Toyota saves us from ourselves! Parker probably doesn't drive one.

Well, I'm sure to get flamed for this, but driving is a privilege, not a freedom. You must pass a test to prove you should be allowed to drive in order to get a licence. And though I'm Canadian, I don't recall freedom to drive being in the American constitution.

Less so is it a "freedom" to drink and drive.

Glenn, I agree that the anti-smoking, anti-fat, anti-etc, lobby is going too far. But there's a big difference. What I do to myself is my own business. That's my freedom. I do not, however, have a freedom to act in a way that endangers others.

Drunk driving puts others at risk. Period. Full stop. And we, as a society, are entitled to take actions to prevent it and protect ourselves.

I will agree that knowing your limits is a personal responsibility. But let's face it, there are a lot of irresponsible people out there.

Last night I drove to a bar after consuming enough to get myself in trouble with the law and felt liberated. Haven't done it in a while.

Covert, please tell me you didn't just admit to driving drunk. If so, you've only proved my point.

I doubt they will be satisfied until people are thrown in jail for carrying a few extra pounds around and there are fines for missing one's daily required workout.

Yes, it's so obvious here in America that the "they" are studiously enforcing all the fat edicts. All you have to do is look around at your fellow citizens (and in a mirror, perhaps; no perhaps in my case) to see how efficiently that is working. It is a terrible thing, living in such a repressive society, isn't it?

Now, you'll have to exuse me. I have to run down to my local McDonalds (the one on this block, not the next one) for my hit of transfats while I can still get them on the local market. Guess I'll have to make a connection in the future for that.

Smoking was only the beginning. It has now moved into trans-fats. Drinking, wine included is next.... don't doubt it for an instant. I doubt they will be satisfied until people are thrown in jail for carrying a few extra pounds around and there are fines for missing one's daily required workout. Glenn

Society can make a case that you are hurting others no matter what you do. Our tax dollars have to pay hospital bills for a lot of old people who smoked and ate too much fat, for example. I would say if somebody wants to smoke, and needs bypass surgery because of it, and they have no money, they don't get a bypass.

I tried to find a philosophy or political party that agrees with my line of thinking, but I don't think there are any. So I just own my opinions for no reason. There was a Twilight Zone episode on TV last night where a decent young man who had drunk too much ran down and killed a little girl with his wagon in the old west. They hanged him for it. I don't have any problem with that. If we just killed people who irresponsibly crashed their cars into others, whether they were stupid from drinking, or from talking on the phone, or just not paying attention, people would be more careful and the problem would stop. But the way this country seems to be going is to tell me I can't drink some wine and drive my car, but they will let a rapist out of jail after a few months to do it again, and then the next time argue that he needs therapy instead of a hanging. There's some kind of wus attitude going on over the last 20 or 30 years that I don't want any part of.

There's some kind of wus attitude going on over the last 20 or 30 years that I don't want any part of.

There's nothing wussy about people being accountable for their actions when they could harm others. Be a man. Take responsibility.

Mike: You need to learn not to pay attention to Covert when he amuses himself by posting things simply to get responses from people. Especially when he's being archly illogical and doesn't make sense. It's a game he likes to play, and he feels rewarded when someone takes him seriously by responding.

Re-read his comments and then ask yourself who would likely be the first person to call the best lawyer specializing in getting people out of DUI cases in Allegheny County if he were pulled over? I suspect Covert's firmly held socio-political beliefs end at right about the point where his cherished liberties begin.

Hoke: Good to know. Thanks.

Last night I drove to a bar after consuming enough to get myself in trouble with the law and felt liberated. Haven't done it in a while.

Covert, please tell me you didn't just admit to driving drunk. If so, you've only proved my point.

By the Government teat measure, Yes.

Those few who are truly irresponsible will eventually ruin everything in life for the rest of us. Fanatics and idiots are slowly taking away all of our freedoms.

