Do they test for steroids?

	Stacyu Innerst, Post-Gazette

Degenerate gamblers have yet another outlet in a world that is increasingly becoming one big betting opportunity. PinnacleSports.com, an online sports book, is taking wagers on chess. You heard right: chess. Peeling the onion of disbelief further, we discover there is a professional chess league, the U.S. Chess League. If you think we're making this up, report immediately to uschessleague.com, and you'll find there are eight pro chess teams: The New York Knights, San Francisco Mechanics, Dallas Destiny, Carolina Cobras, Miami Sharks, Boston Blitz, Baltimore Kingfishers and the Philadelphia Masterminds. No Pittsburgh Pawns nor the obvious entry from Prague, the Czech Mates.

We learned of all this from Wireless Flash, an online p.r. outfit promoting PinnacleSports.com. Stating the obvious, Pinnacle's spokesman says it was only a matter of time before chess became a hotbed for gambling, because "there's just a huge following for the game." Bettors can follow the matches via online video stream at chessclub.com and internet radio at chessfm.com, assuming your paint has finished drying.

Better odds here
A new book, "Odds'R: The Odds On Everything Book" (Bantam) by Roger Schlaifer, is a compilation of nearly 300 oddball stats. A sampling:

You have an 80 percent chance of surviving a ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Two out of three people throughout the world have never made a phone call.

People in their 40s have sex, on average, 64 times a year.

Conclusion: You have a better chance of surviving a ride over Niagara Falls than having sex in your 40s.

Faux mitzvah

From the AP
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You don't have to be Jewish to have something like a bar mitzvah, says Wireless Flash. In fact, a growing number of non-Jewish adults are holding "faux mitzvahs" to mark their passage into adulthood, which can occur at any time, preferably before death. The term was coined by Roger Bennett, a co-author of "Bar Mitzvah Disco" (Crown), who says the trend started 30 years ago when bar and bat mitzvahs changed from "a religious and conceptual sleight-of-hand where an awkward 13-year-old arbitrarily becomes a full-fledged man and woman" to secular celebrations dedicated to themes like Star Wars, The Beatles or Playstation 2.

Foul water for sale
The latest from eBay: A Texas family is auctioning off bottles of bacteria-laden water drained from their home after Hurricane Rita. Others sellers are listing bottles of relief water and pieces of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) passed out in Hurricane Katrina emergency kits as collectibles. We suggest holding out for the Brooklyn Bridge.

A high time for tea

The most consumed beverage in the world, not counting water? Tea. It's a staple in the Middle East, Africa, China, India and Japan. Ireland tops the list of per-capita consumption -- with every man, woman and child drinking nearly three cups a day. In the United States, the Boston Tea Party, which we understand was underwritten by Starbucks, gave coffee a big opening. But tea is gaining in popularity here, with tea houses popping up in many cities, notably New York. But when we think of tea-drinkers, we invariably think of the Brits, no? Britain's 60 million people drink two cups a day -- more tea than North America and continental Europe combined, according to the Washington Post.

The Post went into all this because England is now a tea-producing country, thanks to a couple of aristocrats, one of whom is descended from Earl Grey. It was never the weather, but the high labor costs that kept England from growing tea. The new Tregothnan tea, grown on a big estate near Truro in southwest England, is expensive -- about $10 an ounce or $18 for a box of 25 bags compared to $3 for a box of 80 Tetley's tea bags.

Can we try this?
A Canadian television station has come up with reality programming that doesn't involve eating insects or mating with creepy upper primates. TV Ontario, in keeping with its educational mandate, initiated a search for Ontario's best college lecturer. A three-judge panel created a shortlist of 30 professors from 258 nominations by students and faculty. The top 10 have to lecture before a live TV audience, and viewers rate them via phone or internet. The lecturer with the highest score gets a $10,000 scholarship for her or his university.

He's New York
David Rakoff, a 41-year-old Canadian-born writer who has lived in New York for 18 years, has earned a reputation as a witty, incisive social observer on National Public Radio's "This American Life." His latest book, "Don't Get Too Comfortable," a collection of journalistic essays, took him to familiar territory, Toronto, where Canada's two national dailies did interviews.

"Torontonians are polite, but not warm. And in New York, people are warm, but they're not polite. They're direct. I love the emotional immediacy of the place," he told the Globe and Mail.

And in the National Post, Rakoff said: "Three times every day I'm like, I love New York. It could be some human interaction or some vista or some astonishing bit of cosmopolitan privilege I feel is reaped upon me."

Or maybe it was the chutzpah of the following interaction from Sept. 12, 2001. Rakoff was delayed while waiting outside the New York Times building for a paper and asked to borrow a woman's cell phone. She thought about it a minute and said, "Hmm. No. I don't want to use up my minutes."

"It was the day after the worst tragedy the city had ever seen and we were all terrified, and I wanted to tell my friends I would be delayed. It's not like she didn't want me to use up her battery, it was literally the minutes, and I was offering to pay her a dollar," Rakoff recalls.

Ultimately, he writes, he found this display of shocking rudeness bracingly restorative. "We were still intact, after all."