Bob CollinsThe worst job in the Upper Midwest right now? It’s the person responsible for figuring out how to fix Bayfield County’s washed out roads. 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.
In a speech that was emotional and inspired as any consoler-in-chief has given, Obama chided the nation for refusing to recognize the things ‘we know to be true’ and being unable to talk about our differences in a productive way — preferring instead to choose sides. Read more →
It costs a ship $400 an hour for a pilot, and that’s why the Norwegian Viking Ship, Draken Harald Hårfagre, might not make it to Duluth’s Tall Ships Challenge 2016.
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It is either a feature or a bug — after all these years, I’m still not sure which — that a good conscience never lets go.
It punishes us for the transgressions of our youth. Read more →
Two trauma surgeons at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital — one white, one black — had something to say to the nation, so they asked CBS News to interview them this morning. Read more →
MPR reporter/editor Toni Randolph, claimed by cancer last week, wasn’t from here. She was from Buffalo, N.Y. So when family members arrived in the Twin Cities to attend to her affairs, they realized they had to do something here in addition to a funeral in Buffalo. Read more →
There is drawing lines in the sand between police and the public (embodied in the next post down) and there is law enforcement pulling a community closer together. Read more →
When the Minnesota Lynx put on warm-up T-shirts memorializing two black men killed by police, the Dallas police officers killed in an ambush, and calling for us to look to ourselves for change, it was too much for Minneapolis police officers to take. Read more →
For experienced storm chasers, Monday offered the opportunity for prime viewing of a still relatively rare weather event in these parts, in this case, Litchfield and Watkins in west-central Minnesota. Read more →
It’s almost as if the original coders knew that someday we’d be looking at their work from tiny computers held in our hands, computers with the power that would have filled several rooms back in the day.
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MPR’s Tom Weber asked his considerable audience today, ‘What’s next? Where do we go from here?’ in the aftermath of last week’s police shootings, the attack on police officers in Dallas, and Saturday night’s riot on I-94.
Of the many suggestions, ‘equip police with body cameras’ seemed to be among the most common. That’s not surprising, Minnesota politicians have been wrestling with the question even before Jamar Clark was shot to death by Minneapolis police last November.
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What if blind people could see again?
A group of scientists announced in an article in a science journal they’ve been able to restore sight to blind mice. Read more →
In two weeks, a couple hundred volunteers and the grandson of P-47 Thunderbolt pilot killed during a raid on German troops in Italy in World War II will try to unearth what’s left of the plane and, possibly, the pilot’s remains near Bagnarola, Italy. Read more →
The New York Times reports today that people openly carrying their legal weapons at last week’s assault on Dallas police made it tougher for police to fight back. It introduces a new wrinkle in an old debate: If everyone has guns, how do you tell the good from the bad? Read more →
We’re pretty much killing ourselves by going to work in America. We work too much. We don’t take vacation days. We work from home. We work on the weekends. We don’t use sick leave, if we get it at all.
Why?
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