US Census 2010 Winding Down

The official census day in the United States is always the 1st of April, but in fact the counting started in January 2010 in Alaska, and in the middle of July 2010 the in-person followup of nonresponding households was winding down, putting a lot of temporary census workers out of work, as reported by the New York Times. Because of the recession, the Census Bureau was able to hire an unusually talented group of temporary workers and, of course, we can hope that this will help to maintain high quality results. You can keep up with the progress of the census through the periodic blog postings from the Director of the Census, Dr. Robert Groves.

Malaria Buzz

The Wall Street Journal has a teaser article by Sonia Shah, who has a new book out on The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years (New York: Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010). Although spraying and drugs and other measures have lowered the death rate from malaria, especially since the end of WWII, the parasite and its mosquito vector are incredibly tenacious, and humans, she argues, are part of the problem--we are often way too careless or simply fatalistic (no pun intended) about malaria.

Targeting Employers of Undocumented Immigrants

The Obama administration is quietly trying to deal with undocumented immigration by conducting silent raids of companies in which they audit records to determine which workers are here legally and which are not, and the undocumented workers are fired on the spot. The employers then claim that they are left without workers, while some members of Congress complain that the policy is too lax—it leads to workers being fired, but not deported—at a time when Americans are desperately seeking jobs. Somehow these two perspectives seem to be miles apart.