Behold Phoneutria nigriventer, a Brazilian spider whose sting contains within it a special substance that makes men stand to attention. Tell us about it, Medical College of Georgia physiologist Dr. Kenia Nunes!

The venom of the P. nigriventer spider is a very rich mixture of several molecules. These molecules are called toxins, and then we have various toxins in this venom with different activity. Because of this, when a human is bitten by this spider, we can observe many different symptoms including priapism, a condition in which the penis is continually erect.

Yes, much like the penis pills that have been so profitable for our pharmaceutical concerns, P. nigriventer will give you a dick that just won’t quit. Even better, scientists have “found that the toxin acts in a different pathway as compared with other erectile dysfunction drugs, such as Viagra,” which may be helpful to those for whom current treatments are ineffective. Best of all, Phoneutria nigriventer is also known as the “banana spider,” which is pretty much as close a case of something doing what it says on the tin as one can think of in Science. Congratulations, droopsters, your hour may at last be at hand.

Photo by Techuser.

Kobe Bryant won the Most Valuable Player award at last weekend’s NBA All-Star game in Los Angeles, which had all the suspense of an episode of “iCarly”. This was the marquee player on the NBA’s marquee team winning an award on his team’s home court. If Kevin Durant had scored a few more points during the 3rd quarter, someone from the NBA would’ve probably gone all Tonya Harding on him during a fourth-quarter timeout. For everyone’s sake No. 8 had to win. All you needed to know about the suspense was written on the faces of his teammates, who had to stand there for 180 seconds while Commissioner David Stern handed the trophy to Kobe while Bryant projected the practiced look of a kid who was given pajamas for Christmas.

But now that those festivities are over — and they were, as a whole, corny as hell, with an inordinate amount of children involved — it’s time to turn our gaze back to the teams that may nor may not be readying themselves for the playoffs. The Lakers will be in it and may win it, the Clippers and Kings have a better chance to triumph in “Dancing with the Stars” and the Phoenix Suns are undergoing a procedure called “Dismantling Lite,” which isn’t exactly painful — except if you pay to watch them play or are the Phoenix Gorilla and have anger issues.

Los Angeles Lakers (38–19)
Kobe has logged a lot of miles over his career — with his teams playing well into May and June every season — and on alternating nights this season he looks plumb worn out. Pau Gasol, so valuable the past two campaigns, seems distracted and bored many nights, unable to elevate the team; Ron Artest is still mental-patient crazy and Andrew Bynum only occasionally makes the connection between fitness and health.

The Lakers added Matt Barnes who, really, has sucked his way off of more teams than I have fingers, but he does provide defensive intensity and toughness necessary to make Manu Ginobli feel his flops. Lamar Odom can still get it done when sufficiently motivated, which is about half the time. But, as Kobe reminded us after he was finished dismantling the Knicks a few weeks ago, they have done it before and they can do it again. Sure they played atrociously against the Cavaliers a week ago, gifting that city in a way that their own prodigal son didn’t have the mercy to offer. But they will make it to the Western Conference Finals, no doubt in my mind. Now whether they will beat the bloodless Star Trek cast-looking San Antonio Spurs or the “bad motherfuckers” Oklahoma City Hillbillies is another story.

Phoenix Suns (27–27)
Steve Nash without Amar’e Stoudemire to finish his passes is still better than ⅔ of the point guards out there, but there are a growing number every day that blow by him. Still, what he lacks in the ability to prevent opposing point guards from running their teams’ offenses, he makes up for with his leadership and clutch shooting. Along with a pair of former “next Jordan” guys, in Grant Hill and Vince Carter (yes, they’re both still playing — I know, I know, news to me, too), a recovering “French Jordan” in Mickael Pietrus and two versatile, young big men in Channing Frye and Robin Lopez, there is enough talent for the team to win half its games, but not a series. Personally, I’d trade Nash for picks and give Marcin Gortat a chance to start and then focus on rebuilding for a post Duncan, post-Kobe era.

