Your Tax Dollars At Work

I received the following in my email today from the U.S. Census Bureau:

"Each decade, after it tabulates the decennial census, the Census Bureau calculates the center of population. The center is determined as the place where an imaginary, flat, weightless and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if all residents were of identical weight."

What the heck for?

Considering that the U.S. is NOT flat, is NOT weightless and does NOT balance on anything, not to mention that one thing we are definitely NOT in this country is IDENTICAL WEIGHT, why do they bother with this calculation? And after a bunch of math brains get together and figure it out why do they think I have nothing better to do than expect us to join them for their big announcement?

"Join the US Census Bureau for a live UStream event discussing the new Centers of Population at 11am EDT on Wednesday May 11. They will be taking questions from the public during the event on Facebook and Twitter."

Really?

This is a tweet worthy event? What question could the public possibly have except "Why do you bother doing this"? Who uses this information? Isn't it obsolete as soon as the first person moves, even if it is just across town? One baby is born and oops there goes the perfectly balanced-everybody weighs the same-on the perfectly flat imaginary map of the United States calculation. Considering that according to their very own statistics 11,000 babies are born every day but not necessarily evenly spaced throughout the US, I would venture to say that their statistic is skewed.

I have plans to be somewhere over the midwest, flying to Quilt Market in Salt Lake City on Wednesday. There are a few thousand of us that will decend on the city for the multi day event. We tend to bring lots of fabric, quilts, books, patterns and notions with us. Those things tend to be heavy. I hope we don't tip the map!