why is alcohol legal: the george best/opening hours thread

alcohol is legal because not everyone who uses it abuses it.the reason we have binge drinking in high schools and colleges is because children are raised in a culture of alcohol being this great evil. it's not. wine and beer used to be the only drink because water wasn't safe and couldn't be kept. if people raised their children to have a healthy respect for alcohol things would be different. but, just like sex, our puritan values are killing us. our government wasn't founded by puritans, but our culture was. as a result, we don't talk about sex, so we can't be responsible about pregancy and diseases, and we have all these bizarre prohibitions on alcohol which makes our children rebel and kill themselves.

attention deficit disorders do not prevent the person from paying attention. people with AD/HD are able to focus, just on multiple things at once. this makes it difficult to focus on something uninteresting, like a lecture or homework. this is only a problem in the classroom. it is obviously an adaptation for hunters to be able to focus not only on their prey but also something that might prey on them. back when our society was divided into hunters and gatherers, it was an important adaptation. a non-adapted person would get et (something like eaten but more je ne sais pas).as a result, people with AD/HD should make better drivers as they are more able to concentrate on everything on the road.but then we'll never know who really has AD/HD and who really is a speed freak.

bad drivers tend to be flighty, self-centered idiots. people with genuine AD/HD do not, by necessity, fall into this category.i, however, am a bad driver because i have very low spacial reasoning and poor depth perception. but i'm still better than FUCKING EVERYONE ELSE in south florida hehe.but yes. back on topic.

no. during that time people had much higher tolerances.

no. insurance tables only reflect people who get into massively damaging and fatal accidents. they don't report fender benders. bad drivers get into fender benders. inexperienced drivers get killed.do a study on minor accidents and see what you get.

which is so different from the widespread reports of drunkenness now...

insurance companies seek to protect themselves from very costly accidents. see the male and high speeds? yeah. those tend to result in very damaging and costly accidents. they don't care too much about fender benders because they tend to be less costly than the premiums paid by consumers. yes, all accidents will make your rates increase, but notice they give discounts to women who tend to be more likely to have minor accidents because they're too busy doing the myriad other things in the car instead of driving like makeup and 'parenting' and such. this is still symptomatic of bad driving. good drivers can get into catastrophic accidents. good drivers don't tend to get into minor accidents.insurance tables don't reflect driving ability... only liability.

no not really. if no more people were drunk then than are drunk now that there are more things to drink than wine, then it stands to reason that at least some people had increased tolerances.further, your use of words like soused demonstrates your normative preferences and that i cannot prove you wrong because you will present every argument to show me that drinking is bad and i'm a heathen. congrats fundie.

Right. ALL accidents, citations, and tickets will make your rates go up.

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This is in contrast to what you said before, which was that insurance companies don't even include information on anything other than huge, catastrophic accidencts.and yet they have blanket rules and charge males under 25 more no matter what. i know a guy who will wait out a protected left turn just in case someone runs the light. he drives me crazy cause he drives like a granny. he still pays ridiculous rates.why? because they only really care about catastrophic accidents in which they have to replace one or both cars and pay thousands of dollars in medical bills. if they just have to pay about a thousand bucks to fix your bumper and his taillight, they win. if they have to pay to keep someone in traction for 6 months and replace someone's spleen and funeral arangements and two cars, they lose. insurance is a game of risk.No. Women have fewer accidents overall because they tend to not take as many risks as males.i guess it's not sexist if you win...
every accident i've ever seen involved a woman. i've seen so many women back into other people, not stop short enough, and simply forget that there were other cars on the road that might be more important than that cell phone call.
women tend to take fewer risks, so they don't tend to get into serious accidents.but i'm not talking about women, i'm talking about bad drivers. oh wait.

thank you. my google has issues.*sigh* she's the first to scream about sexual stereotypes until they work in her favor.

i just happen to look around me instead of trusting statistics.
as a student of a discipline that puts way too much trust in numbers and their alleged reflection of patterns and causality i know the kind of things statistics can be twisted into. why do women get in more accidents now? probably because more women drive now than before. the female to male ratio in the population is higher and still growing. further, all the women who were old enough to let their husbands drive are either widowed or dead.you can't just say oh more men than women get in wrecks when there are other factors that could be affecting it.

So, in other words, you're a creationist.and you're an asshole.no. scientists trust nature and i trust my own two eyes. i will trust their statistics when i see a test of significance and a test of generalizability.

well. seeing as i tend to move every couple years and travel a lot and to very different locations, my sample size is a bit bigger. yes i appreciate your point but it's not applicable.

yep. because you are now prone to not being defensive.

that there are more things to drink than wine,
But people used to ferment everything at home, especially beer, back then, so even though more is available now, one never was without it back then because you made it yourself.
i mean that there is water and juice and soda etc. context clues, really.Also, it is likely, and there is scholarly opinion that a lot of people spent much of the day, every day, drunk.show me a lit review, not just one source that happens to back you up. you're so intent on proving me wrong. i just think the whole thing is funny. i don't care about the history of alcohol, i just care that you seem to think that anyone who drinks more than some preposterous amount -that you have decided upon but won't share- is a damn drunk and a terrible person because of it. i have the choice not to drink; i also have the choice not to get drunk. i don't get drunk; however, i do drink a great deal. but i also have the opinion that you are a very judgemental person who draws conclusions then scurries around to defend them taking great comfort when something ridiculous backs you up.now, you've been jumping down my throat for two days about shit that doesn't matter and isn't even on topic. i make one side comment and you go nuts about it. get over it. you're a pain.