Friday column: I’ll take my cat’s IQ over either one

IBM announced this week that it has a computer system that can simulate the thinking power of a cat’s brain with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses. At just 4.5 percent of a human brain, the computer can sense, perceive, act, interact and process ideas without consuming a lot of energy. — Discovery News


Wait a sec …

Already this Thursday morning I’ve pilled my cat, fed my cat, changed her litter box and freshened her water. As she sleeps contentedly on the heating pad I set up for her, I’m sweating another Friday column — somebody has to buy the mixed grill — and she gets me to do all this with just 4.5 percent of the power of my brain?

Something doesn’t compute.

But I think IBM is on to something with the idea of brain simulations. It could, for instance, try simulating the fan brain. I’m thinking of fans like the one who sucker-punched Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen.

Clausen, his family and girlfriend were at a South Bend, Ind., pub about 2 a.m. Sunday, a few hours after the Irish lost to UConn in double overtime. As might be expected in a place where football is taken as seriously — scratch that … more seriously — than religion, words were exchanged, and the Clausen party decided to leave.

But when the girlfriend realized she’d left her purse behind, Clausen went back to retrieve it, and on the way out got “coldcocked” for his trouble. The fan who hit him apparently took the UConn loss very personally.

Then there’s the case of the fan incident involving the Anaheim Ducks. It began when defenseman Scott Niedermayer thought he’d do something nice after being named one of the game’s stars — toss his stick to a young girl who was rinkside.

The only problem was that the girl was surrounded by adult fans, and you know what that means — yes, a fight over the stick.

As a result, one Mike Vallely, 39, was arrested and cited for public fighting. Vallely, a professional skate boarder and a singer in a punk-rock band, was described in the Los Angeles Times as “a season-ticket holder who also built a niche reputation for his online fight videos.”

Well, he’s got a new one online, but the Ducks are so embarrassed by the latest that they’ve severed their semi-official relationship — Vallely had appeared at some club marketing events and wrote a Ducks blog. According to the Times, Vallely also could lose his season tickets.

I do hope he came away with that all-important stick.

Now, if IBM does try to simulate the fan brain, or rather the brain of these type of fans, I’ll be curious to see what percentage of thinking power they come in at — 90 percent, 60 percent, 30 percent?

No, no, not of the human brain. Of the cat’s.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.