dave submitted a link to a Washington Post story about a program where you can get a ticket to a Philadelphia 76ers' game for turning in a gun.

The one-week program opens today. Anyone can bring a working gun into a city police station and exchange it for a voucher good for a pair of tickets to an upcoming 76ers game, no questions asked.

"If we get one [gun], it's a successful program," said Billy King , the team's president. "If we get one, if we get a thousand, whatever we get that's going to be good enough."

The city's murder rate spiked last year and is on a similar pace in 2006. There were 380 homicides in the city in 2005 -- the highest total in five years. There were 44 homicides in the city from Jan. 1 through Monday, just slightly off last year's pace.

The program is similar to one the 76ers ran in 1999. "Guns for Gear" brought in close to 900 guns in just three days.

dave asks, "Here are my questions: 1. Will they be forensically tested and used in criminal cases? Does no questions asked mean that someone could drop off a murder weapon with no repercussions? If not, this could be a fantastic sting. 2. How long before someone shows up at the Arena with a gun demanding free tickets?"

I'm guessing a murderer isn't going to walk up to a bunch of cops, regardless of any potential forensics.

How much money do you make? How much is that compared to the average American or compared to Tom Cruise? How much did you earn just reading these sentences? Ok, I'll stop asking questions. But the Forbes Money Meter is really a great timewaster...plus it'll show you how much money you made while wasting time staring at it. And it'll tell you how much of different items you could buy - Gulfstream jets, Starbuck's lattes, psychic hotline talktime, etc.

dave submitted a link to ESPN's NBA Trademachine with the following description: "ESPN.com's NBA Trade Machine is the must-see toy of the week. Looking to kill time between now and Thursday's NBA trading deadline? Here it is. Not only is it fun to play out wild, armchair-GM fantasies, but you can begin to understand the financial complexities that make fan-frothing trade fodder look so foolish in real life. After playing around with the Trade Machine for a little while, you begin to realize your gripes about "Why can't my team make a deal?" are simplistic. Brush up on your math skills."

ESPN has an article explaining how Andre Iguodala was robbed of the slam dunk title when it was awarded to Nate Robinson instead, and they blame the judges.

Even though it was obvious to the crowd that Philly's swingman delivered the best dunk of the night in the first round, catching an Allen Iverson pass off the back of the glass and gliding under the backboard and rim for a reverse-slam on the other side. And then running off the court and down the tunnel as if to say it was over.

"Andre's behind-the-backboard dunk, that was crazy," said Josh Smith, the defending champ who said he'd never try that even after seeing it completed. Said Iguodala, "I came up with that one day during the summer. I was in the gym and this guy told me I couldn't touch one side of the backboard and come to the other side and dunk the ball, and I did it.

That's when Nate-Rob, showing character and persistence, got himself back in the competition, walking across the court and handing Spud Webb his old Atlanta jersey No. 4. With Webb in his new duds, Robinson caught a bounce pass from the onetime dunk champ and jumped over all 5 feet, 7 inches of him for a spectacular jackknife slam, finishing in a squat that he held for effect.

"My teammate Jamal [Crawford], we were on the plane and he was like, 'I have the perfect idea, you should jump over Spud Webb.' And I was, like, 'That is a good idea.'" The judges thought so, too, lowballing Iguodala with a 44 on his next attempt to force the first tiebreaker in the competition's history. The judges even looked like they were in cohoots, glancing at each other before they revealed their scores.

Either way, it was what the crowd wanted.

There's video of the dunks on the ESPN article page.

There's a new comment system in place here. I now allow for anonymous commenting. But of course, there's perks to being a member...on the story/comment page, anonymous comments appear only after all member comments, and anonymous comments appear in a flat list - no comment hierarchy.

Why the change? I figured some of the site's visitors might have something interesting to say but not feel like registering to say it. And if you have registered, commenting is easier than ever before. You just go to the story-specific page and you can leave the comment right there. No more separate page to go to.

As with any overhaul, there's likely to be some minor bugs to get worked out in the first few days. Hopefully it'll be a smooth transition.

One more note: I reserve to edit/delete any comment as I see fit. Spam comments will be deleted, and comments may be edited for content. Anonymous ones even moreso. If you're not including any objectionable content (by me), you don't have to worry.

Last, feedback is always appreciated.

dave submitted an ABC News story about an American woman whose hot-dog move in the womens' snowboarding event cost her the gold.

An Olympic celebration turned into a mountain-sized embarrassment for Lindsey Jacobellis. Coasting to what should have been an easy victory, the American made a hot-dog grab of her board on the second-to-last jump.

It caused her to fall and while she scrambled to her feet, Switzerland's Tanja Frieden sped past and became the first champion in the strange and wild sport of Olympic women's snowboardcross Friday.

Jacobellis won silver, but should have had the gold. She was well, well ahead of Frieden, and the other two women in the four-rider final had fallen long before.

