Sweet! KC is first!

Gotcha! Yeah, we in the KC area should be proud, we were first in the nation at something! Hooray! Oh damn, but its first at having the worst roads in the country, that kind of sucks. For those of us that drive on those roads everyday this comes as no great surprise, and with St. Louis not far behind at third worst, Missouri has alot to be proud of. Its a good thing that with the help of the wonderful Gov. Blunt, they talked the first priorities first such as taking some uninsured kids of a gov't assisted insurance program and banning lap dances, the roads certainly were less pressing than those two subjects.

Note that the study is based on data from 2003, and put together in a study called the Road Information Project by a group called Trip. The article from Channel 9 here in KC and a link to the group's website are both below.

I would have to admit that some roads are getting better. Parts of I70 near downtown that actually had ruts worn in them have been resurfaced, I435 has been mostly resurfaced from roughly Truman Road down past Gregory on the Missouri side, and I70 is being rebuilt from MO291 to MO7. But there is still a long ways to go.

Here is the story:
http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/4537954/detail.html

And the group's website:
http://www.tripnet.org/index.html

Maybe we should've spent some Homeland Security money here?

With all the billions and billions spent for homeland security, including some high five and six figure grants given to small towns that are probably #897 on the list of top 10 potential targets, maybe we should have spent some money to ensure all nuclear plants have reliable and fail safe warning systems in case of a nuclear disaster. According to the article at the link below from AP via Yahoo, quite a few nuclear plants have either no functioning backup system or an unreliable backup system to warn nearby residents of an impending nuclear disaster. Given that a nuclear plant is probably high on a terrorists list of potential targets, its hard to believe that such a thing would be overlooked, but apparently they have been overlooked for quite some time.

You can read the article here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050527/ap_on_re_us/sirens_no_backup;_ylt=AqpG5GGU4shcd.0C3gmn02tG2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl