Google Body: Users Find Asses with Both Hands

August 18, 2022
MOUNTAIN VIEW–Information search giant Google, Inc. announced Thursday the release of Google Body, a search service aiming to index the internal and external anatomy of every living creature on the planet. “Google has long been dedicated to making information both useful and universally accessible,” notes Google VP of Product Development Eric Hind. “We’re happy now to extend search to information about human bodies, mine and yours, inside and out, from the number of follicles on my head to the length of the President’s toenails.”

The project, known as Google Body, sees the company partnering with public transportation systems, libraries, and motor vehicle departments to place scanning equipment in high-traffic doorways and public thoroughfares. Though details of the agreements are scarce and reportedly subject participating city and state officials to strict non-disclosure terms, Google’s announcement confirmed that the project is active in several major U.S. population centers, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City, with agreements with at least 16 other cities in late-stage negotiation. “We’ve passed proof-of-concept at this point,” adds Hind, “and now our focus is scalability and rolling this thing out nationwide.”

The service, which has been available for some three months to invitation-only beta testers, enables users to search for aggregate information about the anatomy of user-defined groups. “The service is a boon to the medical research community,” says Dr. Jennifer Guns of the Johns Hopkins Clinic for Specialism. “Nothing will replace truly controlled trials, but the ability to get a snapshot of, say, the blood pressure of men between 50 and 65 on New York’s Upper East Side, can certainly give companies an idea of where they might best spend their research dollars.”

Early testers have remarked upon a fuzzy-logic “match my organ” feature, which helps users get in touch with the nearest, most suitable donor for multiple organ systems. “We think of Body as way to bring people together,” remarks Google’s Hind. The most common searches among testers, however, exploited the service’s ability to produce three-dimensional images of the bodies of individual subjects. “I was shocked when I saw it,” exclaims Larry Blender of Carson City. “I mean, one, where did they get a 3-D rendering of my ass, and, two, does my ass really look like that? I admit that I satisfied some of my curiosity about a few of my neighbors and co-workers before I thought to search for myself, but I was still really shocked to see it up there.”

The service has understandably raised concerns among privacy activists, who point to reports that early users include some well-known insurance companies and two prominent executive recruiting firms. “You know what the top two search terms are, after ‘ass’?” asks David Deerfield of People and Privacy, a privacy-focused community outreach group. “They’re ‘aorta’ and ‘arterial plaque.’ Who do you think is conducting those searches? There’s no doubt in my mind that there are insurance company bots scouring this thing and we think it should stop.”

Responding to criticism from privacy groups, Google’s Hind pointed to the program’s opt-out policy. “We are very concerned about user privacy, and that’s why we will not make publicly available any information about anybody who let’s us know they do not want to participate by wearing an Opt-Out headband when in public. Google archives information about those individuals, but does not make it searchable.” The yellow and black vinyl headbands can be requested free of charge by writing to the company at its Mountain View headquarters.

Wal-Mart Opens First ‘All You Can Live’ Township

March 11, 2020
WALTON, OH–Officials of the Wal-Mart Corporation announced Thursday the opening of Walton Township, a company designed and managed subdivision on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio. Walton, the first of three Wal-Mart communities scheduled to open this year, introduces residents to the company’s new ‘all you can live’ consumer goods subscription service. “Beyond its quality environment and top-notch municipal services, Walton represents our first serious foray into flat-fee provision of consumer products,” explains Michael Elmoere, Wal-Mart VP of Intra-Regional Logistics and First Regent of Walton Township. “It’s a 21st century horn-of-plenty, all for one no-fuss monthly fee.”

Taking advantage of the company’s superior purchasing power and its much-vaunted just-in-time inventory management systems, Walton guarantees its residents a literally bottomless supply of the staple consumer goods with which Wal-Mart is commonly associated. “As much Windex as you want,” boasts Elmoere. “As many Cheetos and Glad garbage bags. Imagine, every need satisfied.” And the company is willing to stand behind its promises, integrating a ‘100% availability guarantee’ covering more than 1,200 common household goods into Walton’s town charter. “If it’s in the charter, and it’s not available, we’ll pay you the cost of a replacement good, plus 10%. Guaranteed.”

Walton Township’s initial phase, designed by the Arkansas firm Furst + Femble-Grieg, includes 118 ranch-style single-family dwellings arranged on meandering, pedestrian-friendly avenues radiating from a central town hall and distribution center. “The key to Walton is a literal superimposition of municipal and retail channels,” notes Valerie Femble-Grieg, a principal of the firm. “Our goal was to achieve a resonant harmony between the traditional idiom of the town center and the particular expertise of Wal-Mart in designing distribution networks. The Walton town center is a great central hearth, a hearth of great bounty.”

In an effort to control ‘leakage,’ the export of flat-fee goods outside the Township by community subscribers, Wal-Mart plans to institute a pervasive inventory control system consisting of miniature radio-frequency tags broadcasting unique product and batch ID numbers. “We accept that we cannot control leakage absolutely, but, frankly, our focus research indicates that it may be less of a problem than most expect,” explains Elmoere. “Most of the problem is solved by allocating ‘guest-minutes’ to each of the residents for friends and family. The real goal is less total inventory awareness than designing a subscription service that satisfies people’s real needs.”

Reaction to the Township in the retail community has been mixed. “It is a daring concept,” admits Loki Jonones, Merchandising Director at Federated Lifestyle Enterprises. “But it doesn’t make sense at all price points, at all levels in the value chain.”

Elmoere reports that the results of initial marketing efforts have surpassed the company’s modest expectations. “This is a radical new pricing structure for us,” admits Elmoere. “And, frankly, we expected initial response to be slow as consumers digested the possibilities. But Walton is currently over-subscribed, and we’ve got 14 families scheduled for move-in this week.”

U.S. Citizenship, Now with Free Chicken

November 3, 2027
WASHINGTON DC–In the first of several planned state and federal initiatives designed to attract and retain qualified citizens, U.S. government officials announced Friday the launch of a special program managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture guaranteeing U.S. citizens a lifetime supply of boneless, uncooked white-meat chicken. “We’re very proud today to fulfill a legendary promise to the American people,” exclaimed USDA Deputy Director Tracey Lapoole. “A chicken in every pot, today, now, for every American, and forever more.”

Delivered daily, five days a week, by U.S. postal carriers, the chicken, initially drawn largely from USDA reserves and purchased in surplus and secondary markets, should be sufficient to satisfy the daily calorie requirements of a grown adult male.

“Though originally we planned to tailor delivery quantities individually, for logistical reasons, we settled on supplying enough chicken per citizen to satisfy the daily needs of the vast majority of Americans,” explains Fredrick Breaker, UDSA VP of Marketing. “That’s almost 40 ounces of white meat per citizen per day. A tall order, but I’m happy to say that, with the cooperation of the Postal Service, we’re up to the task.”

Taking advantage of excess and decommissioned capacity at local and regional post offices, and of an exploding U. S. poultry supply driven by the high-breast yield of contemporary chicken breeds, the plan calls for a gradual shift from dependence on reserves and open market purchases to a system of decentralized production and delivery based around the postal network.

“Eventually, the chicken you get in your box every day will be locally grown and locally slaughtered,” explains Breaker. “Empty sorting facilities will be repurposed as high-efficiency chicken barns, your postman or postwoman will learn an entirely new, challenging skillset, and you’ll get fresh chicken every day.”

In addition, as part of the initiative, the USDA has submitted to Congress a suggested amendment to the Oath of Allegiance to the United States taken by new U. S. citizens. “[The project] is about delivering chicken, but it’s also about winning the hearts and minds,” notes Breaker. “So we’ve suggested that the Oath become more of a two-way street. New citizens promise us their loyalty, and we promise them wholesome chicken.”

NASD to Open Attention Exchange

September 2, 2016
NEW YORK–Representatives of the National Association of Securities Dealers unveiled on Friday plans for a nationwide, electronic exchange specializing in the sale, bundling, tranching and swapping of attention and attention-based derivative instruments. “We’re very excited about the possibilities of the attention market,” notes NASD Executive Director Francine Yenk. “The [exchange] will enable real-time trading on multiple scales and will introduce to the attention market unprecedented regularity and liquidity.”

The new exchange, dubbed ‘AX’ and scheduled to open for trading early next year, will initially focus on institutional block-trading of multiple grades of conventional consumer attention. “One of the key features of a regularized commodity market is convergence on a few consistent standards for description of the underlying commodity,” explains Joliet Gagnrenee, Chair of the NASD Standing Committee on Market Science. “Attention is a highly variable commodity, so, in order to clarify the market, we’ll initially be supporting trading in three grades based on familiar touchstones: Iowa Car Dealership Commercial, Must See TV, and Rubberneck.”

Though traditionally attention-based institutions are expected to account for the majority of trading volume, the NASD anticipates an 18-24 month follow-on development of business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer transactions. “We are set up to handle large trades among traditional players: newspapers, TV and movie studios, web publishers,” notes NASD’s Yenk. “But we’ve also built in the capacity to handle a much deeper, more fine-grained market.”

In conjunction with the unveiling of AX, the NASD also outlined plans for a sub-exchange that would be part of the AX system but is designed to serve consumer and retail traders. “We call it the Short Attention Span Exchange, or SASE,” explains Yenk. “And it’s designed to handle a couple of key transactions, chief among them the ability of users to equitably trade attention with each other.”

Aimed at amateur publishers and other small-scale attention seekers, SASE will enable retail-level traders to purchase high-grade attention in bundled units as small as 100 minutes. “This is sure to be a boon to start-up publishers that are in the early stages of defining an audience,” opines Roberto Manchego, Assistant Director of the Association of American Small Presses. “It takes a lot of the opacity out of the publicity process and is sure to lower the barrier to entry.”

In addition to small-scale trading, NASD officials also anticipate enabling consumer-to-consumer attention trading through SASE. “The technology is really off-the-shelf sort of stuff,” explains NASD’s Yenk. “AX trading stations are equipped with network enabled cameras, and the trading process itself is really pretty simple, something like ‘I’ll look at you and what you’re doing for 8 minutes if you look at me for 12,’ that sort of thing. With SASE we just provide the framework in which those sorts of transactions can be standardized and enforced.”