You will jog for the master race, and always wear a frowny face.

IN bans smiling for drivers license photos.

Since smiling can distort facial features measured by the facial recognition software, Indiana BMV officials want people to put on their best neutral expressions when being photographed, according to numerous media reports. They also don’t want people having hair hanging over their faces, or wearing glasses, headscarves or other accoutrements that also might distort their facial features when getting license photos taken. No word on beards and mustaches.

So if you don't want Big Brother recognizing you, slap on a grin.

Smile, you're on camera...

You know how reality shows always come with a twist that shakes up the game?

In Survivor, it was the merge. In The Biggest Loser, it's the team swap. Whatever show you're watching, the creators throw in a curveball in the middle of things to make it interesting.

Shortly after the election of Barry O, I came upon the idea that the only way it made any damn sense at all was if my life was a Joe Schmo-type reality show and this was the twist.

Periodically, the rules of the game are reversed. Think you can win by earning your money? Hell, let's just switch the game around so that now need, not ability, is rewarded. And once you as a player figure that out, we'll switch it back again.

I even texted Mr. Whited that I may be the star of The John Show. He suggested I change the name of this blog to that.

Now it seems I'm not the only one afflicted. There's even a name for it -- Truman Syndrome.

I wonder, do we each get our own reality show, or is American society as a whole the star of one reality show?

Or am I the only star, and they are just characters PRETENDING to have Truman Syndrome?

I don't understand.

Didn't W assure us that Big Brother would only eavesdrop on terrorists, and not whack off while listening to Americans having phone sex?

Slate asks the same question I did.

How does the government know Americans are driving less?

You hear those footsteps coming up behind you, REASON?

It's Popular Science about to overtake you as the standardbearer of libertarian magazines.

Case In Point.

Here's a sample:

Wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, I walked into an AT&T store and immediately noticed several black half-globes suspended from the ceiling: surveillance cameras. I needed to keep my head down. When I tried to pay for my new phone, the cashier swiped its bar code, looked up at me with her fingers poised above her keyboard, and asked me for identification. “I don’t have any on me,” I lied.

She seemed mildly annoyed and asked for my name and address.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t really want my information in the system.”

“We need your information.”

“Why?”

“For billing purposes.”

“But it’s a prepaid card. You don’t need to bill me.”

This, apparently, was irrelevant. “We need to put your information into the system,” she said again. “Otherwise you can’t buy the phone.”

There's an equally excellent article in the same print issue on drug-testing sewage and the probable-cause problems that would generate, but it doesn't seem to have made it's way onto the online edition yet.

On a somewhat related note, here's one of those Kipesque questions one PopSci article raises: Is a lack of empathy for others a disease?

And what if you think the cure (compassion in a pill) is worse than the disease? And if I choose the disease over the cure, does the government have the power to overrule me?

(Husky, whispered voice from the shadows:) Take your Soma, citizen. Leave the philosophical questions to the experts, who always have your best interests in mind.