How do you count a nation of more than 250 million peopleâ€"many of whom are on the move and some of whom may not want to be counted? How can you obtain accurate population information for apportioning the House of Representatives, allocating government resources, and characterizing who we are and how we live? This book attempts to answer these questions by reviewing the recent census operations and ongoing research and by offering detailed proposals for ways to improve the census.
People Count! rests on a single but important premise: As the world shrinks and becomes ever more complex, so have people-as "networked individuals"-become ever more central to the course of events. This book seeks to depict a new era by analyzing the basic roles people occupy in their family, community, and society, including the wider world.
Originally published in 1995, this book confronts the contentious political issues on all sides of the population debate, including immigration, demographic competition, gender ratios, reproductive research and children’s rights. The book argues that lower fertility rates are preferred by women themselves; are beneficial in their own right to both women and children; and should not be used as a bargaining chip in any other area of the development debate. Drawing on a large body of research in anthropology, child psychology and population studies the book presents evidence that the poor do not necessarily have large families as form of financial security, or to put them to work; people without offspring are less lonely in old age; immigration and refugee controls in the Northern Hemisphere have been more driven by politics than rational calculation and human rights; social security does not require a large cohort of young workers. This book is a challenging contribution to the development debate. It presents a persuasive case for policies which recognise hopeful trends in relieving the environmental and social pressures of a globally increasing population.
An introduction to the technology of contact tracing and its usefulness for public health, considering questions of efficacy, equity, and privacy. How do you stop a pandemic before a vaccine arrives? Contact tracing is key, the first step in a process that has proven effective: trace, test, and isolate. Smartphones can collect some of the information required by contact tracers--not just where you've been but also who's been near you. Can we repurpose the tracking technology that we carry with us--devices with GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and social media connectivity--to serve public health in a pandemic? In People Count, cybersecurity expert Susan Landau looks at some of the apps developed for contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic, finding that issues of effectiveness and equity intersect. Landau explains the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of a range of technological interventions, including dongles in Singapore that collect proximity information; India's biometric national identity system; Harvard University's experiment, TraceFi; and China's surveillance network. Other nations rejected China-style surveillance in favor of systems based on Bluetooth, GPS, and cell towers, but Landau explains the limitations of these technologies. She also reports that many current apps appear to be premised on a model of middle-class income and a job that can be done remotely. How can they be effective when low-income communities and front-line workers are the ones who are hit hardest by the virus? COVID-19 will not be our last pandemic; we need to get this essential method of infection control right.
We are undoubtedly living in a society and culture that is growing stranger by the day--creating more distance between others, minute by minute. It seems that people are living in their own little bubbles and silos more than ever--with no interest in connecting with people effectively. And it is evident that the rise of the digital age is affecting people mentally and emotionally, leading to voidness and isolation and a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. Billions of people are connecting with an unproductive device in their hands when it should be the word of God! There is no spiritual value when we allow the things of this world to consume our lives more than God's divine nature. Do we really think anything will improve in our homes, communities, churches, schools, country, and globally if we're not grounded and connected in the Truths of his word? We must realize that connecting with humans physically, emotionally, and spiritually is how God designed us. Just like our Creator wants a relationship with you and me, he wants us to bond with others so they can also see the experience of his abundant blessings and goodness in our lives. We cannot afford to be on the sidelines because it's all about cultivating genuine care for God's creation and putting it into practice for the sake of ourselves and others, now more than ever.
“Wild and ambitious . . . [with] something ablaze at its core. It burns.” —The New York Times Book Review A Tiny Upward Shove is inspired by Melissa Chadburn's Filipino heritage and its folklore, as it traces the too-short life of a young, cast-off woman transformed by death into an agent of justice—or mercy. Marina Salles’s life does not end the day she wakes up dead. Instead, in the course of a moment, she is transformed into the stuff of myth, the stuff of her grandmother’s old Filipino stories—an aswang, a creature of mystery and vengeance. She spent her time on earth on the margins; shot like a pinball through a childhood of loss, she was a veteran of Child Protective Services and a survivor, but always reacting, watching from a distance, understanding very little of her own life, let alone the lives of others. Death brings her into the hearts and minds of those she has known—even her killer—as she accesses their memories and sees anew the meaning of her own. In her nine days as an aswang, while she considers whether to exact vengeance on her killer, she also traces back, finally able to see what led these two lost souls to a crushingly inevitable conclusion. In A Tiny Upward Shove, the debut novelist Melissa Chadburn charts the heartbreaking journeys of two of society’s castoffs as they make their way to each other and their roles as criminal and victim. What does it mean to be on the brink? When are those moments that change not only our lives but our very selves? And how, in this impossible world, full of cruelty and negligence, can we rouse ourselves toward mercy?
