I'm not going to comment on the level of intelligence needed to think this is a good idea:

NameMyDaughter.com

Some folks just never learn.

Hey, it's just a matter of taste.

Years ago, I was in an engineering meeting. Most of those present were of Indian descent, and several possessed very difficult multisyllabic names.

At one point, the chief engineer chuckled at the last name of a design engineer who was not present: "Cupid". I thought this was remarkable, because the chief had clearly not met Mrs. Cupid, delightful in every way, and clearly a sign that Mr. Cupid was of good quality, including nomenclature. Also, there was contrast with the chief's name, which sounded like someone had dumped the family silverware down an elevator shaft.

There are limits to the utility of the unique name (even as they are sometimes an advantage - see "Barack"), but I lament the idea that everyone should be named Bill or John or Susie.

Exactly as predicted:
Health care rationing under the ACA

How is that cost calculator treating you, Patrick?

RE: Name my daughter

My vote: Zelda Waitfor-it

My dog's name is Zelda, my older kids named her (after the video game character).

Video:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article18263937.ab

Story in English:

http://phuketwan.com/tourism/dramatic-tourist-rescue-similans-dive-boat-sinks-vessel-registered-19668/

Dramatic Tourist Rescue as Similans Dive Boat Sinks: Vessel Not Registered

PHUKET: A dive boat sank in the Similan islands with a ''frantic rescue'' required to save all on board, it was revealed today.

The dive boat Aladdin with 13 on board was not registered and operating near the park illegally, officials told Phuketwan.

On a second boat nearby, Swedish diver Dennis Karlsson, 46, took dramatic photographs showing the panic as the Aladdin quickly sank to the bottom about noon yesterday.

It was between Bon Island and Tachai island. Fortunately for the people on the Aladdin, the Phuket-based vessel Peter Pan was close by and able to rescue them all.

Scandinavians were among divers on both vessels, Mr Karlsson told Sweden's Aftonbladet newspaper where his photographs were published today.

The Aladdin sank in minutes, he said. ''It was just coincidence that our boat was there and could come to the rescue,'' Mr Karlsson said. ''It was really, really serious.''

The wooden hull of the boat was holed and the Aladdin tipped then sank, with people scrambling to get off.

''People threw themselves headlong into the water. Some disappeared under the surface. It was a very close thing for some of them and people were so grateful that the Peter Pan was there.''

It's believed the vessel Aladdin, based in Ranong, a Thai port on the border with Burma, was on a four-day live-aboard adventure.

According to park officials Phuketwan spoke to today, the Aladdin was not a registered vessel and should not have been operating.

Peter Pan operates out of Phuket. Andaman coast and Phuket authorities, with the help of the British Embassy, are attempting to lift marine safety standards.

Yesterday's sinking of the Aladdin is likely to trigger a closer investigation of illegal boats that are said to operate in the Similans region with corrupt payments made to renegade marine park rangers.

The Director of the Surin Island National Park, Kongkiert Temtamnan, confirmed today that the sinking happened between Bon Island and Tachai Island and not in the Surin park region.

The Director of the Similan islands national park, Nat Kongkasem, said today that both the islands were part of the national park but the Aladdin sank between the islands. in a location that was not part of the national park.

''The vessel operates out of Ranong,'' he said. ''It was not registered to operate in the national park and the hull was clearly of poor quality.''

More here: link obfuscated to elude spam detector:

www dot phuketgazette dot net/phuket_news/2014/No-salvage-for-sunken-Similan-dive-boat-24454.html

Questions for libertarians: this boat is described as unregulated and illegal and in poor condition.

When is regulation and inspection okay, and when does it go too far?

I dont think many libertarians have a problem with common sense inspection and regulation.

The problem comes when the government chooses to actively refuse to inspect and arbitrarily outlaw something

Or in the cases of cabs in Phx, they have to pay $50 for the Dept of Weights and Measures to slap a sticker on the back of their livery vehicle for not doing a single fucking thing.

You know that "inspected" cab you hoped into at the air port? They didnt check the breaks, they didnt look at the maintenance log. I know guys who have had their working privileges temporarily suspended because there were drops of water on the windshield WHILE IT IS ACTIVELY RAINING.

Re: ACA health rationing>

Just saw this, dont know if the ACA has any role to play, or the validity of the woman's claim, but . . .

http://www.change.org/petitions/patricia-hemingway-hall-approve-randi-s-blood-plasma-ivig-scig?share_id=KxQrUKnOBf&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition

Jim P., I'm really hoping for Cthulu Of-The-Sea McLaughlin.

How could the wife say no to that?

> Questions for libertarians: When is regulation
> and inspection okay, and when does it
> go too far?

Your question is insincere. It's built from pornographic fantasies of control: 'Of course we should regulate the shit out of all human beings, and inspect all things and all times to make sure nobody is unsafe or inconvenienced!' Your tone implies that we can all add value to each other's lives by working as regulators and inspectors, and that this is the natural state of wealth creation. It's not.

