{"id":161,"date":"2002-03-08T17:25:07","date_gmt":"2002-03-09T01:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ogre.nu\/wp\/?p=161"},"modified":"2006-05-23T18:42:12","modified_gmt":"2006-05-24T02:42:12","slug":"1-am-not-a-number","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=161","title":{"rendered":"&radic;(-1) am not a number!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mikeflynn.blogspot.com\/2002_03_01_mikeflynn_archive.html#10325878\">Mike Flynn<\/a>, apparently a newcomer to this stuff, writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>For starters, a national identification card.  How dumb an idea is that?  Giving the US government &#8212; does anybody remember Waco or Ruby Ridge? J. Edgar Hoover? Nixon&#8217;s enemies list? &#8212; a weapon by which to maintain a database of our photos and important information is just scary, and I&#8217;m one of the six Americans left who still thinks government is capable of doing more good than evil.<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\nAnd remember, kids: Next time someone who won&#8217;t have to report your income to the IRS asks for your Social Security number DON&#8217;T GIVE IT OUT!\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Right on, but I&#8217;m still in the market for good ways to avoid it when shopping for <a href=\".\/?p=187\">medical insurance<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.google.com\/groups?selm=telecom18.14.12%40telecom-digest.org\">telephone service<\/a> or a credit-card.<\/p>\n<p>(I&#8217;ve lived without credit-cards for eight years now, with a Mastercard attached to my checking account; but the last time I tried to rent a car &#8212; at a shop where I had done so several times before &#8212; they had a new policy: no debit-cards.  Why?  Because if I totalled their car they might not be able to get $Nk out of my checking account.  But &#8211; er &#8211; so why am I paying for a &#8220;collision damage waiver&#8221;?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Flynn, apparently a newcomer to this stuff, writes: For starters, a national identification card. How dumb an idea is that? Giving the US government &#8212; does anybody remember Waco or Ruby Ridge? J. Edgar Hoover? Nixon&#8217;s enemies list? &#8212; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=161\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-taxprivacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}