Bob Collins1) A DOG SHALL SAVE THEM
Dogs sit in a shelter awaiting their destruction, soldiers sit with cocked guns to their heads. Who would have thought that each would save the other?
After that piece aired on CBS last night, dozens of people went to the P2V Facebook page and offered to help.
2) TAG, YOU’RE IN U2’S CONCERT
If you went to Saturday’s U2 concert in Minneapolis, you can probably find yourself in the picture above. U2’s website has posted a panorama picture of the crowd, and is inviting people to find and tag themselves. Go here.
If you didn’t go to the concert, you can still have fun finding people in the crowd doing interesting things.
3) FROM THE “THINGS YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW” FILE
This is usually the beginning of drought season in parts of Minnesota, but the Red River in Fargo is still in flood stage. It hasn’t completely receded within its banks since the annual spring flooding started in March.
4) WHAT THE WINEHOUSE REACTION SAYS ABOUT US
Her fans are leaving memorials outside the home of the late singer Amy Winehouse, whose funeral will be held today. Many of them don’t really “get it.” Like hundreds of people all around us — people who get no attention and for whom strangers shed few tears — Winehouse self-medicated a mental health problem.
Judging by some of what people are leaving at the memorial, some of her fans are just fine with that, as long as she left her music behind for them to enjoy.
If she’d died of lung cancer, would people leave a carton of cigarettes?
5) THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON FOOTBALL
NFL training camps are set to open this weekend — the first Vikings open practice in Mankato will be Monday — now that the NFL lockout is over.
You may not want to watch this video from The Guardian. You may not want to think about it on Sundays this fall while you applaud the big hit. It’s the brain of a former player, who donated his brain to research on what playing football does to it. There are 75 athletes’ brains on dry ice in the brain bank outside of Boston.
The Guardian reports on the research into former NFL star Dave Duerson…
On 17 February 2011, aged 50, Duerson killed himself inside his Florida apartment. He did so in a manner that was in keeping with his unimpaired earlier self – meticulously, neatly, and with a thought to others. He had placed his NFL Man of the Year trophy, awarded in 1987, on a table beside the spot at which he fell, along with several notes setting out his financial and other arrangements. One of the notes carried a request that he repeated in a text message earlier that day to his ex-wife, Alicia. “Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL’s brain bank,” he said.
The request might have been deemed a quirk had it not tallied with the unusual method of Duerson’s suicide. He shot himself in the heart.
Bonus A kerfuffle anew has broken out in the NPR firing of Juan Williams. He’s got a new book out that tells his side of the story. Today, former NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard pens a column that suggests NPR was pushing Williams out the door long before his “Muslim garb” comment on Fox got him fired, and Williams never got — or at least, took — the hint.
“If you are a staff person and all the sudden your employer says that we are going to cut your remuneration and cut your expectation of how many times you can be on the air,” said the editor, “how would you interpret that?”
Considering his diminished capacity, I wonder why Williams stayed at NPR. Particularly if he felt frozen out and undervalued, as he writes. I concluded that NPR gave him the credibility among the mainstream media that he enjoyed; while Fox gave him visibility and credibility among conservatives. But then that is my opinion, not a fact.
MPR’s Kerri Miller will interview Williams about all of this on Friday night in Saint Paul.
TODAY’S QUESTION
President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner addressed the nation last night to give their different views of the debt-ceiling impasse. Today’s Question: Do you find Obama or Boehner more persuasive?
WHAT WE’RE DOING
Midmorning (9-11 a.m.) – First hour: How well are colleges preparing students for today’s job market?
Second hour: Internet dating.
Midday (11 a.m. – 1 p.m.) – First hour: The economics of government default.
Second hour: E.J. Dionne, syndicated columnist with The Washington Post.
Talk of the Nation (1-3 p.m.) – First hour: The mechanics, hurdles, purpose and leadership of a viable third party in politics.
Second hour: Why the rich get richer, and what it might mean for America.
