Bob CollinsA Wisconsin case illuminates the other half of the growing texting-while-driving problem: the people with whom the drivers are texting. 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.
You have to admire the pluck of City Pages. Who would have thought to get the dirt on Prince by talking to the people who cooked for him?
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Minnesota could make purple its official state color. It could name a new transit line the “purple line.” It could find a street somewhere and call it Prince Street.
Here’s another idea: It could better support music in public schools. Read more →
The conversations between the pilot of Prince’s private jet and air traffic controllers don’t reveal much about why the jet had to make an emergency landing in Moline, Ill., just a few days before Prince died.
But they do show the difficulty of getting a jet on the ground safely in a hurry, and the skill of pilots and controllers to accomplish the task. Read more →
Analyzing Census Bureau data, Pew Research says Millennials have now overtaken Baby Boomers as the largest generation in the country, a blow to Gen X, which never got its day at the top of the heap. Read more →
Today, the Times reports that Trump’s plane is flying again because he sold it to another corporation he owns, which allowed the plane to fly immediately rather than wait for renewal paperwork to be generated. Read more →
Randall Thom, from Lakefield, Minn., showed up at the home in Monticello and gave the family the dog wrapped in an American flag. Read more →
There are plenty of challenges when it comes to opioid abuse. One of the most difficult: the “it serves them right” mentality toward people who overdose on drugs.
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Keep this in mind the next time you go watch the big waves: Some of the disasters the researchers cited were tsunami waves sweeping people into the lake from their onshore perches.
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Unless we’re misreading today’s Star Tribune editorial, the idea of a little public shaming of the men who turned I-394 into their personal Watkins Glen is on the table. Read more →
Jad Abumrad, the co-host of the Public Radio podcast, RadioLab, acknowledges now that he’s an ‘elder statesman’ of the art form and Time.com’s video profile of him — American Genius — reveals the genius and brilliance of one of the nation’s best storytellers. Read more →
‘Stop talking about the music,’ activist, author, and commentator Van Jones said on CNN last week, urging people to look past the music if they wanted to understand Prince.
And so the Los Angeles Times did in a piece looking at the singer’s religion. Read more →
Punishing someone for misconduct before a trial is no reason to keep a sexual assault allegation on someone’s record, the Minnesota Court of Appeals on Monday said. Read more →
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the 60 Minutes Facebook page is hosting a spirited debate following last night’s broadcast in which the show revisited an Ohio community that has been devastated by the heroin epidemic. Its broadcast last year first raised the national alarm over the drug. Read more →
A state lawmaker wants Minnesota to have a state color to honor Prince and a bill so stating will probably pass, given that lawmakers love to pass official symbol legislation.
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