Bob Collins
At Xcel Center on Tuesday night, Jamie Jenn thought she was taking part in an intermission contest, guessing what Erik Haula said was the biggest surprise in Minnesota. She guessed it was the size of the Mall of America. She was wrong. 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.
Don’t even think of watching this video from some guys in New York and New Jersey if you’ve never strapped on a pair of skates and played hockey on a pond. Read more →
America’s luck on the ice hasn’t changed in Sochi since the U.S. men’s hockey team came home empty-handed and the women settled for a silver after having the gold practically around their necks. Read more →
The legislation in Minnesota was probably doomed the moment Gov. Dayton urged both sides to work together on the issue. With the governor declaring he wouldn’t sign the bill without law enforcement’s blessing, there was no reason for law enforcement to negotiate, no matter how many sad stories the state’s citizens told. Read more →
Walter took care of the hard part: First, writing his own obituary. And then: dying. Read more →
A woman died in her own garage, and life went on in her neighborhood without anyone wondering whatever happened to her. For six years. Read more →
Film maker Tatia Pilieva asked 20 strangers to kiss. Read more →
Hundreds of runners in last year’s Boston Marathon are planning to go back to Boston in a few weeks to finish what they started. Their efforts were interrupted, of course, by last year’s finish-line bombing. Read more →
A satellite photography company is using crowdsourcing to pore over thousands of images, looking for debris from the apparently downed Malaysia Flight MH370. Read more →
The short version: He grew up in Southern California, played college football, had strong family figures, wanted to be a mortician, but ended up selling drugs and going to prison. Somehow, he ended up saving lives in Saint Paul. Read more →
Another salvo today in the ongoing battle over whether women should be called “bossy.”
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The thing with a long, cold winter is when it ends, it ends in a hurry. A week ago today, this was the condition of the famous ice road connecting Madeline Island with Bayfield: good, solid Lake Superior ice Here’s the condition today: The morning ice road status line says they’ll try to keep the Read more →
An ad from the Republican Governors Association in support of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is a good example of the silliness of political advertising. It’s a hit ad on Mary Burke, Walker’s Democratic challenger, in which the faces of struggling Wisconsinites is shown. Only Joe Korb and his wife aren’t in the soup line. They Read more →
In Minnesota — and in this case: Minneapolis — winter is the time of the year when you can almost roll a car while parking it. Read more →
What makes Minnesota the state of hockey? We don’t have ties if a game goes too long. We make them play ’til they drop. The record for longest high school hockey game in history sits right here in Minnesota. Or does it? Read more →