[Posted before final scores of last three NCAA games on Sunday night…but just as I learned of Ben Howland’s firing…make that two scores…13-seed La Salle just defeated 12-seed Ole Miss…]
NBA Quiz: [Short-term memory check] Name the top five scorers in the league this season…all over 26 ppg. Answer below.
Sweet Sixteen…and other stuff…
Your Editor’s Final Four:
President Obama’s:
But I would have correctly established a no-fly zone in Syria 18 months ago, thus saving thousands of lives!!!
–Because my alma mater Wake Forest has sucked, I’ve picked a different team the last three seasons and gone all in. Two years ago it was San Diego State, I went to a game out there, and they lost to eventual champ UConn.
Last year I went with Murray State on a lark and out of nowhere, the Racers were No. 9 near year end before succumbing in the tourney to 3-seed Marquette in the second round.
This year I went back with SDSU because of Jamaal Franklin, who is going to be a special player in the NBA.
But after a solid start (and preseason No. 16 ranking), the Aztecs just didn’t play well the second half of the season and you saw what they did on Sunday night.
And it’s kind of embarrassing that the Mountain West Conference is now out of the tourney….none of the five entrants getting to the Sweet Sixteen after what I thought was outstanding play all year. I loved watching MWC games.
But now it’s about Florida Gulf Coast….the first 15-seed to ever advance to the Sweet Sixteen after their 81-71 win over SDSU. I mean it’s not enough to say they are for real. They’ve done something no one else has ever done! Read their coach’s story below. This guy is special!!!
As in he’s a truly special American!!! Heck, I’d vote for Andy Enfield for president in a heartbeat! Barack Obama?! Mitt Romney?! Paul Ryan?! Hillary Clinton?!
–So I couldn’t be more pissed off at the way the Saturday/Sunday games were scheduled. In the old days, Saturday was one of the better days in all of sports. The eight games were broken down as follows…1 (noon ET), 2, 3, 2….with it all ending around 10:00 PM ET. Sunday’s games…also generally 1-2-3-2…ended in time for “60 Minutes.”
Now we have this incredibly idiotic Sunday deal where the last game ends at midnight.
We love having all the games on individual channels….but c’mon! We are capable of using the clicker.
–Meanwhile, what a game…No. 2-seed Ohio State vs. 10-seed Iowa State. The Cyclones were down 69-56, tied it at 69, it was back and forth from there, with Ohio State’s Aaron Craft suddenly missing multiple one-and-one free throw attempts, turning the ball over, committing a stupid foul, but in the end there was a controversial call that went the Buckeyes’ way and Craft drained the winning three-pointer….game over…Ohio State 78-75.
And then No. 1 Indiana outlasted No. 9 Temple, 58-52, despite the Owls’ Khalif Wyatt’s 31. Victor Oladipo had the deciding shot for the Hoosiers. But I still don’t understand how Oladipo, averaging 13.5 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, can be national player of the year.
But for the record, when Carolina was up 12-2 on Kansas, I wrote Johnny Mac and told him the Jayhawks would win by 15. I was wrong. Kansas prevailed 70-58. [You can check the China ISP address for verification.]
–Gosh, those were some hideous games on Saturday, the first five, before No. 3 Marquette bested No. 6 Butler 74-72 in a terrific contest, with No. 9 Wichita State then pulling off the stunner in taking down No. 1 Gonzaga 76-70 as the Shockers went 14-28 from 3-point land, including seven straight at one point down the stretch. Wichita State was 50% overall from the field as well and won despite giving up 20 offensive rebounds. Just a stupendous effort.
–And for the archives just have to note a few Thursday/Friday contests…like No. 14 Harvard beating No. 3 New Mexico, 68-62, for the school’s first NCAA tourney win ever, with the Crimson shooting 52% from the field, while the Lobos, known for their dry spells, shot only 37%.
No. 3 Marquette should have lost to No. 14 Davidson but somehow prevailed 59-58 as coach Bob McKillop’s boys, who lead the nation in free-throw shooting at 80%, went 14-22 from the foul line against Marquette. Oh, what could have been for Davidson…a great, great school with one of the truly classy coaches in all of sports. I mean this is a guy who could have written his own big-time ticket anywhere in the country and he chooses to stay where he’s comfortable and if you’ve ever been to the school, as I was a few years ago to see a game with Phil W., you’d know why.
