Bob Collins
The Iron Range is about to learn what metro drivers have finally figured out. Roundabouts aren’t so bad. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
It’s the chemical Oxybenzone, which the scientists say has the same effect as gasoline. It’s in your sunscreen. Read more →
Up until last year, students at MIT, recognizing the gravity of tradition, tossed a piano off a dorm roof each spring for more than 40 years. Why? Because they could.
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In the latest list, the newspaper reporter job retains its title, while ‘broadcaster’ leapfrogs over ‘logger” into second place. But are these really the worst jobs? Not likely. Read more →
Since 1872, the Worthington Daily Globe has been a daily newspaper, except for Sunday. Those days are over. Read more →
The Big Lake school board will meet tonight and they most certainly will remove a roadblock preventing the Big Lake High School’s trap shooting team photo from appearing in the yearbook. This, of course, assumes there’s a shred of common sense in Big Lake. Read more →
Janis Thompson is being inducted into the North Dakota High School Track and Field Hall of Fame next month. She was a top sprinter.
She was also a cheerleader whose death at North Dakota State in 1986 made schools take another look at the stunts cheerleaders were attempting. Read more →
The crews of medevac helicopters fly into the worst weather on dark nights because someone needs help. Those aboard longing for a long life, would do well to find another line of work. But those aboard have different values. That’s why I referred to them as ‘angels in helicopters’ when I wrote in December about Miles Weske’s recovery from a crash during bad weather in September.
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ESPN, which threw way too much money at sports leagues for the right to broadcast games, took its mistake out on its employees again today when it chopped some high-profile personalities, more than a year after it gutted 350 behind-the-camera employees. Read more →
There isn’t any room for nuance in the laws surrounding flying, not since 19 men hijacked airliners and flew them into buildings.
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Until today, few people likely thought of a sanitation worker as a victim of the Jamar Clark shooting in Minneapolis in November 2015. But today’s City Pages article on what happened to one of them — Alan Ditty — is a disturbing piece of journalism.
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At least in the short term, Corey Jacob, the homeless Rochester man whose van was smashed on Good Friday when it was hit by a drunk driver, is going to be OK. Read more →
Your Wednesday inspiration comes from Man Kaur, a 101-year-old athlete from India, who took home the gold at the World Masters Games in New Zealand this week. She was the only entrant in her age group. Read more →
Jett Kobs, a senior at Unity High School in Balsam Lake, Wis., knows his grandmother never went to her senior prom. So young Jett took her dancing. Read more →
ay what you will about Obamacare — and you will — but it was a fine declaration in it that put members of Congress and the federal government under its provisions. If we had to live with it, they had to live with it.
Vox reports today that a new plan to repeal and replace Obamacare will protect members of Congress, their families, and their staffs from being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. The rest of America? You’re on your own. Read more →