A follow-up on Sir Edmund, and also on driving while distracted

On Friday, I posted my tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary.  Saturday's Washington Post contained a wonderful tribute of its own, better written than mine, by Tim Watkins:

"While he was that rarest of men -- a true epic hero in an age of 15-minute wannabes -- there wasn't an inch of self-aggrandizement in his mountainous frame . . . my lasting memory of Sir Ed is one in which he is absent. While he was enduring anniversary ceremonies back in Kathmandu, I visited one of the schools he helped build in the Himalayas. I met 300 children in a remote corner of one of the poorest countries in the world, some who walked an hour to get to school. They would not have been receiving an education without Sir Ed's persistence and generosity. His legacy was not that day on the mountaintop, it was in the determined faces of those children . . . "

Reading Watkins's eloquent column, I was struck that Hillary possessed a quality that seems in such short supply in my world:  humility.  Living in DC, working with Los Angelenos and New Yorkers in an organization whose mission is to change the world, to say that I don't encounter humility very much is a gross understatement.  The world I inhabit is built on audacity and hubris, not modesty.  And it's a shame. 

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Turning to another subject, I also want to post a followup to my earlier entry on people who endanger lives and cause gross inconvenience by driving while talking on cell phones.  And, speaking of audacity, the Post also reports, in a story headlined "Virginia Considers Ban On Driving While Texting," that "Some Virginia lawmakers want drivers to take their thumbs off the keyboards and put them back on the steering wheel while cruising down Virginia's roads."

Some lawmakers?  Considers?  The article goes on to point out that attempts to enact a law to ban handheld cell phone use while driving have been unsuccessful and that, while the legislature did ban such use (theoretically; see my earlier rant re enforcement) by teenagers, "they can be cited only if they are stopped for another offense."

Honestly.  You can't make this stuff up.  What exactly, I wonder, is the argument in favor of driving while texting?  Of course, this is the same state that requires a permit only if you want to purchase more than one handgun per month, so clearly they travel to the beat of a different drum.  (Baby boomers, join me in cueing up Linda and the Stone Poneys.)