U.S. coach Peter Foley fell onto the ground in disbelief.

Really, this brings about a glaring deficiency in Olympic snowboarding scoring. Snowboarding is all about hot-doggin' it. It's a sport with style - there shouldn't be a penalty for that. If anything there should be minus time awarded for various tricks done off the moguls. So congratulations, Lindsey. Way to not compromise your style and to stick it to that gold medal. Who needs that thing anyways? Everyone knows silver is what's really in. Who determined the scoring anyways, Tightass Mc-NoStyle? What are they going to suggest next, that football players get fined for hot-dogging it?

dave submitted an ESPN article about a gym teacher who took $1 a day from students who wanted to skip gym class.

A former Escambia County middle school gym teacher who allegedly let children pay a $1 a day bribe to skip gym class turned himself in Thursday. Detectives had been looking for Terence Braxton after he apparently left the area. The sheriff's office said he turned himself in earlier Thursday at a Pensacola jail on bribery charges and was released on his own recognizance.

Escambia County School District spokesman Ronnie Arnold says the principal of Ward Middle School learned of the scheme from a parent and began an investigation in December. The principal then contacted authorities and placed Braxton on administrative leave. Braxton then resigned.

After that, Braxton taught some classes as a substitute teacher at the Atmore School District in Alabama. That district removed Braxton from its substitute list after Florida officials notified administrators of Braxton's history.

The official charges accuse Ward of taking about $230 from six students pursuing charges, but Braxton's actual take from the 250 sixth-to-eighth-grade boys and girls is likely much greater.

$1 a day to skip gym? Who really thought gym was that bad?

dave submitted a link to realitytvworld.com which has an article about Fox's new reality show, Unan1mous.

Premiering on Wednesday, March 22 at 9:30PM ET/PT and set to air regularly in the highly coveted post-American Idol results show time period, Unan1mous will feature nine strangers locked in a "bunker" (Fox isn't revealing exactly what that means yet) and competing to win a $1.5 million cash prize.

However unlike other "cut off from the outside world" hidden camera reality shows like CBS' long-running Big Brother, the nine contestants competing on Unan1mous won't be voting each other out of the bunker. Instead, all of Unan1mous' contestants will remain trapped stuck inside the bunker until they come to a unanimous decision (thus the show's title) about which one of the contestants should receive the show's grand prize, after which the show will end.

The first twist will be a "money clock." Shortly after entering the bunker, the contestants will face their first vote regarding who should win the money. If the vote is not unanimous, then the "money clock" will activate and the $1.5 million prize will begin losing potentially thousands of dollars of value every hour until the next vote occurs. In short, the longer it takes the contestants to decide on a winner, the less money the person will win.

The second twist will involve a traditional reality TV staple -- eliminating contestants. Like tradition reality elimination shows, Unan1mous will "eliminate" one contestant each week. However, unlike typical reality TV eliminations, Unan1mous' eliminated contestants will continue to live in the bunker and vote for who should win the show's grand prize, with their "elimination" simply making them ineligible to win the show's prize.

Unan1mous' voting will be largely no holds barred, with the contestants -- which will include a minister, an atheist, a ladies' man and a feminist -- free to tell whether personal details, secrets, or lies that they think will help convince their fellow contestants that they deserve the money.

Wow, the show's title uses a "1" instead of an "i." I'm already hooked...Fox is so good at creating new trends. The show actually sounds like it could be interesting, or incredibly lame. But if you know the kinds of people that go on these types of shows, I'm guessing it won't be over until the money clock is down to $5 and everyone's ripping their hair out and screaming at each other. I wonder if it's in the show's rules that you can't agree to split it. Or someone could pull a "Johnny Fairplay" and agree to split it and then keep it all anyways. I also wonder how the eliminations wil work if the contestants aren't voting. Do the viewers vote? Definitely a creative idea, but this is gonna be all in the execution. I'll probably watch the first few episodes of unan1mous on fox.

CNN International has got a new look to it, and hopefully the other news networks will take notice. Remember when they started adding more and more scrollers and popups and all sorts of nonsense to shove 30 blurbs in your face while reducing the main story to 3 square inches of screen space? Well, no more! Take a look below at the new, clean graphics:

dave submitted a link to Apple's trailer page for Nacho Libre, a movie starring Jack Black. According to imdb:

Nacho (Jack Black) is a young man who was raised in a Mexican monastery in Oaxaca and now works there as the cook, and takes it upon himself to rescue the holy place from financial ruin by joining a local Lucha Libre tournament and becoming one of the 'Luchadores'. Naturally, Nacho isn't acting out of purely altruistic measures, as he wishes to help Sister Encarnacion (Ana de la Reguera), a beautiful Mexican nun who has recently arrived at the monastery, as well as the gaggle of young orphans who live there.

The movie has the director of Napoleon Dynamite and the writer of Jack Black's School of Rock. And imdb's summary uses the word "gaggle." Awesome.