If ever there was an area where daily experience and social science research converge, it's the phenomenon of idiots text-messaging and talking on cell phones while driving.

Risking the lives of pedestrians and fellow drivers, these self-absorbed commuters have an inflated sense of their skill behind the wheel. They're as bad as serious killers when it comes to an almost pathological inability to imagine the consequences of their actions.

Every day, negligent drivers navigate turns at intersections with one hand, putting the their lives -- and ours -- at risk. They never have enough time to make eye contact with elderly citizens or distracted parents unlucky enough to be pushing baby carriages across their path.

All it takes is one second of lost reaction time and an event that was completely avoidable if both hands were on the wheel will haunt these drivers for the rest of their lives.

Carnegie Mellon University professor Marcel Just insisted during testimony before the House Transportation Committee recently that cell phone use while driving should be banned.

The research Dr. Just shared with Pennsylvania lawmakers showed a 37 percent drop in brain activity associated with driving.

It's not surprising that the most distracted drivers, according to a Virginia Tech University study, are 18-to-20-year-olds who rack up four times as many accidents and near crashes as any other group, including old folks who drive slower than molasses through the Squirrel Hill Tunnels.

Several bills are being debated in Harrisburg, but minority chairman Rep. Richard Geist, R-Altoona, opposes a ban on cell phone use in cars as long as we continue to pluck our eyebrows, shave, apply makeup, scarf down breakfast and floss while driving.

I'm all for criminalizing those things, too, if it results in reasonable and rational legislation that bans cell phone use while driving. That's a law that could actually save lives in Pennsylvania.

Still, we live in a state that made it optional for motorcyclists to drive without life-saving helmets, so I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a cell phone ban.

There was a time when the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's only mission was maintaining its monopolistic grip on the state's booze supply.

These days, the LCB is still a soul-crushing monopoly, but it understands the importance of appearing to have evolved with the times.

Since 2003, the LCB has had a crisp Web site -- www.lcb.state.pa.us -- that makes paternalism feel smart and enlightened.

Navigating around the site is almost enough to make us forget that our state is second only to Utah to the degree with which it regulates alcohol and spirits the way medieval societies once imposed chastity belts on maturing women.

While squinting through the haze of wholesome LCB propaganda, you'll come across an innocuous link called "Alcohol Education." That link will take you to a menu with another link to a place called "Kids' Zone."

Faster than you can wonder why any kid would ever have a legitimate reason to visit the LCB site, you're clicking on the link to see what the state has to say to future customers.

But be warned! Making the journey into the LCB site for children is a little like what happened to Alice when she fell into the rabbit hole. The "Kids' Zone" link is a portal to an alternate LCB universe where lack of autonomy is a good thing.

When the "Welcome to the L.C. Bee's Kids Webpage!!" unfurls, you'll see interlocking puzzle pieces with tags like "Coloring Fun," "Saying 'No' to Alcohol," "Under 21 Fun" and "Meet L.C. Bee's Friends."

After the initial shock passes, you realize it's harmless, albeit a bit on the creepy side.

Really, what's the likelihood that any responsible parent would let their child sing along with songs extolling the virtues of the LCB? Doesn't such a thing smack of Soviet propaganda and social realism? What next -- coloring pictures of tractors rolling through Amish country?

I have to question whether visiting the site had its intended effect in the end. The more I thought about the Kids' Zone's anthropomorphic mascot L.C. Bee, the more my hands shook uncontrollably, as if I had the tremors.

Speaking of tremors, I've been getting calls for days about a bar in Oakland that has as a promotion something called "Wetback Wednesdays."

Suddenly, I'm starting to understand why Pittsburgh has never been a magnet for Hispanics. If it's even remotely true that a bar would chance insulting -- even inadvertently -- folks who will be the numerical majority in this country in less than a century, it shows short-term thinking at its most disastrous. This is what happens in insular communities -- too much racial inbreeding.