Bob CollinsGoldieBlox, the toy company that wants to inspire girls toward engineering and science, can apparently tell when the tide turns.
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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.
This will probably be one of the last posts until next week, but just wanted to point out that Saturday is the 6th birthday of NewsCut, which officially launched on Nov. 30, 2007. I had actually been writing it since that October (those posts are available online) while the bosses evaluated whether this idea really Read more →
Should a business owner’s religion determine an employee’s health care benefits, guns at the state Capitol, what’s Thanksgiving without a stay at the airport, and a case in Mankato raises this question: Can anyone be foster parents? Read more →
GoldieBlox isn’t going to need to win the free Super Bowl commercial competition it’s in with the Locally Laid egg farm in Wrenshall, Minn. It’s doing just fine getting publicity thanks to its viral video. Read more →
If The Daily Show can do it, perhaps there’s no reason why a Duluth TV station can’t fake the news by standing in front of a “green screen” and pretending to be somewhere they’re not. Read more →
The fastest-disappearing job in journalism is the photographer and this is the time of the year when it shows.
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The nose doesn’t lie in South St. Paul/Newport, Gavin’s belt to help battle a tumor, an old man with an older gun, teaching homeless kids, and the case against punting. Read more →
We may never know why Adam Lanza killed Connecticut students, Trevino gets 27 years in killing of his wife, Obama pushes back against critics of the Iran nuclear deal, why there’s no Minnesota steel in the new Vikings stadium, and how a person taught himself to fly using someone else’s airplane — without permission. Read more →
Dora Dougherty Strother McKeown has died. The Saint Paul native was the first woman to fly a B-29 Superfortress during World War II because the men were afraid to. Read more →
The new owner of Block E is going to give renovating the eyesore in downtown Minneapolis a go, with no public money, apparently. Read more →
If you’re going to drive drunk, don’t buy these types of things to jazz up your truck. A Meeker County man today lost his attempt to have his DUI license revocation thrown out. His tail light covers did him in. Joseph Hoekstra was driving his pickup truck in December 2011 when state trooper Casey Meagher, Read more →
Why Minnesota works and Wisconsin doesn’t, the band of brothers who stick up for a first-grader, the woman behind the hockey microphone, the B-17 flyover in Green Bay, and why Dilbert’s creator wanted his father to die. Read more →
Minnesota native Melissa Bachman likes hunting big game but her recent lion hunt has the Internet furious. Read more →
Ban baby boomers http://t.co/wV8MYpfI71 — Dan D'Addario (@DPD_) November 22, 2013 Did you expect a generational dispute to break out today? From what I can tell from my Twitter feed today, a lot of people are watching either the CBS or NBC “live” feeds of this moment in 1963 today. NPR and other organizations are Read more →
One of the most famous Minneapolis Lakers has died. Vern Mikkelsen, an Askov, Minn., native, died Thursday night, the Star Tribune’s Patrick Reusse reports. He was 85. He had a stroke in 2002 and found it difficult to talk, so he started writing more and wrote his biography. “My stroke, ironically, gave me something to Read more →