I talked about this yesterday on the radio and it’s a little freaky! By the end of this year, malls in big cities around the country will have video advertising screens that check you out as you’re walking by. It will determine your age, gender, and even ethnicity, and then pick certain advertisements targeted specifically at you! Whoa! Very sci-fi sounding, but coming soon to a mall near you (will probably hit San Francisco way before Sac I would imagine). So if I were to walk by the screen, it might show me an ad for a new line of razors, or sports apparel. If you’re, say, a 24-year old female, it may show you an ad for cosmetics or maybe shoes. What do you think? Brilliant idea? Or a little too spooky? The computer is supposedly accurate at reading gender 85-90% of the time. Like I said, that’s not too shabby, considering I can’t even tell 10-15% of the time!!

We were all very excited to vote in Barack Obama as our 44th president, so how has he done in his first 2 weeks in office? The answer… sadly, not great. He has already hit a speedbump because three people he appointed to serve in his administration in various capacities have now had to back out due to shady things in their past. Sure, that’s not Obama’s fault, but unfortunately it does reflect back poorly upon him. He also seems to be having a tough time finding any Democrats to appoint to high-level positions that actually pay their taxes honestly. Our new Secretary of the Treasury cheated (oh sorry, made mistakes) on his taxes. Now he’s the boss of the IRS telling us we better pay our taxes on time! Right. In addition, Obama’s appointment for Sec. of the Dept. of Health & Human Services also cheated on his taxes, although at least that guy backed out (one of my aforementioned three). Don’t you find it a bit ironic that the political party that makes its living from raising our taxes doesn’t seem to find the need to pay them themselves? When our leaders behave this way, it doesn’t exactly inspire the rest of us to be the best we can be. And that’s very sad. Here’s to hoping that Obama’s next couple weeks go better than his first!