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“Minority Report”, the movie or the book, is a science fiction in which psychics look for future crimes and send the police forward in time to prevent them before they happen. At a glance, it seems far fetched, but if you consider it for a mere second you realize that this already happens on a large scale. It’s only silly that they would through the trouble of finding psychics and mastering time travel to do it.

Governments are constantly looking for subversive forces and are somewhat successful at weeding them out. They look at things like race, religion and political affiliations, but these are really just funny ways of seeing if you have ideals. If you have them that’s an automatic red flag because someone’s going to get hurt. The next thing they want to know is if your ideals are consistent with those of the government. If not, you’re automatically on every conceivable watch list, and rightly so. You are a threat. At any given time, when there isn’t much on TV and your friends are too busy to hangout, you’ll stand up and say, “I’m going to do something about something!” Powerful words. The world quakes in fear.

Still, minority reporting needn’t deal with political activism. It’s more commonly put to use in advertising. To find out if people will buy your product all you need to know is if they do what they’re told. For instance, there are shows like “American Idol” that aren’t entertaining and nobody would watch unless they were told or pressured to do so. If you advertise during the show then people will buy your product for want of free will.

Perhaps, there are other things you want to know. Does a person access internet pornography? Find out with this two part questionaire: Do you have access to the internet? Are you a man?

Want to find out if a person is a pyromaniac? Ask to see their childhood home. In short, seeing the future isn’t a super power and even with trace amounts of observational skills you can do some minority reporting of your own.

Scene#1

I’m playing in the park with my 8 year old son.

“Daddy, push me higher.”

“I’m not your real father!”

Scene#2

In an anonymous fast food restraunt, I walk in and place an order with the fresh-faced, teenage boy cashier.

“Hello, welcome to…What can I get for you today?”

“Yes, I would like the quarter pounder combo.”

“What would you like to drink with that?”

“Coke.”

“Is Pepsi ok?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Would you like bacon added to your burger for an additional .50 cents?”

“I would like it, but not .50 cents worth. So, I guess that’s a no.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very.”

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