Nice job No. 7-seed Notre Dame, 76-58 losers to 10-seed Iowa State. If I were an N.D. alum (see Mark R.), I’d ask for all my donations back because of this absolutely ridiculous thing the school is doing with the uniforms.
–So much for UCLA and Coach Ben Howland. He’s been fired after 10 seasons at the helm (literally I learned this five minutes before posting), including three consecutive Final Four appearances, 2006-08. But after a hideous loss to 11-seed Minnesota, 83-63, the 6-seed Bruins could have not have seemed more disinterested. There’s a post-game photo of freshman ‘star’ Shabazz Muhammad in the locker room, doing his social media thing, and it just kind of summed it all up. Yes, UCLA won the regular season Pac-12 crown, but it’s where you end up in March that matters.
“Say what you want about the embattled leader of the Bruins’ sixth-seeded team, but Howland deserved better….
“If his players cared, they didn’t show it. If his players were still listening to him, it wasn’t evident. Once embraced by a UCLA community that truly believed he was leading them back to the days of Wooden, Howland spent his probable final game shouting into nothing, drawing up plays for nobody, very much alone.
“At the bitterest of ends, in a postgame news conference in front of only a handful of reporters, the man who has answered every question for 10 years couldn’t bring himself to respond to the final one.
“ ‘Do you think you’ve coached your last game at UCLA coach?’ he was asked.
“All indications are that Howland, having missed the Sweet 16 for the fifth consecutive year, will soon be bought out of his contract…
“Howland clearly knew what was at stake in this game, and obviously understands the ramifications of its outcome.
“It’s a shame the players, who are rarely held accountable in these situations, seemingly did not share that understanding.
“Given the hype that accompanied some of these guys into this season, it’s fair to ask some questions and offer some answers. Best recruiting class in the country? Please. A lineup of top NBA prospects? Only one. John Wooden’s university? The kids acted as if they never heard of the man….
“The Bruins’ last shot of the game was Shabazz Muhammad missing a layup, which is appropriate because he will now take his game to the NBA after missing his mark as an enduring Bruins star. On a day when this newspaper reported that Muhammad has been playing under an assumed age – he is 20, not 19 – he began by playing as if he were 40. He missed all seven shots in the first half and by the time he found his rhythm, the game was essentially over.
“So, too, probably, is Ben Howland’s UCLA career, a great run that deserved a better ending.”
Meanwhile, about Muhammad’s age, Eric Prisbell of USA TODAY noted:
“(Muhammad’s) birth certificate shows he was born Nov. 13, 1992, making him 20-years-old. His age had been listed and reported as 19.
“After scoring 15 of his 20 points in the second half Friday, Muhammad said that he was not affected by the story (in the L.A. Times) and that, ‘I tell everyone I am 20. I don’t even know what the big deal is. People try to get stories these days, and it’s really ridiculous. Twenty years old in college, guys are 22, 23, 24. Most of those guys out there are old. I always say I am 20. I didn’t even read it.’
“When asked if he knew that his age was known publicly as 19, Muhammad said, ‘No, I didn’t. I have my ID all the time. I show my driver’s license, it says 1992. That’s just ridiculous…It’s ’92. I always say I am 20. People know I am 20.’”
What a jerk. A “Jerk of the Year” candidate for sure.
–I knew nothing about Florida Gulf Coast coach Andy Enfield before this week, as I assume most of you didn’t either. Actually, until reading a piece by Liz Clarke in the Washington Post, I didn’t realize the guy could have retired in his 30s after co-founding a health care-related technology company. Enfield is a Johns Hopkins graduate who earned an MBA in finance at Maryland, “abandoned Wall Street and, accompanied by his lingerie-model bride who put her own high-wattage career on hold, headed south to chase a dream of coaching basketball.”
And all he did in his second year as a head coach was defeat 2-seed Georgetown, 78-68. [And then SDSU as noted above.]
Remarkably, Enfield holds the NCAA record for free throw shooting percentage (92.5) from his playing days at Johns Hopkins in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. He grew up in Shippensburg, Pa., the son of two schoolteachers.
