Confidentiality Expires For 1940 Census Records 311
Hugh Pickens writes writes "In spring of 1940, the Census Bureau sent out more than 120,000 fact-gatherers, known as 'enumerators,' to survey the nation's 33 million homes and 7 million farms. Now as the 72 years of confidentiality expires, the National Archives website buckled under the load as the 1940 census records were released and 1.9 million users hit the archives servers in the first four hours the data went public and at one point, the Archives said, its computers were receiving 100,000 requests per second. Data miners will have the opportunity to pick and chip through more than 3.8 million digital images of census schedules, maps and other sociological minutiae. What will we learn from this mother lode? The pivotal year 1940 'marked the beginnings of a shift from a depressed peacetime to a prosperous wartime,' says David E. Kyvig, author of Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1939. The vast data dump, Kyvig says, will allow historians 'to look closely at particular communities and how people within them were doing in terms of employment, income and material comforts.' The 1940 census was the first Census that looked deeper into the details of much of American life. 'As we see how the country evolved over the subsequent 20 years, where we have aggregate census data ... we ought to be able to see more clearly how government spending bettered everyday life, confirmed Keynesian economic theory and revealed that, before the war, the New Deal did too little, rather than too much, to stimulate the U.S. economy.""
Get all 18TB of it while it's hot.
correlation != causation (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because the government was able to implement a Keynesian solution to that economic problem, does not mean that it holds the solution to every economic problem, for instance one that involves post - peak natural resource production.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
If Keynsian economics "works" then why was the depression so long? Why do we still have unemployment above 8% after the "stimulus"?
The answer is it doesn't work, and FDR+Obama made things worse.
Every dollar the government spends is a dollar taken from the free market.
Re: (Score:3)
While it is true that every dollar spent by government equates to a dollar from the free market, but that doesn't mean that the ROI on the money is less in all government spending programs than the money would have been in the free market. More specifically government spending is used for positive externalities, where the aggregate ROI exceeds the individual ROI (like firefighting, roads, education). Part of the reason why we have higher unemployment, is that the work itself is becoming automated and less n
Re:correlation != causation (Score:5, Interesting)
not sure if trolling, or just revisionist
fannie+freddie were not forced by law to to give subprime loans. they were compelled by the market forces, as propelled by de/unregulated banks (2004 lowered Debt Capital Rule, unregulated derivatives and CDO market, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, DIDMCA, adjustable-rate mortages), which allowed the major institutions to over-leverage themselves while dealing out predatory ARMs.
if fannie+freddie had not existed the 2008 FC would have still happened in the private sector alone. northern rock, countrywide, bear stearns, lehman brothers, merril lynch would have still all collapsed/required government takeover. the (de)regulatory framework simply allowed them astronomic profits at substantial risk, with the knowledge that any failure would cause systemic collapse, thus requiring government action, thus mitigating any risk to the personal wealth of the execs and traders.
yes, fannie+freddie were headed by some fuckups that made decisions very similar to the large banks. but they were the decisions of private executives; these organizations were not compelled by law to seek inappropriate mortgages and then leverage them on the CDO market. they were compelled by high profits and low effective risk, just like the other speculative lenders.
Re: (Score:2)
Many people misuse the term "deregulation". It is most often (probably always) actually a change to an idiotic mix of regulations.
The other day I watched that Enron movie, and the narrative about the California power crisis didn't make sense so I looked into it. Sure enough, the government had "deregulated" part of the market but was price setting for another part.
Re: (Score:2)
not sure if trolling, or just revisionist
Poe's law.
Re: (Score:2)
The unemployment is simply a reflection of the available workforce not matching the needs of the employers. There's less and less low-qualified jobs, and that's a good thing. The problem is that the workforce is 20+ years behind the needs. We don't need more unqualified people. We need people who are educated and smart -- not on paper, but in reality. It's incredibly hard to find qualified people for many positions. Yes, in the U.S.
Re: (Score:2)
Every dollar the government spends is a dollar taken from the free market.
