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Tailgating at The University of Mississippi is covered in the NY Times. And the Times didn’t look down its Northeast nose at the event.
OXFORD, Miss. — Perhaps there isn’t a word for the ritualized pregame revelry on the University of Mississippi campus. “Tailgating” certainly does not do it justice. It might be a gathering of football fans before a game, but it hardly resembles those celebrated scenes in Green Bay and Kansas City, which are modest by comparison.
For one, there are the $71,000 portable toilets. And then there’s this fall’s $750,000 university budget for the quintessentially Southern marvel known as the Grove. The price tags, and the orchestration, just keep getting grander.
“We want to put on the dog here,” one fan said, using regional vernacular for “over the top.”
Rebels fans began putting on the dog in high fashion again Friday night, when an estimated 2,500 tents were erected for Saturday’s game between Mississippi, ranked seventh in The Associated Press Top 25, and Auburn, ranked fourth. To help set the stage, here is a tour of one of the country’s most elaborate pregame gatherings. …
… In many tents, food is served on silver trays, drinks splash through fountains and chandeliers hang from the metal supports. Fur coats abound. Jackets, ties and cowboy boots are common.
Prominent chefs are hired to cater meals, and chicken is a favored entree. “You don’t want to be a chicken in northern Mississippi on game day,” said Tim Walsh, the executive director of alumni affairs.
The tents themselves can be fashion statements. Some fans hire interior decorators. One tent on the Walk of Champions (the Grove’s Main Street) is painted with zebra stripes. One of its owners is Jane Foster, a converted MississippiState fan. She brings in a rock band once a year. …
Dilbert’s Blog reviews the iPhone 6.
After a month-long wait – and salivating the entire time – I finally got my iPhone 6 Plus. I don’t know how Apple manipulates my emotions so effectively but I am thoroughly impressed at the mental anguish they put me through while I waited.
My heart was racing as I removed the phone from its strikingly well-designed packaging. Apple makes the process of opening a box feel as if you are winning a prize. Every color, shape, texture and probably smell has been studied and tweaked to perfection. Simply touching the product or its associated packaging is a tactile joy.
The experience of getting the iPhone 6 Plus was like getting a puppy. …
… But I needed a case. I tried to imagine my anguish if I accidentally dropped this new member of my family and cracked it. I needed protection.
So I went to the Verizon store and bought the only cover they had left that doesn’t look like a six-year old girl’s bedroom wall. The color of my new case could best be described as Colonoscopy Brown. It is deeply disturbing. But because I love my iPhone 6 Plus, and want to keep it safe, I put it on. …
Jewish World Review article downplays the efficacy of Tamiflu. But it does recommend chicken noodle soup. What, you wanted gefilte fish?
Neuraminidase inhibitors including Tamiflu and Relenza are recommended by government health agencies for treating and preventing symptoms of the influenza virus in both children and adults. A review conducted by the Cochrane Collaboration has now revealed these treatment options may cause more harmful side effects compared to their ability to reduce and prevent flu-like symptoms. …
… There are certain household treatments people suffering from flu-like symptoms can apply in order to achieve a natural remedy. For example, our best defense against any bodily ailment is staying hydrated. Drinking and avoiding alcohol, coffee, and soda can go a long way in maintaining a healthy immune system. With its anti-inflammatory properties, chicken noodle soup can also serve as a natural, at-home remedy for boosting the movement of immune system cells. Lastly, avoid dry places where cold viruses thrive and seek humidity. Adding moisture to your home via a humidifier can prevent a stuffy nose and scratchy throat by dampening our airways’ mucous membrane.
From Fight Aging we learn dementia may be the result of many small strokes.
… The researchers conducted an intensive study to observe the development of this white matter disease over a short period of time, rather than on an annual basis – the interval at which previous studies have performed repeat brain imaging. The study involved 5 patients with white matter disease undergoing detailed MRI scanning of their brains every week for 16 consecutive weeks. The weekly MRI scans revealed new tiny spots arising in the brain’s white matter that were, based on their MRI appearance, characteristic of small new strokes (cerebral infarcts). The lesions had no symptoms but, with time, came to resemble the existing white matter disease in the subjects’ brains. In the study’s random sampling, the majority of subjects had this phenomenon: Tiny strokes occurring without symptoms, and developing into the kind of white matter disease that causes dementia. …
US Naval Institute says China’s new stealth fighter has the attention of our pilots.
