The NYT offers this charming story about fruit distributors' plan to tattoo fruit with laser codes, eliminating the need for the stickers that currently mar the consumption experience.  As with all business technology stories, there are different perspectives.

The consumer's [how did the reporter find this person?]:

Sticker-removal duty took Jean Lemeaux of Clarksville, Tex., half an hour one day last week.

"I was picking all the little stickers from the Piggly Wiggly off my plums and my avocado pears and my peaches," said Ms. Lemeaux, 76. "Then I had to make fruit salad out of the ones that got hurt when I took the stickers off, and then I had to wash the glue off the other ones before I put them in the fruit bowl."

"One time," she said, "I got up the next morning and looked in the mirror and there were two of them up in my hair."

The entrepreneur's:

"With the right scanning technology the produce could even be bar-coded with lots of information: where it comes from, who grew it, who picked it, even how many calories it has per serving," said [the entrepreneur]. "You could have a green pepper that was completely covered with coding. Or you could sell advertising space." [Emphasis added - and I can't say how much I look forward to reading ads for new cars on my morning grapefruit]

And, the artist's:

"For literally hundreds of years, artists have immersed themselves in the color and curvature of the perfect peach or apple," said Joseph Rishel, a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art who specializes in Cézanne. "So a tattoo sounds like a desecration."

"But then again," Mr. Rishel said, "there are those who say that Cézanne himself used artificial fruit."

Interesting question comes to mind: is tattooed fruit still kosher?

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