GIFTING CIRCLES: JUST HOW ILLEGAL ARE THEY?

 Here is an idea: You give me some money. By giving me some money you will be entitled to ask others to join our group. Eventually, there is a chance you will receive money. Sound about right? No? Okay, how about I form a sister empowerment group that shares abundance. We focus on fulfilling our deepest selves through gifting love (and cash) toward the center of our lotus circle and someday, after you gather more women together, with lightness and invigorating clarity, you might blossom into the center and receive the abundance.  Sound better?

NOT MILK? CAN I CALL MY FROZEN VEGAN CREATION “ICE CREAM"?

Here is a little t.m.i. for you all (by the way, t.m.i. stands for “too much information” if it’s been awhile since you were around teen-speak): my mother likes to joke that after I was born she understood the meaning of the term, “snot-nosed kid.”  I know it will come as a shock to all of you that yours truly was ever disgusting, but we all have some color in our pasts and mine, apparently, was greenish yellow.  Eww!  Did I forget to tell you to put down your food before reading this?  So, um, moving right along I will report that, after the hassle of an elimination diet, we determined that the cause of this minor blip in my otherwise perfect nature was a sensitivity to dairy.

I WANT TO ROCK OUT MY PODCAST WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S SONGS, ANY ISSUES?

So you’ve decided to start dj’ing for your internet fans and want to show off your prodigious talent for selecting cool tunes. Maybe this will kickstart your international empire of cool. Except, you don’t want to pay anyone to play.


Before you get rolling, I want to introduce you to a little friend of mine. He is called “copyright law”— and he is ever so cute. No, actually, I take that back. He isn’t cute at all. Copyright law in the United States (yes, this is federal U.S. law) applies to creative and expressive works, which are most of the things that are included in a podcast. This includes, for example, performances, scripts, interviews, musical works and sound recordings. Under current US copyright law, copyright attaches automatically to creative, expressive works once they have been “fixed”, i.e. written down or recorded. Copyright law gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to control certain activities in relation to their work. Here are some examples of what a copyright owner can control:

HOW CAN I LEGALLY HAVE TWO WIVES?

You want two wives? This is an interesting question. Until I wrote this post, in 2013 I assumed that most men would enjoy having one wife and one or two mistresses more than being legally responsible for two full-fledged wives. However, clearly I was wrong. This is by far my most popular post-- which means that lots, and lots of you are typing the heading into search engines. 


Well, I always knew my readers are an extraordinary bunch and you are not most men. (If you are even a man at all— See my post on the latest laws regarding homosexual marriage.)

WHY DO WE NOTARIZE DOCUMENTS?

To notarize or not to notarize that is the question.

The purpose of notarization is to deter fraud.

A notary complies with a statuary method to determine the identity of the individual that signed a document and, as needed, administers oaths.  This greatly increases the reliability of the signature.

Although there may be other ways to prove that someone signed a document, a notarization is a clean, cost-effective method.  In many places notarization is required by statute for certain documents (deeds, mortgages, power of attorneys), but it is a good practice for any important document.  If the document is ever in dispute in a lawsuit the notarization provides a significant procedural advantage because it is “self-authenticating” meaning that the signer doesn’t have to take the stand and swear that he signed it before the court will accept it into evidence.  You can imagine how useful this is if the signer is dead or otherwise unavailable.