No bull: Fearless Girl stands her ground

The defiant, burly, overly endowed bronze bull that adorns the entrance to Wall Street in Manhattan has been long overdue for a feminine touch. In honor of International Women's Day, an investment firm commissioned sculptor Kristen Visbal to install Fearless Girl directly in the 7,000-pound bull's path.

It was meant to be a temporary installation, but tourists couldn't get enough of this unlikely duo. Fearless Girl's overwhelming popularity prompted Mayor Bill de Blasio to declare that she's here to stay, at least for the next year. "She spoke to the moment. That sense that women were not going to live in fear," De Blasio said.

Not everyone is thrilled. A spokesman for the Italian sculptor who created the bull denounced Fearless Girl as "an outrage" and an illegal interloper on the bull's sacred territory. Legal action could follow.

Give it a rest, guys. There's no space on this planet where fearless girls should be blocked from taking a stand.

Another Webster chess team national title

The Webster University chess team won its fifth straight national championship last weekend in New York. St. Louis University finished third, behind Webster and Texas Tech. Webster's coach, former women's world champion Susan Polgar, who formerly coached at Texas Tech, now has seven national titles under her belt. That would be a monumental achievement in any sport.

She said one weekend competition lasted a grueling 13 hours, which is enough to test anyone's patience and endurance.

Sexyburgers, well done

There was always some question about precisely what Hardee's restaurants were selling when thinly clad supermodels appeared in their TV commercials chowing down on huge hamburgers. Further, the idea of using underfed models to market a 1,000-calorie burger never made sense.

Now CKE Restaurants, the former St. Louis-based company that operates Hardee's and Carl's Jr., is ditching the sex-and-burgers ad campaign. Not since Old Milwaukee beer ditched the Swedish Bikini team 25 years ago has a marketing idea so richly deserved its fate.

The models-and-burgers campaign, which featured the likes of Paris Hilton, Kate Upton and Heidi Klum, was a favorite of Andrew Puzder, the one-time St. Louis lawyer who became the burger chain's CEO. The commercials were one of many issues that dogged Puzder's failed bid to become U.S. Labor Secretary.

2,750 foul shots, not one afoul

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Tom Amberry, a retired Long Beach, Calif., podiatrist, died March 18 at the age of 94. With him went the world record for most consecutive free throws.

Amberry was 71 on that day in 1993 when he made 2,750 straight shots from the charity stripe at a gym in Orange County. It took him 12 hours. "I could have made more — a lot more," Amberry once recalled. "But they were closing the gym, so they kicked me out."

Amberry shot fouls every day for exercise. He shot them right-handed and left-handed alike. All it took, he said, was pure, locked-in concentration and muscle memory. And keep your elbows in.

He was on the David Letterman show. He was sought out by big-name coaches and players. He wrote a book on the subject. He's in the Guinness Book of Records. He claimed to have made 500 in a row on 473 occasions.

If you're obsessive enough to shoot them, you're obsessive enough to count them.

O'Reilly goes for offensiveness trifecta

Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly really does need to give it a rest. As in go home, kick off the shoes, and leave broadcasting behind. His employer had to settle a lawsuit reportedly in the high six figures after host Juliet Huddy accused O'Reilly of making inappropriate phone calls and trying to forcefully kiss her. When she complained, the network retaliated by demoting her to a 4:30 a.m. anchoring slot.

This week, O'Reilly showed a clip of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., giving a speech. On a dual screen, O'Reilly could be seen pumping a black power fist while mockingly mouthing "right on." When the clip of the black congresswoman finished, O'Reilly said, "I didn't hear a word she said. I was looking at the James Brown wig." Another Fox host immediately came to Waters' defense.

After viewers began calling for O'Reilly's ouster, he apologized. Kind of. Then he attacked her again. Also on Tuesday, two women in the network's payroll department sued, claiming they had been subjected to "top-down racial harassment." Anyone see a pattern here?

End of the splashdown

Thursday's first-ever launch of a previously launched rocket booster was a milestone in space exploration. The space shuttle program was the first to embrace the concept of flying reusable craft into space, but never before has the expensive first-stage rocket booster been recovered and used again in a subsequent launch. All that changed when SpaceX founder Elon Musk pioneered new technology that allowed rocket boosters to be guided vertically back to a landing pad rather than being unceremoniously ditched in the ocean.

The savings could be enormous and mark a dramatic step toward a human mission to Mars. Musk compares the waste of rocket boosters during launches as the equivalent to scrapping a 747 jumbo jet after a single flight. With space shuttles, it turned out, the cost of refurbishing after every flight made it prohibitively expensive to continue the program. Not so with rocket boosters, which could now lead to a 30 percent to 50 percent reduction in the $62 million cost of each launch.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH