No need to be an industry veteran like Isaac Toussie to know that real estate laws throughout the country will vary. It’s what makes real estate law so fascinating – as well as quite a challenge to stay on top of! Look at Alabama, for instance. There, “buyer beware” is held in a very, very high regard by the courts, such that even in cases of outright fraud buyers may have no legal recourse anyway – when that property has been bought on a strictly “as-is” basis. That’s right: Alabama case law takes the old dictum of caveat emptor very, very seriously, to the point of, in effect, allowing for otherwise illegal activity!

The Yellowhammer State takes the notion of “as-is” so literally that unless somehow superseded, the terms means exactly just that, even if the seller described the property with lies. That’s right, it’s really been upheld that misrepresentations are entirely legal under that basis.. Most anywhere else that’s just fraud and will probably lead to some jail time, but an Alabama court has ruled that as the as-is clause in the sales contract was not superseded by any other provision signed onto by both parties, the as-is clause shall be interpreted literally!

That was an ambiguous situation in the eyes of Alabama law, but the law itself in Alabama is actually not quite as simplistically draconian as the quick snapshot of the case provided here would suggest. As if evidence of a peculiar regional preference for legal loopholes of all kinds, Alabama law will only hold such a strict view towards used property, not new ones. Such as-is clauses are also superseded in cases where the misrepresentation is not obvious and potentially harmful to health and safety.

Alas for the plaintiff in Teer v. Johnston, however, while the misrepresentation was not something obvious it was not deemed harmful to health or safety, making nothing more than an inconvenience or nuisance at most. What plaintiff should have done was stipulating in the contract or the deed that pre-sale disclosures hold despite the sale!

Are wedding favors going out of style as society gets ever more informal?
Not if the gals have anything to do with it!

The practice of giving gifts to matrimonial guests may not be the cultural institution it once was, but weddings will always be one of the biggest dynamos within any economy.
While wedding favors may not be the first thing or two that delighted couples think about when organizing their special day, it is something that is still expected and few ceremonies would feel complete without some souvenir for the guests.

Obviously, were marriage itself to continue to decline, then there may well be a day when wedding favors go extinct — as nuptials themselves do!
This type of situation is improbable, and outright impossible for the near future.
The wedding industry is and will continue to be healthy for decades to come.

To play the futurist for a moment, nevertheless, let us envision a world centuries ahead where human civilization has evolved considerably, a Star Trek future where money itself is no longer used, a society as drastically different from our own as ours is from that of the neanderthal.

No more sickeness, incredibly very long life spans if not immortality plain and simple.
Would marriage still make any type of sense in such a world?
Can people truly be monogramous “forever and ever” when there is no death to do them part?

Maybe not forever, but it does seem that as naturally social creatures there will always be a pairing off of human beings, even if only for a period of time, and it’s not inconceivable that some couples would wish to publicly proclaim their arrangements: that is, to get married.
This could mean that guests would still be receiving favors, or gifts, in appreciation of their attendance, even in an otherwise totally changed world!

CPE requirements of late (relatively speaking) has emphasized ethics more and more, especially for lawyers and accountants.
Usually, continuing professional education courses consist of self-study, whether online or by using traditional materials like workbooks and the like.
Nevertheless, credits may also be received through attending qualifying seminars, such as those popular talks given by those accountants, lawyers, and others convicted of so-called white-collar crimes.

Yes, listening to fraudsters and scammers may satisfy some CPE requirements, depending on the certifying body governing the profession in each state!
Okay, so it’s quite an amusing concept, but then again, who else is there better qualified to instruct of such things than those with personal knowledge by virtue of their criminal activities?

Just about the most well-known of such speakers is Sam Antar, the former Chief Financial Officer for Crazy Eddie’s, his cousin’s eponymous business in consumer electronics.
Rising from a lowly stockboy back when the company was a really modest local neighborhood success, Sam Antar finished up very close to his cousin Eddie Antar because of his role as the pro enabler that greatly facilitated the organization’s widespread accounting fraud.
Given such an insider’s role, it’s easy to see why his lectures today can command credits that meet CPE requirements: after all, it takes one to know one!

Indeed, Sam Antar, while acknowledging the depth of his offenses, doesn’t flinch from the truth: he is only on the right side of the law these days because he was caught.
Had the whole Crazy Eddie’s saga never collapsed as a result of greed and in-fighting among some of the principals included, Sam Antar could be busy today enabling white-collar crime as he generally had, not fighting it himself as he is in a sense forced to do because of economic conditions related to his now toxic work history and professional notoriety.