If you approach the matter with sincere humility, the answer will become readily apparent.

I've been diving on a 10-day liveaboard in precisely that area. Finding a safe boat with a disciplined and sober crew isn't too difficult.

Unless you're a mind reader Crid, you have no way of knowing if my question is sincere, or not.

And it is very sincere as when I read my friends here, I am often persuaded by their arguments and so I want to lean libertarian and yet examples like this do show up.

Finding a safe boat with a disciplined and sober crew isn't too difficult.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn0WdJx-Wkw

Shayna, they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into, I say, let them crash.

Apparently Crid, if we're all not as smart as you in choosing a dive boat for our tourist adventure, well, fuck us all, we all deserve to die. The Free Market will sort it out.

And I certainly know when I was diving that I knew shit about dive boats or boats in general and would have no idea of how to find a safe boat or disciplined and sober crew and relied on California's regulatory environment to keep this landlubber safe. I probably deserved to die on those boats for my assumptions and how they destroyed the free market in San Pedro.

If that's your notion of libertarian utopia where ignorant people deserve to die for stepping aboard boats marketed to tourists then fuck me indeed, the liberals are then right to point to Somalia as some libertarian paradise.

When is regulation and inspection okay, and when does it go too far?

I'm not sure if this is really a libertarian standpoint or not, but here goes:

Regulation and inspection is okay when it's being done to ensure some degree of safety and honesty for the consumers. It's goes to far when it's done to control markets, facilitate graft, reward political allies, or punish political opponents.

Where it gets tricky is when the regulatory regime does all these things at once. An example of that might be (and I'm making this up), a tourist boat inspection regime that costs far more than it should actually cost the government to perform. Pretty clearly there's a pay-to-play component to the regime, but unraveling it from the more legitimate components could be politically difficult.

Sign I saw at Dive Mogadishu:

All divers should know and be able to determine

+ if the tanks they rent are corroded
+ if the air they are filled with is good air (no oil, no CO, no exhaust fumes
+ if the regulator they use was properly made and is safe
+ if the glass in their masks is safe and tempered
+ if the pressure gauges are calibrated correctly
+ if their dive computer has the right dive tables
+ if the boat is seaworthy
+ if the boat has enough lifejackets
+ if the crew is competent
+ if the captain is sober & competent
+ if the captain won't leave you behind
+ if the captain and crew aren't pirates

OR ELSE JUST FUCKING DIE ALREADY NOOB SCUBA TOURIST BECAUSE YOU DESERVE IT

NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR SEAL TEAM INTERDICTIONS

"Where it gets tricky is when the regulatory regime does all these things at once."

And I suspect there are few regulatory regimes that aren't confounded in this way.

Trying to subvert a regulatory regime you begin to realize just how useless - and easily defeated - they are:

Right here in the US of A.

> Unless you're a mind reader Crid, you
> have no way of knowing if my question
> is sincere, or not.

If comments require "mind reading" to be understood, why bother making them? There are no mind readers. Besides, I nailed it.

I need you to try and understand how weird this next part is... Because it happens ALL THE TIME.

> if we're all not as smart as you in
> choosing a dive boat for our tourist
> adventure, well, fuck us all, we all
> deserve to die.

For some reason, and nobody really knows why, when Libertarians say government shouldn't do something, or that government shouldn't play TOO large a part in something, others will think that Libertarians don't want that thing to happen at all.

Why does that happen, Jerry? Let's read what you wrote again, because it's violently sarcastic and ugly.

> if we're all not as smart as you in
> choosing a dive boat for our tourist
> adventure, well, fuck us all, we all
> deserve to die.

Did I ever say anything of the kind? Isn't that the childish terror of libertarianism that I was describing?

Is the world really that dangerous?... Do you think every merchant is a cunning viper who'll reach for the last dollar in your wallet as he sends you sinking to your death?

Do you think you're THAT vulnerable? Do you think you have no tools to protect yourself, and that you should be able to move blindly through the world, taking no risks? Do you think libertarians are trying to summon such a world into existence?

"Fuck us all, we deserve to die"? As you typed it, did you even recognize that you were being sarcastically dishonest?

This is how Obama got elected. People expect him to pay their rent and supply their medicine and birth control (for "free"!), and there are even some guys here on the blog who want the gummint to protect them from connivin' wimin's!

And I suspect there are few regulatory regimes that aren't confounded in this way. -- jerry at January 30, 2014 1:23 PM

Do you happen to remember the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

There were several reports of the Coast Guard boarding the hastily contracted cleanup and containment vessels and ordering them back to port because they had only three out of the five fire extinguishers or were missing a life ring. Not a fix or fine ticket but going back to the dock. Or in other words they were delayed from helping with the cleanup for picayune reasons.