Golden State (26–29)
Several years ago I visited the Warriors team offices, which were located in a downtown Marriott Hotel. I remember choking back crocodile tears as I listened to whatever transitory coach gave a spiel about how his team would matter, all while thinking: I wonder if I can get a turkey club sent up? Knicks fans howled when the team let David Lee go and they probably shouldn’t have; his 16 and 9 are probably closer to his true talent than his 20-and-12 Knicks numbers. The Warriors do have Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry, both of whom are entertaining to watch and keep games closer than they probably should be. And then there are about 9 guys who score, like, 6 points apiece. Good teams have 5 DNPs a game, while the Warriors are more like wheelchair basketball: everybody gets some run. In case you’re wondering, which you aren’t, that’s no way to win in the NBA.

Los Angeles Clippers (21–35)
Yeah, Blake Griffin is a great dunker and makes for an amazing ten-second clip on “Sports Center.” Unfortunately, there are another 47 minutes and 50 seconds per Clippers game, and most of them are dogcrap. You can scarcely blame the players, who play with the cohesiveness of a wrestling battle royal. Owner Donald Sterling has a stated goal and it has nothing to do with winning games and everything to do with making money.

Unfortunately, he does neither, but he still refuses to relinquish control, or to hire a coach and let him do his job. Rather, he lets overweight point guards, trigger happy 2s and 3s and a revolving cast of big, slow gingers run around, making millions while entertaining Billy Crystal and Jessica Alba. If there is an NBA franchise that most closely resembles the Washington Generals, this it.

Sacramento Kings (13–40)
They had their chance. Sure it was a decade ago, but they had the team and should’ve won back-to-back NBA championships. Bibby, C-Webb, Divac, Stojaković — those were some loaded squads. If it weren’t for Robert Horry and some of the worst officiating in NBA history, they would’ve made their owners, the McDoof brothers, much more famous than for being the guys who own the “Real World: Las Vegas” hotel and a cramped, formerly loud arena.

Today’s news that Anaheim may be inquiring about adopting the Kings should come as no surprise. Sacramento is a pretty depressing place. Still, Demarcus Cousins, who acts quite like a dick, Tyreke Evans, Beno Udrih and Carl Landry are pretty decent, the team doesn’t have that go-to guy at the end of games, despite what Cousins may say. And, on most nights, they aren’t going to beat the top 7 teams in either conference. In fact, they are barely going to beat the Nets, even after the Timofey Mozgov era begins later this week, ESPN’s sources tell me.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Photo by Alberto Cabello.

by Christian Vachon

Gordon Reynolds is the pseudonym of a teacher in Cairo. He also posts regularly to Twitter, if you follow him there.

There’s a whole story that we’re waiting to hear, and it may take a few decades (centuries?) to get in full. With the murky news that the CIA was bilked out of $20 million for hoax “terrorist-detecting software, software that the CIA suspected was fake for years before anything was done about it, it has to be asked: is the CIA actually not an immense, successful octopus diligently working to rearrange the order of the globe? Are they in fact just a bunch of ineffectual overpaid chumps, who were taken entirely by surprise by Tunisia, Egypt and Libya? Who are too busy using drones to shoot random “militants” in Pakistan to achieve any major goals in the rest of the world? (All the while staffing embassies with “contractors” who poorly promote “instability” ?) Is it really possible that the post-Cold War apparatus, which still costs taxpayers billions of dollars, was diverted entirely to bin-Laden-related issues, with little or at least unknown success over the last decade, therefore deprioritizing all other agendas? When you look back at their documents from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, you see a well-informed and active global intelligence network in action. In 40 years, will they be releasing just a few muddled cables related to Libya and Yemen? Or have all of the events of the last month been their doing? (Related: Prime Minster David Cameron is going to apologize for his country’s paternalistic (at best!) role in propping up crappy regimes around the world.)

