the iPhone or any cell phone with a camera.

Here's some of that "Seinfeld" episode, to refresh your memory:





The Shoeboxed app allows users to take photos of receipts with their iPhone. The image is then automatically sent to Shoeboxed to be digitally archived and and categorized for expense tracking, reimbursements and deduction claims. A computer, backed by human verification, takes down the date, vendor name, amount, payment type and IRS tax category before filing away the electronic copies of the receipts.

The iPhone automatically sends the photo to Shoeboxed through the application. Owners of other phones that wish to use the service will have to e-mail the photos to Shoeboxed, according to Stacy Chudwin, director of communications at Shoeboxed, based in Durham, N.C.

The service allows business people, travelers, freelancers and individual consumers to organize their finances without having to keep a shoebox full of paper receipts for their accountant to wade through at the end of the year. The digital archive can be exported to Quicken and other financial software for their tax returns, reimbursements, deductions and tax preparations, or can be viewed by users' accountants.

The service is free if you want to scan your receipts yourself. Or Shoeboxed offers monthly plans where customers can send so many receipts in and Shoeboxed will scan them in. Fifty scans will be done each month for $10 a month, 150 for $20 or 500 for $50.

And if George Costanza had an iPhone, he'd probably be too cheap to pay a company to scan his receipts for him.

Source

The Best and Worst Places to Work by Average Salary

Client Work: Follow The Money..

Posted on 04. Nov, 2009 by Jess in Uncategorized

Hi, I see that you are new here. The WallStats.com blog explores information with original visualizations and ideas. You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and don't forget to comment!

So i was doing some research for another infographic and I was deep in to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ spreadsheets and I had to do something with all the fun data. The BLS keeps track of salaries for thousands of occupations in thousands of locations, everything from astronauts to watch makers. While I find it very interesting to know how much these folks make, I needed something more. So I extrapolated the top and bottom locations by salary for each occupation. I only chose 40 occupations, but this is only part 1.

I tried to be efficient with the data display, even though the actual graphic is drawn out over 10k pixels in height. The top and bottom 10% of each salary and the US national average are also listed for reference.

There is lots of conclusions and insights to make with this data, so have fun.

Pearl Jam 10.31.09 Spectrum Philly 4 - Halloween - Whip It

CNN projects marijuana tax revenue for every U.S. state

money.cnn.com — How much would legalizing marijuana help with state budget deficits? CNN breaks down the projected tax revenue for each state.

Projected marijuana tax revenues*
State	Tax Revenue (in millions)
California	105.4
New York	65.5
Florida	48.2
Texas	46.6
Ohio	34.8
Michigan	32.4
Illinois	31.6
Pennsylvania	30.5
Washington	22.0
Virginia	20.9
North Carolina	20.6
Georgia	19.3
New Jersey	19.3
Massachusetts	18.4
Indiana	17.8
Colorado	17.6
Missouri	15.6
Minnesota	14.3
Oregon	14.1
Maryland	13.9
Wisconsin	13.4
Arizona	13.0
Louisiana	13.0
Tennessee	12.2
Kentucky	10.2
Connecticut	9.8
South Carolina	9.1
Alabama	8.9
Oklahoma	8.3
Nevada	7.9
Arkansas	6.7
Kansas	6.6
Mississippi	6.6
Iowa	6.2
New Hampshire	5.6
Nebraska	5.0
New Mexico	4.9
Utah	4.7
Rhode Island	4.6
Maine	4.1
West Virginia	4.1
Hawaii	4.0
Montana	3.6
Idaho	3.3
Alaska	2.8
District of Columbia	2.8
Vermont	2.8
Delaware	2.4
South Dakota	2.0
North Dakota	1.6
Wyoming	1.2
* Revenues based on state-by-state marijuana consumption, assuming pot were legalized. Source: Prof. Jeffrey Miron, "Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibitions," June 2005.

Kordeza Zhelyazkova, 11, gives birth on wedding day

• From: The Daily Telegraph

Child bride ... Kordeza Zhelyazkova, 11, with baby Violeta Source: The Daily Telegraph

AN 11-year-old girl has become a mother after going into labour during her wedding to her teenage boyfriend.

Kordeza Zhelyazkova was still wearing her wedding dress and tiara when she arrived at hospital and gave birth to little Violeta.

The schoolgirl, of Sliven, Bulgaria, fell pregnant within just two weeks of her 11th birthday.

She gave birth last week with 19-year-old husband Jeliazko Dimitrov at her side,

"I'm not going to play with toys any more - I have a new toy now," Kordeza told Britain's News of the World newspaper.

"She is so beautiful, I love her. Violeta is the child and I must grow up. I am not going back to school - I am a mother now."

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Kordeza met Jeliazko in the playground of her gypsy school when he rescued her from bullies.

Their daughter was conceived within a week.

Kordeza admitted: "I haven't had sex education classes and I didn't know how to get pregnant. I'd never had a boyfriend and I'd never heard of condoms.

"I didn't know I was pregnant until my grandmother saw I had put on weight. I just thought I'd eaten too many burgers."

The pair had a traditional Roma wedding - but now Jeliazko is facing up to six years behind bars for having sex with a minor.

"I'm scared. I want to look after my wife and child. Instead I may be going to prison," he said.

"I made a mistake but I am not going to apologise for that because now I have beautiful Violeta."

Read the full story here...

Plastic surgeon gives new wife eight surgeries to pretty her up

By ANDY CRICK

from: http://www.thesun.co.uk/

A PLASTIC surgeon has told how he chose a dowdy girl as his bride - so he could sculpt her into his ideal wife.

Reza Vossough hated 33-year-old Cany's body, but they tied the knot anyway after he spotted her "potential".

He performed EIGHT operations to change her chest, thighs, eyes and face.

Vossough spent five years pumping 1,600g of silicone into her body, boosting her size A chest to a giant F cup.

He also enhanced her lips, lifted her eyelids and de-creased her forehead.

The former waitress also had nip-and-tuck ops to her bum, tummy and thighs and countless Botox injections.

Only AFTER £18,000 of cosmetic surgery did Reza, 48, fall in love with her.

But busty Cany, now a model, is thrilled with her new image. She said: "When your husband is a plastic surgeon, then the scalpel is your friend."

Reza, who operates on 1,200 patients a year at his Berlin clinic, said of his skills: "It's almost like being God - you have the ability to change nature.

"When I first met Cany, she had physical deficiencies, but I could see there was something there. She had big hips and big thighs, so we made corrections, then did a little bit more.

Slideshows

Man-made curves ... Cany after eight ops

"On the operating table her face is covered, so she's anonymous like any patient. I was interested in working on her. It's better than nature could do."

Since her hubby's last op, Cany has had a secret fourth boob job. But Reza has not ruled out MORE work - saying: "There may be some more in the future, like a facelift, but not yet."

Slideshows

Busty ... Cany's cup size boosted from A to F

But Reza is wise enough to admit that he's not perfect himself.

He said: "I inherited a big nose from my dad, so my business partner made me a new one. And I have Botox too."

a.crick@the-sun.co.uk