He met his wife, Amanda, in New York as her modeling career was at its peak.
“It was March 2003, and a mutual friend suggested Enfield drive Amanda, an Oklahoma native, to an NCAA tournament game in Boston, where her beloved Oklahoma State was playing. She already had tickets; he offered to spare her the $500 flight.
“ ‘I pulled up to the Starbucks in Manhattan,’ Enfield recalled. ‘As soon as I saw Amanda get in my car, I knew it would be a good trip.’”
After business school, among Enfield’s ventures was a basketball shooting camp, which led to jobs with the Milwaukee Bucks and the Celtics. He later launched a health-services start-up based on a technology called Tracked Manager. Health care wasn’t his field but finance was and soon the company was worth $100 million.
Leonard Hamilton took note of Enfield’s work with the NBA and when he became coach at Florida State in 2002, offered Enfield a job on his staff in 2006.
–Meanwhile, Florida Gulf Coast’s first-round victim, Georgetown, now has “five difficult-to-stomach defeats in as many tournament appearances,” as noted by the Washington Post’s Jason Reid.
Big East player of the year Otto Porter Jr. could have not come up smaller the last two games; going 5 of 17 against FGC and before that, 4 of 13 in a loss to Syracuse in the Big East semis.
“Since reaching the 2007 Final Four, the Hoyas have been eliminated in either their first or second tournament game five times. During that span, they were seeded second, third, sixth, third and second, respectively, in their regions.”
So the temptation is to blame the coach, but JTIII has won six regular season league titles in his 13 seasons as head coach. He was this year’s Big East coach of the year.
“It’s not Thompson’s fault the Hoyas missed many open shots….
“Thompson does have a Final Four appearance on his resume. That’s a fact.
“What’s also true is that, under Thompson, things usually go horribly wrong for Georgetown in the tournament. Lower-seeded teams always seem to improve against the Hoyas; Davidson, Ohio, Virginia Commonwealth, North Carolina State, Florida Gulf Coast – each booted them from the tournament….
“ ‘More than anyone on this earth, I’ve tried to analyze it, think about, look at it, see what we could do, should do, differently,’ Thompson said. ‘And…I don’t know.’”
–We all know that Oregon should have received a higher seed, an 8 or 9 rather than the 12 it got, but they are Sweet Sixteen bound anyway and this affords us an opportunity to see the Duck cheerleaders on a more intimate stage. Quack quack!
–We know who was overrated….Memphis. And how disappointing was N.C. State’s season? Heck, a lot of folks had them as a lock for the Final Four in the preseason. But we learned they were way too thin, and the coaching was suspect.
–Phil W. ….going to get into some of the stuff we discussed this weekend next time.
The Heat
The streak is up to 26 after Miami defeated Charlotte on Sunday. That performance the other night when they came from 27 down in the third quarter against Cleveland was truly amazing.
But now I’m looking at next Sunday, Miami at San Antonio, as the Heat will be gunning for win No. 30. LeBron and Co. vs. Timmy Duncan and his crew. Duncan went to Wake Forest, you know.
“We all know by now that LeBron James is the current MVP of all our professional sports, and the biggest star we’ve got, not even the big-name quarterbacks of the NFL are in the conversation with him. Baseball? You tell me who’s the biggest star right now, the one who makes you watch the game if he’s in it. There isn’t one. [Ed. Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, assuming they don’t have sophomore slumps, could be.]
“Michael Jordan was the king once, and then Tiger Woods….Now it’s LeBron, hands down….
“The Miami Heat have made a regular season in professional sports mean more than it has in such a long time.
“Lately they have made every game feel like a playoff game, against good teams and bad teams….
“The majesty of James’ talent and his athletic character and the force of his game and will is exactly the same as Michael’s once was, when Michael accepted the responsibility of being Michael Jordan, every single night.
“This all goes back to the old Joe DiMaggio line, DiMaggio once asked back in the ‘40s why he had played so hard in a meaningless late-season game for the Yankees.
“DiMaggio said, and famously: ‘Because there might have been somebody in the stands today who’d never seen me play before, and might never see me again.’
“We all understand that there could be no such sentiment in the modern world of sports; we’ve been watching LeBron James play basketball since they started putting his high school games on television. But he gives you a Joe DiMaggio game every night, does it now more than ever….
“If the streak keeps going for another week, makes it through San Antonio next Sunday night, this will start to feel more like the team equivalent of DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.”
As for the Lakers and their response to the Heat threatening their historic 33-game run in 1971-72, Jerry West points out the hardest part was the travel. For example, during the streak they had four sets of back-to-back-to-back games, whereas these days you can only have back-to-back.
The Heat, on the other hand, have had longer breaks between games and charter flights, for starters.
What I forgot about L.A.’s season was how Elgin Baylor retired nine games into the campaign, with the Lakers 6-3. Jim McMillian took his spot in the starting lineup and they won the next 33. Only two of the games were decided by five points or fewer and only one went into overtime.
Jim Cleamons, the only rookie on the team, recalled the monotony of the schedule.
“A lot of times the game was over at 10:30, 11:00. You’d go back to the hotel, try to grab something to eat and if your uniform was wet, you hung it up to dry a little bit. If there was a 7 o’clock plane the next morning, that means you had to be at the airport by 6 or a little bit after, so your wake-up call was at 5:30 and you had to be packed and down in the lobby to catch a cab or the bus to the airport.” [Ben Bolch / L.A. Times]
–Two other basketball notes…Ray Williams, a very solid shooting guard with the New York Knicks in the late 70s, early 80s, died of colon cancer at the age of 58. He was the younger brother of NBA star Gus Williams and played for six teams over 10 years.
His best years were with the Knicks, averaging 20 points per game twice, and teaming with Michael Ray Richardson to form an exciting backcourt. But the two also loved the good life and Richardson, following a first-round sweep by the Chicago Bulls in the 1981 playoffs, admitted that excessive partying contributed to their undoing.
Knicks coach Red Holzman felt the two had to be separated and Williams was traded to the Nets.
Last week, upon hearing Williams was critically ill, Richardson called him at Sloan-Kettering. “He told me, ‘Sugar, I always considered you my brother,’” Richardson said. “I said: ‘Me, too. Be strong, Ray.’”
It was through a free screening offered by the NBA Retired Players Association that Williams recently learned of his cancer. Sadly, it was detected too late.
And Bud Palmer died. He was 91. According to some, he was the first one to shoot the jump shot. The Basketball Hall of Fame suggests Glenn Roberts may have fired off the first jump shot while at a Virginia high school in the 1930s, and NCAA archives credit John Miller Cooper of the University of Missouri around the same time, and others say Kenny Sailors of Wyoming, 1934, but it was Palmer, according to author John Cristgau, who was another pioneer.
“When he tried out for the Knicks in 1946, it was still so odd that Coach Neal Cohalen thundered, ‘What the hell kind of shot is that?’
“Palmer sat on the bench for several weeks, until he and the coach huddled at a bar. Palmer told Cohalen that he had been successful with the shot and said that its unusualness was an advantage because opponents had little experience defending against it. Cohalen said shooting blindfolded was also unusual.
“But Palmer’s shooting accuracy ultimately won the day. Over three seasons in New York, he averaged 11.7 points in 148 regular-season games.’
Palmer was also the Knicks’ first captain and team’s highest-paid player. He would later go on to be a well-known broadcaster, both in New York and nationwide.
“As a Knick, Palmer roomed on the road with Sweetwater Clifton, one of the first black players in the NBA. He once confronted a hotel manager in Baltimore to demand, successfully, that Clifton be allowed to stay.
“Later, after a few beers in their room, Clifton told his friend, ‘Damn, for a white boy, you sure can jump.’”
Ball Bits
–This whole deal for the Mets and pitcher Johan Santana is truly pathetic, but also par for the course it being the Metsies. There is no date whatsoever as to when he will pitch this year, Santana himself saying that over the weekend. His arm is dead.
And for this dead arm, including a buyout at the end of the season when the Mets release him, he will be paid $30 million (I have to keep repeating this…it’s part of my therapy). One thing is for sure, the fans will kill him if and when he returns and he fails to perform. It’s going to be a very nasty divorce.