Jesus go to #libya, people are tweeting and then going out to be shot.There’s a revolution happening and they’re using twitter. IncredibleMon Feb 21 21:47:32 via ÜberSocial

Steve North
snorths

Yeah, I can’t really care about anything else right now.

@ShababLibya demonstration will be held every day till liberation of libya
in front of embassy in egypt
god help u heroesMon Feb 21 21:51:21 via web

ahmed hassan
thedreamer33

(Previously)

BREAKING Al Arabiya: Reports that Muammar Gaddafi will be delivering an address on TV soon #Libyaless than a minute ago via web

Sultan Al Qassemi
SultanAlQassemi

Rumors on the Internets suggest that Gaddafi is going to take to the TV soon with a speech. Maybe he’s going to apologize for everything! (No?)

When I think of a future filled with little robot hummingbirds flying around videotaping everything for the Defense Department, it makes me want to build myself a life-size robot ostrich mecha suit programmed to bury its head in the sand.

Concerns about heart disease — the number one killer of the gorillas in our zoos — lead researchers to alter the diets of the animals at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, replacing their previous feed with “a wheelbarrow of romaine lettuce, dandelion greens and endive they gently tear and bite, alfalfa hay they nimbly pick through, young tree branches they strip of succulent bark and leaves, green beans, a handful of flax seeds, and three Centrum Silver multivitamins tucked inside half a smashed banana. Instead of spending about a quarter of their day eating the old diet, the pair now spends 50 to 60 percent of each day feeding and foraging, about the same amount of time wild gorillas forage.” The result? “Although they take in twice as many calories on the new diet, after a year, the big boys of the primate house have dropped nearly 65 pounds each and weigh in the range of their wild relatives.” This is very happy news for the gorillas, except for the part about how they are destined to spend their now extended lifetimes in captivity.

Early last week, I spent a pleasant evening flipping back and forth between two fantastic college basketball games involving top 10 teams. On ESPN was Kansas State’s stunning obliteration of newly minted No. 1 Kansas. Jacob Pullen, the enigmatic K-State point guard was chucking silly three-pointers from way outside and just burying them. The crowd was freaking out. Great basketball atmosphere, great game (unless you’re a Kansas fan, of course).

The other game featured arguably the best team out West, sixth-ranked San Diego State, scrambling to hold off a game UNLV in Las Vegas. Every time UNLV made a run at the Aztecs, San Diego State guard D.J. Gay had an answer. Big shot after big shot. Another great basketball game.

I was enjoying both so much I did something I rarely do and got online during the game to tweet about how much fun it was to watch both games at the same time. It was sometime the next morning that I finally discovered one of those games — the SDSU-UNLV matchup — had actually already been over for two whole days. Huh.

Thankfully, it’s not like I have some massive Twitter following and was going to get called out. But given that I consider myself something of a college basketball expert and write multiple weekly columns on the subject, it was a pretty weak showing. Plus, it was a game involving a top-10 team. I should have been more aware of it. Like most screw-ups in my life now, and there are plenty, I blame fatherhood for this one, too.

But I still enjoyed the game, and echoing an old network summer schedule ad campaign, it was still new to me. And since I’m as likely as anyone you’ll ever meet to watch games that have been over for decades, much less a couple of days, in their entirety, then it’s not surprising I’m not that bothered at being fooled by cable TV into momentarily losing my grip on reality. Wouldn’t guess I’m the only one with that problem these days.

I’ve confessed to some pretty nerdy stuff in this space over the last few months, including but not limited to boyhood obsession with aeronautics, spending time at K-Mart and keeping regular tabs on triple backup point guards in far flung basketball conferences for the fun of it. But perhaps I top this when I reveal that I own somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 old, already completed college basketball games on DVD, not to mention the many dozens more I still keep on inaccessible VHS tapes (My VCR finally broke.). I know there is an ESPN Classic that shows old games, so it’s not that weird, and certainly a bunch of the games I own one might deem classics: the 1983 NCAA final, a 1990 Elite Eight matchup between Georgia Tech and Michigan State, etc.

