In case you have been wondering, there are now official odds on the likelihood of Lady Gaga becoming President of the United States. No longer do we have to wonder. Next time someone scoffs and says “What are the odds on that?” you will actually have an answer. The odds are 100/1 that Lady Gaga will at some point in her life become President of the United States, according to bookmaker William Hill.

Novelty betting is nothing new. Any time a few guys get together and are doing some activity, at some point a wager will come up. “What do you want to bet I can hit that target from here?” “I bet you $20 I can get her phone number.” In recent years, proposition betting on novelties has become more popular at online bookmakers. The truth is, people like to bet, and not just on sports and casino games.

While sports betting is still the dominant category at online bookmakers, prop bets on things such as politics and popular culture draw the interest of those who aren’t sports fans. It has become popular to vote on things such as who will win Dancing with the Stars or who will win the Booker Prize for fiction. William Hill allows you to bet on whether or not it will snow on a given day. Almost anything can be bet on with one online bookmaker or another, including Lady Gaga’s odds of becoming POTUS. In case you’re wondering, the odds of Ms. Gaga becoming president in 2012 are 500/1. Barack Obama’s odds are even money, which seems a little optimistic, considering his abysmal approval rating.

You can expect online bookmakers to continue offering novelty bets and possibly adding more and more of them. Many insiders see that as an attempt to target women or others who are not interested in sports.

College students are finding new incentive to make good grades – they can make money. Using monetary reward for getting good grades is nothing new. Parents have been using the “I’ll give you $5 for straight A’s” technique ever since there were report cards. This new system, though, uses online gambling.

Ultrinsic, a website that allows students to bet on their grades, is getting some negative attention from schools and positive attention from the students. According to their website, Ultrinsic “provides incentives to students for academic achievement” and “dedicates itself to motivating students to improve in their grades.”

Here’s how it works: Students create an account with the website and upload transcripts and other proof of their academic history. They then send the website their upcoming class schedule. Based on their academic history, the website calculates odds of the student reaching certain grades. The students choose target grades for their classes and how much money they want to invest. At the end of the semester, the students send in their transcript and if they reached their target grades, they win money.

The website is new – still in beta mode – and has a growing roster that could include 200 universities by the spring. No schools are directly involved, though, and some administrations aren’t too happy about the site. Some say that a quest for knowledge should be its own reward. Others think it’s bad to have students bet money on a target grade, putting more pressure on themselves. Still others believe that use of the website amounts to online gambling, which could make it illegal in the United States.

Everyone agrees that it’s difficult to motivate students and welcomes tools to accomplish that. However, some worry that the site will develop gambling problems in college students. More realistic opponents worry that having money riding on the grades will lead to an increase in cheating.

There is not even an agreement about whether the actions taking place on the website are gambling. Judah Guber, the CEO of Ultrinsic, states that the website is not an online gambling site at all. According to Guber, it’s not gambling because it involves skill. This isn’t students betting money on someone else, as with sports betting. They are putting money on themselves and have the power to affect their own outcome with their skill. If they need an A, they can study, get tutoring, and do other things to accomplish that goal.

So is this website just a supercharged version of your parents giving you a few bucks for getting A’s? You decide.

Online bookmaker Paddy Power prides themselves on the variety of prop bets they offer in addition to the more traditional sports betting. In addition to sports, the Irish betting site offers betting on whether or not your flight will be cancelled due to the Icelandic volcano. It has odds on the U.S. Republicans gaining control of the House and Senate as well as the U.S. presidential election, Irish elections, English elections and more. You can bet on whether extraterrestrial life will be proven by 2013, who will win Britain’s Got Talent and who will win a court case involving a Hooters restaurant in which a waitress was ordered to lose weight.

The proposition bet that is causing the controversy, though, involves the BP oil spill. Right now, Paddy Power is taking bets on which marine species will be the first to become extinct due to the oil spill. Right now there are 4/5 odds on the Kemp’s Ridley turtle, 6/4 odds on the bluefin tuna and 8/1 odds on brown pelicans, among others.

Many people, myself included, think that Paddy Poker has now gone too far. The site says that they are trying to bring awareness to the situation. A spokesman for the company said that “hopefully our odds will bring home the imminent danger to such a varied mix of species dependent on the ocean.”

Yeah, I’m sure people would have no clue that marine life is in danger if people weren’t betting money on the extinction of the species. Paddy Power has a reputation for being witty and sometimes edgy and that adds to the charm of the website. Sometimes, however, you can go too far. A spokesman for the company said that they pride themselves on letting people put their money where their mouth is. If there is something in the news that people are discussing, Paddy Power wants to let you bet on it.

That sounds fine, but shouldn’t there be a line that shouldn’t be crossed? Shouldn’t some topics be off limits? If Paddy Power was around during the Holocaust, would they have had odds on how many Jews would be killed in the concentration camps? If they had been around during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, would they have kept odds on how many innocent Americans would be thrown in jail without a trial for “sedition?” If they had been around during the Civil Rights movement, would they have had odds on the likelihood of Martin Luther King being assassinated? If they had been around during the Irish Revolution, would they have offered odds on whether the IRA would succeed or be beaten down by the British?

I don’t know which of these species, if any, will become extinct. I certainly hope none of them will and I think that the environment and ecosystems are not as fragile as people believe. I think life finds a way to survive. Even so, I can’t support this prop bet.

Maybe I’m overreacting. Betting money on this doesn’t hurt anybody, so even if it’s in poor taste, why should we care? In fact, maybe Paddy Power wants us to overreact. They certainly are getting a lot of publicity from this. Aside from the gambling news websites, this story has been covered by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. You know what they say: There’s no such thing as bad publicity. You’re welcome, Paddy Power.