David Cazares is an editor for MPR News. He also writes about jazz and Latin music.
Toni Randolph of MPR news had a chance to meet Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated economist, last fall as part of a trip sponsored by the International Reporting Project. Johnson Sirleaf is one of three recipients of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in November 2010 We asked Toni Read more →
Fascinating, and maybe a little scary: Wired’s Noah Shachtman reports that a computer virus has infected the U.S. military’s fleet of unmanned aircraft, or drones. Excerpt: A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones. The virus, Read more →
Gawker has a nice little twist on those inane “Best Of” lists, the kind we wrote about earlier this week that pegged Chanhassen as, like, one of the crazy best towns in the whole U.S.A. Gawker’s gawkery-take: The Worst 50 States in America. Cheeky. The least worst state, according to New York-based Gawker? New York. Read more →
The moose, a freakishly large mammal, is in the news today. And so is the capybara, a freakishly large rodent. In our Today’s Question feature we asked: Minnesota’s moose population is in sharp decline, but the DNR says hunting is not the reason. State officials would like to ban the feeding of deer, a practice Read more →
Our humble metro area is popping up on a few awesome sauce lists lately. Money magazine, for example, says five Twin Cities suburbs are among the 100 best small towns in the U.S. In descending order: Shoreview (52) Savage (51) Lino Lakes (44) Arden Hills (14) Chanhassen (10) Says Money: Despite some 2011 budgetary brouhahas Read more →
Thirteen percent of American mobile phones users employ their devices for avoiding meatspace social contact, according to a new survey on how people use their phones from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Surprised it’s not higher, actually. I’ve done this and I bet you have, too. “Cell phones can help prevent unwanted personal Read more →
Quite a few instances lately of world authorities blaming technology (or shutting it down) for conflict. The latest: Police in Essex, England have charged a man for using the BlackBerry Messenger service and Facebook to organize a mass water fight. From guardian.co.uk: The 20-year-old from Colchester was arrested on Friday after Essex police discovered the Read more →
In Cannon Falls today, President Obama referenced a New York Times editorial by financier Warren Buffett to back his call for higher taxes on wealthy Americans.
Check out these recent-ish headlines from the Intarwebz: “Email is dead: Check out these 8 innovating alternatives instead” (Business Insider) “Nine reasons e-mail is dead” (PCMag.com) “Is e-mail dead?” (Discovery News) “The end of the e-mail era” (Wall Street Journal) I’ve never bought the premise that email is on the way out. New research from Read more →
From Jeff Jones of APM’s Public Insight Network: There’s a sense this week that everything’s changing again with the economy, and it’s either time to make a big decision or put off that big decision. MPR’s Public Insight Network is hearing from people reacting to the stock market turmoil. Here’s an audio montage they produced Read more →
By Bill Wareham, MPR News When the topic of this Saturday’s U2 concert came up in our morning editorial meeting, it exposed a cultural divide far deeper than one might expect among this rather homogeneous group of 40- and 50-somethings. On one side of the gulf there was open derision of the Irish rockers as Read more →
From Alexandra DiPalma, Midmorning assistant producer: When listener Josh Collins turned on the radio and heard the Beatles playing today, he sent a worried tweet: Flipped on Midmorning with @KerriMPR, heard Beatles and suddenly worried that something had happened to Ringo or Paul. Guess not. Whew.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyJosh Read more →
While the Minnesota state budget battle is moving toward a final resolution, the federal fight is moving into high gear. A new tool might help you make sense of a complicated issue. “If you ever wanted to control where your tax dollars go, here’s your chance to decide,” begins the Budget Hero game from American Read more →
A digital music service for which Europeans have gone nutso launches in the U.S. today, after a couple of years of promises and waiting. “If Apple’s iTunes ushered in digital music’s first phase as a large-scale business, then Spotify and other services like it could be its future,” writes Ben Sisario on the New York Read more →
A Blaine man who hijacked his neighbor’s Wi-fi and then made threats to Joe Biden and distributed child pornography using his victim’s identity has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. It’s just one more nasty incident — albeit a very small one — in the long war between forces of good and evil online. Read more →
David Cazares