TomAiello

I guess we're finally catching up to Europe. When I was living in Budapest in 1992, there was a huge billboard opposite my bus stop, advertising ice cream bars. The only thing you could see was the top four inches or so of the chocolate shell, a tiny rim of white ice cream at the top, and a brightly painted pair of red lips wrapped around it. I found it so striking that I took pictures and sent them back home. My Hungarian friends couldn't figure out why I found it so unusual. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

This sort of crass commercialistic statement is more appropriate for the Bonfire, and I'll thank you for keeping your head out of the gutter in the future, Rick. I totally missed that. Huh? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Better?

Just to play Devils Advocate with you for a minute... I don't know of any laws that make BASE Jumping illegal, but trespassing is. ( I know the National Park law about delivering goods by air thing doesn't really fit either category and should be re-written.) Currently, BASE is illegal by either statute or administrative regulation in National Parks, in about half of the state parks, in the city of Denver, Colorado, and by statute from about a half dozen specific objects (the Golden Gate Bridge, for example). There is also a series of rulemaking decisions indicating that BASE may not be allowed in designated wilderness, but that issue hasn't been litigated. The problem is that the NPS prohibition, along with the wilderness prohibtion, covers virtually all of the slider up cliffs in the continental United States, and certainly covers the very safest of them. I'm fairly well educated on this particular micro-issue for reasons of personal interest. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Do you have a cite for the data, so we can all go educate ourselves? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Here's the actual text, for those to lazy to click through: -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You should check out the WSJ article here. At the two non-profit hospital systems I'm familiar enough with to know about pricing, the fees charged by the non-profits are actually greater than those charged by the "for profit" competition. One of my wife's former partners went "in house" with a non-profit (meaning he became a hospital contractor, where they took over billing for his services) and the fees charged to his patients more than doubled. The non-profit continued billing his original rate, and just added on their own service fees (which were larger than his original rate). They paid him the same (less some overhead expenses) and pocketed the rest. "Non profit" definitely does not mean "cheaper" when it comes to healthcare. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Anyone seen this organization? Thoughts? Especially from anyone who's a doctor? It looks to me like if that takes off, they've got one heck of a base for creating change in the healthcare system. And honestly, I'd trust a group of doctors a lot more than I'd trust a bunch of lawyers who think they know how to run everything. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Except that you, I, and even Nancy Pelosi are all part of "Frank." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Or sooner, if he's abusing her to enforce his dress code. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

"...disregard the mounting debt!" -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Holy crap, you're at Carillion? My wife is a doctor there, too. You're the annoying internal medicine resident who always talks down to her, aren't you? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Anything that's not hurting someone else ought to be decriminalized (or better yet, legalized). BASE jumping, for example.

Ah, I see. Since the current law isn't being enforced, we need to...make more laws? How does that follow? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

There's a huge amount of pressure to join religious orders? Once in, sure, there's pressure. But the decision to join is made by an adult, and so far I haven't detected much pressure at all to join any sort of religious order. Perhaps my life is just totally atypical... -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Ok. I guess I didn't know that. Sounds pretty lame to me. Indecent exposure ought to be based on the same standards as porn (i.e. "prurient sexual interest"). Exposure without intention to arouse certainly should not be banned. Even exposure with intention to arouse I'd have to think a lot about. When I was in college, I managed a swimming pool. We once had an incident where a woman was swimming topless and another patron complained. I sent the issue up the chain (after the fact) and was told that there was nothing we could do to stop the toplessness. But I dunno, I wasn't looking at the law at the time, that was the business of someone further along who supposedly consulted the lawyers. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The right to raise one's children according to one's beliefs is pretty fundamental. I'd be extremely uncomfortable if our government (in the USA) started making blanket proscriptions like that. In school, that's one thing, and I can understand if something interferes with the schools mission. But regulating what your children wear at home? What's next, requiring you to feed them a particular sort of ethnic cuisine? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

In France, or the USA? I'm pretty sure that beating or killing a woman for failing to wear a burqa is illegal in France, just as it would be in the USA, but perhaps I've missed something. Can you reference the law that allows such beating and killing? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

In much the same way that soldiers are "forced" to wear uniforms. They choose, voluntarily and with no compulsion, to join (the military or church order) that has such a dress code. If they greatly object to the dress code, they shouldn't join in the first place. As far as I know, no one is forcing women to become nuns. Can you provide an example of such a thing happening in the US? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Hang on...there's some sort of federal law about this? Can you give me a reference so I can look it up? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I agree with you, but doesn't the US do the same thing? Women aren't free to wear what they want and are restricted more than males are. I don't think that the US ought to govern dress by law either. I'm not familiar with any laws doing so. Can you point them out for me? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Workplace dress code is set by the employer. The government should not be setting it, one way or the other. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Can you contrast Paine with another Libertarian thinker to illustrate?

I'm not exactly sure how that relates to this story. Here, we're talking about the rights of adults to wear particular garments. It seems to be that it's rather paternalistic to decide that they can't wear something because it's "bad" for them. Shouldn't they be allowed to decide for themselves what they want to wear? Is your argument that somehow by choosing to wear this specific garment, the woman is participating in her own (or other women's) oppression? And that this centralized, government oppression of her freedoms is going to cancel that out? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The wearing of particular garments (black armbands, for example) can also be construed as symbolic speech, and protected on free speech grounds. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com