Bob CollinsMinneapolis is trying mightily today to woo the National Football League to the city for the Super Bowl in 2018. Odds are that by then, the league will still be the most popular sport in America despite every scandalous piece of evidence that could give a person a reason to turn away. Coincidentally, the latest Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Steve Kandell of BuzzFeed lost his sister in the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings and decided to check out the Museum. In particular, he gives a different sort of voice to the issue of the Museum also being a cemetery. Read more →
Researchers at Tufts University have released a study — Don’t Call Them Dropouts — based on interviews in more than a dozen cities, including Minneapolis and Saint Paul, showing that there is no single cause driving most students to leave school. Read more →
Delta has now posted fare and schedule information for the new service out of Rochester and while there are some opportunities for some saving, it doesn’t seem to be as big a boon for the budget shopper. Read more →
At one point during the winter, we wondered whether all of the ice would ever leave Lake Superior. About 10 percent of the lake is still covered with ice, but the Coast Guard has ended its ice-breaking operations for the year. According to sources, summer is coming. Lake Superior Magazine has put together a time-lapse Read more →
Other nations are noticing that the people of the United States and science aren’t on good terms.
In a scathing article in Maclean’s, writer Jonathan Gatehouse asks if the most powerful nation on Earth has lost its mind? Read more →
Art can provide an escape from the daily stress but it’s got its own kvetching and politics to mire itself in.
Art-A-Whirl, the tremendous northeast Minneapolis art festival, is at the heart of the discussion about whether art has to be oh so serious, and, sometimes, artsy. Its growing, becoming hugely popular and, like everything else, changes, to the consternation of some who want it to always be what it always was. Read more →
It was no surprise, really, when the hucksters and street vendors showed up around the site of World Trade Center buildings while the holes in the ground were still smoking in 2001. We don’t expect much in the way of decency when there’s a quick buck to be made. But the new 9/11 Museum that opened last week is also cashing in on the collapse, to the consternation of family members of those killed. Read more →
For a country that thumps its chest and talks tough every time its feelings get hurt, there’s been precious little reaction to the reality that the manned spaceflight program in the United States is in serious decline, and the country is becoming a second-rate space power. Read more →
Today’s regulatory filing by Target provides a good opportunity for the business world to see the same thing differently. Read more →
In Minnesota it’s a crime to refuse to submit to chemical testing when a police officer thinks you’re driving under the influence. Read more →
Leif Enger, of Aitkin County, makes a great case for spring in all of its frustrating slowness.
It was the perfect plan. How could it possibly have not worked? Danielle Shea of Quincy, Mass., was supposed to graduate from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut over the weekend. The whole family was going to be there to watch. They would, no doubt, be so proud. Her mother had given her thousands of dollars for Read more →
With less than a month before the official opening of the Green Line, street.mn’s David Levinson takes a look today at one particular stretch of the route: Washington Ave SE. Many of the problems he highlights, he notes, will be solved in time. The signals will be timed better and maybe pedestrians will start paying Read more →
Commercial radio and TV will probably die off when the :15 and :30 second advertisement does. One gets the sense that the day is approaching, considering advertising’s growing fascination with docu-ads, entertaining films that, at the end, sell you something.
The latest comes from Cornetto, a U.K. ice cream company, which has taken 8 minutes to tell you that more than just the world of advertising is changing in a hurry. Read more →