Bob Collins
We’re three episodes in to Ken Burns’ outstanding series, The Vietnam War, and among the more compelling debates to come from its airing is the question of whether there really is no such thing as a ‘single truth’ in war. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for September 2017
There was a forehead-slapping moment last week when NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed one of its reporters about Facebook’s ad-targeting program which allowed advertisers to target anti-Semitics in the audience. Read more →
Near Nerstrand, Minn., last evening, Sawyer Ruby Rose Hanson, 4, was playing in her front yard when she followed a cat into a field. She disappeared. Read more →
Truthfully, we’re not exactly sure what Appleton, Wis., police officer Jack Taschner was doing when he walked into the stands at the high school football game last Friday night. Read more →
You know who is doing a better job of covering the Cassidy-Graham bill to repeal health care for Americans than many news organizations? Late night comedians. They’re at least paying attention to it. Read more →
It’s what you do when you think no one is watching. But Cass Mundy, of Fargo, was watching the other night in the heavy rain, even though she didn’t get much of a picture.
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Charlotte Bleistein, 102, of Greendale, Wis., has died. Earlier this year she got a little regional fame because she had started taking up yoga, as profiled by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Jim Stingl. She had more time for it once she gave up her career as a lawyer after a traffic accident at age 96. Read more →
OK, we’ll bite, mysterious motorcycle rider dressed up like a panda. Why are you dressed up like a panda? Read more →
In Minnesota, death is efficient. Read more →
Though there are plenty of gorgeous days left, the baseball diamonds in the ginormous sports complex in my town are empty; the kids and their parents have moved on to either soccer or football.
It doesn’t appear that anything has stopped football from being the sport of choice for these younger kids and their parents, so it’s unlikely today’s study from Boston will change anything. Nonetheless, your kids brains are getting scrambled by tackle football. Read more →
Eighteen is the new 15, a new assessment of the generation suggests.
They don’t drink as much, have sex, or drive a car the way other generations — that’s you, probably — did. Read more →
An ad campaign in Boston is dubbed, ‘Take The Lead’, will involve the Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Revolution. The teams started planning the campaign in May, after the racism against Baltimore Orioles star Adam Jones. Read more →
“We’d like to do something and something’s better than nothing.” And this concludes the lesson on how a dead-and-gone effort to repeal Obamacare rolled back to life. Read more →
There’s something you won’t see in this drone video of the island of Barbuda, released by GlobalMedic overnight. Humans. Read more →
Money practically declared this the year of the suburbs, as city housing prices are skyrocketing. You know who does suburbs like nobody’s business? Minnesota. Read more →