sign of the times
Nov. 15th, 2004 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioI'm applying for a passport (because I might want one in the next decade and I want to beat next year's RFID chips if I can). I just took a closer look at my birth certificate than I had previously and noticed something.
The form records, of course, information about my parents. For both, it has name, age, state of birth, and race. For my mother, it adds maiden name. And for my father, it adds occupation and industry.
That's right: this form has no place in which to record the mother's occupation. It's not that it's blank; the spot doesn't exist.
(What is it with the governmnet's interest in occupation, anyway? I guess on tax forms it acts as a really primitive sanity check, and maybe my occupation affects whether they'll grant me the passport. But it's not like they could have told my parents "nope, you're not allowed to give birth because dad's an aircraft engineer". Why do they even care?)
The form records, of course, information about my parents. For both, it has name, age, state of birth, and race. For my mother, it adds maiden name. And for my father, it adds occupation and industry.
That's right: this form has no place in which to record the mother's occupation. It's not that it's blank; the spot doesn't exist.
(What is it with the governmnet's interest in occupation, anyway? I guess on tax forms it acts as a really primitive sanity check, and maybe my occupation affects whether they'll grant me the passport. But it's not like they could have told my parents "nope, you're not allowed to give birth because dad's an aircraft engineer". Why do they even care?)
Re: RFID??
Date: 2004-11-16 08:56 pm (UTC)Wow. Scary stuff!