–It’s not official, but Derek Jeter seems headed to the DL and thus would miss opening day. And the Yankees are near a deal for the Angels’ Vernon Wells….provided L.A. pays virtually all of the $42 million remaining on one of the worst contract signings ever.
Once again, this also speaks ill of the Yanks’ farm system.
“On the night of June 14, 1949, a young woman gave an enormous tip – $5 – to a bellhop at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago to deliver a note to another guest, Eddie Waitkus, the first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, who were in town to play the Cubs. The two had never met, but she needed to see him, she explained in the note, in which she called herself Ruth Anne Burns. Could he come to her room?
“She ordered two whiskey sours and a daiquiri from room service and sipped them while she waited. Waitkus received the note late in the evening and phoned her room about 11 p.m. When she answered, she said she had gone to bed and needed to dress. Would he wait half an hour and then knock on her door?
“The woman, a 19-year-old typist for an insurance company whose name was really Ruth Ann Steinhagen, planned to stab Waitkus with a knife when he entered the room, she later said. But after she opened the door, he rushed by her and sat in a chair. So instead, she went to a closet and fetched a .22 caliber rifle she had recently bought.
“Training the gun on him, she forced him to stand up and move toward the window.
“ ‘For two years, you’ve been bothering me, and now you’re going to die,’ she told Waitkus, according to a front-page account in the New York Times. Then she shot him.”
Waitkus was hit on the right side of the chest and survived. He returned to baseball the next season. Steinhagen was charged with assault with intent to murder, but was soon declared insane and committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she spent three years. She was not punished further.
She led a reclusive life thereafter, on the North Side of Chicago; so much so that she died last Dec. 29 but the Chicago Tribune just reported it. The newspaper said it had come across a notice of her death while searching public records for another article. She died after falling in her home.
Anyway, her encounter with Waitkus was seized upon by Bernard Malamud for his 1952 novel, “The Natural.”
It seems Steinhagen “had a penchant for falling in love with unattainable men. She told the police that before she began focusing on Waitkus, she had had crushes on the movie star Alan Ladd and a Cubs infielder, Peanuts Lowrey. She became obsessed with Waitkus during his three full seasons for the Cubs…
“When Waitkus was traded to Philadelphia after the 1948 season, she had a breakdown, her mother told reporters, and moved to a small apartment, where she built what amounted to a shrine to Waitkus.”
Steinhagen would later tell police her plan was to commit suicide afterward, but she did not have the courage to follow through.
Waitkus played six seasons after the shooting and finished his career with a .285 batting average. The guy never struck out, but had zero power, especially for a first baseman. He died in 1972 at age 53.
—Dr. James Andrews, who a lot of us once admired but now will go to our local physicians instead, thank you very much, if there’s a problem of the sort he handles, nonetheless said Robert Griffin III’s recovery from his knee surgery is “way ahead of schedule. His recovery has been unbelievable so far.”
“RGIII is one of those superhumans. First patient I ever had like that was Bo Jackson. And recently I, of course, had Adrian Peterson, who is also superhuman.”
–Baltimore star safety Ed Reed signed with Houston for $15 million over three years, with $5 million guaranteed. He’s 34 and who wouldn’t want him on their team. I think he can still play. Others, however, don’t. Hell, he’s a tremendous leader. Houston made a great move.
–The Chicago Bears and future Hall of Fame linebacker Brian Urlacher parted ways after 13 seasons for salary cap reasons. As opposed to Ed Reed, I wouldn’t waste money on Urlacher at this stage in his career. Great leader like Reed….just think his best days are over.
–Ex-Chicago Bears wide receiver Harlon Hill died at the age of 80. Hill attended North Alabama and was NFL Rookie of the Year with Chicago in 1954 after being drafted in the 15th round. I mean this guy started his career with three outstanding seasons for the Bears, including 1955 when he was league MVP.
1954…45 rec., 1124 yards, 25.0 avg., 12 TD
1955…42-789, 18.8, 9
1956…47-1128, 24.0, 11
For his career, the 6-3, 199 lb. Hill (huge for that time…and he obviously had speed) caught 233 passes for 4,717 yards and 40 touchdowns.