No. Those dollars are used to hire contractors, etc., all from your "free market," which is just "the market." There is no separation between government spending and any other spending. It all goes to the same places.
Re: (Score:3)
I will argue exactly that: what happened in 2009 was a result of government social engineering forcing quasi-businesses Fannie+Freddie to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back.
Then you obviously have no idea what you are talking about. You didn't even get the date of the recession right. It started in September 2008 with the bankruptcy of Lehman brothers.
Although it's popular among Fox news viewers to blame the recession on the Fair House Act and political pressure to lend to minorities as you jus
Re: (Score:2)
However, governments have dealt with this particular problem - scarcity - before through rationing.
Also, to put it bluntly, the choice is between the government or the same bunch of monsters who brought us this latest economic meltdown to line their own pockets; in other wor
Re: (Score:2)
What if the government and the "monsters" are the same people... now you just gave them permission to lock you in a cage if you don't cooperate with their plans.
Re: (Score:2)
just thought of a funny thought:
Protester: CORPORATIONS ARE MONSTERS!
Mitt Romney: Monsters are people too my friend.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Keynesian economics did increase the total workforce participation, but your right about the destroyed industrialized countries being a part of it, so did the neo-colonialism of the late 19th and early 20th century. Now that we can no longer access such cheap resources, and don't have a significant advantage in manufacturing, we (and also Europe) are left with an inflated economic bubble that's collapsing. Simply put is that our total factor productivity is too low and resources too high, to be able to dema
Re:correlation != causation (Score:5, Insightful)
It's impossible to say what would have happened without the war.
Re: (Score:2)
if war > destruction
and destruction > loss of capital
and loss of capital > lower productivity
if war > non productive labor
and non productive labor > lower productivity
therefore war > lower productivity
we can say that war created technological advances, but its not only war that create technological advances, but capital expenditures themselves that do. I could write a logic calculus expression for it, but I'm too lazy to.
Re: (Score:2)
WWII, and maybe WWI, were exceptions as the country was already in an extremely low production state. Sending all those men off to war, opening up the factories, it was like bringing god knows how many people off of unemployment/layoffs into turn-key operations ready to go immediately.
We've since transitioned to where such factories and what-not are shipped over seas or sold as scrap instead of sitting. Wars are more forced overtime.
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding was that there was a low production state, partly driven by the protestant work ethic, to under consume and over save. Our economy wasn't designed around that paradigm, and people suffered as a result of the collapse of the economic system, as it created a negative feedback loop in the debt/interest based economic system. Of course the whole idea of compound interest in a financial system, which is tied to a physical world of finite limitations is absurd, but their solution was to tie indiv
Re: (Score:2)
I find the phrase "under consume and over save" to be hilarious. Obviously if you can make do with less, you can make do with less! Why consume when you don't really need to?
Re: (Score:2)
Because there the Ipad3 now has a retina display! I hear that riding a harley davidson gets you laid!
Re: (Score:2)
I think reality is more complicated than that.
Re: (Score:2)
It's impossible to say what would have happened without the war.
So what? [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Small German political parties got funds for new trucks, rallies -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar [guardian.co.uk]
The US invests in people - Latin America, Asia, Africa - the cold war was full of strong friendly dictators, keep going back a few more years...
Re: (Score:2)
It's from Pi and it crashed Euclid.
Re:correlation != causation (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hold on. You have to slow down. You're losing it. You have to take a breath. Listen to yourself. You're connecting a computer bug I had with a computer bug you might have had and some religious hogwash. You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere."
"As soon as you discard scientific rigor, you're no longer a mathematician, you're a numerologist."
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
WWII was the hugest government stimulus and spending. It was government spending without limits, which at some point is what it took to get out of the first Great Depression. It helped that our competitors were all turned to rubble, but the Keynes effect was so great that we ended up with a recovery strong enough to allow us to help those competitors rebuild.
