Marriage 2.0: How to pick a spouse!

I was getting caught-up with Josh Spear this morning and came across an amazing stunt site TV show vlog, called 2 Husbands. At first blush the concept isnt that interesting. Two single guys want to get hitched and they have turned to the Internet for help. On their site women can upload videos of themselves and visitors to the site vote on who they should marry. Think of it as a mash-up between The Bachelor and American Idol with a $50,000 prize to the lucky ladies who get the most votes.

But wait, there’s a twist, one of the guys is gay. Yup, one of potential mates is quite openly, comfortably and happily gay. Now I’m not one to judge the mate selections of others, but I tend to prefer mates who are at least potentially sexually attracted to me. Call me old fashioned.

The site was launched back in November and will run for a year or until it collects 500,000 votes for the various brides. Votes cost $2 a piece, which would give the 2 husbands 1 million bucks to start their lives with their new wives. Of course given how they got those wives the likelihood of keeping that money are pretty slim.

Pricing Digital Music: An academic perspective

Trolling SSRN I came across another academic report destroying much of the FUD put out by the RIAA in their attempt to criminalize digital downloads. Like all good academic studies it has a cumbersome and wordy title, The Analog Hole and the Price of Music: An Empirical Study, which belies the rather simple text contained within.

The report starts off with an exploration of the analog hole , which frankly isnt that interesting but then goes into how the analog hole will effect the pricing of digital music. They set off to answer two questions: Do consumers perceive a difference between analog hole copies and the originals? Kinda. At what price would they be willing to sacrifice some quality? Twenty-five cents. The sample size is pretty small for the survey, only 66 respondents, but the findings are really interesting. Read the full report here and check out the abstract here: