My government forces me to pay for many things I am morally against. Why should religion be a valid excuse to get out of it, when nothing else is?

Also, is paying for insurance which allows patients to choose the morally objectionable action really "paying for" that action? How is that all that much different from the fact that when insurance doesn't cover it, and the employee pays out of pocket instead, it's with money earned from the job at the same company? Both of those are one step removed - isn't the company either paying or not paying in either scenario?

Listening to this piece on NPR today I was reminded of the 90's, and all the crazy abusive things phone companies did then. Before cellular really hit it big, long-distance calling was contracted separately from but billed through your local phone company. There was a huge competition between long-distance companies. They would not only call you constantly trying to get you to switch, but nefarious activities were common. Once a year at least I'd open up my phone bill and discover I'd been switched to a new long-distance company without my authorization (they called it "slamming" back then), usually with some terrible rate or unintuitive "evenings and weekends" hours, so that what should have been a $20 charge for a few calls was now $50. It was almost impossible to prove you didn't authorize the change, and since the billing went through another company disputing the charges was incredibly difficult. That plus hard to read bills, fishy and/or vaguely labeled charges, and some surprise or another nearly every single month.

Today's news just reminded me that even if it's twenty years later and there's been a huge transition from landline to cellular, in the background nothing has really changed.

I can't recall the last time I saw these words on Slashdot. You must be new aroun-- ... oh, nevermind.

If every week's homily is a discussion of a philosophical paradox, you can count me in.

The university I used to work for offered three insurance plans and on top of that allowed anyone to opt out, take 75% of the money the university would have contributed to the plan, and purchase your own insurance.

I suspect this is a rare case, but they do exist.

Ah, they're not shafted. They can 1) purchase add-ons to their insurance plan, 2) pay out of pocket for things that insurance doesn't cover. It's less convenient and more expensive, yes, but their employer is preventing none of these things. It should also be noted that 3) several forms of birth control *are* still included in the existing insurance, just not ones considered abortifacient by this group.

I don't particularly like this decision, but the consequences are not at all as you're laying them out.

Yeah, I don't get the opposition, either. Considering nearly every writer I know loves books stores of all kinds, including used book stores, it seems absurd to object to reselling a digital one in exactly the same way physical ones have been resold in the past. I tend to assume most of it boils down to the fear if someone can resell once they'll resell a bunch of times.

Assuming it's just one night of drinking, the alcohol will have left the mother's system before the fertilized egg is implanted, possibly even before the egg is actually fertilized.

Funny aside: I knew a gal named after a wine varietal, because a bottle of that type of wine had led to her conception.

Apparently I stand corrected, but that's still a crazy number. Going back to the famous quote, "Nobody went broke underestimating the stupidity of the average person," I am astounded that there are that many unwanted pregnancies. Are people really that completely incapable of managing birth control?

I have to question that number. There are roughly 112 million Americans aged 18 to 44, which is a good enough approximation for childbearing year. If half of those are women, that's 56 million women.

There are 4 million babies born in the US, that means there are 52 million women not having a baby in a given year.

You're suggesting that roughly 2% of eligible American women are getting pregnant, deciding they don't want to be, and having abortions every year? Or that nearly 20% of all American pregnancies are terminated?

I'm probably wasting time responding to an offtopic post by an AC, but that number just doesn't make any sense to me.

I was on a subway in a city, Chicago maybe?, that had a picture of a soda, and then a picture of 20 teaspoons of sugar, with a tag line that read, "You wouldn't eat 20 spoons of sugar, would you? That's what's in this soda." It's been a couple of years, and I still get kind of disgusted when I think of that one. That's a quality educational ad.

Aw, sig line stuff is fair game. I don't find an affiliate link spammy. At least it's a technical topic, and even an answer to a question that people on this forum may be asking.

The problem I have with it is it's factually incorrect, on both counts. If you're looking for inexpensive, 1and1 is at best moderate. And if you're looking for "good" there's lots of more reliable places, though many of them will cost you more. They weren't lousy, mind you, but I had a string of boneheaded interactions with tech support, like the case where I spent half an hour filling out and refilling a ticket until the support agent was satisfied with all the details of the case (having problems with email) only for him to conclude at the end "we're experiencing a denial of service attack right now, so all of our email is down."

But I'm quickly getting off topic ...

It may be that her pieces are usually interesting because Supreme Court decisions are almost always important material, but I'm always genuinely enthusiastic every time Nina Totenberg has air time. She does a great job of distilling the information. As I was reading this article today I was looking forward to my drive home and the segment that will surely air.

The almighty $ has always been life's primary cheat code.

Kingdom of Loathing has a text-based puzzle where you have to select this sequence to pass through a gate.