When Mayor de Blasio inaugurated free, full-day prekindergarten classes citywide in 2013, the analysts helped pinpoint thousands of eligible 4-year-old children by cross-matching birth records, anonymous social-service information and commercial marketing data for diaper services. – Wall Street Journal.
Scene: Police station. Giant map on the wall. Men in shirtsleeves and suspenders striding briskly in and out through frosted-glass doors. Berwilda, the only woman, sits at a computer. Suddenly an alarm goes off and the screen flashes.
Berwilda: Hey, boys, I think we’ve got one! Marketing data from diaper services has just come through!
Everybody: (Crowding around the computer) Where, where?
Berwilda: (Pointing to the screen) Here’s where the signal’s coming from.
Riley: Aw, that’s the place we busted yesterday. False alarm. Just a woman buyin’ Pampers for her old poodle.
Boris: (Darkly) For what she said was her old poodle.
Riley: You mean — it could have been a 4-year old in disguise?
Tyrone: Only one way to find out. Get Confidential Informant #A4590 on the phone.
Berwilda: Yessir. (Dials phone).
Speakerphone: Lollipop Garden Anonymous Social Services, may I help you?
Riley: We need some data chop-chop.
Lollipop: What did Little Miss Muffet sit on?
Riley: What the hell’s that supposed to mean?
Tyrone: That’s the security question, dummy.
Riley: Oh. Uh – a wishing well?
Lollipop: Wrong.
Riley: (To the others) What did *%# Miss Muffet sit on?
Lollipop: You get one hint. It rhymes.
Boris: I know! A fluffet.
Lollipop: Wrong. Whoever heard of sitting on a fluffet?
All: Pluffet? Shuffet? Zuffet? Ruffet?
Lollipop hangs up.
Tyrone: Well, boys, I guess you know what this means. It’s an all-nighter of cross-matching birth records.
Boris: Why don’t we just bring in the poodle? They won’t suspect a thing until it starts first grade.
All concur.
I hope they cross-checked with the terrorist watch list. A kid with a full diaper in a crowded subway can do all kinds of damage.
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Yes, one of those can clear out an entire subway car in 2 minutes.
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