Tag: Chinese New Year

Facial Recognition AI Applications: China vs USA

Facial recognition sunglasses used by Chinese police in Zhengzhou, Henan Province during Chinese New Year.

Facial recognition sunglasses used by Chinese police in Zhengzhou, Henan Province during Chinese New Year.

Facial recognition software has been used in China for quite a while. China has used facial recognition software to scan large gatherings of people in an effort to capture known criminals. The benefit to greater society outweighs all privacy concerns. In North America, we value our privacy and do not want the authorities to accumulate vast amounts of facial recognition data. North Americans believe we should be able to walk around in public and not be recorded for whatever purpose.

Al Jazeera Covers News on China

Al Jazeera covers news on China. Nice!

Al Jazeera covers news on China. Nice!

The year 2009 was marked by significant news coverage of Al Qaeda attacks, soldiers and civilians getting blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan, much stricter airport security and, here in Canada, increased wariness of those from the Middle East. In the middle of this morass was the news agency Al Jazeera. Most people here in Canada actually did not recognize the agency until tapes from Osama Bin Laden were released only to Al Jazeera.

What’s Your Beef?

$1.20/lb ground beef, with onion

$1.20/lb, 1.5 lbs of ground beef, browned with onions


If you are what you eat, then we are certainly not cow. At least not much, anyway. We’re not really big beef eaters, and never were. Hopefully this will bring us good luck in the Chinese year of the Cow, which starts on Monday.

It did not help when we learned of the Canadian mad cow scare, where the brains and spinal cords of cows were put back into cow feed. That’s bovine cannibalism, which is crazy when you think that cows are herbivores. Yes, mankind did lend a helping hand. The Canadian government did not even heed the learnings and warnings from Britain, where there was a huge and disastrous mad cow outbreak. Even Japan warned us. I guess our Japanese isn’t as good as it should be.