NCAA or Zoo - It's one answer only

Smart zoogoers know not to mess with even the oldest, sleepiest looking tiger, because they never fade away, and OSU knows not to mess with
39 Down - Fighting Tigers' sch.


218, 13

Old Tigers Never Fade

Several years ago I had a close encounter with a retired tiger. We were spending a family weekend in Las Vegas after a week touring the Grand Canyon, Zion, Brice and Monument Valley. It was August and it was hot. If anyone tells you dry heat is bearable, their experience with dry heat consists solely of moving between air conditioned casinos in an air conditioned cab. We had tickets to tour Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden. This looked like a short easy walk compared to our recent canyon hikes. We would stretch our legs and see the sights. Each casino on the strip has its own, very large block. A hike to a destination just four casinos away required two stops to refill our canteens, but we arrived -ready for a rest.

The Secret Garden was a cool, green oasis. We strolled with audio players that provided a self guided tour. After ten minutes I spotted an inviting bench, next to an exhausted looking Siberian White Tiger, with only a wire fence between us. This particular animal had a grey snout and pot belly. But for the sign, I would have thought the white coat was due to age, not breed. The inbred white tigers are known for a mean streak, but this cat looked like it was just barely able to stay awake.

I listened to the full audio lecture on the Siberian White Tigers, but I didn't feel like moving yet so I played one of the extra features - a short demonstration of the language Siegfried used to communicate with the Tigers. This was a series of clicking noises with a guttural background, something like a Kalahari bushman trying to get another round of Becks in a German beer hall. I looked at the sleepy old cat through the fence and thought - why not? Two seconds into my best imitation of Siegfried's secret calming noise, the aging feline snarled, then jumped against the fence before I had time to blink my eyes. The fence held as I jumped back, suddenly communicating in Anglo Saxon instead of Siegfried's secret tiger language.

The moral may be don't take lessons in Tiger language from a guy who speaks English with an accent after twenty years in Vegas. For anyone visiting a zoo that relies on natural barriers and the predictability of the tigers' behavior to protect the visitors, the odds are with you, but predicting the tiger may not be an exact science.

Have You Looked in Vegas

The As Good As News scouting report on Victoria Azarenka predicted her singles loss to Kuznetsova, while noting that we would hear more from her. It did not take long. See the post of September 3 for a photo of the 2007 US Open mixed doubles champs, Max Mirnyi and Victoria Azarenka, who saved five consecutive break points in a second set tiebreaker to grab the championship.

Virus Is Seen as Prime Suspect in Death of Honeybees - A team of entomologists and geneticists identified Israeli acute paralysis virus as a primary, but not sole, cause of mysterious, mass bee hive die-offs in North America last winter. This mystery remains partially unsolved. Other suspected causes -poor nutrition, frequent transport of hives in "industrialized" beekeeping. Wait a minute - let's look at what is really happening here, the workers leave the hive and do not return. This whole die-off thing is really a mysterious disappearance, no one is reporting they found millions of little honeybee corpses in the back yard. In the bee hive you have the queen who is, well, the queen. You have the drones, males who sit around the hive, eat the free honey, watch the big screen plasma TV, take an occasional stab at making their contribution to reproduction and then die young. No real motive for these guys to disappear. Finally, you have the workers, undeveloped females who work constantly to keep the hive going, essentially spending their lives as slaves. The workers are leaving the hive and not coming back. Poor nutrition? Perhaps, but if the virus is not the whole story then we should look for a massive increase in the worker bee population of Las Vegas. Maybe paid vacation and some health benefits would get those worker bees back into the hives.

Survey Reveals Student Attitudes, Parental Goals and Teacher Mistrust - Nearly half of NYC middle and high school students say students who get good grades are not respected. Mayor Bloomberg views this as troubling and calls for a shift to a "culture of success." You may have this one backwards, Mayor B. Nerds are historically unpopular - in fact "nearly half" is a surprisingly low number - the regular kids probably didn't believe the survey was really anonymous. Sure this makes for some tough years in middle school and high school - but isn't that the incentive to get into a college where you can be normal? The fact that one-third of teachers mistrust the principal is more interesting. This may have something to do with the fact that NYC principals can now actually do something if they think a teacher is incompetent. Let's watch this number in future surveys. Will teacher trust go up or down and why - because the principals earn the trust of the good teachers or push out the mistrustful.

The Brothers Solomon - Mixed review of a new movie characterized as slapstick in the style of the early Steve Martin (insert arrow through skull thusly). Key to success - the inspired casting of Lee Majors (The Big Valley, Six Million Dollar Man) as the comatose dad.