Are you two arguing about whether pistons have rings or not?!?

I think we can all agree that in a perfect world, piston rings would form a perfect seal for their entire working life of the engine and not one drop of oil would ever be lost past them, but in the real world, they are not perfect and get worse with age and some oil will get past. If we can all agree on that, then you can argue all you want about how much oil loss is acceptable.

To that, I say that half quart every 3000 miles is fine by me... the engine never gets starved for oil between changes, and that's the most important thing. My old Honda Prelude SH with 145k miles was burning about 2-3 quarts every 3000 miles. That was a problem, but not unexpected for a high-revving engine that old and that beat on (I was anything but gentle on that car from the day I drove it off the lot). Ultimately, the oil was cheaper than a ring job, so I was willing to live with it.