On a scale of 9 to 10, how would you rate the Minnesota Twins, who are about to turn in their fourth consecutive 90-loss season? The little franchise that couldn’t is getting poked today for a survey it sent to ticket-buyers. ESPN’s Keith Olbermann last night awarded the Twins marketing department its gold medal in Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for September 2014
Fire has claimed two of the four restaurants in Dorset, Minn., a hamlet in north central Minnesota hamlet that bills itself as the restaurant capital of the world. Read more →
OK, Millennials. We’ll bite. What have you got against leaving voicemails? Read more →
The Rochester Post-Bulletin says it will not be joining a movement by some newspapers to stop using the word “Redskins” when writing stories about Washington’s NFL team. Read more →
This should settle the debate, but it probably won’t. The St. Paul city attorney says the seats in the First National Bank building are public, not private property, the Pioneer Press reports today. That much should be obvious, given that nearly nine months after an African American man got in trouble for sitting in them, Read more →
A police scandal makes people in even the smallest town head for their corners and then come out swinging.
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You probably don’t have to wonder whether your local Home Depot store was one of the ones where credit card information was stolen by, presumably, Russian hackers. It was, Brian Krebs, the online security expert says. Read more →
If there is one likely loser in this campaign season, it’s the political debate, the traditional chance for interested voters to size up two (or more) candidates at the same time. Sen. Al Franken, the DFL incumbent, refused to participate in the traditional State Fair debate sponsored by MPR. And today, Minnesota Daily reports he’s Read more →
This video is burning up the Internet this week. It’s tragic and lovely at the same time, and it comes with a troubling question: Why is Alzheimer’s so much more common in women? Of the more than 5 million people in the United States who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, two-thirds are women, the Washington Read more →
We flew down to Rushford on Monday and it was impossible to mistake what the summer rain has done this year compared to previous years. It’s green in a way that makes you feel selfish for keeping the beauty the state can offer to ourselves.
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A woman wanted to drive despite having her plates revoked, so she found a piece of cardboard and some coloring pencils and made her own license plate. Read more →
Minneapolis is considering a streetcar line on Nicollet Avenue from Lake Street to Fifth Street NE. St. Paul is noodling on a streetcar line on Seventh Street between Randolph Avenue and Arcade Street. These might be bad ideas, CityLabs’ Eric Jaffe suggests today, indicating that where streetcars have been put back in service in America, Read more →
KMSP provides a perfect example of the threat within with its report that Abdirahmaan Muhumed, the second man with Minneapolis connections to die fighting for ISIS, was close to terrorism’s weapon of choice in the U.S. He worked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Two former employees confirmed working with Muhumed at Delta Global Services, Read more →
Serge Vorobyov, the local guy who got arrested last winter when he tossed money in the Mall of America rotunda in an attempt to woo his estranged wife back (it didn’t work), tossed more dough from the Sky Ride at the State Fair last weekend. “It was good fun,” he tells City Page’s Aaron Rupar. Read more →
If you want to hear high school students wail, tell them they’ll have to take 30 minutes every Friday to read something. The Duluth News Tribune reports on the reception East High School principal Laurie Knapp got at a student assembly yesterday when she announced the district has added 30 minutes to the academic day. Read more →