Sunday paper tidbits

I find I read the paper with a different intent now that I'm on the lookout for items to post.

- New Jersey has earthquakes. In Morris county (the county just northwest of Union county where we live) there have been two earthquakes in the past two weeks. Both have registered 2.5-3.0, which is enough to be felt and shake things in a house, but not enough to rattle windows. The last serious earthquake in New Jersey was a 5.5 level one in 1884. Scientists believe that a 5.5 magnitude one could happen every 120 years, so I guess we are due for another of those, but they predict a 7.0 magnitude earthquake every 3,500 years, so hopefully we'll be safe on that one.

- In the weird category, a 41-year-old transgender woman has been accused of exercising her 73-year-old husband to death. While it is easy to laugh at that sentence, when you hear more of the story it is actually very sad. S/he refused to let him get out of a swimming pool until he finally had a heart attack. Apparently the surveillance video was horrible to look at. As a side note, the couple got married in Kentucky, where people can change their gender on their birth certificate. Who knew Kentucky was so advanced in trans-gender rights?

- Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that cheerleading is a contact sport. Because of this, teammates, schools, etc. cannot be sued in the event of accidental injury. In New Jersey (as I'm sure it is in much of the country) cheerleading does not fall under the Interscholastic Atheletics agency, so it is not regulated like other sports are. The upside of this is that the teams don't have to practice within a defined season, which being on drill team all those years ago I see as a plus - you don't do competitions the same time you are performing at football games, etc. But on the downside it means there is no regulation by a statewide or national code of rules. And according to the article cheerleading stunts have gotten much more difficult over the past few years (I can't imagine how they compare to when we were in high school, and even those I was impressed with at the time). The final quote in the article by Jim Lord, the director of the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators is chilling: "If we have a catastrophic injury and there's a lawsuit, the question is going to be: 'Why weren't you following the rules?' The answer, 'Because we didn't have to' isn't going to be good enough." Think I'll be pushing Grace toward dance team.