Bob Collins
Reader Matt Black forwards us this video from The Random Altruist that seems appropriate for the afternoon. We’ll ignore the fact he didn’t seem to know what an army blanket is. He was doing good work.
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.
It really is as cold in Minnesota as it is in the Arctic. The CBC gives us a glimpse today into the life of Cameron Bobinski, who started KimmirutWeather.com in 2006. Current temperature is about 20 below there — that’s 20 degrees colder than the current temp in International Falls. But that’s about the same Read more →
Does giving presents make financial sense, Black Folk Don’t, why electricity rates are going up so fast, we live here for the pity, and nothing says ‘holidays’ like Nina Totenberg shaking it. Read more →
Last-minute reprieve for insurance shoppers, Ohio may be the next state to fall for same-sex marriage bans, the Court of Appeals ruling on what constitutes hunting, the airing of Festivus grievances in Madison, the death of the man who invented the deadliest weapon of modern warfare, and pregnant and on life support. What to do now? Read more →
In Ontario and many areas in the northeast, a December ice storm has brought its share of misery but also stories of people who don’t wait to help their neighbors.
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If you’re dressed in blaze orange during deer hunting season, holding a 12-gauge shotgun, sitting on an ATV in a camouflage deer blind, and four deer slugs sitting beside you, what are you doing? A three-judge panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled today that you’re hunting, when it shot down the attempt of Read more →
With the end of a month approaching, it’s “goodbye” time for workers who have taken buyouts at their companies which are trying to cut costs. At NPR, newscaster Jean Cochran gave her last newscast on Friday, the moment captured in this video. Newscaster Paul Brown also took the buyout as did Morning Edition editor Anne Read more →
Iowa woman’s wishes granted, two years after she died. Plus: sleeping outside for a year, how three men captured the first earthrise ever witnesses, the nipple artist, and fulfilling the Christmas wishes of soldiers’ kids. Read more →
Is there anything social networking can’t do? Since he took his own life, C.J. Twomey has sat in an urn in his home in Maine. His mother didn’t want him to remain there so she enlisted social networking sites to spread his ashes around the world. People volunteered to scatter the ashes, and his mother Read more →
Nate Yoho and Laura Brammeier of Des Moines didn’t have much time together after they met in late 2007. They were engaged three years later, just before Laura passed out at work. It was cancer in the brain. In May 2011 she had surgery at the Mayo Clinic. In August, they were married. The 28-year-olds Read more →
It’s possible today’s story about a woman who tried to get a tank of propane on an airplane isn’t as crazy as it first sounds.
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The huge backlog of veterans’ disability claims, one of the most shameful scandals of the last decade, is ebbing. Read more →
Many Americans, this week’s news stories confirm, don’t have a clue what the First Amendment says or what it means.
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Moving Saint Paul’s homeless, how public radio and TV cover news differently, a new hand for Harmony, Story Corps: the movie, and the day in Christmas videos. Read more →
The bus stop cookie lady has been shut down. Somebody blew the whistle on her. Read more →