Keynes is not only good for the economy
Re:correlation != causation (Score:4, Insightful)
Really?? Before Keynes no country ever survived a depression?
Re:correlation != causation (Score:4, Insightful)
Combined with people living on rations for years, a government forced saving program. When the war was over, people had money, they wanted to spend it and with the GI Bill a lot of these people went to college and got better educated. As well as their time in the war gave a lot of these people discipline that they wouldn't have gotten else ware. While some of the Stimulus spending helped, but not so much in terms of spending but in the fact that it rebuild and improved key areas of the infrastructure.
Monopoly + (Disciplined + Educated) Work Force + With a lot of money saved up + Improved Infrastructure = Dominate Economy.
Re:correlation != causation (Score:4, Insightful)
If I didn't fear China's economic power yet, I would start right now.
Re:correlation != causation (Score:5, Informative)
Wow....just....I don't even know how to respond to the sheer number of fallacies in that paragraph.
Instead, I'll focus on the biggest whopper:
WTF?!? Are you seriously saying that Russia *wasn't* paranoid and autocratic until *after* WWII? Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 on, and used that position to consolidate power. His centralized planning of the economy resulted in the famine that caused mass uprisings, which led Stalin to command the "Great Purge" in 1937-38.
Re:correlation != causation (Score:4, Insightful)
The autocracy was a result of constant existential threats, much like what occurred in the USA.
I have a saying "terrorists need tyrants, like tyrants need terrorists", but it generally applies to the relationship fear and control.
His centralized planning also led to the industrialization of the country, but there was a chicken and the egg problem where you have to move people from farming, and you dont have anything to sell but agriculture to build factories. Many non communist countries have had this same exact problem, even countries that recieve IMF development (often capitalist dictators), but we like to use it as fodder against the communists.
its not as if our dictators are less dispicable than theirs (chile and iran come to mind), or that our development from agriculture to industry was less worse (irish famine) ( US slavery) (germ warfare).
Re: (Score:3)
The USSR ... didn't want anything to do with the war originally, that is until Germany decided to invade them anyways.
Tell that to Poland
Re: (Score:3)
Germany invaded Poland first, and the russians beat back the polish, and ended up in control of it as a result.
Re:correlation != causation (Score:5, Informative)
That would all make sense, if Stalin hadn't been planning all along to attack Germany, he just needed to wait longer for his forces to redeploy and his officer corps to rebuild after killing 90% of them. And yes, maybe he needed to ramp up production, but his military woes were really caused by the lapdog morons he put in command and his own micromanagement. I mean, he needed to dig up Zhukov after executing Tukhachevsky, the guy who pretty much invented the deep operations concepts that won the war for the Soviets. If the Red Army had had a reasonable tactical doctrine, as well as professional military leaders running the show, you can be certain that the Germans would not have gotten anywhere near as far as they did into the USSR. They may have even been repulsed.
And let's not forget that the Red Army had absolutely no compunction about attacking the Finns during the Winter War. They even shelled some of their own troops to provide the reason for the invasion. The only reason Finland wasn't a Soviet Socialist Republic was the sheer incompetence of the Red Army staff, which is understandable because it was filled with lapdogs, and generals and colonels recently promoted from the lofty grade of lieutenant due to "staff rotation via gunshot to the back of the head".
As for the USSR's economy, they had no concept of "sustainability" and "equality" in their economic focus, unless you consider that everyone in their sphere was equal in that they needed to do what Moscow said. If you were lucky, you'd be like Cuba, where you got subsidies so that you could continue to stay in power and piss off the Americans. That's nothing more than aid to prop up your friends, not economic equality. That's like saying we give aid to Pakistan because we think that they deserve equality and sustainability.
There is also nothing new about Russia being paranoid and autocratic at any point. Russia has been paranoid and autocratic since before the reign of Ivan the Terrible, let alone during Stalin. They're still paranoid and autocratic, albeit to a lesser extent. The #1 reason that the USSR carved out its sphere of influence is that Stalin pretty much assumed that the Western powers would do what he would do, which is to say invade when they smelled weakness. And while Operation Unthinkable existed, it was a theoretical plan that was drawn up due to was assumed to be Stalin's next step (ie. invasion of Western Europe), not because they wanted to invade the USSR and take over. I should also point out there was a reason it was called "Unthinkable". For those who don't know, it was because they didn't want to do it, and they were pretty sure that they would either fail miserably or the victory would be at so terrible a cost that it would have been Pyrrhic at best.
Of course, there were certainly many misunderstandings between the superpowers during the Cold War. And certainly the US got itself dirty playing in the mud with the Soviets, but I can't think of a single case where the US or the West legitimately considered an attack, or even a pre-emptive strike on the USSR that was not specifically for the purposes of defending against the gigantic Red Army presence in either Eastern Europe or their efforts to spread communist revolution around the world. As it stands, I think the fact there was no war is a testament to how both sides realized that it wasn't worth ending the world to spread their power via global war.
Re: (Score:3)
"The overall political or political object is to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and British Empire...."
Re: (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure what also helped was that the ability to produce overseas and import the crap instead of making it at home was severely limited due to the likeliness of transports being sunk.
Want to get the economy back on track? Get it back home.
Re: (Score:3)
Another war fought mainly outside US borders is the gulf war. How much stimulus did US get out of it? Maybe the war is a giant broken window fallacy?
Re:As Krugman says (Score:5, Interesting)
This is called "The Broken Window Fallacy", but is essentially a cornerstone of alot of economic policy, because rebuilding things (that were destroyed) creates jobs. In fact I hear alot about 'creating jobs', for example recent talks in my state for a casino, even though its a negative sum game. Even part of our throw away culture is defined by the measurement of GDP for economic success, since the sale of a single part contributes less than the sale of a whole new device. Now its no surprise that warfare, exploitation of and shipping resources around the world, may have not been the most efficient use of our time. But I have a belief that had the greedy capitalist pigs, not gone to war to protect their 'private property' from the 'communist looters', we would have ended up with a more 'free market' than we have now. Furthermore the more homogeneous development and lower diminished returns on both natural and human capital, would have increased aggregate human development and economic productivity, and probably have reduced the population and factored resource inefficiencies.
America has a god given right to demand a bigger piece of the pie, even if that means destroying some of it in the process, because were exceptional and gods chosen people. Which is essentially our 19th and early 20th century intellectual rhetoric, we found what was essentially virgin land that we exploited, in order to create our version of order in the world.
Re: (Score:3)
This is called "The Broken Window Fallacy",
Actually there's a difference since War may involve killing lots of people.
If the number of people goes down but the amount of assets and resources don't go down as much, it means the survivors/victors have more.
Re: (Score:3)
This theory assumes infinite resources. Reality is a polar opposite, as European nations discovered after WW2. The continent was literally plundered of natural resources that were strip-mined to fuel war machines.
Re: (Score:2)
That situation sounds like the accounts I've heard of Europe in the Plague years. Survivors of the bubonic plague inherited the wealth of the dead, suddenly changing a lot of assumptions about feudal class relations.
Assets and resources went down quite a lot in WW2. I've read Marxist accounts that describe this as what really ended the Great Depression and led to the Long Boom of 1940-1972. Traditionally, Marxists expected economic crises to get worse and worse each time, with shallower booms and deeper bus
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure you explained that properly?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm at the eleventh hour of a twelve hour night shift, so it wouldn't surprise me if I blundered in the details. What strikes you as off?
