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.
By now, you’ve probably heard the story of Myles Eckert, the Toledo-area boy who found $20 outside a Cracker Barrel restaurant and then decided to give it to a soldier who was having dinner inside. He did it, he told CBS’ Steve Hartman, in memory of his father, who was killed in Iraq on Mother’s Day 2005.
There’s another kid in that family, and she’s got a pretty good story, too. Read more →
You can’t blame Carrie Steacy, an airline pilot in Canada, for being a little steamed. All she did was get “David in 12E” and all of the other passengers safety to their destinations in British Columbia. Read more →
Another anchor from the state-run Russia Today network is protesting the actions of Russia. Liz Wahl, an American, quit on the air this afternoon. “I cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government which whitewashes the actions of Putin,” Wahl said. She said her grandparents emigrated from Hungary to the U.S. to Read more →
Joe Bell put on his uniform to honor runners who were raising money for scholarships for veterans. So they honored him. Read more →
The situation in Ukraine is occupying our attention. And now it’s almost hard to remember what the big crisis was before that?
Syria is still happening. Read more →
What can hackers steal along with the credit card data they took when they broke into Target’s servers? At least in Wisconsin, child support payments. In Wisconsin, child support from the state is given to recipients in the form of debit Mastercards, a program described as “a secure and convenient way to receive payments.” But, Read more →
Minneapolis actor brought life to “Captain Phillips” but times are still lean. Read more →
A change in the way FAA hires air traffic controllers is upsetting those who train many of them.
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Oh, Canada! Cpl. Justin Stark, an infantry soldier with the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, killed himself in October 2011. He was just 22 years old. Stark had been on a a seven-month tour in Afghanistan that started in 2010, including patrolling Nakhonay, a village southwest of Kandahar city. Nobody really knows what pushed Read more →
Why do people pay a high toll price on MnPASS roads when there’s no real calculation how much time they’ll save? Read more →
If we can’t get excited about Minnesota’s kids — the ones that perhaps don’t have NHL careers ahead of them — playing for a state hockey title, can we really call ourselves the state of hockey? Read more →
For more than a year, Stefon Alexander, the Twin Cities rapper who performs as P.O.S., has been looking for a kidney. His musician pals, DoomTree, crowdfunded the cost, raising more than $47,000 for the procedure, well over the initial $25,000 goal. Finding a kidney turned out to be harder. Read more →
A couple having a medical emergency in Minneapolis finds a good person. Read more →
The only thing that made Carl Kasell’s retirement from NPR acceptable, was that he’d still be on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me every week. Now, that’s ending too. Kasell announced today he’s retiring from the show. “My favorite time at NPR has been Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! It was loads of fun and gave Read more →
We still tinker with software, but hardware, the very infrastructure of our wired and unwired lives? Not so much. We’re generally content if something just works. Read more →
Bob Collins