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I read the other day that 16,000 people have been recruited as volunteers for next year's Super Bowl in New Jersey, and suddenly it occurred to me: the Super Bowl is one of the great financial bonanzas of modern times. From the players to the networks to the hotels, everybody involved with it makes a killing. Why would anybody volunteer to work for free for the Super Bowl? Would you volunteer to work free for Netflix or Disneyworld?

Apparently, though, there are more chumps in New Jersey than we see on television's Jersey Shore or hear about in the Rutgers athletic department.
I mean, if you want to volunteer, there are so many things that could really use your help. Like hospitals and schools and churches and museums and libraries and all sorts of wonderful charities. Why would anybody volunteer for the Super Bowl?

Of course, golf and tennis tournaments, where the players and promoters make hundreds of thousands of dollars, have been getting suckers to volunteer for years. It's amazing how sports seduces us fans.

We can take some comfort that it's not just American citizens who are such easy marks. Whole cities and countries throw themselves at sports. Most recently, no doubt you've heard about the riots in Rio de Janeiro, where the Brazilian people are a little put out that while such things as food, medicine and shelter may be hard to come by, the government has put up billions for both the World Cup next summer and the summer Olympics in 2016.

The Brazilian sports honorarium pales before what the Russians are laying out for next winter's Olympics, though: a record $50 billion, which is only $38 billion more than the original bid proposal. Sports events always cost a tad more than the officials — who desperately want the event — estimate. And the Olympics and World Cup always lead cities and countries on by saying that the infrastructure built for their games will be a long-term boon for the country. Like Greece, which, as you know, has been living high on the hog ever since Athens overspent for the 2004 Olympics.

But, there's always a new sucker somewhere out there. The Olympics and the World Cup scramble to find novel places to go to. Like the 2022 soccer championship will be in Qatar, where it is known to be too hot for soccer. Or next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi, where it seldom gets to be winter. They have stockpiled snow there. All of Russia, suburban Siberia, and they pick a place where you have to save snow?

But, if you got the money, the Olympics or the World Cup will only be too happy to come on over and enjoy the facilities you've built just for them. Oh my, what we all do for sports.

Why would anybody volunteer to work for free for the Super Bowl?

The reigning king in the truck world is the Ford F-150, and it's been that way for a couple of decades. But staying on top is getting harder.

With new, tougher fuel standards looming there is a lot of emphasis on efficiency and innovation. On Wednesday, Ford is announcing its flagship truck is taking a step into the alternative fuel world with a vehicle that can run on natural gas.

When you look at their bottom lines and their advertising you realize that the Detroit Three make cars, but they're really truck companies, especially Ford.

"Well I think the F-150 pickup truck is probably the single most important vehicle to Ford Motor Company and arguably it might be the single most important vehicle period," says Jack Nerad, an analyst with Kelley Blue Book. "It's just an 800-pound gorilla in the marketplace."

Nerad says when Ford takes a step there is a potential that the rest of the truck world will follow. Ford is making compressed natural gas an option on the truck that is its best selling vehicle.

Compressed Natural Gas, or CNG, is cheaper than petroleum, it emits less carbon dioxide and the U.S. has a whole lot of it.

Advocates for natural gas say this is a big step toward using more of it. John Hoffmeister used to be CEO of Shell, the oil giant. He now runs a group called Citizens for Affordable Energy.

"The fact that Ford would begin to put CNG into a very popular consumer vehicle ... is a major step along the way to a transformation of the total fleet of American vehicles," Hoffmeister says.

The F-150 will run on both CNG and regular gas, but it won't be cheap. The CNG option runs upwards of $7,000.

Nerad doesn't think there's a huge consumer market, but he says large companies and city and county governments will be interested.

"A lot of these vehicles are purchased on a cost-to-own basis," he says, "and if you can get the cost of fuel down, as natural gas has the possibility of doing, it's going to be pretty successful with fleet customers."

For regular consumers there is a classic chicken and egg problem. Out on the road, there just aren't a lot of places where you can get compressed natural gas.

