{"id":510,"date":"2004-06-21T19:54:22","date_gmt":"2004-06-21T19:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=510"},"modified":"2004-06-21T19:54:22","modified_gmt":"2004-06-21T19:54:22","slug":"pagan_rituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=510","title":{"rendered":"Pagan Rituals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It never fails.  Every six months I have to fill out paperwork to demonstrate that I am still eligible for Medical Assistance.  And 50% of the time, Hennepin County manages to foul things up.  I got a letter from them today saying they never received my documentation.  Damn bureaucrats.  Er, not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with bureaucrats per se.  I hear some of them are quite capable.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.asimovonline.com\/\">Isaac Asimov<\/a> included the concept of a &#8220;neural whip&#8221; in some of his books.  The basic concept of the whip was that it was a kind of mob control device; you simply pointed it at a person and it would inflict severe pain sensations throughout the individual&#8217;s nervous system.  Looks like someone in the military liked Asimov&#8217;s idea so much that they decided to build <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2004\/06\/07\/beam_of_pain.html\">the real thing<\/a>.  We can probably expect to see it deployed in Iraq by the end of the year, giving the Iraqi people another reason to love us.<br \/>\nToday marks the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/netnotes\/article\/0,6729,1243856,00.html?=rss\">summer solstice<\/a>.  Show of hands: how many of you were at Stonehenge at 3 a.m. this morning to celebrate?  Nobody?  How disappointing.  It&#8217;s a bit discouraging to know that after today, the nights are only going to get longer.  The bright mornings make it so much easier to wake up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It never fails. Every six months I have to fill out paperwork to demonstrate that I am still eligible for Medical Assistance. And 50% of the time, Hennepin County manages to foul things up. I got a letter from them today saying they never received my documentation. Damn bureaucrats. Er, not that there&#8217;s anything wrong <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=510' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-8e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}