Bob Collins
Thanks to Slate, there’s now an annotated video of all the stars who sang at the end of Stephen Colbert’s final show on Thursday night.
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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.
Behold, the business possibilities of booze in Minnesota! Read more →
Someday, old-timers will tell the children bouncing on their knee about the days when astronauts needing a tool had to wait until a space ship from Earth had to bring it to them.
That day is at hand, apparently. Read more →
That might have been the best news conference in the administration of President Barack Obama, who has been far too reclusive in his years in office when it comes to answering questions from the media. Read more →
How do you know it’s true love?
When your proposal isn’t on a scoreboard, doesn’t involve a marching band, and YouTube. Read more →
If you play your cards wrong around here, you can commute to work in the dark, spend the day in a windowless room, and then commute back home again in the dark.
The only way to lift the gloom is to calculate how much longer we’ll have to endure this. Read more →
Santa Claus gets all the ink at this time of year, but Harry Shoup should get his due. Read more →
It was six degrees Wednesday night when someone put a black lab and her litter in a cardboard box and left it next to a dumpster in East Grand Forks, Forum Communications reports. Read more →
We have many obvious needs in life — food, water, a housebroken puppy, for example. But if there’s one thing that drives Americans, it’s outrage. Without it, our lives lack a certain meaning. Read more →
It’s not as if Stephen Colbert is going anywhere. He takes over for David Letterman, of course. But his character — Stephen Colbert — is being retired and last night was the last Colbert Report.
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Serial, the Public Radio version of ‘Who shot JR?’ (ask your parents), has concluded its first season without us knowing who killed a young high school woman. Read more →
As soon as authorities can figure out how to stop people from leaving the country to fight with Islamic extremists, perhaps they can figure out how to stop trucks people trade in at the car dealership from ending up in the hands of Syrian rebels. Read more →
The European Court of Justice today ruled that obesity is a disability, a ruling which could mean employers have to treat those obese workers as disabled. It ruled in the case of Karsten Kaltoft, who was fired for his size. His employer said the child care worker was so fat he needed help to tie children’s shoe laces. Read more →
For several years, I’ve been considering what sort of unique and insightful (or inciteful, as the case may be) post would constitute the 10,000th NewsCut post. Read more →
A decision this week by the Minnesota Supreme Court will never make the news but it’s significant for anyone in Minnesota with siding that might get damaged in a hailstorm.
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