Saturday, January 31, 2004

(timesuck) resource for wisconsin singles

As evidenced by the rise speed-dating and Internet-personals, it's becoming increasingly common for people to go on dates with people on the basis of very superficial and possibly erroneous information. "How does she know the guy isn't a convicted ax murderer?" a friend of mine once asked, referring to another friend who was making prolific use of the nerve/salon/onion personals. One might take as evidence that ax murderers, unless they commit their crime well before age 18, are usually put away for life, or if not for life at least long enough that you could use the fact that the man appears to be under 45 as a good rule-of-thumb that he's not a ax murderer, or at least not one convicted as an adult. Obviously, for many this is not evidence enough, and besides many singles would be interested in knowing whether the person they dating had been convicted of felonies much more mild that ax-murder. Here, at least for readers in Wisconsin, is a site you can use to check the complete "official" Wisconsin criminal history for anyone.

I discovered a couple of traffic convictions for a woman I dated in my first year here at Madison (Amanda This, Amanda That), and I was tempted to link to the page as a demonstration of how the search system works, but then I decided that would probably be a Not Nice Thing To Do. Plus I don't think the link would work, anyway.

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