Did you know you can make money -- very, very good money -- just by knowing lots of information most people consider silly or worthless? Remember Cliff Claven from Cheers? Well, if instead of sitting around drinking beer he had put his trivia background to good use, he would have been a rich man.

You see there are lots of trivia competitions on the Internet. If you answer a bunch of question, you could win lots of money. It's that simple. For example, The 21 Trivia Competition going on right now has a grand prize of $21,000. All you need to do is answer 21 questions correctly to be entered in the drawing. All the questions and answers are somehow related to the number twenty-one. For example, there are questions about the 21st President, the atomic element 21, the movie "21," and so forth. The questions start off easy but get much harder.

But here is a hint. There is no time limit. So all you have to do is some Google searching and you will eventually find all the answers. Not only is this allowed, they even encourage it! I don't know why, but they really want to give some trivia buff $21,000!

You can do everything on the Internet. Each time you answer a few questions, you can go to the next page. It's also multiple choice so even questions where you don't have a clue you still have a good shot at. Just eliminate a few of the weird answers and you will have an even better shot.

But take my advice. print out the questions and spend some time searching the Web. Isn't the chance to win $21,000 worth just a little bit of your time? If not, then I think you are reading the wrong blog!

If you are, we suggest you start counting your money. In 1860 when Abraham Lincoln decided to run, the amount of money he needed for his campaign was $100,000, a tidy sum in those days. George W. Bush put together $367 million to win his presidency in 2004 and his opponent in the race, John Kerry, scraped together $328 million to fund his losing campaign.

Now we come to 2008. Forecasters are predicting that it will cost at least $400 million to take home the presidential prize. These figures throw interesting light on some aspects of the world's great democracy. It takes money to be a winner. Had Kerry upped his investment to say $400 million, would he have become the president instead of Bush? Is it only a matter of money, or are there other factors involved as well?

Michael E. Toner, the chairman of the Federal Election Commission, has some friendly advice for presidential candidates who plan to be taken seriously by the time nominating contests start in early 2008: Bring your wallet. "There is a growing sense that there is going to be a $100 million entry fee at the end of 2007 to be considered a serious candidate," Toner said in an interview.

Jockeying for presidential nomination in both major parties is already vigorously underway, as illustrated by the parade of GOP contenders on display this weekend at a meeting of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis. The main arena of competition is financial, as candidates prepare themselves for a race most analysts believe will involve sums vastly larger than those spent on previous presidential campaigns.

In the end, the candidate with access to the most money will be the next president of the United States of America!