[CAPTAINZING2000]

Among recent troubling news: After Rafer Wilson crashed into a parked car in Sydney, Australia, his blood-alcohol content (according to evidence at his trial in December) was tested at an almost death-defying .462, nine times the legal presumption of impairment. (Three weeks later, in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, doctors said a 67-year-old man had produced a blood-alcohol reading of .914, which supposedly stood up through four re-tests, and have stuck with the story despite worldwide alarm.) And Gary W. Rodgers was arrested in November in Lexington, Ky., and according to the county's offender database, it was his 96th arrest for public drunkenness in 2004. [News Limited (Sydney), 12-17-04] [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News, 1-4-05] [Lexington-Fayette Urban County Division of Community Corrections, 11-16- 04]

A 34-year-old man performing a field sobriety test for a police officer alongside Route 130 in Bordentown, N.J., was killed when a tractor-trailer driver (who police said had probably been drinking) lost control and smashed into him (December). (The officer jumped out of the way in time.) And a 40-year-old New York City man was killed when, inebriated, he fell and broke a fish tank, fatally slashing an artery; he had recently purchased the tank to help his girlfriend's kids learn responsibility (December). And a 47-year-old man was crushed to death in Albany, Ga., when the tree he was cutting down fell on top of him (December). [Trentonian, 12-19-04] [New York Post, 1-1-05] [Atlanta Journal Constitution-AP, 12-22-04