But too many of them are pretty pedestrian affairs as well. Bad mid-00s Kentucky games where the object was apparently to try and out-mediocre your unsuspecting opponent. I think there’s even a football game or two thrown in there for good measure and I barely even watch football. I guess I enjoy old games as an aficionado of sorts, like a cinema buff might re-watch Francis Ford Coppola movies. I’d make the argument the 1998 title game is better than The Conversation, personally.

So given my predilections, watching and tweeting on a game in real time that had already taken place might not prove I’m unattached to reality in toto. But what it does prove is that even a self-described basketball junkie like myself isn’t paying attention to what the purported best teams out West are doing. Not really. It’s that East Coast bias, baby, going strong.

Then again, part of the problem is that we just don’t take teams out there seriously anymore. Only a handful of teams west of Kansas have even maintained anything resembling relevance. Sometimes it seems like the basketball punditry just keeps propping the Gonzagas of the world up because they feel like they have to. Why doesn’t Xavier get the darling treatment that Seth Davis or Jay Bilas offer the Zags? Or Washington? Xavier has been much more dangerous, and good, in the last few years. Excepting the three-year run by UCLA in the mid-00s, and it’s a big exception, it’s mostly much ado about nothing out there.

And this year, West Coast basketball is particularly bland. The PAC-10 is just terrible. Like, historically terrible. Arizona and UCLA are running away with the conference and neither of those teams passes the ‘eye test’. Are either capable of finishing in the top half of the Big East, Big Ten or probably even the SEC East? Arizona’s best win outside the conference was N.C. State. That’s like saying Paulie Shore has a best movie. The PAC-10 is trying hard, I guess, but gosh, I wish my Kentucky squad could face Oregon State and Oregon and Arizona State and their ilk twice a season.

The two best teams in the West by record and reputation are San Diego State and BYU, both of whom play in the same conference, the Mountain West. It’s hard to tell whether either of those teams is a legit threat to make the Final Four. Both have had great seasons and have fantastic individual players, but four wins in two weeks in the tournament seems like a lot to ask either of them based on what I’ve seen, and on recent tournament history. But we keep hearing from folks who do this for a living about BYU’s Jimmer Fredette and San Diego State’s Leonard and Gay and their teammates, so we have to assume they’re worth the trouble, right? I’d argue no.

It seems like every year some ostensibly mid-major team pads its record out West, plays its way into the top 10 or 12 of the polls, earning a seed it still can’t advance with, while others with tougher conference schedules duke it out for scraps back East. Usually, it’s Gonzaga or UNLV. Last season, New Mexico came in with the big, and as it turned out, predictably hollow, reputation. Money here says one of BYU or SDSU will tank in the first or second round, probably BYU, while the other may win an extra game or two then get pounded.

This undue hype raises the question: if we keep getting told these guys are so good, but they really aren’t, then who out there is more deserving of the ink and TV face time these guys are getting? This past weekend’s Bracket Buster games made for a nice lead-in to who we aren’t hearing enough about. Last year, you’d have made a mint if you’d known that Northern Iowa was capable of destroying a bracket. This year, as I mentioned last week, there is a good chance for even more tournament parity, meaning there are plenty of Northern Iowas out there lurking, waiting for a chance to be an utter surprise to the under-informed come bracket time. That is, assuming they can edge out all the overrated Big East teams and actually get in.

Maybe the best league outside the major conferences this year is the Colonial Athletic Association, which features a whole slew of quality upset candidates. George Mason has been the class of the league to date, but not far behind are Old Dominion, Hofstra and VCU. The real danger for napping BCS schools among these squads is not just talent — each of these schools has it — but actual star-level, NBA good talent. An All-Star team from just the CAA would be a handful for a similar team from any of the name conferences. Add in a recent history of legitimate NCAA tournament success, and whoever from this league gets into the Dance will give someone a nasty headache.

