manhattan

ah, manhattan. manhattan, kansas, that is. settlement of the early free-staters. home of elvira, mistress of the dark and kansas state university. manhattan lies in the middle of some of the flattest land in the country. somebody from manhattan will try to correct me and will talk about the flint hills. don't. it's flat. pancake flat. a great place to study wind. or wind erosion, which is one of the things the folks at ksu spend some time on. in fact, they're fascinated enough by wind erosion they built themselves a nice little lab called the wind erosion laboratory. i'll bet they've been learning all sorts of things about wind and what wind can do. in fact, today the folks at the wind erosion lab learned more than they ever learned before about the power of wind because this morning when they arrived at their lab, it wasn't there. you see, the wind erosion laboratory was blown away by a tornado in the night.