Scam city! Free shipping of $1 coins from US Mint = free credit card rewards and frequent flier mile points.

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.

via online.wsj.com

Wow, what a scam. Even better than buying pudding for airmiles.

Can you tell the difference between a rare Stradivarius and a modern viola?

Stradivarius made c. 10 violas. 8 remain and only 2 are playable. One of these, the "Archinto viola", is coming out of a museum to be played at the Proms in the Tippett triple concerto in 2 weeks. It's the first time it's been played in nearly 10 years.

The podcast features Philip Dukes, Britain's top concert viola player, who will be one of the three soloists in the piece at the Royal Albert Hall. It compares the sound of the Strad with that of his own viola, a modern Japanese/American instrument and allows listeners to try to tell the difference. Peter Kingston reports. (13mins 33s)

Listen

via blogs.guardian.co.uk

The Stradivarius actually sounds like it has more body. Amazing.

California dreamin

A fun quote from the earlier days at Google -- it's from a "letter to the editor" at the Wall Street Journal, in response to their "Boom Town" column about Google:

J. Claude Tenday writes: Old habits die hard. For Sergey Brin to expect to grow a $100 billion/year business from an obscure $60 million/year niche player in an already mature Web-search market shows that Mr. Brin is still California dreamin'. And for the Wall Street Journal to take him seriously shows reporters may still be prey to dot-com hype!
via paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

Driving a Porsche can raise your testosterone quite a lot. Sensible family sedan, not so much. (via @andrew_chen)

They had 39 young heterosexual men drive both "a 2006 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet estimated to be worth over $150,000" and a "a dilapidated 1990 Toyota Camry wagon having over 186,000 miles," each for an hour, split evenly between city and and highway driving.

via bobsutton.typepad.com

Maybe consumerism is more of a drug than you can possibly imagine.

Hat tip @andrew_chen