Last year, small school darling Butler nearly won the national title, coming as close as a so-called mid-major has ever come to bringing home the hardware. But this year, the Bulldogs — top-20 ranked in the preseason — aren’t even the best team in the Horizon League. That would be Cleveland State. Led by Norris Cole, maybe the top point guard playing in college right now, and coached by Gary Waters, the Vikings are probably going to cream somebody in the first round. Two years ago CSU was a tournament surprise after pummeling Wake Forest in the Vikings’ first trip back to the NCAAs in over 20 years. Don’t be shocked when it happens again.

Waters’ onetime coaching home, Kent State of the Mid-American Conference, is going to be a tough team to face in the postseason, too. Former Ohio University star Geno Ford has brought the same bulldog toughness he played with at Ohio to Kent State as coach. His Golden Flashes will be a tough draw in the opening round this March.

The league that gave us Northern Iowa last year could give us Northern Iowa again. But even if the Panthers can’t make a return engagement, the team that eventually wins the Missouri Valley Conference’s automatic bid will be battle-hardened. The top tier of the MVC has bloodied itself all season long, with Missouri State and Wichita State currently riding atop the standings. The league has for years played basketball at a very high level, and it will probably earn multiple bids to the tournament this go around as well.

I talked in this column last week about Oakland (MI) center Keith Benson, but the bigger concern for potential NCAA tournament opponents should be Oakland’s experience playing against the big conference schools. In addition to beating Tennessee in Knoxville, Oakland played road games at Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan, West Virginia, Purdue and Illinois. Yes, they lost each of those games, some of them close and some not so. But on a neutral court in a one-game playoff, you’d much rather your lower seeded opponent not be completely unfazed by the bright lights and the name on your uniform.

Last year, Cornell was one of those teams that showed little intimidation in the spotlight, making a run to the Sweet 16 out of the Ivy League. This year, two teams are vying to take the struggling Big Red’s place at the table. Princeton and Harvard are both quality teams full of the kind of fundamental, smart basketball players we’ve long come to associate with the Ivy. Either would love to see a fundamentally flawed Virginia Tech, Marquette or Nebraska on the tournament’s first weekend.

There are too many of these teams to go in depth on them all. Some are unfamiliar schools coached by plenty familiar names, like College of Charleston, whose white mop-topped head coach Bobby Cremins is well known to longtime basketball watchers from his days at Georgia Tech. Former Clemson and Auburn boss Cliff Ellis’ Coastal Carolina could all be in the mix as a first-round spoiler. Likewise for former St. John’s boss Mike Jarvis’ team at Florida Atlantic, currently the Sun Belt conference leader.

But even for programs you almost never see on TV and whose personnel and coaches are mostly completely unknown, places like Belmont, Morehead State, Bucknell and Long Island, the tournament represents a chance at tasting even a sliver of the success that the Kentuckys and North Carolinas and Dukes take as a birthright. One school which would probably relish a nationally televised shot at the big boys is the Big Sky Conference’s Montana, which has already beaten a pair of PAC-10 schools this year.

Maybe for the last few weeks of the season instead of hearing about the manufactured fluctuation of an underachieving UCLA’s NCAA “bubble status” we can talk about which pod the Grizzlies should be slotted in? Heck, maybe we can just give them the PAC-10’s spot in the field. It would probably take a few days for anyone on this side of the country to even notice.

Originally from Kentucky, JL Weill now writes from Washington, DC. His take on politics, culture and sports can be found at The New Deterrence and on Twitter.

Photo by Matt C.

Gucci Mane got a great set of synth horns from producer Drummer Boy for his new single, and a guest spot from Cash Money Records owner Bryan “Birdman” (a.k.a. “Baby”) Williams. And considering all the CGI explosions and fire and bullets and doves in the video Dallas-based director Mr. Boomtown made for it, the only thing missing is Nicolas Cage.