A few months ago I was stopped late at night for having headlight out. The cop said get it replaced within ten days or the next stop would be a fine. And the fix or fine tickets have pretty much been around since before I was born.

There are valid safety, health and environmental regulations that need enforcement. But then there are complete bullshit ones that are enforced at a whim.

An example is the ATF Form 4473 (NICS background checks). There were cases that the ATF came in, looked at the forms and threatened to remove the FFL dealer's license because the person that filled out the address using the abbreviation of "Ave." instead of spelling out "Avenue". Or the person put a check mark and not an X in the Yes/No columns.

The libertarian view is that does it make sense for why the government is doing something, and is it actually Constitutional.

Crid, I'm not one for chianti, but GABA pairs well with vodka.

Nine mothers. Nine kids.

One NFL father behind on his payments.

Oh feh Crid, take your bluster elsewhere.

I asked a perfectly reasonable question that goes right to the heart of what Libertarianism is, and if it is a reasonable political philosophy.

> Questions for libertarians: When is regulation
> and inspection okay, and when does it
> go too far?

You then amp that up to 11 and call it insincere and project a tone onto it that was never there. And worse, you take my reasonable question and add a fallacy of the excluded middle to it.

I never asked an either/or question, I never suggested gov't needs to regulate the shit out everything, I asked a perfectly reasonable question "When is regulation and inspection okay and when does it go too far?"

> Your question is insincere. It's built from pornographic fantasies of control: 'Of course we should regulate the shit out of all human beings, and inspect all things and all times to make sure nobody is unsafe or inconvenienced!' Your tone implies that we can all add value to each other's lives by working as regulators and inspectors, and that this is the natural state of wealth creation. It's not.

And then you make a silly but typical Crid claim, oh I am not being sincere and the matter is clear for those of Crids who are humble enough

> If you approach the matter with sincere humility, the answer will become readily apparent.

And then you precisely tell us how smart you are and how everyone should be that smart

> I've been diving on a 10-day liveaboard in precisely that area. Finding a safe boat with a disciplined and sober crew isn't too difficult.

It's not unreasonable for us to wonder what the or else is. And if you don't think the or else is "so they can die" then you should probably fill it in for us -- it sure ain't clear to me.

"The libertarian view is that does it make sense for why the government is doing something

Jim P.,

My guess is there are perfectly great reasons for why the gov't and Coast Guard are inspecting boats for fire extinguishers.

And hey in hindsight, given the 90s days the leak ran for, did the cleanup and containment boat delays really make the problem worse? Or would lives lost due to fires onboard boats be adding tragedy on top of tragedy?

And even so, what you are arguing for in Deep Water Horizon is not no regulation, but smarter and more flexible enforcement.

So I appreciate your response, but it doesn't seem to answer the question of what/when regulation is okay, because again, everyone that proposes a regulation is going to provide a good common sense reason for it.

(I agree entirely on the need for any regulation to be Constitutional.)

I only "amped it up" to two... You were already foaming with distrust of imaginary Libertarian lawlessness.

> I asked a perfectly reasonable question that
> goes right to the heart of what
> Libertarianism is...

Jerry... Puh-leeeze.... You linked a VIDEO OF PEOPLE THRASHING FOR THEIR LIVES, with a 400-word citation for the regulation of travel in Thailand... Which has other problems this week, and they're obviously not caused by chokingly effective technocracy.

That's where you want to start the discussion? And those who challenge you —with (mundane, unremarkable) personal experience— are pretending to be "smart"? You used the word three times.

But Dood, I looked up the name of the boat on the newfangled Internet, and found it listed in a couple magazines. There was no extraordinary investigation. Diving is inherently dangerous... It deserves a little more consideration than going out for a burger. This isn't an intellectual thing.

But the briefest description of the effort sets you off in fearful resentment... You're upset to think you might not be able to hold every vendor in your life to the same standard as United Airlines or Microsoft in America, no matter where on the planet you find them, and no matter how little interest you take in their competence. Is that response anything but Obamanoid?

> Questions for libertarians: When is regulation
> and inspection okay, and when does it
> go too far?

If you're sincere, start here. She gives plenty of attention to the importance of effective government.

You crid, a while ago you were ridculing guys for wanting the same protections under the law that women get.

$3000 for one kid a month? $170,000 a year for all nine?

170000/12= $14,166.67/9 = 1574.07 per kid

So, why are some kids less equal than others?
And why so much? Child support should be based on what it takes to raise a child, not on what the parent earns.

When my mom left my dad he paid more than 500 a month for my sister and I, when he won custody (dont read too much into that, mormon judge in Utah and mom wasnt a mormon)she had to pay him nearly the same amount even though we were now living in rural Utah instead of LA.

The guys got kids and should take care of them. But not to the point he is helping to finance the mothers based on who hired the better lawyer

Dont know how I managed to delete it, but I was asking you, crid, to look at the article Gog posted