Located on New York City’s tony Upper East Side neighborhood, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is dedicated to both teaching and research. As one of the most selective of medical schools in the country, enrolling only about a hundred students per class out of some six thousand applicants in any given year. Now named Weill Cornell Medical College and, even more often, simply “Weill Cornell,” the school was partially endowed by Sanford Weill, an American banker and philanthropist who was the former executive officer and chairman of Citigroup, Incorporated. Mr. Weill and his wife donated over two hundred and fifty milion of their own money, with Mr. Weill able to raise a further hundred and fifty million through his own tireless efforts.

The school was already famous long before Mr Weill’s contributions, and not once had it lacked for benefactors, a veritable Who’s-Who of local, national, and even international luminaries from business, politics, and entertainment, for instance real estate veteran Isaac Toussie. After all, it’s the first American medical school to accept women right alongside men. It was also the first American medical school to have locations outside the United States, with an Education City, Qatar campus offering a six-year integrated curriculum focused on patient care. The school can count many a notable physician among its alumni, leading men of medicine like Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop. Other alumnus luminaries include Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley and Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich Maneuver.

Anyway, despite all the monetary support, the fiscal realities of a medical education are grim, with some forty-two thousand dollars needed for the first year and thirty-eight thousand required for the second. But that’s still quite a deal when compared against the university’s own law school expenses, which eclipse it at just about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars over four years!

Sam Antar was the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, his cousin’s electronics retail empire.
Sam is a much sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit currently, and his seminars may even earn CPE and CLE credits for the attendees.

That’s because he is a convicted fraudster.

Ethics continuing education courses are generally self-paced correspondence courses one takes at one’s own leisure as a part of maintaining one’s professional good standing.
Reading through Sam’s site on the worldwide web, however, is as educational as any structured academic account can be.

As the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, Sam presided over one of the most famous scandals in the chronicles of corporate crime.
He lays everything out, bare, raw, and unembellished by any of the usual self-serving rationaliziations frequently given to insiders’ accounts – all unadulterated on his website.

This is an ethics CPE course like no tomorrow – if it were accredited as such.
As it is, it’s just a website – but oh, what a website!

White-collar law-breaking never sounded so exciting.
That’s because the Crazy Eddie’s scandal was at heart a soap opera featuring all the common human foibles known to a Greek chorus – lust, greed, betrayal, along with family.
Yes, family.

The familial element in this drama makes this type of corporate offense so – if the pun is going to be pardoned – familiar to lay readers, grabbing and holding their awareness where other accounts might lose them under a mountain / hill of technical particulars.
However, it isn’t that Sam offers no minutiae of his own; his very purpose today is to combat criminal activity, after all; it’s that these details, which would be so boring otherwise minus the benefit of a human drama in which to place them in the correct perspective, come to vivid life against the context of a family power struggle that resonantes powerfully with everyone who’s actually underwent any semblance of sibling rivalry.

How’s that for an ethics CPE course!

Taking online CPE courses is more convenient than ever before, but it’s still something that one would need to take seriously.
Those unfamiliar with continuing professional education may suppose it’s just some kind of nonsense or they may think it’s like school all over again.
The truth is, however, somewhere in the middle.

Online CPE courses help make it even less like school, and for all the seriousness involved they could be almost fun.
A well-written course can help to make things seem less onerous – as anything obligatory often tends to be – but of course if one is a professional then one will do whatever needs to be done regardless of the fun factor!

Still, it’s good to know that not all online CPE courses need to be as dull as traditional mail correspondence courses were.
No need to make a chore even more of a chore, after all!
Hopefully, staying on top of developments in one’s field, whether it be the law or medicine or any other profession, could be exciting enough in and of itself.

Frankly, if undergoing continuing education would be a problem, then there’s no reason to enter such careers to start with, despite the prestige and the higher income.
(And, in the case of lawyers, the higher income is nowhere near as assured as for the other professions!)
These days, even personal fitness trainers are expected to take continuing education courses.
That’s right – those guys and gals at the gym!

Chalk it all up to an ever increasingly competitive job market, where credentials mean getting a foot in the door.
Naturally, it’s not just market pressures, as the scope of knowledge in a field like medicine is always increasing with each new discovery.
However, while something like the law is also subject to constant change, it merely does not command the same kind of rates these days as it once did.
Law graduates have actually gone on to file class-action lawsuits against their alma maters, putting those legal skills to the just use they can find in this economy!

What’s so interesting about On Off Digital World for me is that it evokes a certain time in New York. Well, the eighties, really. Back then you still needed a token board the subways, and pizza was a buck a slice and comic books just as cheap. Back then there was no Neflix and video on demand, when, indeed, cable was just trying to take off in terms of widespread adoption. It was an innocent time, in a sense — when mom-and-pop stores like Montgomery Ward were where you went for electronics. That’s what today’s On Off Digital evokes.

Affiliate marketing is a superb way for the tech-savvy hobbyist to make some money on the side.
For a select few who have managed to put their finger on the Zeitgeist, however, it means full financial independence, with income in the tens of thousands per month!

Just about the most celebrated cases of affiliate marketing made good have been that of Dr. Arnold Kim, M.D.
While still a medical student, he began a website committed to rumors about Apple products.
This was back right at the turn of the century, before the word “blog” had entered into the well-known lexicon.
Even while diagnosing patients, Dr. Kim kept up the site, though soon enough it took on a life of its own, with forty million page views monthly, as certified by independent research firms.

Dr. Kim was already well-off because of his medical practice, but affiliate marketing also generated a six-figure income – and he was only devoting comparatively little time to his site!
Believing that things could grow so much more were he to invest his whole day, Dr. Kim gave up his stethoscope and plunged whole-heartedly into the world of professional blogging.

Similar types of internet riches abound, such as that of the teenager who became a millionaire by creating free MySpace designs for individuals to download, or the college student behind “The Million-Dollar Homepage” which made money by just selling space to advertisers.
What they have in common is that their success is entirely traffic-driven: it’s all about the eyeballs, the number of visitors per month, week, day, even hour – both repeat and first-time (known in the industry as “unique”).
Get the numbers, and you will earn money.

But how do you receive the numbers?
Content.
“Content is king.”
If you have something lots of people are interested, such that they will keep visiting your site, you will make money – assured.
The only real question is what content or material to serve up!

Located within one of the richest zip codes in the entire United States, the school of medicine at Cornell University both teaches and conducts research. The school can brag about quite a few luminaries among its alumni, with famous names like Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and Henry Heimlich of Heimlich Maneuver fame. Also well-known are former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop and Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley.

The very first institution to admit women as well as men, it has more recently established itself as a pioneer in another way by operating the first medical school outside the United States – in Education City, Qatar, with a campus that provides six years of integrated studies focused on patient care. With such a storied tradition, it is probably not surprising that the institution has been the beneficiary of much financial backing – since the very beginning, in fact, funded as it was through an endowment established by Colonel Oliver H. Payne, a prominent New Yorker of the mid-nineteenth century – and its list of financial backers include the likes of professional developer Isaac Toussie.

But the single largest contributor of all is the man who whose name would be borne by the school, Sanford I. Weill. A banker and philanthropist, Mr. Weill and his wife donated two hundred and fifty million dollars of their own money, and he has been instrumental in further securing another hundred and fifty million in funding. Today the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, or Weill Cornell Medical College (or even more colloquially, especially within the field, “Weill Cornell”), ranks among the most selective of medical schools in the whole country, with only around a hundred students every year admitted – out of some six thousand hopefuls that apply. How selective? Well, 3.8 GPAs are typical, as are 35Q MCAT scores!

Community support will always be a basic necessity for the survival and prosperity of hospitals and medical schools. Even most medical research facilities have had some significant amount of communal support, especially in the form of philanthropic dollars. Oftentimes, these generous donors can be found contributing to more than one institution, folks such as Isaac Toussie and family with regards to two of the leading names in healthcare teaching and practice in the Empire State, Weill Cornell Medical College and the North Shore-LIJ network of hospitals and research centers.

Weill Cornell is named after a pair of its most important contributors, Ezra Cornell, of Western Union fame, and Sanford I. Weill, former CEO and chairman of Citigroup, Incorporated. As one of the most selective such institutions in the country, it admits only about a hundred hopefuls out of the nearly six thousand that apply each year. What’s more, it was the first to admit women right alongside the men and first to operate overseas, right outside of the capital of Qatar, Doha. It can also claim a long line of famous alumni, doctors such as C. Everett Koop, U.S. Surgeon General; Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame; Nobel Laureate Robert W. Holley; and Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich Maneuver. The North Shore-LIJ Health System is the second largest healthcare network in the country as measured by the number of beds and the largest in New York State based on patient revenue. It serves over seven million people a year through more than forty-two thousand employees – the single largest employer on Long Island and ninth largest largest in the City of New York.

Both are successful in large part due to strong communal backing, whether through financial donations by leading businessmen and women or donated time by local volunteers of civic or religious organizations. Indeed, despite a budget in the multiple between them, Weill Cornell and North Shore-LIJ will always depend on the support of the host communities they serve.