HUSKY ADVANTAGE

Striving for the perfect season — twice

The men's college basketball playoffs were exciting this year, no doubt, but if you want to watch possible history in the making, check out today's championship game by the women's teams of Stanford and the University of Connecticut.

The UC Huskies have won 77 games in a row, all with double-digit margins, and if they win today, they will be the first women's team to go undefeated in consecutive seasons. But the team that handed them their last defeat was Stanford, when they last met in December 2008, so it's not a slam dunk for the Huskies. We'll see.

WORDS OF WISDOM

Surprise: Older folks often wiser

Seeking wisdom? Listen to your elders.

University of Michigan researchers found that older people were more likely than younger or middle-aged ones to have the “;social wisdom”; crucial to coping with the conflict, uncertainty and change that's a part of life.

Just don't ask them to program the universal remote.

BLAST-OFF NEAR

It's been quite a ride for the past 25 years

It was bittersweet watching the space shuttle Discovery blast off toward the International Space Station yesterday morning. Yes, with three female astronauts aboard, the mission set a record for the most women in space at the same time. But the predawn launch also begins NASA's “;3 ... 2 ... 1 ...”; countdown to this fall's shutdown of the shuttle program.

The dwindling number of missions recalls the exuberance of the shuttle program when it began some 25 years ago. Hawaii's own Ellison Onizuka was aboard that successful first shuttle mission — aboard Discovery — in January 1985. But it was a year later that the promise turned to tragedy when the shuttle Challenger exploded, killing Onizuka and his six fellow astronauts.