coworker: my team is playing today
me: oh yeah, what team is that?
coworker: kansas state university, final four tonight
me: oh wow, Kansas has a university now?  how… progressive of them.

Not just for states anymore!  I am posting this from the new OpenSolaris liveCD available from the Indiana project.  It’s nowhere near as slick as Ubuntu is, but light years ahead of where OpenSolaris was on the Desktop (laptop) just a short while ago

Why all the hubub about Charles Wheeler skipping a neighborhood forum Wednesday evening?Unless he’s cloned himself (now that’s an argument against stem-cell research), it would have been hard to have been both at the forum and his “attorneys only” fund raiser at campaign headquarters.

Wheeler’s campaign manager, Maureen Galey, says the forum notice arrived the day before and the lawyer event had already been scheduled. (An attorney confided beforehand that the Wheelies were having a hard time getting lawyers to show up so it was downsized to the campaign headquarters. Sanders, of course, has been working hard in the vineyards of the legal firms.)

Galey pronounced the event a great success.

ref

Mind blowing…

But really, soccer fans, all is not lost!  This weekend you could catch the Kansas City Wizards play the Colorado Rapids.

After going undefeated in the three games leading up to its current string of seven games, Kansas City has hit a bit of a road bump since falling 1-0 at D.C. United on June 24th to open its 22-day adventure. The Wizards faced D.C. again four days later, dropping a 3-2 contest at Arrowhead. Three days after the second loss to D.C., they lost a 2-0 decision to Los Angeles at home.

Amazing!

I know that you, dear reader, are not among this group — but could you believe that there are still some people left in the world who haven’t yet heard of Manny’s Mexican Restaurant of Kansas City?  It boggles the mind, so I’m posting this here as a public service annoucement:  next time you’re in KC, check out Manny’s.

When you visit Kansas City, don’t forget to get your DiscoverKC pass from visitkc.com. Otherwise you’ll get hosed on such KC treats as the Rhythm and Ribs jazz festival, or the theme park Worlds of Fun. You won’t regret it!

Please note: The DiscoverKC Pass is only available to those who live outside the five-county Kansas City Metropolitan area.

This is a very long, yet informative article.

This will help if you ever go to China Star Super Buffet at 13515 S Mur Len Rd, Olathe, KS.

If you’re in Kansas City and in need of a cosmetic dentist I suggest strongly considering these fine folks. Why?  Their website tells you itself: they are AWESOME.  Also, how could you not trust a face like the one above?  Now that is the fact of a happy customer and/or proprietor.

That’s right — 5-time British Open winning golfer Tom Watson was born in Kansas City, MO.

Crazy!

* The extensive, interlocking system of parks and boulevards set aside by visionary planners in the 1890s prompted writers to call the Kansas City area “Paris on the Plains.”

* More than 200 fountains in the area earned Kansas City, Missouri, its nickname, “The City of Fountains.”

* Kansas City is the number 1 inland trade zone in area, and is the second-largest rail centre in the United States.

* Opened in 1922, the Country Club Plaza was the first shopping area planned for the automobile. Its 12 towers and numerous fountains and artworks were modelled after Seville, Spain.

* The distinctive swing sound of Kansas City jazz dates to the mid-1930s, when Count Basie played local clubs.

* Kansas City is third in the nation for professional theatres per capita, with performances offered by a dozen companies.

* Boasting one of the tallest, largest and fastest roller coasters in the world, the theme of Kansas City’s Worlds of Fun amusement park was based on Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.”

* Kansas, and hence Kansas City, was named for the Kansa, or Kaw, Indians. Kansas means “people of the south wind.” Kansas first appeared on maps drawn by French explorers Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette.

* Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, is the only intertribal university for Native Americans in the United States. Its enrolment represents more than 100 tribes.

* People of German and German-Russian background are numerous in the Kansas City area, and settled widely in the state of Kansas in the late 1870s.

* Famous explorers Lewis and Clark explored the territory that would become Kansas City between 1804 and 1806.

* The Santa Fe Trail, established in 1821, was one of the longest commercial routes in the pre-railroad era, running 1,255 kilometres from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

* The ruts created by heavily loaded ox-pulled wagons along the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails may still be seen. Santa Fe Trail markers may be seen in throughout the area, including in Olathe and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

* Famed abolitionist John Brown came to Kansas Territory in 1855 and during a three-year stay staged several armed skirmishes and freed some Missouri slaves.

* Kansas was in the centre of the great bison (or buffalo) range until the 1870s.

* The Quindaro Ruins in Kansas City, Kansas, where runaway slaves landed upon their arrival in the free state of Kansas, is the largest underground railroad archaeological site in the nation.

* The first African-Americans officially recognized by the U.S. government as front-line troops, the 1st and 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry, were trained in 1864 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The famed 10th U.S. Cavalry, the “Buffalo Soldiers,” organized there in 1867.

* Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, attended art school in Kansas City and experimented with the process of animation in a tiny upstairs studio on 31st Street in Kansas City, Missouri, in the 1920s.

* Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean (1928) and the first to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932), was born in Atchison, Kansas. Earhart broke numerous records before being lost on an around-the-world flight in 1937.

* Professional golfer Tom Watson is a native of Overland Park, Kansas.

* Rocker and television personality Melissa Etheridge was born in Leavenworth, Kansas.

I know a lot of you readers want to know and see more of Kansas City.  So here’s a picture of the skyline as viewed from an airplane.