September 10, 2010
Colonel Reb is the traditional sporting mascot of Ole Miss Rebels, the collegiate athletic teams of the University of Mississippi. Designed in the 1930s, the figure served as the teams’ official or near-official mascot from 1979 until 2003. To some people, he resembles a white antebellum plantation owner, but to others, he simply resembles the ideal of the ‘Southern gentleman’ of the Antebellum Age.
In 2003, the administration eliminated Colonel Reb from the sidelines at Ole Miss athletic events as the on-the-field mascot, though he was allowed at tailgating and other unofficial university functions. In a 2010 vote, Ole Miss students decided to choose a new mascot for the school. An internet campaign to replace Colonel Reb with fictional Star Wars character Admiral Ackbar has gained popular support.
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September 3, 2010
Contact juggling is a form of object manipulation that focuses on the movement of objects such as balls in contact with the body. Although often used with ‘toss’ juggling, it typically involves the rolling of one or more balls on the hands and arms to create visual illusions without releasing the props into the air. It is divided into three main techniques: body rolling (manipulating one or more props around the hands, arms, and body), palm spinning (manipulating two or more balls in the open hand so that at least one ball is in motion), and isolation (manipulating a ball so that it appears to be suspended in place).
Some of the manipulations have been performed for centuries, but contact juggling in its modern form originated with a routine called ‘Light’ developed by Michael Moschen in the 1980s. He received high regard from the international circus community for his range of innovative new techniques, and was awarded the MacArthur genius grant in 1990.
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August 24, 2010
Skijoring [skee-jawr-ing] is a winter sport where a person on skis is pulled by a horse, a dog (or dogs) or a motor vehicle.
It is derived from the Norwegian word skikjøring meaning ski driving. Since many leashed dogs naturally tend to pull a skier with no training, the sport cannot claim a single country of origin. It was invented and continues to be reinvented all over the world. As a competitive sport, however, it is believed that the first races were held in Scandinavia as an offshoot of the older sport of Pulka.
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August 24, 2010
In video gaming a nerf is a change to a game that reduces the effectiveness of a particular game element. The term is also used as a verb for the act of making such a change. The opposite of nerfing is buffing. The term originated with ‘Ultima Online,’ and refers to the Nerf brand of toys which designed to prevent serious injury.
Game developers nerf aspects of a game in order to maintain game balance. Occasionally a new feature (such as an item, class, or skill) may be made too powerful, unfair, or too easily obtained to the extent that it unbalances the game system. This is sometimes due to an unforeseen bug or method of using or acquiring the object that was not considered by the developers.
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August 10, 2010
In the United States, a Sadie Hawkins Dance is usually a less formal dance sponsored by a high school, middle school or college, in which female students invite male students. This is contrary to the usual custom of male students inviting females to school dances such as Prom, in the spring and Homecoming, in the fall.
The Sadie Hawkins dance is named after the Li’l Abner comic strip character Sadie Hawkins, created by cartoonist Al Capp. In the strip, the unmarried women of Dogpatch got one day a year to chase the bachelors and ‘marry up’ with the ones they caught. The event was first introduced in a daily strip which ran on November 13, 1937.
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August 6, 2010
The sweeper is a position on a soccer team. It is versatile type of defender who ‘sweeps up’ the ball if an opponent manages to breach the defensive line. He is more fluid than other defenders who man-mark their designated opponents. Because of this, the position is sometimes referred to as libero; from the Italian word meaning ‘free.’
Though the sweeper may be expected to build counter-attacking moves, and as such requires better ball control and passing ability than a typical back, his or her talents are often confined to the defensive realm. In modern football, its usage has been fairly restricted, with few clubs in the biggest leagues using the position.
