Word: census
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Cheering as the population reports are becoming today, for much of the past 50 years, demographers were bearers of mostly bad tidings. In census after census, they reported that humanity was not just settling the planet but smothering it. It was not until the century was nearly two-thirds over that scientists and governments finally bestirred themselves to do something about it. The first great brake on population growth came in the early 1960s, with the development of the birth-control pill, a magic pharmacological bullet that made contraception easier--not to mention tidier--than it had ever been before...
...figure that reached a whopping 4.9 earlier this century--has plunged to just 2.7. In many countries, including Spain, Slovenia, Greece and Germany, the fertility rate is well below 1.5, meaning parents are producing 25% fewer offspring than would be needed to replace themselves--in effect, throwing the census into reverse. A little more than 30 years ago, global population growth was 2.04% a year, the highest in human history. Today it's just 1.3%. "It was a remarkable century," says Joseph Chamie of the U.N. Population Division. "We quadrupled the population in 100 years, but that's not going...
...last question will only be used if you fail to turn in that other form this week to the IRS, in which case official government agents will break into your house and steal your stuff, in lieu of taxes. Because of the new collaboration between the Bureau of the Census and the IRS, implemented only a week ago, the IRS is now the most well-stocked agency in the federal government. (If you'd like to get in touch with the IRS agent selling hot stereos out of the parking lot of your local IRS regional office, call the taxpayer...
...Republican Party has been particularly vocal in opposing what some have termed an "invasion of privacy" in the long form of the census, the version distributed to a sample of households throughout the country. Bush has said he might have refused to answer several of the questions, had he been given the long form (He got the short one). But it was a Democrat who had the most problems filling out the census form--where do you imagine Hillary Clinton said she lives or stays "most of the time"--in New York, or with her husband...
...privacy. You can delete those Internet browser cookies that trace you, hide your Social Security numbers and unlist your phone number, but it's more efficient just to toss your junk mail. The notion that anyone will ever find you interesting enough to look up your personal Census data or read your e-mails is so egotistical that I know you're dying to answer personal questions. I can bench-press...