dcnovice
Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006 Status: offline
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quote:
Do you find this kind of intimate bureaucratic interest in your life intrusive and vaguely creepy? No. I think of it as a demographic equivalent of medical imaging. MRIs, CT scans, PET scans, ultrasounds, and the like equip physicians to see exactly what's happening and where inside a person's body, and aid in the selection of sound remedies. In the same way, the ACS (which is merely an adaptation of the long-form data the Census Bureau has collected for decades without destroying the republic) offers us a clearer look at the body politic and can help communities at various levels make reality-based decisions about, say, locating schools and hospitals (nether of which springs up overnight). I also know from my own work as writer and editor that census data is invaluable for understanding our demographics, particularly over time. It's interesting that the aptly named Mr. Hurt offers no examples of privacy breaches or other misuses of census data. You know he'd wield them if he had them! So far as I can tell, his whole argument boils down to "government is bad" along with some paranoid ravings to entertain readers. Not for the first time, I find myself wondering if the Washington Times isn't actually an Onion-style parody with its owners (still the Moonies?) laughing behind closed doors at their readers.
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No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
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