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August 3, 2010
In American football, a lineman is a player who specializes in play at the line of scrimmage. The offensive line consists of the center, who is responsible for putting the ball into play, two guards who flank the center, and two offensive tackles who flank the guards. In addition, an offensive line may also include a tight end outside one or both of the tackles. An offensive lineman’s motion during a play is often limited to just a few quick steps to establish position, followed by a wrestling match similar to sumo. Offensive linemen thus tend to be the largest players on the field, with excellent agility and balance but limited straight-line running speed.
The defensive line consists of one or two defensive tackles and two defensive ends who play outside the defensive tackles. Defensive linemen—particularly defensive ends–are called upon to do more running than offensive linemen, thus they usually tend to be somewhat smaller and faster.
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August 3, 2010
Stickle Bricks are a construction toy primarily intended for toddlers invented by Denys Fisher. The brand is owned by Hasbro and they are currently manufactured by Flair Leisure Products plc. An individual stickle brick is a colourful plastic shape a few centimeters long which has a brush of small plastic fingers on one or more edges. The fingers of adjacent stickle bricks can interlock, allowing them to be joined in various ways. Several companies manufacture similar toys, not all of them compatible. Names for these toys include Nopper, Bristle Blocks, Fun Bricks, Clipo, Krinkles and Thistle Blocks.
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August 2, 2010
Gorodki is an ancient Russian folk sport. Similar to bowling and somewhat of the horseshoes concept, the aim of the game is to knock out groups of skittles arranged in some pattern by throwing a bat at them. The skittles, or pins, are called gorodki (literally little cities or townlets), and the square zone in which they are arranged is called the gorod (city).
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August 1, 2010
Happy Farm is a social network game, or massively multiplayer online game, based on farm management simulation. It is played predominantly by users in Mainland China and Taiwan, and is the most popular MMOG in terms of players. At the height of its popularity, there were 23 million daily active users, logging on to the game at least every day. Happy Farm was developed by Chinese social game developer 5 Minutes in 2008. It allows players to grow crops, trade with others, sell produce, and steal from neighbors. The game was influenced by the Japanese RPG series, ‘Harvest Moon.’ The game peaked during the end of the 2000s, and in the following years, experienced a sharp decline in players. As of 2012, it had practically vanished.
‘Happy Farm’ went on to inspire many more farming social network games, including ‘FarmVille,’ as well as parodies such as ‘Jungle Extreme’ and ‘Farm Villain.’ In 2009, ‘Harvest Moon’ developers Marvellous Entertainment eventually released their own farming social network game, ‘Bokujo Monogatari,’ for the Japanese site Mixi.’
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July 17, 2010
A nutmeg (or tunnel) is a technique used in football or field hockey, in which a player plays the ball through an opponent’s legs. This can be whilst passing to another player, shooting or occasionally to carry on and retrieve it himself. However it is well accepted that the classic nutmeg involves retrieving the ball oneself after passing the ball through the opponent’s legs, ideally calling ‘nuts’ or ‘megs’ whilst doing so.
The usage may have arisen because of a sharp practice used in nutmeg exports between America and England. Unscrupulous exporters mixed wooden replicas into the sacks being shipped to England. Being nutmegged soon came to imply stupidity on the part of the duped victim and cleverness on the part of the trickster. Panna is a two person soccer game where opponents attempt to meg each other that is popular in the Netherlands.
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July 14, 2010
The spread offense is an offensive scheme in American and Canadian football that is used at every level of the game including professional, college, and high school. The spread offense begins with a no-huddle approach with the quarterback in the shotgun formation (5 – 7 yards behind the line of scrimmage) much of the time. 3-5 receivers are spread along the line of scrimmage, creating multiple vertical seams for both the running and passing game to exploit, as the defense is forced to spread itself thin across the field to cover everyone.
The father of the spread offense is Rusty Russell, coach of Fort Worth, Texas’ Masonic Home and School for orphaned boys. Russell began coaching Masonic Home in 1927, and due to the fact that his teams were often over matched physically by other schools, they were called the ‘Mighty Mites.’ While there, he deployed the earliest form of a spread offense to great success.
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