HAPPY NEW YEAR
A NEW YEAR’S THOUGHT FROM A WISE FOREFATHER.
“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.”
-Ben Franklin
NEW ILLINOIS LAWS
*Children 2 years of age or under, 40 pounds or under, and 40 inches or under will be required to travel in rear-facing car seats.
*National Guard members will now have the protections afforded to all other branches of the military.
*The ban on ticket quotas is extended to include the City of Chicago Police Department.
*The sale of ivory is officially banned.
NOT ME—NOT NOW!
There’s a retirement village in Australia that recently saw something unusual: a protest by its residents. Seems they got hold of plans to build a crematorium adjacent to their living facilities. Said one of their residents: “We all know we are going to go at some time or other, but we don’t want to be reminded on a daily basis every time we go shopping!”
WANT A PRENUPTIAL?
Jennifer was OK with it. Well…until the marriage went South! And Jennifer then said that Greg never gave her full disclosure of his assets. But the Illinois Premarital Agreement act says that, with such agreement, you’ve given up your right to have a judge decide based on relevant divorce statutes. And the fact that one party may receive a much larger part of the assets doesn’t matter; that alone will not allow a court to declare the agreement invalid, so long as there was “fair & reasonable” disclosure. Which the cited case law says is a “general approximation” of income, assets, and liabilities. Sorry, Jennifer.
COLLEGE SAFETY.
A female college student was stabbed by a classmate while on campus at UCLA. She filed suit against the school for negligence and lost on grounds that the school was not obligated to protect students from other students (even though grammar and high schools were.) But the Supreme Court of the state changed all that last month saying that Universities do indeed have a responsibility to protect students, with whom the Court said the Universities have a “special relationship.”
DO GENEALOGY BASES CONCERN YOU?
Remember last spring when a retired police officer in California was arrested for a number of murders and rapes some 40 & 50 years ago? And the authorities tracked him down thru a relative identified in a DNA website? Well, how concerned are you with giving up your saliva to ID your DNA? And knowing that once you give it up you can’t reverse it!
So the head science officer at MyHeritage wanted to know how easy it would be in the future to track someone. A few of his findings:
–They could identify close relatives in over 60% of European descent (which was their database), meaning “it’s enough to have your 3rd or 2nd cousin once-removed in these databases to actually identify you.”
–And when combined with other information, the scientists could reduce a list of possibilities quickly to simply a few people. “It seems that very quickly we can get virtually to nearly everyone!”
–But even he has lots of caution! It can not only be used to catch criminals but many illegitimate purposes and misuses. Just one? “Are we OK with using this technique to identify people in a political demonstration who [unknowingly] left their DNA behind?”
Second thoughts anyone?
WHAT A RIDE!!
Jillian & Amy were at a South Carolina amusement park one night and took a ride on the “Pipeline Slide.” Seems it didn’t go so well, as each ended up with a broken arm and 2 broken ankles! Now they’re suing the owners, but they’re not alleging negligence. No… the claim is that the owners made the park “too easy” for them to break into!!