Bob CollinsGeorge Hartman was in eight of his son Steve’s stories for CBS. And over the weekend, the last of them aired. George has died. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
This or That
After a KARE 11 investigation, Target says it’s changing its app to make clear that the price displayed for an item is different depending on whether you buy it in the store or buy it online. Read more →
It seemed like a good idea when it got its start. Panera started several stores in which people could pay whatever they want. The idea was some people would pay more to help those who had little choice but to pay less.
Nice, right? Read more →
Lovell Tims died a few weeks ago but good luck finding anything about him online, even though he was quite the iconic figure at the U.S. Bank Plaza in downtown Minneapolis. Tims was a shoeshine guy and obituaries cost money, so one was never printed nor published. Read more →
Police in Fargo don’t think a woman whose body was found in a car in a shopping center died in the recent cold snap; she died several months ago. Read more →
There may be only one place in the Northern Hemisphere where people aren’t talking about the cold: Carstairs, Alberta, north of Calgary.
They’ve got a mystery in the town of 4,000. Car FOB’s have stopped working near a grocery store. Read more →
Jason Kiley’s beard is so long, he’s zipped it into his jacket a few times, tied it into his shoelaces by mistake, and there’s that food thing. Read more →
Earlier this week, there was appropriate gnashing of teeth with word that Digital First — the hedge fund that’s destroyed the St. Paul Pioneer Press and other proud newspapers across America — would make a play for Gannett, owners of dozens of newspapers, including the St. Cloud Times, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
We need not have worried about Digital First. Gannett has killed off many of the papers with a round of layoffs that leaves the newspapers as newspapers in name only. Read more →
Here’s an update on a story I passed along a week or so ago about a man in Arizona who mistakenly got an invite to a bachelor party weekend, skiing in Vermont, then asked if he could come anyway. It went pretty well. Read more →
This might not be the sort of photo you’d value unless it’s your father who died last year and it was on a cellphone that was in your breast pocket and it fell into the water when you were ice fishing the other day and you never got around to backing up what was on the phone. Read more →
Metro Transit is one of the few transit agencies that still uses fabric seats, the Star Tribune’s Tim Harlow reports. But maybe not for long. Read more →
If the people of Maplewood ever lament the loss of a locally-run market, they have only themselves to blame if they don’t step up in some fashion to help a couple victimized by bad luck and bad people.
Read more →
In the category of people are horrible, we give you this from the Douglas County, Wis., sheriff Read more →
The now infamous Gillette ad audaciously suggesting that men treat women with respect and police the ones who don’t, has accomplished its mission of opening a discussion. It also required us — again — to listen to the sound of a million hissyfits by men who don’t have much to offer after ‘hey, baby!’ Read more →