Changing Times

Published 12:01 am Friday, March 18, 2011

All the news that’s fit to post: The New York Times announced it will begin charging for use of its website, one of the few newspapers seeking to erect a pay wall for its online edition. Online subscribers will be charged $15 every four weeks for unlimited access.

For an additional $5 a month, you can have your iPad thrown at least 10 feet away from the front porch and into the wet grass.

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Book your tickets now: For the first time, a spacecraft is orbiting the solar system’s smallest planet and the one closest to the sun. NASA’s Messenger probe fell into orbit after a journey of more than six years, circling a planet with temperatures as high as 800 degrees and as low as 300 below zero.

Messenger will be looking for water ice in Mercury’s darkest craters but also is searching out areas so inhospitable that Charlie Sheen will not take his one-man show there.

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Wait, Wait, Don’t Quell Me: The U.S. House of Representatives voted to end public funding of National Public Radio on Thursday, a move that would likely deprive smaller stations of funding to offer NPR’s most popular shows, including “Car Talk” and “All Things Considered.”

Instead, local stations will fill their schedules with cheaper to produce shows, such as “Community College Professors Earnestly Reading Poetry” and “Mobile Home Companion.”