Bob Collins
It’s the end of an era on Wisconsin’s license plates.
There are no more six-character combinations left in America’s Dairyland.
The state will go to seven.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
NASA has released what it’s calling the clearest view ever achieved of the earth at night. Read more →
Dr. Anupam Jena, of Harvard Medical School, looked at 11 major U.S. marathons — the Twin Cities Marathon included — and a decade’s worth of heart attacks for Medicare patients. He found that on marathon days, the mortality rate increased by about 15 percent.
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It’s not often that a TV reality show sparks a national conversation on the ethics of ‘outing’ another person, but it’s not often a TV reality show ‘outs’ an individual as CBS’ Survivor did last night when contestant Jeff Varner — a former news anchor — revealed that fellow contestant Zeke Smith is transgender. Read more →
It’s commencement season and now it’s really over, parents. They’re really on their own now. Sure, you cried when they went off to college four years ago, thinking it was really over, but they came home with their laundry every now and again and had some free meals while reminding you that they’re smarter than you are now.
There’s just one thing left for a parent to do. Read more →
Changing a sports team’s logo is a pretty simple task. All it takes is a bucketload of money, as the Minnesota Timberwolves showed last night as part of the team’s plan to wipe away the stench of bad basketball.
Wiping away the stench of racism, however, continues to befuddle the sports world and the people who run the leagues, particularly baseball and football. Read more →
When the Harlem Globetrotters come into a town, where do they head to shoot their promotional video? If you’re ‘Zeus,’ a football stadium, of course. Read more →
There are bigger stories in the world than the death yesterday of David Letterman’s mom. So why are we so sad about someone we didn’t know?
Because we did. Read more →
The Minnesota Twins last season lost 103 games, often played in a half-empty stadium, and made a ton of cash. Read more →
The Winona Fine Arts Commission is in a tough spot. It’s got 100 historical works of art, and it has to decide which 90 it’ll have to sell off. It can only afford to save 10. Read more →
Don’t steal candy from an amusement park near Toronto. The cops will go to DEFCON 1. Read more →
Among the most disturbing stories of the day is the NPR report today on the use of corporal punishment in schools. It still exists. It’s 2017. Read more →
Geoff Fearns, 59, is no slouch when it comes to big money. He’s president of TriPacific Capital Advisors, with a half-billion dollars of real estate holdings. But when he needed to give up a seat, he was just another little person on a big airline. Read more →
It was on this date in 1945 that Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp, was liberated by soldiers from the 6th Armored Division of the Third Army.
Edward R. Murrow faced the task of telling the story of Buchenwald with no tape recorded audio, no fancy production, just words. Read more →
Surely there’s a way to characterize Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons without suggesting that Hitler set a certain standard for depravity. Read more →