http://www.slowpokecomics.com/strips/terminatrix.html

Thanks, dbay!

All I have to say, weather gods, is that there better be an effin’ warm day in January to balance this out.

Check it out: www.normanuniform.net.

Dang. This does make me want to gamble! (and maybe get a baby pig or puppy with that $1 million)

No? Well, OK, here it is:

This scene is one of my favorites in Minority Report, since this kind of intrusive technology seems just over the horizon, and that the ideas behind it, at least, are already here, in Google Adwords, or the banners of dancing mortgage refinanciers who know where you live.

Then today, in my work inbox, I find this:

September 30, 2009, Budapest

Face Analytics Based Retail Customer Analytics Software is Being Launched

Intellio’s new face recognition technology based Retail Customer Analytics Solution provides real-time customer behavior data for retailers and marketers

This was sent to me, I suppose, soley because as a Marketing Manager, they thought I would be interested in evil.

Intellio’s new software solution VisiScanner™ provides detailed statistical data about visitors to retail outlets and the target audience of offline display media, such as billboards and digital signage systems. Intellio’s VisiScanner™, based on the in-house developed face analytics technology, provides a detailed, real time analysis of the number, gender and estimated age of potential customers.

VisiScanner™ sounded enough like a joke to me (and Intellio would make a great satire/sci fi company, if it weren’t real) that I checked Snopes before posting — but I suppose the tech in Minority Report didn’t seem that far off because it isn’t.

The press release also contained a video download, which I uploaded below — silent footage of people walking past a security camera, with little blue and red text bubbles displaying their age and gender on the screen like a heads-up display.

I’m genuinely interested in which identifiers they use in a face (or a body) to tell male from female, old from young. The range of people in the video seem to all be 20 to 40, I wonder if it’s less effective for folks outside that range . . .

Finally, I got to their privacy policy:

Privacy Policy

The Face Recognition software was designed to comply with general privacy policy standards. By default the software does not record images of the faces as it only creates anonymous statistics. Users, however, have the option to override the default setting. In this case, they need to be able to prove that their actions are in line with the relevant local privacy and data protection regulations.

It’s only a (short) matter of time before the billboards will call your name.

Read the full press release from Intellio.

Either Pulao or I have talked to you about it or, even more likely, you’ve sat at a table there with us. In fact, considering the readership of 12apostrophes, there is a very good chance you were with us at Grand Szechuan last night.

Little Szechuan, in St. Paul, was a magical place. There I was introduced to things that I now cannot live without, like the Dan Dan Noodle, and the Szechuan peppercorn.

I became part of a dozen or so regulars who, in some configuration or another, dined at Little Szechuan way, way too often, and ordered food like we were preparing for an apocalypse, with plates stacked atop each other on the lazy Susan, a one-table buffet, all the better to try a bit of as many dishes as you could, and ensure you’d have some more for one, last late-night taste, and lunch or dinner (or both) the next day.

Then the chefs left.

One day we ordered all our old faves, but it just wasn’t the same. One dish was too salty. One dish’s sauce was too thin. One dish was soggy when it should have been crispy.

It was two months ago but we finally found them. The Little Szechuan chefs started their own place, a new place, called, in a little dig at their former employ, Grand Szechuan.

We drove their last night, nine of us, all the way to Old Shackopee and France in Bloomington. Would it be the same? Was this truly them? We had tried Little Szechuan post-chef-walkout a few times. We had tried Tea House, which we had heard was on par with Little Szechuan in its heyday. Maybe, one of us said, it’s a little like heroin; you chase and chase, but never get as high as the first time.

Let me tell you: Grand Szechuan is the good shit.

Nearing the end of our dinner, when I had abandoned my plate altogether and picked Chung King Chili Chicken and A Choy morsels directly from the serving dishes, I pushed back in my chair, and, Szechuan peppercorns coursing through my veins, sighed the sigh of the deeply content and soon to be fat.

A friend to my right knew this feeling very well, and began to laugh, at which point I began to laugh, at which point people across the table asked, “What are you laughing at?”, at which point I could only answer, truthfully, “Nothing!”, at which point, all nine of us began to laugh.

The food is like that.

I’m torn. I don’t want to disparage my old Little Szechuan; where we’ve all brought anyone who came through town in last two years; where I’ve driven eight miles for takeout, multiple times; where the wait staff is happy to see us, and us them; where the owner confided to us she hadn’t slept since all nine chefs walked out at once the week before . . .

I’ll say this about Little Szechuan: it’s still the best Chinese in St. Paul. Get the Dan Dan Noodles, which got better with the new kitchen, and the Ma La or Szechuan Taste chicken — fantastic dishes you can’t get at Grand Szechuan.

But who am I kidding? I’ll sell all my memories of Little Szechuan for one more hit of the real Ma Po, with pork crumbles and black bean paste surrounding the fresh tofu as your whole mouth tingles . . .

Make the drive to south Bloomington. If you’re an old-school Little Szechuan-er, this is all you need to know: Grand Szechuan is where the chefs went.

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Would there be a risk of using this so much there’d be an Intervention called?

Or would it just be more like President Scroob sucking down some Perri-Air?