Re: (Score:2)
Why is "asset accumulation" rather than increasingly productive technology seen as the cause for less money spent on labor? It takes ten man hours up front to build the machine then you only have to pay one man to run it long term. What about when new technology comes along makin
Re: (Score:2)
Here is a good explanation of the concepts of "socially necessary labor time", which is generally the source of profits (not value or utility) for companies, as it takes less labor to produce a good the prices and margins go down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSP-crYjeoE
Re: (Score:2)
This is an accurate assessment of how modern capitalism operates, but i think the comprehension problem is that he skipped over alot of the labor theory of value, which is where alot of left/right disagreements occur and makes it hard to understand. I'll see if i can conjure up a better explanation.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
America has a god given right to demand a bigger piece of the pie, even if that means destroying some of it in the process, because were exceptional and gods chosen people. Which is essentially our 19th and early 20th century intellectual rhetoric, we found what was essentially virgin land that we exploited, in order to create our version of order in the world.
Now I know that you're stating this in an ironic sense, but I actually got a letter -- this year -- from my US Senator stating that he still believes in American Exceptionalism, actually using that phrase or a slight variation thereof.
Re: (Score:3)
The Broken Window Fallacy makes the assumption that resources would be put to optimum (or at least some) use without the window being broken. It assumes that replacing the broken window wastes the precious time from the already full schedule of busy glassmakers; in other words, it assumes that the main economic problem is producing as much as
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like your the one who doesn't know what they're talking about, it doesn't make sense to you because you haven't learned it yet.
Re:As Krugman says (Score:5, Interesting)
No, he doesn't. He's said the right kind of war would help the economy, not that any war is a good thing. Krugman is consistently anti-war. He's also said an arms built-up to fight an alien invasion would be good for the economy and have great secondary effects (from research and whatnot.) He's also not seriously advocated that we arm up to fight an imaginary alien invasion.
But you can sit their in your smug, self-righteous libertarianism and keep pretending Krugman is a hack who hasn't consistently made very accurate predictions and the Nobel prize in economics is a fraud
Re:As Krugman says (Score:5, Informative)
The economics nobel prize is pretty strange. It is actually the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel".
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
He plans to do exactly that. At some point, their claim that black is white and up is down is all libertarians have.
Re:As Krugman says (Score:4, Insightful)
The main claim is that government often creates more problems than it solves, then gets stuck in a loop of never ending quick fixes each generating more unintended consequences.
Re: (Score:3)
Your wife forces you to eat her crappy cacciatore? Does she also send you to the store to buy the ingredients?
Re: (Score:3)
Of course, the kind of garbage peddled by mainstream economists can't even be proven wrong, because "The solution to a depressed economy is more liquidity" is a statement that can't be falsified. If the central bank prints up 20 trillion dollars and it doesn't help anyth
Re:As Krugman says (Score:5, Insightful)
If the central bank prints up 20 trillion dollars and it doesn't help anything, Krugman and his ilk simply shrug and says "Eh, must not have been enough."
No, Krugman says it wasn't spent correctly and yes, the $700B of the stimulus was half what he prescribed. Instead of being injected at the bottom of the economy (working folk and main street businesses), it was piled on to the top, where it was used to keep paying out bonuses to the very people that caused this mess in the first place.
When the financial industry makes up 40% of the economy, purely by shuffling paper and gambling, that's actually acting as a drag on the economy and not helping things. The TBTF banks should have been broken up *and* liquidity should have been aimed at jobs creation. Instead, you have a gov't that's heavily influenced (run?) by bankers and financiers who can't see any further than the edges of Manhattan. No idea how we're going to get out of this one, unless they go and dig a moat around New Yawk and stop listening to all the yammerheads over there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is such a thing as a good war. A cold war.
Face it, the US economy boomed while the USSR was a threat.
Re: (Score:3)
1. Correlation is not causation
2. There is no correlation, let alone causation. We had a recession in the 1950s and an even worse one in the 1970s. The cold war had nothing to do with economic fluctuations. And we had a boom in th 1990s after the Soviets broke up.
What happens is you have a war, the economy booms, then it crashes when you have to pay for that war. The '50s recession was paying for WWII and Eisenhower's dream (I'm glad for it, the interstate highways are great). The '70s recession and inflati
Why was it confidential? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why was it confidential? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Our State Representative who served in WWII is only retiring this election because they redistricted him out of a district. He was very skilled in finding ways to apply being born/raised in the depression as an advantage.
