Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 3/21-3/23/2009

3/21/1986:
With a minute remaining in regulation time, Kansas rallies from six points behind to tie the score and then runs away in overtime to defeat Michigan State, 96-86, in a Midwest Regional semifinal at Kemper Arena in Kansas City. A clock malfunction occurs with about two minutes left, adding 15 to 20 seconds to the contest and providing Kansas with extra time to stage the comeback. Last-minute baskets by Cedric Hunter, Calvin Thompson (game high, 26 points) and Archie Marshall even the score at 80-80 and the overtime proves to be a formality against the disheartened Spartans, who missed two key one-and-one free throw chances in the closing moments of regulation.

Birthdays:
Tom Flores b. 1937
Jay Hilgenberg b. 1960
Ayrton Senna b. 1960
Shawon Dunston b. 1963
Al Iafrate b. 1966

Packers Fact:
Brandon Jackson was the 63rd pick of the 2007 draft. The last running back that the Packers selected any higher was Darrell Thompson, who was the 19th choice in 1990.

3/22/1967:
Muhammad Ali knocks out Zora Folley at 1:48 of Round 7 at Madison Square Garden, successfully defending his heavyweight championship for the ninth time. Younger than the challenger by nine years and heavier by nine pounds but infinitely quicker on his feet, Ali dominates the bout with his left jab and finishes it with a right cross. Next month, Ali will be stripped of his title for refusing induction into the army on religious grounds. He'll return to the ring in 1970 and regain hish title in 1974 with a stunning upset of George Foreman in Zaire, Africa.

Birthdays:
Billy Vessels b. 1931
Flash Elorde b. 1935
Glenallen Hill b. 1965
Shawn Bradley b. 1972
Marcus Camby b. 1974

3/23/1990:
En route to winning the national championship with a 30-point blowout of Duke in the title game, UNLV very nearly stumbles against unheralded Ball State in the semifinals of the West Regional at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. The Runnin' Rebels are out-rebounded 54-37 and outscored down the stretch 23-14, but they manage to disrupt Ball State's last offensive sequence and escape with a 69-67 victory. Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon lead UNLV with 20 points apiece, and Chandler Thompson has 21 for the Mid American Conference champion Cardinals of Ball State.

Birthdays:
Roger Bannister b. 1929
Ted Green b. 1940
Moses Malone b. 1954
Jason Kidd b. 1973
Mark Buehrle b. 1979

Packers Fact:
After falling to the Bears on Kickoff Weekend in 2006, the Packers won all five of their remaining games against NFC North foes that season.

ANYBODY THERE?

This posthumous collection drawn from the 1985 Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology at the University of Glasgow will remind us what a graceful presence Carl Sagan was: He used his erudition as a delicate probing tool, never as a bludgeon, and his gentleness softened an iron strength of purpose and integrity. Put yourself in his hands as he guides you and teaches you, not what to think, but how to think.

THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE: A PERSONAL VIEW OF THE SEARCH FOR GOD, by Carl Sagan (Penguin Press, 2006)

JUST LIKE FAMILY

Richard Russo returns to some of the characters from Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls and takes them to Venice, Italy, to learn some hard truths. Louis Lynch and his wife, Sarah, have lived in a small New York town for 40 years and built a respectable life—in fact, Lynch is somewhat smugly writing a history of the town and his family. But life is far from over for the Lynches and still holds many surprises, especially in the hands of this capable, sensitive, funny, tender writer.

BRIDGE OF SIGHS, by Richard Russo (Knopf, 2007)

KILLER INSOMNIA

D. T. Max, science writer and himself victim of an inherited neurological disease, opens his investigation in 1765, with the mystery of a rare, fatal, misunderstood, and misdiagnosed disease in a Venetian man, and he traces that disease in the same family to present times. The patients die within a couple of years of showing the alarming symptoms: contracted pupils, racing heart, elevated blood pressure, total insomnia, and eventually dementia. The culprit: indestructible proteins called prions, which also cause mad cow disease, kuru, and scrapie. Diagnosis has not brought a cure, but that doesn’t make the book any less of a great read.

THE FAMILY THAT COULDN’T SLEEP: A MEDICAL MYSTERY, by D. T. Max (Random House, 2006)

On Freebies, Dubious:

FREE BACTERIA

printed on bottles of Vietnamese mineral water

On Better Give Back the Award!:

Reporter: How do you feel about being named one of the NBA's most reporter-friendly players?

Basketball star Michael Jordan: No comment.

On Why the Radisson Has So Many Empty Rooms:

RADISSON WELCOMES EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES

sign at a Radisson Hotel in Minnesota

UNCLE JOHN’S POLICE LOG

A DUMB CROOK

“German police charged a man with drug possession when he entered a police station to check if he was on their wanted list. ‘I suppose he may have heard he was wanted for some offense and just wanted to see if the police had anything on him,’ said Volker Pieper, a spokesman for police in the city of Kassel. ‘It didn’t go quite as he had planned.’ As the 33-year-old man, a known drug abuser, questioned police, an officer noticed a suspicious lump stuck in his ear which turned out to be a gram of heroin. Police confiscated the drug before filing charges.”

—Reuters

ELVIS PRESLEY SHARED A BED WITH HIS MOM UNTIL HE REACHED PUBERTY.

TUBE TALK

WAKKA-WAKKA

Burgess Meredith’s characterization of the Penguin on the 1960s Batman TV show included a distinctive “wakk-wakk” bird noise. How’d Meredith come up with the clever affectation? The Penguin was supposed to smoke cigarettes. Meredith was allergic to them, but the producers made him smoke them anyway. The “wakk-wakk” covered up his coughs.

MARCH 22 IS INTERNATIONAL GOOF-OFF DAY.

MYTH-CONCEPTIONS

The Myth: The red liquid that seeps out of cooked beef is blood.

The Truth: Very little blood remains in muscle after slaughter and what’s left is then removed. The liquid is a combination of water and a red-colored (because it’s rich in oxygen) protein called myoglobin.

DOLPHINS CAN PRODUCE NOTES 100 TIMES HIGHER THAN A HUMAN SOPRANO CAN.

GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE

Q: A landscape of panoramic passes, valleys, rivers, waterfalls, canyons, and forests, said to have provided J.R.R. Tolkien’s inspiration for the setting of The Lord of the Rings, lies in these mountains, the highest in South Africa:

a) Admiralty Mountains
b) Drakensberg Mountains
c) Hoel Mountains
d) Prince Albert Mountains

Answer: B, the Drakensberg Mountains. The Admiralty, Hoel, and Prince Albert Mountains are all in Antarctica.

DOGON COUNTRY

MALI

South of Timbuktu, the isolated Dogon country is home to an intriguing civilization that has so far resisted both Christianity and Islam, preserving the traditions and customs of animist ancestors who arrived there 700 years ago, perhaps from Libya.