The AP’s Oklahoma City bureau needs a copy editor for this story about suspended players:
Jackson had career-highs in receptions with three and 45 yards receiving against Iowa State in the Insight Bowl.
Oklahoma played Iowa in last year’s Insight Bowl. Oklahoma also played Iowa State in the regular season.
Iowa at statehood, 1846 (Flickr)
It seems like most of Iowa’s county histories are ever only organized by individual county. This provides good detail for each separately, but hurts when you are trying to think of the “big picture” of Iowa’s westward expansion.
I was going to fill in that gap, creating a timeline of when counties were created, county seats named, and so forth, only to find a pleasant surprise: It’s been done. The writer found sources and legislative acts specifying each date a county was created or changed.
There’s no need for me to duplicate that work, so I’ll have to change my focus. A timeline just of county seats will be about as informative.
Bonus: In searching for an image for this blog entry, I found a couple of maps that show one of the proposed but not approved state boundaries, the one that went into Minnesota but not to the Missouri River. More research on that later.
Davis County Iowa, along the Missouri border, was named in 1843 for Garret Davis, a U.S. representative from Kentucky. But if the luck of the draw had gone another way, it would have created historical confusion for generations to come. This is from a history by a Davis County recorder:
“The name Bloomfield was pulled out of a hat. The other choices were Jefferson and Davis.”
So Iowa almost had a city of Jefferson in the county of Davis less than 20 years before the Civil War. At the time, Jefferson Davis was an officer in the U.S. Army, not yet a U.S. representative from Mississippi, secretary of war, or president of the Confederate States of America.
Whichever Davis the county was actually named after, the association surely would have been too strong for residents to bear after 1860, especially with rebels at their doorstep — Davis County was “invaded” by Confederates in 1864 (bottom of page). The name of the county seat would have had to be changed. Lincoln, perhaps?
The University of Idaho football team moved up from I-AA with Boise State in 1996, but since then their fortunes have wildly diverged. Now Boise State is wedging its way into the BCS (just as it ceases to exist) while Idaho is in real danger of having no alternative than going back down to I-AA.
The Vandals are in the middle of a WAC-tastrophe. Idaho’s home conference has been pillaged by the Mountain West (again) and the Sun Belt, leaving it holding the bag with New Mexico State.
With just about nothing to lose, the university’s president, Duane Nellis, took a shot at the 800-pound television network in the room: “As you well know TV networks like ESPN are now running major college athletic affiliations not the NCAA.” His whole letter is at the link.
It’s not the first time someone has openly said that. Remember when Boston College’s athletics director said the ACC added Pittsburgh and Syracuse because “ESPN told us what to do” and then had to retract the statement?
I’m in the middle of reading Those Guys Have All the Fun, a history of ESPN with interviews from the people who were there. In 30 years, the network has gone from begging the NCAA to let it carry basketball games to determining structural components of college athletics. It is, to be blunt, a little scary how much power it wields.
Why am I bringing up a quote from the president of the University of Idaho on a website concerned about Iowa? It should be pretty obvious: Iowa State has been in practically the same boat two years in a row. “The key variable for adding new teams is immediate media market,” Nellis wrote. That won’t change if and when Conferencepocalypse III rears its ugly head.
The widespread flooding last year is only part of it. (Omaha World-Herald)
This is a continuation of a post from December listing post office closing notices and appeals, filed after a moratorium was placed. A Final Determination for each had been made before mid-December, but he boilerplate text says the USPS “will proceed with the discontinuance process for any Post Office in which a Final Determination was already posted as of December 12, 2011, including all pending appeals.” The 120-day schedule for all of them has expired, but no further filings have been made.
The moratorium is scheduled to expire in two weeks. The U.S. Senate last week passed a one-year extension, but the House hasn’t voted yet. If the moratorium expires, will the USPS go ahead with closing the post offices in the towns below?
This won’t change the fact that my iDisk is going away, but this article from Apple sounds encouraging for those of us who have used iTools for a long time and don’t want to upgrade to 10.7. Maybe enough of us raised questions about it.
I’ve been “behind the curve” for a while now when it comes to iDevices. All I want is a smart iPod with my flip-phone, and still use physical storage media once in a while.
The 2012 map has been online for a while.
Remember, there are fewer copies of this edition after the map budget was severely cut. Hopefully, demand will not outstrip supply.
(Yes, I said “hopefully.” The AP Stylebook may be mistaken in its changes sometimes, but this isn’t one of them.)
In the CIML, football teams are leaving grass for greener pastures — all-weather artificial surfaces.
Indianola, which shares its field with Simpson College, installed a $750,000 surface in 2001.
West Des Moines Valley opened an $8 million stadium a decade ago with a $700,000 field. The field was replaced in 2010.
The article is about more than football though — artificial tracks and weight room upgrades are also part of it.
(Title is in reference to the post below. If it seems excessively snarky, it’s because I’m still kind of upset about the remarks.)