China’s new Shenyang J-31 stealth fighter — making its debut next week at the Zhuhai international airshow — could eventually become more than a match for American stealth fighters in battle, several U.S. military and industry officials told USNI News.
The J-31 is China’s latest crack at developing a modern so-called fifth-generation stealth fighter — equivalent in ability to Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor or F-35 Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter.
“They’re still in the glossy brochure phase of development, so they still look ten feet tall and bulletproof,” one senior U.S. fighter pilot familiar with the F-35 program told USNI News.
“I think they’ll eventually be on par with our fifth gen jets — as they should be, because industrial espionage is alive and well.” …
WSJ writes on the growing amount of unused retail space that is being converted to other uses.
The Internet is moving to a shopping center near you.
In Fort Wayne, Ind., a vacated Target store is about to be home to rows of computer servers, network routers and Ethernet cables courtesy of a local data-center operator. In Jackson, Miss., a former McRae’s department store will get the same treatment next year. And one quadrant of the Marley Station Mall south of Baltimore is already occupied by a data-center company that last year offered to buy out the rest of the building.
As America’s retailers struggle to keep up with online shopping, the Internet is starting to settle into some of the very spaces where brick-and-mortar customers used to shop. The shift brings welcome tenants to some abandoned stretches of the suburban landscape, though it doesn’t replace all the jobs and sales-tax revenue that local communities lost when stores left the building.
Venyu Solutions LLC, a data-center operator that is renovating the former department store in Jackson, sees more opportunity for conversion because of sheer amount of distressed retail properties. “Who else wants them?” said Brian Vandegrift, the company’s executive vice president of sales. “You’re not competing with people in substantial businesses who want those spaces.”
Many malls and neighborhood shopping centers are still grappling with vacancies five years after the recession. …
Ever wonder while waiting to board a plane whether there’s a faster way? Wired has a piece on how boarding could be improved.
No, there’s not much chance it will be adopted. Just wanted you to know people are trying.
I was at the airport last week, and all I wanted to do was sit down, strap in, and lift off. Of course I couldn’t, because there were a bunch of people standing in my way. As the line crept along, I scanned ahead for malingerers, but everyone seemed sufficiently ready to board. I couldn’t help but wonder, is there a more efficient way for airlines to put get our butts into our seats, and into the air?
Millions of other people probably have pondered this question. At least one wrote a computer program to find the answer. Jason Steffen is an astrophysicist at NorthwesternUniversity, and several years ago he modeled different airline boarding methods to see what made them so slow. He also figured out how airlines could get us on board much faster. …
ARS Technica says LED bulbs have pulled ahead of compact fluorescents in efficiency.
A few years back, when I got my first LED-based lightbulb, it seemed natural to stick it into a wattmeter to get a sense of its efficiency. At under 15 Watts of power drawn, it clearly beat any incandescent bulbs I’d ever put into the same lamp. But I was disappointed to find that it wasn’t any better than a compact fluorescent bulb.
Based on the graph shown above, my experience was hardly unique; in fact, it was decidedly average. Although the technology behind LEDs had the potential to be far more efficient than any other lighting source, the complete LED bulb package wasn’t doing that much better at the time than the far more mature fluorescent bulbs, which output roughly 60 lumens for every Watt put in.
After some small boosts in 2013, however, a new generation of more efficient LEDs hit the market this year, raising the typical efficiency to nearly 100 lumens per Watt. The increased efficiency is coming at a time when prices for the bulbs continue to drop; given their expected lifetimes, they’re now far and away the most economical choice for most uses.
The graph also nicely displays why incandescents have been booted off the market for a failure to achieve sufficient efficiency, as they have flatlined at around 15 lumens per Watt.