Link-Yo-Rama

House panels passes college football playoff bill

The bill would ban the promotion of a postseason NCAA Division I football game as a national championship unless that title contest is the result of a playoff.

Miles for Nothing: How the Government Helped Frequent Fliers Make a Mint

At least several hundred mile-junkies discovered that a free shipping offer on presidential and Native American $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to printing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 million in coins until the Mint started identifying them and cutting them off.

Coin buyers charged the purchases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the shipments straight to the bank. They then used the coins they deposited to pay their credit-card bills. Their only cost: the car trip to make the deposit.

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One FlyerTalker, identified by his online moniker, Mr. Pickles, claims to have bought $800,000 in coins. He posted pictures of the loot on FlyerTalk.

He says his largest single deposit was $70,000 in $1 coins. He used several banks and numerous credit cards. He earned enough miles to put him over two million total at AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, giving him lifetime platinum-elite status

Forbes Commentary: Not-So-Safe Sex

Condoms undeniably help lower the risks of HIV infection. But that doesn't mean the government should mandate condom use in adult movies--and it certainly doesn't mean that such regulation is a good idea. For one, the adult film industry would have to make every performer an employee to satisfy the California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health, better known as Cal/OSHA, laws. This would be detrimental: California's anti-discrimination laws prohibit requiring an HIV test as a condition of employment; therefore the adult film industry's current testing process, in which every performer is tested for HIV monthly, would be illegal. Nor would adult film producers be allowed to "discriminate" by refusing employment to HIV-positive performers.

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Second, condom-only regulation would also encourage a black market in adult film production. So movies featuring no-condom sex would not only still exist, but those actors and actresses would no longer be required to participate in the industry's HIV testing program, increasing the risk of an HIV outbreak in the industry and the population at large. One need only look at prostitution to see what happens when an industry operates underground.

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Good intentions do not guarantee good results.

Climate Change Hoax Photo of the Day

Wired: To Deflect an Asteroid, Try a Lasso, Not a Nuke

MTA whistleblower breaks nose, loses teeth, needs stitches after alleged shove onto tracks

An MTA whistleblower who helped expose track workers sitting around idle for hours every day claims he was shoved off a Brooklyn platform onto a live railway.

Linked by JS: antiduckface.com

Iamyomets has relentlessly tracked the high school career of Len Chenfeld (2/18/09: Hebrew Hammer Recap, 5/13/09: Mazel Tov) and what thanks do I get? Boy Wonder has transfered from Yo Mets' alma mater to Keith Williams' Poly Prep.

Sunday NY Times page-and-a-half spread: Len Chenfeld’s Outside Shot

So, for senior year, Len left Hunter, a prestigious public school on the Upper East Side that sends graduates to the nation’s top colleges, where he had been since prekindergarten and led the team to a division title. He transferred to PolyPrep to raise his basketball I.Q., commuting 19 miles each way from the Upper West Side to the far reaches of Brooklyn and paying $30,000 in tuition for the privilege of playing for Coach Bill McNally, whose trophy case includes two state private school championships, five “coach of the year” titles and 10 league titles over 17 years. He is a Blue Devil. An upgrade.

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Jesse Shapiro, coach of Fastbreak NYC, the Amateur Athletic Union team that Len has helped take to the national tournament the past two years, called him “hands-down the best white player, and one of the top five point guards, in the city leagues right now.” But after a wildly complimentary article about him appeared in February on Five Boro Sports, a Web site that tracks New York high school and college athletics, Len was denounced on blogs as “the most overrated player ever,” and was warned that nobody would ever “take him seriously playing at Hunter College High School,” which was further ridiculed as being in a “cupcake league.”

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes

"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen.

Maybe this explains it: Prostitutes Offer Free Climate Summit Sex

Copenhagen Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards to city hotels warning summit guests not to patronize Danish sex workers during the upcoming conference. Now, the prostitutes have struck back, offering free sex to anyone who produces one of the warnings.