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.
Apparently the new threat to air safety is 15-year-old girls whose shirts are not tightly buttoned. Over the weekend, Boing Boing editor Mark Frauenfelder relayed the story about what happened when the girl passed through the TSA security post in Los Angeles: She said the officer was “glaring” at her and mumbling. She said, “Excuse Read more →
When I first started following the story of Daniel Alvarez, the Florida man who kayaked from Minnesota’s Northwest Angle to Key West and who is now paddling back by way of the Atlantic Ocean and Hudson River, I was deeply impressed by the kindness of Canada, Minnesota, and Wisconsin individuals who looked after him, if Read more →
How we teach the teachers. The dog tags go home to a Minnesota native. Remembering Roy Grow. Why are men so fragile? And should we require deposits on cigarette butts? Read more →
Snowden’s “honor” from Dick Cheny, Texas and South Dakota woo the gun manufacturers, the Stillwater Lift Bridge is all out of lift, the new astronaut from White Bear Lake. Here’s the “it always goes smoothly” news conversation with Mary Lucia on The Current. By the way, after we chatted about commencement speeches, Mary acknowledged she Read more →
We have a new entry in our ongoing list of people biking across country, running across country, kayaking across the country and — if you noted on 5×8 today — golfing across country. Nathan Mehlhoff left his parents house in Lakeville this afternoon and started walking to San Francisco. Why? To see what’s between here Read more →
I was worried that we’d get through the entire graduation season without a halfway-decent commencement speech that could hold our attention for longer than 15 seconds. But then Lewis Black gave his first-ever commencement speech to the grads of University of California– San Diego’s Thurgood Marhsall College. “I want you to know that you are Read more →
We’re going to be needing a clever nickname for the person who’s running around the Twin Cities stealing people’s garden planters and plants. Lift Bridge Brewing Co. in Stillwater is the latest victim, but it captured the brazen act on camera. The shock is not only that she seems to be the grandmotherly type — Read more →
You can go an entire lifetime without saving someone’s life. A young man named Delbert Willert of Lake Benton didn’t go more than a few years. An employee of the Hendricks Farmers Elevator fell into a grain bin this morning, according to Steve Hemmingsen, who writes the newsletter in town. Typically, if you fall into Read more →
The tension and reaction surrounding a Rock the Garden set, perhaps, was inevitable as more rock festivals feature partnerships with previously-unlikely bedfellows. Rock music and an art museum? In the end, at least with one set, the locale won out. Art is supposed to satisfy, infuriate, cause a commotion and get people involved in spirited debate. Read more →
Clearing off the desk of items that’ve been sitting here a week or so. There goes the Federal Reserve again, destroying perceptions. In its assessment of state economies released a couple of weeks ago for April 2013, only five states have contracting economies under a survey’s method. And two of them border the fair state Read more →
The piecemeal program, one giant leap many times for a man raising money for Parkinson’s research, what’s in your bug-out kit, and then they came for my garbage, and the picture that made a father cry. Read more →
Last month I mentioned the work of Joe “The Barber” Cymerys, who sets up shop in a Connecticut park every Wednesday to give free haircuts to homeless people. This week, however, Connecticut health officials and the cops shut him down. He didn’t have the proper permits, they said. “Twenty-five years I’ve been giving haircuts, and Read more →
There are war criminals and there are war criminals. Today’s Associated Press report that a Nazi responsible for wiping out a village is living in Minneapolis has gotten well-deserved attention and it’s instigated a debate on the proper U.S. response to the revelation. We understandably are repulsed at the very notion that someone could slaughter Read more →
The Census Bureau made news this week, you may recall, when it announced that for the first time, white babies are in the minority in the country, and that by 2043, the white majority will be no more. But there was more to the release than just a racial demographic and when an official did Read more →
What is the point at which owning a car isn’t worth the cost of owning a car? See these two parking spots? They sold this week for $560,000. The IRS had seized the spots from a man who owed back taxes in Boston. The bidding started at $42,000 but escalated between neighbors quickly, the Boston Read more →
Bob Collins