On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:01:11 GMT, Jose
wrote:

Back to one sip of beer seven hours before takeoff, vs two glasses of
beer eight hours before takeoff. One's legal, one's not. The one that
is not is probably safer than the one that is. But how far down the
line are you willing to go? And once you decide that, why not "just a
little" further?

Does avoiding the slippery slope lead to "zero tolerance"?

(Pick your favorite idocy associated with zero-tolerance enforcement.)

That's why I keep coming back to the tit on the bulb. My mechanic, at
least, is convinced that if I get hit by lightning and crash, if the
accident investigators find a titless bulb, they're gonna hang him out
to dry -- even if he didn't know about it and it had nothing to do
with the crash.

So when it comes to owner maintenance, I find it easier to tell myself
that any non-approved part can have a "tit" that I don't know about
and that I don't want to be responsible for messing up somebody else's
life -- even if it's a pretty long shot that I will..

I find that easier to wrap my head around than taking an approach
that in other situations leads to throwing a kid out of school because
there's no semantic difference between a butterknife and a K-Bar.

Apologies if my strawman doesn't apply to your version of slippery
slopes.

Don ("Semantic"? There must be a better word.)