02 13 14 The Crimson White

Page 1

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 13, 2014 VOLUME 120 ISSUE 86 Serving The University of Alabama since 1894

New taps NEWS | CRAFT BEER

for crafts

Bruno’s offers new, take-home draft brews for growing craft beer trends By Josh Sigler | Contributing Writer

A

s the demand for craft beers over traditional domestic beers has grown, Mike Jury, merchandising and IT consultant at Bruno’s supermarket, had an idea to help continue the trend’s growth in Tuscaloosa. In Ja January, Bruno’s opened up a growler station where their pharmacy u used to be located. At this station, customers can choose from a varie variety of beers on tap and bring them home in 64 oz. glass jugs known as growlers, which get their name from the sound they make when ccarbon dioxide escapes through the lid. “The idea first came from a store that was do doing it in Memphis,” Jury said. “Our w wholesaler showed it to us, and we just ki kind of took the idea and ran with it.” What is your Whi While Cashsavers, the model store favorite locally in Mem Memphis, features between 15 and 20 brew brews to choose from, Bruno’s offers brewed beer? more tthan three times that many Let us know at option options, nearly all of which are local and craft b beers. cw.ua.edu/poll. “It’s been a continuing rolling-out proces process for us since January,” Jury said. “We st started with around 24 different beers a and now already offer more than 60.” The station is still a work in progress, and plans are in the works to includ include a drive-thru window, which Jury claims is the first of its kind in the city and one of the first in the state. Jury said he hoped the station would be a good way to promote busine business among college students. Since the station opened, Bruno’s has so sold more than 600 of these growlers. Wes Rickey, a senior majoring in classics, was among those first 600 customers.

ONLINE

CW | Austin Bigoney Customers can purchase glass jugs of a variety of craft and traditional brews from Bruno’s after a recent growth in craft brewing popularity.

SPORTS | BASEBALL

SEE BEER PAGE 3

NEWS | ECONOMICS

UA baseball team Bitcoin brings cash to digital era sees expectations rise for 2014 season Fluctuation of Bitcoin

Digital money seen as controversial by experts

Market Price (USD) in the past year

1,400

By Samuel Yang | Staff Reporter

By Kevin Connell | Staff Reporter No one willingly reminisces on a loss. For any player or coach with a competitive drive and the determination to succeed, a loss is comparable to a nightmare, only it’s as real as it gets. For the Alabama baseball team, one loss has been especially hard to forget – the one that ended the 2013 season. The Crimson Tide’s season ended last June when it gave up four runs in the bottom of the ninth inning in a 9-8 loss to Troy at the NCAA Regional in Tallahassee, Fla. “Sometimes what occurs can help you later,” Alabama coach Mitch Gaspard said. “And we’ve really been able to use that regional as fuel moving into this year. The majority of guys that were in that dugout lived that, and now they’re back in this dugout again this year.” Alabama, which comes into this season ranked No. 21 in both the Baseball America and Perfect

SEE BASEBALL PAGE 2

B

1,000

Market Price (USD)

Tide to face Saint Louis at home over weekend

Game USA preseason polls, will officially be able to put last season behind them with a good start to the 2014 season this weekend at home against Saint Louis. “This year, I think the expectations are a little higher,” said righthander Spencer Turnbull, who is an expected starter in the weekend rotation for the second year in a row. “It’s still just a day-by-day thing. We want to take every day one day at a time, win every game that we can and hopefully go as far as we can. Obviously, everybody wants to make it to [the College World Series in] Omaha, so that’s our goal for sure.” Those goals would not have been realistic a year ago. The Crimson Tide was coming off a miserable 21-34 campaign in 2012 and had to replace five starters in the everyday lineup for the upcoming season. It’s much of the opposite heading into this season. Despite last season’s bitter ending, the Crimson Tide finished with a 35-28 record in the brutal Southeastern

It happens all the time – a student swipes their ACT card and walks away with their new purchase. The process seems instantaneous, secure and foolproof. Most of the time, there’s no reason to doubt that, but a purchase like that can involve identity theft, refusal of access and fees. Bitcoin, programmable money that can be spent in a number of places, is a low-cost, high-speed way of payment – and recent growth has sparked discussion and scrutiny into previously under-the-radar “crypto-currency.” David Bailey, University of Alabama alumnus and founder of Forza Financial, founded a quarterly magazine, yBitcoin, to educate people about bitcoin. He said the bitcoin model, with all the traditional properties of money, has the potential to revolutionize commerce and government around the world. “Bitcoin is going to do [to] the financial world the same that the Internet did to what we communicate,” he said. Bailey also points to the Internet as a comparison when it comes to the controversy that often trails bitcoin. Concerns over its use in illegal

1,200

800

600

400

200

0

Mar ‘13

Apr ‘13

May ‘13

Jun ‘13

Jul ‘13

Aug ‘13

Sep ‘13

Oct‘13

Nov ‘13

Dec ‘13

Jan ‘13

CW | Belle Newby; Information obtained from Blockchain.info. activity have kicked up debate over its regulation and use – a problem that Bailey said also dogged the developing Internet. “The controversy basically spins out of the fact that, for a long time, bitcoin was seen as basically nothing. It was just pieces of code – ones and zeros. People were just kind of moving ones and zeros around. From that standpoint, bitcoin, for a long time, was kind of like this thing for crypto-anarchists, cyber-nerds and hackers,” he said. “But the principles and properties of bitcoin are extremely valuable. Most of the

controversy you hear about now stems from bitcoin’s early days.” Crypto-currencies, which are math-based, stand in stark contrast to fiat money, the current system, which gains its value from the backing of governments. Benton Gup, UA professor of finance, said past systems have included the trade of commodities and the backing of currencies using commodities. He said there is no doubt that bitcoin is well-designed, but he sees no reason to use bitcoin over an SEE BITCOINS PAGE 8

TODAYON CAMPUS

Ple a

Partly cloudy

Partly cloudy

51º/32º

60º/31º

per •

Friday

pa

16 15 15

Thursday

recycle th i se

s

INSIDE

Sports Puzzles Classifieds

tomorrow

per • Ple a

2 4 9

today

WHAT: Diverse Desserts: Love Around the World WHEN: 8-9 p.m. WHERE: Ridgecrest South Atrium

pa

Briefs Opinions Culture

WHAT: Huxford Symphony Orchestra WHEN: 7:30 p.m. WHERE: Moody Music Building

s

today’s paper

WEATHER

WHAT: “For the Love of the Blues” WHEN: 5-8 p.m. WHERE: Druid City Brewing Company

Honors College

recycle thi

WHAT: “A Gift from Nanoscience: Molecular Memory” WHEN: 2 p.m. WHERE: Rodgers Library

Campus symphony

CONTACT

Out on the town

se

Science series

Feb ‘13

Date

email

editor@cw.ua.edu

website cw.ua.edu


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.