This previous Tournament of Champions winner and my Iowa State quiz bowl contemporary will be on the “Jeopardy! Battle of the Decades” today
Here are the Jeopardy airing times for Iowa TV stations. KWWL will be showing the episode 30 minutes after this post goes live. UPDATE: Air time on KWWL has been changed to 4 PM.
Here’s an interview Falk did with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
July 23, 2009: This intersection, and the road ahead, will look very different at the end of this decade.
For assorted reasons, I never got around to making a blog post about the planned relocation of IA 31, but now that the Sioux City Journal has an article about it, I should go ahead and post.
The plans have been available since last July. A new road will be created for IA 31 just west of present Aspen Street, on the west side of Correctionville, and meet US 20 at the present west L36 intersection (in the background behind the car in the picture). There will be a short 20/31 multiplex on a five-lane road, and then 31 will continue north on its present route.
Correctionville will take over old 31, including a slight jog at the survey correction line that gives the town its name, and Woodbury County will take a quarter-mile east-west section that has been part of the state highway system since it began.
There has literally never been a time in my life when Ron Steele wasn’t behind the anchor desk at Channel 7. The Waterloo Courier has a long profile and look back.
Steele has covered the occasional North Tama sporting event and spoke at the 2003 Father-Son Banquet in Traer.
This is a “clearing the spindle” week, where I bring up items glossed over during posting of my trip log and my illness.
In the current DOT five-year plan, US 20 is supposed to be four-laned between Moville and Correctionville by the end of 2018. Plan drafts indicated that the existing two-lane road would not be used, in favor of building an entirely new alignment.
The Sioux City Journal reported on March 19, however, that it was not going to be possible to keep existing 20 open while those new lanes were built. In preparation for the first new lanes being built in 2016, old US 20 will be rebuilt to hold detour traffic.
This part of 20, now D22, was bypassed in 1958. The segment to be rebuilt is between Ida and Minnesota avenues.
The first episode of “Futurama” aired on TV March 28, 1999 — 15 years ago today.
/shakes cane at younger animated shows
The Iowa State men’s basketball team is in the Sweet 16 for the fourth time in school history. It has been to the Elite Eight once in the modern era, and Final Four once ever. Yet that only merits third place in Sports on Earth’s list of “tortured fans” of the 2014 Sweet 16, behind Wisconsin and Virginia. Looking back at the Cyclones’ basketball performances at this level, there is a strong case to top both of them.
1944 Final Four. Only eight teams participated in the tournament. Big Six Conference champion Iowa State beat Pepperdine in Kansas City and would play Utah next in Madison Square Garden. Tom Hager wrote in The Ultimate Book of March Madness that Utah was given “little chance against the Cyclones” and was even asked to have luggage ready for departure after the game. “After dumping their belongings in what was meant to be Iowa State’s room, Utah pulled off another shocker to give Iowa State an early return home.” Utah won the championship.
The catch: It’s going to be part of the Iowa City school district. The district awarded a design contract Tuesday for a building that would open in 2017. The new high school will be on the east side of North Liberty, at the intersection of Dubuque Street and North Liberty Road. (Remember, everything west of Jones Boulevard is part of Clear Creek-Amana.)
Here’s to hoping the district calls it North Liberty High School, or at least Iowa City North, instead of some other name.
Stories: Iowa City Press-Citizen, Cedar Rapids Gazette
In the April 2014 issue of the Atlantic, and already online, there is a long piece by Adam Doster called “Fighting Over the Field of Dreams.” It’s about the field and the Ballpark Heaven development. About three-fifths of the way through, the writer reaches the backlash to the plan — and drops a line about my column from last September.
Without irony, a columnist for The Des Moines Register expressed concern that the development would facilitate the area’s “Disneyfication.”
In the end, he appears to understand my point of view: The place is different from some anachronistic Disney streetscape. It genuinely tricks you.
It’s been a while since I updated this. I haven’t been out much.