And yes, this is the Harlon Hill for which the Division II player of the year trophy is named.
—Golf: Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler had only completed two holes at Bay Hill on Sunday when play was suspended due to storms. So with half the field still on the course at the time, play resumes on Monday at 10:00 a.m. on Golf Channel. Great for many of us! [With snow in the forecast for your editor’s home area.]
–Speaking of snow, I was watching the hoops Friday night, specifically my Aztecs, when Pete M. said I needed to check out the U.S.-Costa Rica World Cup qualifier outside Denver. What a scene. The U.S. winning 1-0 in an authentic blizzard.
So Costa Rica filed a protest, which is within their rights. Costa Rican coach Jorge Pinto asked for the game to be suspended, but U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann made a case for playing on and the referee concurred. Costa Rican players, however, didn’t complain much during the contest, only afterwards.
The U.S. plays Mexico in Mexico City on Tuesday, which was part of the decision-making process at the time.
–In another World Cup qualifier, Croatia defeated bitter rival Serbia 2-0 in Zagreb amid heavy security. The two nations fought a war in the 1990s during the break-up of Yugoslavia.
The Serbian national anthem was booed and at one stage a chorus of “Kill a Serb” echoed round the stadium. Serbian supporters were barred from attending the match.
Croatian football authorities had implored fans to respect the opposing side, but the home crowd soon started singing fascist songs from the 1940s – when tens of thousands of Serbs died in Croatia at the hands of Ustasa militias.
The return match will be played in Serbia in September. This will be interesting. Croatia is on its way to moving on in WC play, but Serbia appears to be out of it.
–Back to golf…last time I noted that Arnold Palmer was having dinner with Kate Upton. Johnny Mac then relayed a note from that experience, Ms. Upton’s take on it all…
“He is so down to earth, so nice. He is able to sit in any situation and talk with anyone. I hope to be like that. I’ve always wanted to meet Arnold. He’s a legend in more than golf.”
It would seem the 83-year-old Palmer and 20-year-old Upton really hit it off.
Did you know Arnie went to Wake Forest?!
—Joe Weider died. He was 93. He was the body-building pioneer who created a multi-million dollar fitness business, mentoring a young Arnold Schwarzenegger from the time he was an unknown.
Weider discovered a teenage Schwarzenegger at a bodybuilding contest in Europe and sponsored his move to the U.S.
Weider popularized bodybuilding worldwide. On Saturday, Schwarzenegger said, “He taught us that through hard work and training we could all be champions.”
Weider was born in Montreal and his parents struggled to make ends meet. He left school at age 12 to work, first as a grocery delivery boy and later as a short-order cook.
He was a scrawny kid but to protect himself from neighborhood toughs, he made his first barbells out of scrap metal. By 17 he was obsessed with muscle-building. That same year he started his first magazine and later convinced a major magazine distributor to put the publication, Your Physique, on newsstands. Sales took off.
At 27, he and his younger brother formed the International Federation of Bodybuilders and hosted the first Mr. Canada contest.
In 1965, Weider created one of bodybuilding’s premier events, the Mr. Olympia competition.
So it was in 1972 that Weider moved Schwarzenegger to California, setting him up in a Santa Monica apartment, and splashing his victories across the covers of his magazines.
At its height, Weider’s muscle magazine empire included 16 publications with a combined circulation of 4 million copies a month. In 2003, he sold the magazines to American Media for $357 million.
As Ronald Reagan would have said…not bad, not bad at all. [Rebecca Trounson / Los Angeles Times]
“Authorities in still-frigid Ohio have issued an ‘indictment’ against the famed groundhog, who predicted an early spring when he didn’t see his shadow after emerging from his lair in western Pennsylvania on Feb. 2….
“(The) furry rodent has been charged with misrepresentation of spring, a felony ‘against the peace and dignity of the state of Ohio,’ wrote prosecutor Mike Gmoser in an official-looking indictment….
Well that is what Amanda Lee Myers and Mark Scolforo surmise. I’m sure Gmoser really meant it. I mean it’s just a rodent. And it does appear Phil’s digs, which are right next to the police station in Gobbler’s Knob, are seeing increased security.
–Frans de Waal / Wall Street Journal…had an extensive piece over the weekend titled “The Brains of the Animal Kingdom” that is definitely worth a look. To wit:
“Who is smarter: a person or an ape? Well, it depends on the task. Consider Ayumu, a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University who, in a 2007 study, put human memory to shame. Trained on a touch screen, Ayumu could recall a random series of nine numbers, from 1 to 9, and tap them in the right order, even though the numbers had been displayed for just a fraction of a second and then replaced with white squares.
“I tried the task myself and could not keep track of more than five numbers – and I was given much more time than the brainy ape. In the study, Ayumu outperformed a group of university students by a wide margin. The next year, he took on the British memory champion Ben Pridmore and emerged the ‘chimpion.’….
“Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species. Scientists are now finally meeting animals on their own terms instead of treating them like furry (or feathery) humans, and this shift is fundamentally reshaping our understanding.
“Elephants are a perfect example. For years, scientists believed them incapable of using tools. At most, an elephant might pick up a stick to scratch its itchy behind. In earlier studies, the pachyderms were offered a long stick while food was placed outside their reach to see if they would use the stick to retrieve it. This setup worked well with primates, but elephants left the stick alone. From this, researchers concluded that the elephants didn’t understand the problem. It occurred to no one that perhaps we, the investigators, didn’t understand the elephants.
“Think about the test from the animal’s perspective. Unlike the primate hand, the elephant’s grasping organ is also its nose. Elephants use their trunks not only to reach food but also to sniff and touch it. With their unparalleled sense of smell, the animals know exactly what they are going for. Vision is secondary.
“But as soon as an elephant picks up a stick, its nasal passages are blocked. Even when the stick is close to the food, it impedes feeling and smelling. It is like sending a blindfolded child on an Easter egg hunt.”
Us humans really are idiots. So the folks at the National Zoo in Washington conducted a more realistic experiment, where an elephant had to kick a box until it got under a tree bearing fruit and upon which the elephant then used the stool to reach it. Let’s just say the elephant passed with flying colors.
And there is the other traditional study for elephants….the mirror test. “In the early going, scientists placed a mirror on the ground outside the elephant’s cage, but the mirror was (unsurprisingly) much smaller than the largest of land animals. All that the elephant could possibly see was four legs behind two layers of bars (since the mirror doubled them). When the animal received a mark on its body visible only with the assistance of the mirror, it failed to notice or touch the mark. The verdict was that the species lacked self-awareness.”
So then a researcher gave the elephants access to an 8-by-8-foot mirror and allowed them to feel it, smell it and look behind it. “With this larger mirror, they fared much better. One Asian elephant recognized herself.”
There are more stories, including with horses and octopi. As de Waal concludes:
“Aristotle’s ladder of nature is not just being flattened; it is being transformed into a bush with many branches. This is no insult to human superiority. It is long-overdue recognition that intelligent life is not something for us to seek in the outer reaches of space but is abundant right here on earth, under our noses.”
Dr. W.W. and I were discussing the above over the weekend and he said we need to employ the chimp in our online gaming careers. I suggested I’d love to have him at a blackjack table, doing the card-counting. I’m just wondering if his hand gestures would be too obvious.
But you know I really don’t like chimps because of their propensity to rip your face off, or throw their own [you know what] at you.
Which is why I prefer the far friendlier, and equally intelligent, Bonobo, a perennial top ten on the All-Species List.
“A Canadian man who was bitten by a snake while vacationing in Costa Rica survived because of antivenin provided by a Seattle zoo, officials said Friday.
“Michael Lovatt of Vancouver, B.C., had not realized he’d been bitten by a viper on his foot, but when the 61-year-old returned home on Monday, he was ill and was diagnosed with kidney failure after being rushed to the hospital. His legs were swollen from his foot to his mid-thigh.
“But not knowing what bit him, doctors called in help from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. The medical team determined based on Lovatt’s symptoms that he was bitten by a Fer-de-lance Bothrops asper, which is native to Central and South America and is known to be deadly to humans.
“The medical team contacted the Woodlands Park Zoo and Harborview Medical Center for help.
“The zoo keeps a cache of antivenins from Mexican pit vipers, cantils, rattlesnakes, eyelash vipers and bushmasters. They are kept in case of emergencies.”
