How tough is the real world, would-be college graduates?

UCLA men’s basketball coach Ben Howland (with the help of his players, naturally; most coaches, including the Hawks’ Fran McCafferty, credit the players with the victories, themselves with the losses, though “credit” at that point wouldn’t be exactly the word) wins the Pac-12 regular-season championship, not to mention that his teams went to three-straight Final Fours from 2006-08 and won four Pac-12 conference championships in 10 years.

So naturally, Howland gets fired.

Talk about tough love. (Was Bob Bowlsby involved?)

Did I mention that all the other Pac-12 teams combined during Howland’s 10-year tenure went to the massive total of one Final Four appearance? Yeah, might as well fire the best coach in the conference. (Was Bob Bowlsby involved?)

Maybe UCLA’s decision was merely tough without the love.

Or maybe the Real World isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Of course, the Real World also includes the Big Bang (news to some, or many, conservatives, I realize), and it turns out, according to some new data that has come to light, so’s to speak, that the Big Bang and the universe are a tad older than scientists had previously thought. One hundred million years older, suggests the data from the European Space Agency’s Planck Space Telescope.

One hundred million years? you say. How could scientists have been so wrong? This casts a whole new light on their so-called theories of evolution and global warming.

Well, we’re talking 100 million years over the span of 13.8 billion years, so, while 100 million sounds like real money (unless your name is Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, in which case, why are you talking to me?), 100 million is a pretty small percentage.

It could be we live in the the Unreal World, which I think we know as Facebook.

One good thing about living in the Unreal World is we get to watch the antics of Sen. Ted Cruz, darling of the tea-party crowd, which, I hear, isn’t quite so crowded as it used to be.

You remember Ted Cruz, he of the theory (there’s that word again, not that we’re counting at home) that now Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was taking money from North Korea (that from Gail Collins of the New York Times).

That’s a ludicrous suggestion, of course. Everyone knows North Korea has no money; people eat grass there.

Speaking of ludicrous, Cruz is also the author of the theory that the United Nations has a black-helicopter plot to kill American golf courses (that tidbit also courtesy of Collins).

We could only wish that the United Nations had such a plot. Both the Unreal World and the Real World would be far better places without golf.

Cruz is a Republican (yeah, I know — you couldn’t tell), the party also known as the GOP.

GOP, which for a long time I thought meant “gop,” that slimy, foul-tasting medicine your mother makes you take when you’re young and have a cold or the flu. Turns out, it actually stands for the Grand Old Party. Kinda funny, if you’re into humor these days. (So few are.)

Grand is about the only word to describe Cruz’s theory about lizards in Texas. Yes, lizards.

According to Factcheck, Cruz entertained the Conservative Political Action Conference recently by accusing the EPA of “trying to use a lizard to shut down oil and gas production” in West Texas.

Well. Except that last year (June 13, 2012),the federal government decided not to list the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as “endangered.” So, no oil and gas production shutdown.

Also, it wasn’t the EPA, it was the Interior Department.

Maybe the Unreal World isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either.