PolygamousRanchKid writes "As the worst drought in half a century has ravaged this year's U.S. corn crop and driven corn prices sky high, the market for alternative feed rations for beef and dairy cows has also skyrocketed. Brokers are gathering up discarded food products and putting them out for the highest bid to feed lot operators and dairy producers, who are scrambling to keep their animals fed. In the mix are cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows, fruit loops, orange peels, even dried cranberries. Cattlemen are feeding virtually anything they can get their hands on that will replace the starchy sugar content traditionally delivered to the animals through corn. Operators must be careful to follow detailed nutritional analyses for their animals to make sure they are getting a healthy mix of nutrients, animal nutritionists caution. But ruminant animals such as cattle can safely ingest a wide variety of feedstuffs that chickens and hogs can't. The candy and cookies are only a small part of a broad mix of alternative feed offerings for cattle. Many operators use distillers grains, a byproduct that comes from the manufacture of ethanol."

alphadogg writes "The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony has honored a wide array of strange research and advancement over the years, from exploding pants to woodpecker headaches to aggressive parking enforcement, and Thursday night's ceremony in Cambridge, Mass., was no exception. Particular highlights included a Russian company that turns ammunition into trace amounts of diamond, Japanese engineers who developed a speech jamming device, and research into such critical topics as why coffee is so hard to carry without slopping and what makes a ponytail move the way it does."

pigrabbitbear writes "Is bottled beer nuclear bombproof? The United States government conducted a couple tests in the 1950s to find out—it exploded nuclear bombs with 'packaged commercial beverages' deposited at varying distances from the blast center to see if beer and soda would be safe to drink afterwards. The finding? Yep, surviving bottled and canned drinks can be consumed in the event of a nuclear holocaust, without major health risks."

colinneagle writes "In a cool yet creepy marketing campaign, Nestle plans to stalk UK consumers. The company kicked off a unique promotion called 'We will find you' that involves GPS trackers embedded in chocolate bars. When a winning consumer opens the wrapper, it activates and notifies the prize team who promises to track them down within 24 hours to deliver a check for £10,000. A Nestle spokesman added that 'inside their wrappers, the GPS-enabled bars looked just like normal chocolate bars.'"

Dr Herbert West writes "Students at Ontario College of Art and Design were forced to buy a $180 textbook filled with blank squares. Instead of images of paintings and sculpture throughout history (that presumably would fall under fair-use) the textbook for 'Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800' features placeholders with a link to an online image. A letter from the school's dean stated that had they decided to clear all the images for copyright to print, the book would have cost a whopping $800. The screengrabs are pretty hilarious, or depressing, depending on your point of view."

An anonymous reader writes in with a story about the power of bacon."Travel can be expensive. One man is using a unique way to pay for a trip as a challenge. Pennsylvania comedian Josh Sankey is on a mission to make a cross-country road trip from New York to Los Angeles with no other currency but bacon. Sankey isn't carrying any cash or credit cards as he makes his cross-country trip. He is paying for everything from gas to lodging by using uncooked bacon as currency. He set off on his trip with 3,000 pounds of the popular meat and he seems to be getting good deals with it so far."

Cornwallis writes in with a story reminding cameras everywhere that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't watching you. "Many people find speed cameras frustrating, and some in the region are taking their rage out on the cameras themselves. But now there's a new solution: cameras to watch the cameras. One is already in place, and Prince George's County Police Maj. Robert V. Liberati hopes to have up to a dozen more before the end of the year. 'It's not worth going to jail over a $40 ticket or an arson or destruction of property charge,' says Liberati."

An anonymous reader writes "A bald eagle that lost its beak to a poacher's gun receives a 3-D printed beak prosthetic like a dental implant." More (with pictures): "Mr Calvin, a founder of the Boise-based Kinetic Engineering Group, made a mold of Beauty's shattered upper mandible, laser-scanned it, fine-tuned it in a 3D modeling program, and created a prosthetic beak from a nylon-based polymer."

jfruh writes "What's the longest tech interview you've had to sit through — two hours? Eight? Ruby on Rails devs who want to work for Hashrocket need to travel to Florida and do pair-programming on real projects for a week before they can be hired. The upside is that you'll be put up in a beachfront condo for the week with your significant other; the downside is that you'll be doing real work for a week for little or no pay and no guarantee of a job slot."

colinneagle writes "As if warning a zombie apocalypse is imminent, FEMA hosted a webinar for its Citizen Corps encouraging emergency planners 'to use the threat of zombies — the flesh-hungry, walking dead — to encourage citizens to prepare for disasters.' The problem is many of those recommendations would have you do things that would flag you as a possible terrorist according to The DOJ's controversial 'Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities' guidelines. From the article: 'Don't be silly by thinking you must actually break the law before cops deem you a potential threat and report you. Paying with cash comes under numerous "you might be a terrorist if" lists. Whatever you do, stocking up on non-perishable food as the feds advise should not include buying "meals ready to eat" since that, too, is potentially suspicious and means you might be a terrorist. "Suspicious activity" at military surplus stores includes making "bulk purchases" of "weatherproofed ammunition or match containers and meals ready to eat, as does suspicious purchasing of "night vision devices include night flashlights and gas masks."'"

mikejuk writes "Companies in America, Denmark and the UK are adding QR codes to gravestones that can be used to view online memorials via smartphones. The idea is that these living headstones can include photographs, videos and memories of the dead person from family and friends. Genealogists and historians have always found graveyards a useful resource. If the QR idea takes hold memorials will be able to tell much more to future generations."

wiredmikey writes "Sam Kass, White House Assistant Chef and the Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives, after much buzz, today released the recipe for White House Honey Ale and White House Honey Porter, two brews made right on site at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. According to Kass, the White House Honey Brown Ale is the first alcohol brewed or distilled on the White House grounds, as far as they know. "George Washington brewed beer and distilled whiskey at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson made wine but there's no evidence that any beer has been brewed in the White House. (Although we do know there was some drinking during prohibition)," Kass wrote in a blog post. The recipe can be found here along with a short video 'Inside The White House Beer Brewing' which shows the brewing in process. Your tax dollars hard at work yet again!"

sciencehabit writes "Before you down that pint, check the shape of your glass—you might be drinking more beer than you realize. According to a new study of British beer drinkers, an optical illusion caused by the shape of a curved glass can dramatically increase the speed at which we swill. The researchers recruited 160 Brits, and asked them to watch a nature documentary while they drank beer from straight or curved glasses. The group drinking a full glass of lager out of curved flute glasses drank significantly faster than the other group--possibly because the curved glasses impaired their ability to pace themselves while drinking."

Velcroman1 writes "When Apple founder Steve Jobs died after a long fight with cancer last year, software engineer Tony Tseung sent an email to a Buddhist group in Thailand to find out what happened to his old boss now that he's no longer of this world. This month, Tseung received his answer. Jobs has been reincarnated as a celestial warrior-philosopher, the Dhammakaya group said in a special television broadcast, and he's living in a mystical glass palace hovering above his old office at Apple's Cupertino, Calif. headquarters."

An anonymous reader writes with this bit from the Globe and Mail: "Quebec police are on the hunt for a sticky-fingered thief after millions of dollars of maple syrup vanished from a Quebec warehouse. The theft was discovered during a routine inventory check last week at the St-Louis-de-Blandford warehouse, where the syrup is being held temporarily. The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, which is responsible for the global strategic maple syrup reserve, initially kept the news quiet, hoping it would help police solve the crime quickly."

Back in 1969 insurance companies weren't very optimistic about the odds of an astronaut making it back to earth after being launched in a rocket to the moon. The cost of life insurance for the Apollo 11 crew was astronomically high so they came up with a clever solution. A month before launch, the astronauts signed hundreds of autographs that were to be sold if they didn't make it back. From the article: "About a month before Apollo 11 was set to launch, the three astronauts entered quarantine. And, during free moments in the following weeks, each of the astronauts signed hundreds of covers. They gave them to a friend. And on important days — the day of the launch, the day the astronauts landed on the moon — their friend got them to the post office and got them postmarked, and then distributed them to the astronauts' families. It was life insurance in the form of autographs."

An anonymous reader writes "A drift bottle released in June 1914 by Captain CH Brown of the Glasgow School of Navigation has been found. Part of a project to help map currents, 1,890 scientific research bottles were released around Scotland. Only 315 of them were ever recovered. From the article: 'Mr Leaper, 43, who found the bottle east of Shetland, explained: "As we hauled in the nets I spotted the bottle neck sticking out and I quickly grabbed it before it fell back in the sea. It was very exciting to find the bottle and I couldn't wait to open it."'"

There are Maker Faires all over the world, but this video was made at the one held in Ann Arbor this June. It's a random selection of demos given by people Slashdot editors met while cruising the exhibits. Want to have your own Maker Faire? Make Magazine has instructions on how to make a Maker Faire if there isn't already one near you.

SmartAboutThings writes "In a recent survey performed by Wakefield Research, it has been discovered that the majority of the surveyed Americans are quite confused about the notion of Cloud, when it relates to Cloud Storage/Computing. The most interesting fact is that 51% of the surveyed persons thought that stormy weather interferes with cloud computing!"

An anonymous reader writes "The man who holds the Guinness record for the world's lowest voice can hit notes so low that only animals as big as elephants are able to hear them. American singer Tim Storms, who also has the world's widest vocal range, can reach notes as low as G-7 (0.189Hz), an incredible eight octaves below the lowest G on the piano."