So after the call, the zoo rushed 20 vials to Harborview, where an air ambulance got them to Vancouver.
“The patient’s blood clotting improved dramatically within minutes of receiving the antivenin and his condition stabilized within six hours.”
–We note the passing of Harry Reems, whose starring role in “Deep Throat” in 1972 made him America’s first true male porn star. It was back then that director Gerard Damiano hired Reems to be the lighting director on the movie, but when the original male lead failed to show up for work, Reems stepped in. He was paid about $250. The film grossed a reported $600 million worldwide.
Reems had already made a number of porn films when he starred opposite Linda Lovelace in “Deep Throat.”
“Reems played Dr. Young, a physician whose diagnostic brilliance – he locates the rare anatomical quirk that makes Ms. Lovelace’s character vastly prefer oral sex to intercourse – is matched by his capacity for tireless ministration.
“ ‘I was always the doctor,’ he told New York magazine in 2005, ‘because I was the one that had an acting background. I would say: ‘You’re having trouble with oral sex? Well, here’s how to do it.’ Cut to a 20-minute oral-sex scene.’” [New York Times]
Reems later became a First Amendment cause celebre when he and 11 others were tried on charges of conspiracy to transport obscene material across state lines. Alan Dershowitz represented Reems and his original conviction was overturned on appeal.
–At age 17, British trumpet player Derek Watkins turned professional and enjoyed a lengthy career in which he played with the Beatles, Frank Sinatra and the London Symphony, among others.
But perhaps his biggest claim to fame is he played on every James Bond film soundtrack from Dr. No to Skyfall. He died over the weekend at 68.
–I said New York City’s new country music station, Nash FM, 94.7, would be a huge hit and it appears it is on its way to being so as its station rank rose to 20 from 31 in its first full month, February. I know I flip it on every time I am in the car, as much as any of my Sirius stations, actually.
—Bobbie Smith, former lead singer of the Spinners, died at the age of 76.
Smith was lead on the group’s first hit, “That’s What Girls Are Made For,” all the way back in 1961, and on three records that reached the Top 10 in the 1970s: “I’ll Be Around” (1972), “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love” (1973) and “They Just Can’t Stop It (Games People Play)” (1975). And he collaborated with Dionne Warwick on “Then Came You” (1974), the Spinners’ only No. 1 hit.
Smith was born in Abbeyville, Ga., and later moved with his family to Detroit, where in the mid-1950s he and his friends Henry Fambrough, Pervis Jackson, Billy Henderson and C.P. Spencer began singing together as the Domingoes.
Later, with the Spinners on the Motown label, the group was taking a backseat to the Temptations and the Four Tops so they moved on to Atlantic and then the hits flowed. The Spinners’ Greatest Hits Album is as good as any…as I’ve noted more than once.
Top 3 songs for the week 3/27/82: #1 “I Love Rock ‘N Roll” (Joan Jett & The Blackhearts) #2 “Open Arms” (Journey) #3 “We got The Beat” (Go-Go’s….just hated this year…)…and…#4 “That Girl” (Stevie Wonder) #5 “Sweet Dreams” (Air Supply) #6 “Make A Move On Me” (Olivia Newton-John…I would…but this in only on paper…) #7 “Centerfold” (The J. Geils Band) #8 “Chariots Of Fire” (Vangelis…incredibly infantile…) #9 “Pac-Man Fever” (Buckner & Garcia…Bill Buckner and Sergio Garcia…a weird grouping if there ever was one…) #10 “Freeze-Frame” (The J. Geils Band…this was the year 60s nostalgia was really taking off because current music was so dreadful…I was living in Hoboken and there was a place called Mile Square City, a little club, that had 60s groups like the Duprees, which was very cool…Except this was also the time when the Mafia was torching Hoboken’s apartment buildings, killing scores, to make way for the eventual gentrification of the place….)
NBA Quiz Answer: Top five scorers in the league…
Kevin Durant 28.4
Carmelo Anthony 27.6
Kobe Bryant 27.0
LeBron James 26.7
James Harden 26.3…this is the one I expect most to miss
6. Russell Westbrook 23.3
7. Stephen Curry 22.4