"Because before you will spend the money to put in the [CNG] infrastructure, you want to know that you're going to be able to sell enough [CNG] to enough vehicles to pay the bill," says Hoffmeister.

But Hoffmeister says a popular vehicle like the F-150 taking natural gas could help spark the building of the missing infrastructure.

Environmentalists though aren't on board with using natural gas because of the controversial way much of the gas is extracted — through hydraulic fracturing or "fracking."

Roland Hwang with the Natural Resources Defense Council says he's not opposed to the fuel, but he doesn't like how the U.S. is getting it.

"When you look at that F-150 or whatever vehicle in the showroom, you're thinking about whether [it] is a good choice for the environment," Hwang says. "You got to keep in mind and you got to ask the question [of] how this fuel is being produced. Is it better or is it just different?"

But the automakers are under pressure to increase fuel economy and it's not that hard to adapt current engines to run on compressed natural gas. So that's why you'll soon be seeing them in showrooms.

But it's not clear yet whether average consumers are ready to step up and pay thousands of dollars extra for a natural gas option.

House Republicans investigating IRS targeting of groups for extra scrutiny say they have proof conservatives had it worse.

A House Ways and Means Committee staff analysis of the applications of 111 conservative and progressive groups applying for tax exempt status found conservative applicants faced, "more questions, more denials, more delays," says committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich.

That is, when the IRS sent groups letters asking for further information, conservative groups were asked more questions — on average, three times more. All of the groups with "progressive" in their name were ultimately approved, while only 46 percent of conservative groups won approval. Others are still waiting for an answer or gave up.

Here's a chart laying out the committee's findings:

Enlarge image i

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Caroline Criado-Perez, the feminist activist who successfully campaigned to make Jane Austen the new face of Britain's 10-pound note, has been inundated with hundreds of death and rape threats on Twitter after the banknote news broke last week. Criado-Perez responded by retweeting the threats to her followers. Some of the more printable examples include: "I will find you and you don't want to know what I will do when I do, you're pathetic, kill yourself before i do." and "Hey sweetheart, give me a call when you're ready to be put in your place." British police arrested a man over the weekend "on suspicion of harassment offences," but the threats didn't stop. When British Parliament member Stella Creasy spoke out in support of Criado-Perez, she also received rape threats, which she in turn retweeted. This has sparked debate in the U.K. about whether Twitter is responsible for regulating such threats. CNN reports: "Twitter UK's General Manager Tony Wang said the social-networking company takes online abuse very seriously, offering to suspend accounts, and called on people to report any 'violation of Twitter rules.' " Separately, one of the world's most eminent classicists, Mary Beard, promised Monday to publicly shame those who send her misogynistic messages on Twitter, tweeting, "I'm not going to be terrorised." A man who purportedly sent the Cambridge professor crude messages Monday swiftly begged her forgiveness after another Twitter user threatened to tell his mother what he had written.

The Four Way Review published three new poems from Craig Morgan Teicher. The second, "Drunkenness," reads, "Sip by sip, life becomes tolerable, then pleasant, then milky — as soft and gregarious as a lamb. ... Not even happiness feels this good."

Mary Karr tells The New York Times about the unique experience of finding out your literary idols are jerks: "If we didn't read people who were bastards, we'd never read anything. Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards."

The novelist Gary Shteyngart writes about wearing a Google Glass around New York: "Wearing Glass takes its toll. 'You look like you have a lazy eye,' I'm told at a barbecue, my right eye instinctively scanning upward for more info. 'You look like you have a nervous tic,' when I tap at the touch pad. 'You have that faraway look again,' whenever there's something more interesting happening on my screen."

The London Fire Brigade says a recent rise in the number of calls involving people trapped in handcuffs may be tied to Fifty Shades of Grey. A spokesman comments, "I don't know whether it's the Fifty Shades effect, but the number of incidents involving items like handcuffs seems to have gone up." Either way, the fire brigade has some practical advice: "If you use handcuffs, always keep the keys handy."