But yeah, they should have waited a few more years (a decade or two) if that was their goal unless they had a hard percentage of estimated survivors as a trigger.
Re:Why was it confidential? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why was it confidential? (Score:5, Interesting)
LOL human death back then, as now, was a bathtub distribution, like electronics parts. So most people died as little kids or elderly. Back then pretty much all preemies died as a general rule, for example, unlike now. All the "average" means is the ratio of how many died as a baby vs died as an old man. I'd guess that means about two kids died young for every 8 or so that died elderly, which seems to fit in with actual genealogical data I have on my ancestors...
The "real story" (in quotes because even pages of and pages of this stuff is still merely a summary of the real sources) can be read at
http://www.census.gov/history/www/reference/genealogy/the_72_year_rule.html [census.gov]
The exact number 72 was selected because in 1952 they wanted to give away the 1880 census information. Essentially declassify it by transfer from the BC to the NA. I think you can see the math there, 1952 - 72 = 1880 The exact 72 year range has stuck since then.
The legal BS behind the general range of "more than 70 years" was selected, as you'll read at the link above, because the census officers had to / have to take an oath to never release the data. Assuming someone lied on their application and got hired anyway at 10 (unlikely), and assuming that even in extenuating circumstances there are no govt employees of any sort over the age of 82 (unlikely), that means waiting 72 years means the oath takers successfully did their duty and while it was in their power, blah blah blah, they never released the data. Essentially its your usual govt corruption. Technically according to the rule of the law the folks who gathered your 2010 census data will Never permit the release of the 2010 census data .... Never ... of course they'll be dead or retired eventually at which point it'll be released anyway in 2082, assuming the country doesn't self destruct first, at which time the oath takers will all be dead or retired.
Its legal bullshit because if you're convicted of a crime by a judge, just because a judge dies or retires doesn't mean you're a free man. Another example would be the priest who married me and my wife about a dozen years ago by the process of signing the marriage license recently died... that does not automagically make us single. Also from my military experience the death of a guy who classified a document doesn't automagically free that document.
If someone invents an immortality treatment, we'll have to come up with some new legal technicality bullshit. But for now 72 years works and is the tradition.
Re:Why was it confidential? (Score:5, Funny)
Essentially its your usual govt corruption.
I like how you just equated people following the law with government corruption. No bias here! Good show.
Re: (Score:2)
In the UK they release census data after 1000 years ... we have recently got the 1911 census (we have them every 10 years but started in 1841)
Is this a reflection of expected lifespans in the US and UK ?
The laws that established the Census go way back (Score:2)
Actually, it's in the Constitution.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Because if it had not been promised to remain confidential, people wouldn't have filled it truthfully.
Re: (Score:2)
OK it's somewhat sensitive information, but why was it confidential for so long?
From TFNPRA:
There is a reason that all of this up-close-and-personal information from 1940 is being released all these years later. "In 1952, the director of the Census Bureau and the National Archivist agreed that keeping census records private for 72 years balanced public release of federal records with the tradition of confidentiality," explains the Census Bureau's Glasier. In other words, 72 years was considered at the time to be longer than most lifespans.
Keynesian solution my ass! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe that government has a role to play in the economy, but not one that is in bed with the private sector, which is where most of the waste is derived from. However if your talking about it from a liberty perspective, there is essentially two forms of liberty (actually a plurality), the government and private sector both advocate differing varieties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty#Freedom_as_a_triadic_relation
1940 regulation? (Score:3)
All of the above and more [withylaw.com] are from the postwar period. I don't think you can have it both ways: 2012 respect for civil rights is only possible through 2012 regulation. One could say the same abo
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure what not discriminating against people has to do with regulating the price of electricity. Also, how does groping people in the airport promote civil rights? Can you please enlighten us?
You seem to implying that we would all be bigots if the government wasn't carefully watching over our shoulder to make sure we met our quotas.
