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Man Pays £1 Million for a Dog

17 Mar

Big Splash

A multi-millionaire Chinese coal baron has purchased Big Splash— an eleven-month Tibetan mastiff— for the staggering sum of 10 million yuan ($1.521 million or £945,000). These dogs are considered status symbols for the emerging class of newly rich Chinese. Many consider them to be a pure “Chinese” breed and note that the dogs are rarely found outside of Tibet.

Big Splash is nearly 3-feet tall and weighs more than 180 pounds. The price of Tibetan mastiff puppies has skyrocketed over the past couple of years from 5,000 yuan to hundreds of thousands or even millions.

Though it may sound callous, the new owner may consider the dog to be a sound investment. Other breeders may recruit Big Splash’s services (he’s male) and pay up to 100,000 yuan per “sample.” The dog’s breeder thinks the man could recoup his investment in a couple of years.

“The price is justified,” Lu Liang, who raised the dog, said. “We have spent a lot of money raising this dog, and we have the salaries of plenty of staff to pay.”

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New York Times Paywall Goes Up March 28

17 Mar

It’s here. After months of hearing about it, The New York Times will finally implement its paywall starting March 28. Consumers will have to pay $15 a month for unlimited access to all of the site’s content. A certain amount of content remains free, though. Readers get the first 20 articles of the month for free, and much of the content on the front page will be available without cost as well.

As many of us who read The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times know, there are ways to duck the system. Users can search for the articles by Google or Bing and find the full text versions easily available. The Times knows that too, and will limit the number of articles you can access by Google to 5 per day.

Just several years ago, many claimed consumers would never pay for online news content. Journalists hoped that online advertising would increase quickly enough to make up for gaps being formed by decreasing print sales. Unfortunately, they did not and print media companies must look for new sources of revenue.

This move should be seen as necessary and ultimately fair. Most of us don’t read more than 20 articles per month (certainly not more than 5 per day). Those of us that do should pay up.

That being said, the Business Insider already has a guide to getting around the paywall.

New York Times

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Japan’s Nuclear Crisis Clearly Explained

17 Mar

Fukushima Power Plant

Over the past couple of days, the situation has continued to deteriorate at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant in Japan. The situation remains extremely fluid. With that said, few media outlets have actually explained what occurred in the power plant to cause the disaster. Japan’s NHK offers a thoughtful, and clear, explanation.

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Viral Videos You Should Watch

17 Mar

These are some of the best videos I’ve seen over the past day

1) Jimmy Wong (Response to Alexandra Wallace): This Middlebury alum performs a mocking video of Alexandra Wallace. Really catchy. Well done Jimmy.

2) “Bless You” (Remake of “Fuck You” by Cee Lo Green): Because everyone asked for a Christian version of the explicit “Fuck You,” these guys delievered.

3) Stupid Internet: Now this poor boy never knew that 15 years after he sang (and danced) his little heart out to Mariah Carey’s “Emotions,” YouTube would be invented and his life would be ruined.

4) Steve Kardynal (“Born ThiS Way”): Apparently, this guy is famous. He sure freaked out most of NYC by singing Lady Gaga’s latest hit in drag. Was it not cold when he filmed it?

5) Wesleyan Students (“I Have Sex”): If you haven’t heard, the Republicans in the House want to cut all funding for Planned Parenthood. The students at Wesleyan don’t think that’s a good idea and this video shows how many of them have used that organization’s resources.

 

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Blank Book Outsells Harry Potter

16 Mar

What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex

A UK book entitled “What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex” by comedian Sheridan Simove is climbing the book charts despite being completely blank.

After selling out of its first run, the book settled at number 744 on Amazon’s best seller charts. That’s good enough to beat perrenial favorites like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2,910) and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2,406).

The book has taken off in the UK, where young men have given the book as a gag gift to friends. Those friends have begun to use the book as a place to keep lecture notes.

“I never anticipated that my book would be used for students to take their lecture notes in. In a sense they are proving me wrong by filling my book with content. But I wonder how many of them go back to thinking about sex once the lecture is over,” he told the Daily Mail.

Simove said the book took 9 days from the date of conception to publication to finish.

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