In Kentucky, there's hardly any more dueling

State politics

In Kentucky, there's hardly any more dueling

Dueling is really not something they do a lot of in Kentucky anymore. It used to be huge there, but not so much now. So state legislators are proposing a change to the state Constitution that would do away with language that required officeholders to swear that they have never taken part in a duel. Back in the day, it was originally added in an effort to clean up Kentucky's image, but no official has admitted participating in a duel in years. So far, a proposal to amend the language has passed a House committee. If it gets through the House and the Senate, it would go to the ballot in November.

Happy days

Your best days may be yet to come

Scientists in Germany and America have completed groundbreaking research, interviewing 21,000 people, and determined that 74 is the happiest age. Using a scale of 1-7, researchers asked people of all ages to rate their happiness. What they found was that people in their late teens are pretty happy, averaging about 5.5 on the arbitrary scale. Then, life starts happening, and the numbers go down, until about 40, when the average bottoms out at about 5. But then it starts to go back up, topping out at 74 when happiness averages 5.9. The report, published in Social Indicators Research, which is not on newsstands, surmises that we get more appreciative as we get older, and therefore happier.

Police Reports

Such a bad dancer, they called the cops

Ryan Baczkiewicz, 18, has been arrested in Elma, N.Y., for damage he is accused of doing at a party. Baczkiewicz is accused of repeatedly attempting to break dance, apparently without success. Which — very controversially — is not against the law. The problem came about because he is accused of attempting to do this while wearing a large belt buckle with diamonds on it, while "dancing" on a hardwood floor. The home­owner, whose daughters hosted the party while their parents were on vacation, says that there was about $3,000 worth of damage done to the floors, reports WIVB-Ch. 4. Baczkiewicz was reported to be intoxicated, though it was unclear if that affected his ability to dance. He was being held without bail.

Burglar thought he found easy marks

An Amish businessman who owns a shed store in Nickel Mines, Pa., is embracing some technology. After repeated burglaries, he set up a video surveillance system and got an image of the thief. Now other businesses in the area are considering adding similar protection. "(The thief) might think it's an easy mark to go back to, but that's not the case anymore," Lt. Tracy Brown told WGAL-Ch. 8. Amish tradition forbids people from taking photos of themselves, but business owners told the station that they don't have any problems taking photos of someone else. Particularly people robbing them.

Compiled from Times wire services and other sources by staff writer Jim Webster, who can be reached at jwebster@sptimes.com.