- Watching top-ranked
North Carolina defeat Michigan State in front of President Barack Obama, first
lady Michelle Obama and thousands of military personnel in the Carrier Classic
on Veterans Day on Nov. 11 was amazing. The Tar Heels and Spartans squared off
on the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson before the troops, the President and
a national television audience and the success of the event has sparked a slew
of imitators. Where there was one outdoor, ship-bound game last season, there
will be three of them this coming season. Marquette will play Ohio State on a
ship off the coast of Charleston, S.C., Syracuse will take on San Diego State
on the flight deck of a retired ship, the USS Midway, off the coast of San
Diego and it was announced over the weekend that Florida will play Georgetown
on a ship Nov. 9 off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla. The U.S. Navy expressed
its full support of the Florida-Georgetown contest, just as it was with the
Carrier Classic last year. "The Navy is excited to work with the city of
Jacksonville and Naval Station Mayport to bring the Navy-Marine Corps Classic
to the First Coast," Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said in a statement.
"The Navy is America's Away Team; when we are on the job, we operate
forward around the globe and often out of sight of the American people. This is
a unique opportunity to showcase the Navy, and to join together to honor our
veterans and active duty military." No television arrangements have been
made for any of the games yes, but all involved parties are sufficiently fired
up for them. "This is a unique way to say thank you to our military while
putting Jacksonville on display for countless sports fans tuning in from all
over the globe," Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown said in a statement.
Whether the uniqueness of the concept can be sustained long term is a big
question, but schools are clearly looking to seize upon the concept while it’s
still remotely fresh………..
- Barnes & Noble doesn’t want in on Microsoft’s tablet
plans, so what’s next for the maker of the world’s worst operating system?
According to sources, the next step just might be Xbox integration. The current rumor is
that the company’s Surface multi-touch tablet will share many internal
similarities and components with the popular gaming system. While not confirmed
by Microsoft, the so-called Xbox Surface tablet will, according to purportedly
leaked specifications, have a 7-inch 1280x720 multi-touch display and connect
wirelessly to a “stationary computing device” base station with twin 3.1GHz IBM
processors, a custom 28nm AMD GPU and 250GB of speedy storage. Much like the
tablet the Xbox Surface will try (and fail miserably) to compete with, the
iPad, the Microsoft tablet will also have WiFi and Bluetooth, along with a
separately mentioned 2.4GHz connection likely to be used as a sort of proprietary
link between slate and base-station. To add in more versatility for image
sharing, there will also be an SD/SDHC/SDXC card slot. Another key question
with any tablet or laptop is battery life and the Xbox Surface will reportedly feature
a rechargeable battery with up to seven hours of life. All of it would run on a
system with a meager 288 MB of RAM and a custom IBM engine for scale-out
workloads. It doesn’t sound tremendously impressive, but this is Microsoft, so
give the company a chance to prove itself and eventually, you’ll be even less
impressed than you are right now…………
- There still might be another round of “Beetlejuice” for
Tim Burton. The director of the dark, shadowy 1988 comedy starring Michael Keaton as a ghost who scares away humans for other ghosts
insisted he’s still interested in working on a sequel, but is waiting to see a
script before he commits.
He was asked about the project after word broke last
month that screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith was penning a sequel to the
original. Grahame-Smith also wrote the screenplay for Burton's most recent
movie, the disappointing “Dark Shadows,” and if they work together on a
follow-up to “Beetlejuice,” Burton said the film would not be a "remake"
or a "reboot", but "a true sequel with Michael Keaton as the
title character.” That would be a decided departure from the approach taken in
the “Bourne” franchise, in which a studio desperate to squeeze more cash out of
the series was willing to make a sequel in which they had to reboot the entire
concept because the star of the first three films did not return. While he is
currently working on a remake of his 1984 short film “Frankenweenie,”
which is scheduled for release in October and stars “Beetlejuice” cast members Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara, Burton could easily
slot the potential “Beetlejuice” sequel in next year. "Seth is writing
something, so we'll see," he said. "I love the character but I want
to just kind of look at it from a fresh perspective and see what he comes up
with. That's, like, one of my favorite characters I've ever dealt with… I would
love to revisit that character at some point." Sounds like a match made in
ghoulish heaven……….
- When the topic turns to ugly sweaters or maple syrup,
the discussion has to include Vermont. The Nutmeg State has the perfect climate
for both of these entities to thrive and for Killington, Vt. resident Ann Marie Blackman, making and selling maple
syrup isn’t her thing. Instead, she has turned the ugly holiday sweaters most
of us only rock once a year at the annual Ugly Holiday Sweater party we’re
invited to every December into a business. My Ugly Christmas Sweater collects,
repurposes and then sells extraordinarily ugly holiday sweaters, cardigans and dresses.
Blackman doesn’t operate the business as a tongue-in-cheek idea wherein she
merely cashes in on the terrible fashion tastes of others; she seems to
genuinely enjoy the ugly holiday sweater phenomenon. "There's actually a
sweater I didn't sell because I love how ugly it is. It's a 1980s padded
shoulder with children's toys, a giant Raggedy Ann, a toy box. To me it's like
a scary clown. I was going to wear it to a party but I want to add lights to
it," she said. The business started as a small home-based operation based
in a warehouse filled with fringe, lights, jingle bells all things ugly, tacky
and gaudy. With a website, myuglychristmassweater.com, the former stay-at-home
mom is now a small-scale entrepreneur making a living. "A few years ago,
my kids were finishing up high school, getting ready to go to college. So I was
looking for something to sell during the holiday season," Blackman
explained. Ironically, she insisted she had never heard of the Ugly Holiday Sweater
party. "I had never heard of those parties," she said. "But I
thought I could make sweaters uglier than those on the market." That’s
right, this woman MAKES ugly holiday sweaters too. After selling a few of her
creations on eBay, the operation grew quickly from there. Tales of customers
winning prizes at their ugly sweater parties flow in to the My Ugly Christmas
Sweater offices all holiday season long and prove that ugly is beautiful to
some………
- Heads on pikes are so 16th century…..except in India. In the
village of Dungarji, not only are
people still parading severed heads around town, but the man doing the
decapitating and parading is the father of the young woman who was beheaded.
According to police in the region, marble miner Ogad Singh was irate about his
daughter's lifestyle and rather than disown her, verbally abuse her or even
smack her around, he chopped her head off with a sword and then paraded it
through his village before surrendering to authorities in the western Indian
village. His daughter had been living with her parents in the Rajasthani
village after leaving her husband two years ago and she was apparently doing a
lot of getting over her failed marriage, so to speak. Police said Singh was
upset by his daughter having affairs with men the breaking point came two weeks
ago when she eloped with one of her lovers. At that point, Singh could have let
her go, disowned her and refused to ever speak to her again, but he took a
different route. After forcing her to return home Sunday, he beheaded her
Monday with a sword and then marched around town sporting the detached dome for
all to see. Sadly, the story isn’t completely without precedent in a rapidly
modernizing nation rife with social clashes as youths resist traditions like
arranged marriage or limits on women venturing outside their parents' or
husbands' homes. Feel free to join the rest of the world in the 21st
century any time, India………
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