Re:1940 regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not claiming that all regulation is good. The examples you cite (regulating price of electricity, the TSA) are clear examples of stupid, counterproductive regulation.
My position is that without Federal law to suppress a host of discriminatory practices, the bigots would still be in charge. Without Federal law to prevent dioxin in the ground water, companies would still be dumping toxic waste. The quality of life we take for granted did not magically emerge as we all became enlightened. It required the big stick of government regulation to stop the elite from abusing the rest of the public.
Re: (Score:2)
One could say the same about clean water, food safety, highway safety, and other important issues.
No, no one would not. Water: dirtier now than in 1940, full of chlorine and chloramines and yet STILL biologically unsafe. Highway safety: Ticket speeders, ignore left lane cloggers even in states where it's illegal. Food safety: They're actually arresting people and pouring bleach on food that people want to eat, while promoting processed foods which are inherently harmful with deliberate lies from the NIH.
Re: (Score:2)
Still I would rather have a 1940 size US government with a 1940 size budget and 1940 amount of federal regulations.
(and a 2012 respect for civil rights)
In order for that to work out you're going to need a 1940-size population (and never let it grow -- maybe some more world wars) and a 1940-style population distribution. I've been thinking a lot lately about the implications a larger, more urban population has for the American experiment. In all the discourse I hear/read, I never come across anyone pointing out the simple fact that things are very different than they were when the founders did their thing. Hell, things are incredibly different from what
18 Terabytes?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone gonna torrent that?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I think you can get it from megaupload.com
Re: (Score:2)
I had this same question. My assumption is that should the gov't provide a torrent, the MPAA/RIAA/etc would get all up in arms that the administration is supporting copyright infringement. It's completely incorrect, but when has that ever stopped the MPAA/RIAA/etc from complaining?
So instead of "sharing the load" between servers, they just put the data on a server and said, "Good luck. We're all counting on you."
I'm sure some slashdotter somewhere has torrented it though. Too bad I'm at work and my compa
Re: (Score:2)
It looks like the website linked is designed to avoid oversharing. There doesn't seem to be any way to export the data in bulk.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:18 Terabytes?! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the reason for the 100,000 requests per second is largely - drumroll - mormons.
No, I'm not kidding. Honestly.
Part of their religion is that they hold baptisms for dead people, so they allegedly get a chance to become mormons after their death, and thus gain greater rewards[*]. In order to do that, they engage extensively in genealogy. Really extensively.
Their accuracy isn't much to brag about, though. I discovered through a search engine that someone in the LDS church had done a baptism "for" my departed father. And got most of his details wrong, including his birth year and family relations. But now it's "official" as far as they're concerned.
They refuse to strike this from their records - I am "welcome to" submit correct information, but I don't want them to have that either. How about they stick to their own, and leave the rest of us alone?
But yeah, mormons cause a huge part of the traffic.
[*]: Like being reunited with one's loved ones, or becoming a Mr. and Mrs. God of a new planet. No, I'm not making this up. Religion is stranger than fiction.
Re:18 Terabytes?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've done a fair bit of genealogy. It's a decent geek hobby, it doesn't cost too much, takes a large amount of time, and requires good problem solving skills and the ability to judge and verify information. Plus it tends to tie in with a lot of history and geography, which I'm interested in. I'd recommend it.
I'm not a professional genealogist, but I have found situations which may explain the conflicting information for your father. It could be due to two people with similar names, or misinformation on public records, etc.
Someone I'm probably descended from lived about 50 miles away from someone else with the same name in colonial times. They were about the same age. They both married, and some of their children share the same name as well. Its common to see details from both individuals in other family trees.
A similar situation exists with myself - when I went to school, there was someone in the same school with my name. Different birthdate, but roughly the same age. Anyone who attempts a family tree with me in it will probably run into the same problem.
Public records are not immune to this either. Some of them show interesting errors. The state and the federal government disagree on the date my grandmother died - the state thinks she died a day earlier than the feds. Anyone who hasn't seen the records would consider any genealogical research with the wrong date to be "sloppy". Nowadays, with the Internet, its pretty easy to get both records. But even 15 years ago, having retrieved just one record wouldn't be unusual. Another case would be a great-grandmother of mine, who had the amazing ability to age only 8 or 9 years between each census - she kept lying about her age on every census in order to be younger than she actually was. (In addition, her children could never agree on her father's name either - marriage records and the death certificate give conflicting information.)
Of course, a large problem with genealogy today, especially Internet genealogy, is the severe amount of copying that goes on among amateur genealogists, especially with the lack of verification and citation for the source of information. Citations are very important when it comes to research - there are going to be mistakes in records, and you always want to know the sources when it comes to conflicting information in order to verify which one is correct. Someone may be listed as a son or daughter on the census, but instead turn out to be a stepson or stepdaughter or other relative. Or perhaps a person's name was recorded incorrectly. Blindly following this information results in flawed family trees. But some people are not patient enough to do this, and instead tend to add people without verification or hunting down the source. These are the same people who tend to copy from other individuals family trees, which compounds the problem.
This is one reason why I won't publish my family tree, in its current form, online - I have links and information in my family tree that are, quite frankly, a "best guess". As long as the notes and citations are included, it's clear that the information requires further verification, but if put on-line, the information would most likely be copied into countless other family trees and stripped of citations and notes. I'd rather not do that. ;)
As for the LDS's obsession with genealogy, I tend to really appreciate it. The amount of preservation of old records the LDS has done is amazing, regardless of the reasoning behind that. And really, post-death baptism shouldn't be too upsetting. If you're religion or lack of religion is so weak that a religious ceremony once you're long dead will put you in jeopardy, I think you're belief is misplaced.
Keynsian Theories (Score:2)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Keynes suggest government deficit spending during depressions and recessions... then pay it off when times are good?
I've never actually read his work so I don't know. This would make more sense than that an economist would recommend what is going on though.
Re:Keynsian Theories (Score:5, Informative)
Technically speaking all money is now a form of debt, and what governments tend to do anymore is issue debt in their currency, and then inflate the currency to keep the debt/gdp level low enough to prevent default.
Its mathematically impossible for everyone to pay off all debt in the system that we currently have now, the inflation is what makes the active pursuit of money (and therefore production) obligatory.
Re:Keynsian Theories (Score:4, Insightful)
I have gathered that point, however there is more than one way to get rid of debt.
I think that is kind of tangential to what I was asking though. Keynes advocated "counter-cyclical" spending, correct? Inflate during recession and deflate during boom times (yes, people and businesses will default because of this policy). What we have instead is constant inflation.
Re: (Score:2)
It might if the people running things had perfect information and only good intentions. Anyway, so it seems your problem with keynes is that monetary cycles have been more volatile. Either way, I am still unsure what the historian in the OP was talking about.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Its mathematically impossible for everyone to pay off all debt in the system that we currently have now, the inflation is what makes the active pursuit of money (and therefore production) obligatory.
In other words, the whole fucking thing is a ponzi scheme.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It was brought up because there is a historian randomly praising Keynesian policy.
I question the received wisdom (Score:2)
The pivotal year 1940 'marked the beginnings of a shift from a depressed peacetime to a prosperous wartime
Baloney. Wartime might appear more prosperous in that a lot of people were suddenly "employed" by the government who were previous unemployed, but everyone still lived under rationing and scarcity. Real economic recovery didn't happen until 1946.
Better than 1911... (Score:2)
Slashdotted! (Score:2)
Oh great, the server is way busy. Now I'll have to wait for all the geeks to finish. :/
Copyright vs Census (Score:4, Interesting)
Did too little (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess if someone is dumb enough to list "Drug Dealer" as his occupation rather than "Unemployed".
To be worried about the Census Bureau having your name, age and address is stupid, Law Enforcement can already get it from the IRS, SSA, or state DMV databases, and that's just a few and they are likely much more up-to-date than the Census Bureau's data.