At one point during the winter, we wondered whether all of the ice would ever leave Lake Superior. About 10 percent of the lake is still covered with ice, but the Coast Guard has ended its ice-breaking operations for the year. According to sources, summer is coming. Lake Superior Magazine has put together a time-lapse Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for May 2014
Other nations are noticing that the people of the United States and science aren’t on good terms.
In a scathing article in Maclean’s, writer Jonathan Gatehouse asks if the most powerful nation on Earth has lost its mind? Read more →
Art can provide an escape from the daily stress but it’s got its own kvetching and politics to mire itself in.
Art-A-Whirl, the tremendous northeast Minneapolis art festival, is at the heart of the discussion about whether art has to be oh so serious, and, sometimes, artsy. Its growing, becoming hugely popular and, like everything else, changes, to the consternation of some who want it to always be what it always was. Read more →
It was no surprise, really, when the hucksters and street vendors showed up around the site of World Trade Center buildings while the holes in the ground were still smoking in 2001. We don’t expect much in the way of decency when there’s a quick buck to be made. But the new 9/11 Museum that opened last week is also cashing in on the collapse, to the consternation of family members of those killed. Read more →
For a country that thumps its chest and talks tough every time its feelings get hurt, there’s been precious little reaction to the reality that the manned spaceflight program in the United States is in serious decline, and the country is becoming a second-rate space power. Read more →
Today’s regulatory filing by Target provides a good opportunity for the business world to see the same thing differently. Read more →
In Minnesota it’s a crime to refuse to submit to chemical testing when a police officer thinks you’re driving under the influence. Read more →
It was the perfect plan. How could it possibly have not worked? Danielle Shea of Quincy, Mass., was supposed to graduate from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut over the weekend. The whole family was going to be there to watch. They would, no doubt, be so proud. Her mother had given her thousands of dollars for Read more →
With less than a month before the official opening of the Green Line, street.mn’s David Levinson takes a look today at one particular stretch of the route: Washington Ave SE. Many of the problems he highlights, he notes, will be solved in time. The signals will be timed better and maybe pedestrians will start paying Read more →
Commercial radio and TV will probably die off when the :15 and :30 second advertisement does. One gets the sense that the day is approaching, considering advertising’s growing fascination with docu-ads, entertaining films that, at the end, sell you something.
The latest comes from Cornetto, a U.K. ice cream company, which has taken 8 minutes to tell you that more than just the world of advertising is changing in a hurry. Read more →
Jill Abramson, the ousted boss at the New York Times, is expected to speak for the first time about her firing from the Times. She’s giving the commencement speech this morning at Wake Forest.
Watch it here. Read more →
Kevin Love can come forward any minute now and say ‘I don’t want to leave Minnesota.’
Any… minute… now, Kevin. Read more →
We like to think of our generation as smarter than those who went before, but we dump junk down the throats of our kids, spurred on by the marketing of food companies.
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Don Meyer, the long-time men’s basketball coach at Northern State University in Aberdeen, has died, the Associated Press reports today. He had also once been coach at Hamline.
Read more →