That's an oversimplication, David. The problem with alcohol is that one aspect of alcohol impairment is a loss of judgement. The same disinhibition that causes people to become more loquacious after a few glasses of wine also reduces their ability to recognize their own impairment. True, many of us are fearful enough that we've learned to identify our own internal signs of impairment, but not all have done so, especially people who haven't had much experience with alcohol.

I for one would never drive a car with sucha device. If they become standard in new autos I will buy used cars for the rest of my life. It's my job when I drink to drink responsibly. It's not Toyota or Ford's job to check up on me. Realize that the first time someone manages to drive one of those cars while seriously impaired (and you know someone will) that an auto maker will get sued into the stone age. And it won't have been their fault.

People must take responsibility for their own lives!!

That's a specious argument. In fact, it's a classic strawman. No one's denying that we have a responsibility to not drive when impaired by alcohol or any other drug. This device does nothing to change that fact. What it does, in fact, only affects people who have not behaved "responsibly," so where's the conflict? People also have a responsibility to not spread AIDS or other sexually-transmitted diseases; should we therefore oppose the use of condoms?

Mark Lipton

Mike: You need to learn not to pay attention to Covert when he amuses himself by posting things simply to get responses from people. Especially when he's being archly illogical and doesn't make sense. It's a game he likes to play, and he feels rewarded when someone takes him seriously by responding.

Hoke, I think logic is overrated. Consistency might be the hobgoblin of little minds, but logic is the child of even smaller chunks of gray matter: that thin cortex layer which developed into its current thinking state only in the last few hundred thousand years. The brain stem, with its reptilian impulses, on the other hand, has been around 500 million years.

When we screen everything we think through the cortex, to make it logical, we throw out the first 500 million years of who we are. (Some folks would argue that the patterns of the mind existed in inorganic states for at least 6 billion years prior to life.)

Dionysus was “invented” to symbolize the vast unconscious, primitive and irrational reaches of our minds, so that we could experience through him the ecstasy and joy which recognition of our total selves brings.

We should behave in society; - but if we don’t recognize, appreciate, and even celebrate, our irrational heritage, the energy of our largely unconscious mind will find its way out in untoward ways.

I love the connection between the Dionysian and wine experiences, which are in mythology synonymous. That’s why I choose this forum to sometimes express my irrational thoughts in addition to trying to get peoples’ goats. And the expression “getting somebody’s goat” is derived from finding the Dionysus (the goat) in someone, - a nice thing to do for him (hers often get it naturally).

Best,

Covert

[James Roscoe]

Covert, that is illogical, but you knew that already!

Covert:

What an inventive circumlocution to justify driving while intoxicated and willfully endangering other people's lives.

"I wasn't drunk, Occifer. I was just getting in touch with my bad reptilian self, thassall."

And what an interesting way to depict hundreds of millions of years of evolution of a species, from proto-reptilian to sentience and civilization, as a negative thing, an inconvenient imposition of cerebral cortex keeping us from 'being our true selves' (and thank the supposed deity of your choice for that).

It's clear you see yourself as the love-child of Ayn Rand and Pan, capering around in your goatboy chaps in the sylvan glade, riffing on the old wine-as-divinity thing (or whatever your drug of choice is). And that's fine. Whatever peels your banana, Giles.

All I ever got was a B in Philosophy. I knew I had missed something by not getting that A.

It's no surprise that there is an intellegent discussion in the Wine Forum!!

Hmm - must see about getting the snorkel concession near the local pubs at closing time. Or do you think that people driving around breathing through a snorkel over their shoulder to avoid the steering wheel sniffer might act as a tip-off to the cops that they might want to stop you....

Hmm - must see about getting the snorkel concession near the local pubs at closing time. Or do you think that people driving around breathing through a snorkel over their shoulder to avoid the steering wheel sniffer might act as a tip-off to the cops that they might want to stop you....

Don't know about that Bill, but I think wearing the rubber suit and flippers would get you attention, and it appears the rubber suit might have its place in this discussion...padded of course.