Let's be careful out there!
Posted at 4:19 PM on May 25, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads
A lot of us will be getting into cars at the end of the day and driving, someplace, in Minnesota for the long weekend. So where are the places with the most injuries or deaths tied to traffic?
We have answers thanks to the data wonks at the fine website Minnesota Compass.
Here's a Minnesota map:
Nobles County in southwest Minnesota came in at the top, with 982 injuries and fatalities per 100,000 residents. Red Lake and Lake of the Woods counties were the best on that scale.
If you're only counting deaths, northwest Minnesota is perhaps your biggest worry:
Overall, though, the general trend of traffic injuries and deaths in Minnesota is pretty good.
Let's be careful out there!
What 'civic leadership really is'
Posted at 12:28 PM on May 25, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(0 Comments)
Filed under: People doing good, Politics
Forty-five years ago today, Gov. Harold LeVander signed legislation creating the Metropolitan Council to "do a job which has proved too big for any single community."
James Hetland was the first chairman of the council, charged with bridging the long-time divides between Minneapolis and St. Paul. He died Wednesday at 86 years old.
The Star Tribune and Pioneer Press both wrote nice obits for today's papers. I appreciate those kinds of obits because they remind me that there are lots of people, largely anonymous to most of us, who built this region in ways that weren't flashy but necessary.
A Met Council staffer today noted that back in the 1960s, the region had some sever infrastructure problems. Home septic systems were failing in many suburbs, delivering poorly treated wastewater into lakes and rivers and the metro bus system was "disintegrating" as buses aged, fares rose and ridership dropped.
Nearly 50 years later, the region is better because he and others did the work that got things done.
Some lines from the Star Tribune obit sum it up pretty well.
At the time, Minneapolis and St. Paul were intense rivals, but Hetland immediately sought to unify the council, said Ted Kolderie, a former head of the Citizens League, which had pushed for the formation of the council."It was a nice touch that at the initial meeting of the new Metropolitan Council, when it came time to vote on where its offices would be, the vote was 7-7, the east metro voting for St. Paul and the west metro voting for Minneapolis, Kolderie said. "Jim, a Minneapolis resident, broke the tie by voting in favor of St. Paul.""That maybe says as much about him as anything," Kolderie said.
"We don't have many of Jim's kind around any more," Kolderie said. "The kind of person who had a successful and productive career and took time for an incredible amount of civic work. This is what 'civic leadership' really is."
Gov. Harold LeVander and the first members of the Metropolitan Council, August 1967. James Hetland is seated at far left.
Source: Met Council
Math we can't do
Posted at 9:49 AM on May 25, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(6 Comments)
Filed under: Schools
There are lots of humbling aspects of being a parent of a teenager. Among them, is the uneasy realization that they are getting smarter than you.
Proof of that comes to me daily in the SAT Question of the Day.
With my son starting to look at schools and getting ready for the ACT, I've been reading the question of the day for the SAT and the ACT the past few months.
Bottom line: 32 years after high school, I'm still pretty good at understanding what I read -- and I still stink at math.
Here's a recent SAT question of the day where I didn't know where to start.
Read the following SAT test question and then click on a button to select your answer. If S is the set of positive integers that are multiples of 7, and if T is the set of positive integers that are multiples of 13, how many integers are in the intersection of S and T?I'm buoyed by the fact that only 40 percent of the 231,758 who tried this question got it right.(A) None
(B) One
(C) Seven
(D) Thirteen
(E) More than thirteen
For all the agonizing we do about public education, I'm pretty sure the expectations and demands schools place on our children when it comes to math are harder than what I dealt with as a teen.
Bonus: Answer is E.
Foreclosures: Better but still not great
Posted at 3:32 PM on May 24, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(3 Comments)
Filed under: Economy
Minnesota is starting to recover from the mortgage crisis -- foreclosures are down, as are the number of homes getting pre-foreclosure notices and the number of sheriffs sales, 2011 data released this afternoon by the Minnesota Home Ownership Center show.
That's good news, although it's still a fact that foreclosure numbers have not returned to "normal," 2005 levels and there are still deep pockets of problems -- especially in the metro's northern ex-urb counties.
The report also throws out a fascinating tidbit: The mortgage crisis is no longer about sub-prime madness.
"The vast majority of the homeowners served by foreclosure counseling have fixed-rate prime mortgages," the center's report notes. "This marks the continuation of a pattern that began three years ago, as the foreclosure crisis transitioned from a sub-prime mortgage problem to an unemployment problem."
It's worth reemphasizing that point. Most of the problems now are tied to your typical, conventional mortgage loans, not the any-terms-you-want craziness of a few years ago. It's essentially a jobs issue now.
If nothing else, the center's report shows counseling helps more than perhaps we realize. Some 10,000 families received free foreclosure prevention help and the centers said, "of the closed cases where outcomes are known, 60 percent of these households were able to avoid foreclosure."
Bonus charts
Number of Minnesota home foreclosures:
Rate of foreclosures by county in 2011
Source: Minnesota Home Ownership Center
-- Paul Tosto
Minnesota kid falls short in Geographic Bee, still a winner
Posted at 10:55 AM on May 24, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Schools
Gopi Ramanathan of Sartell made it to the finals of the National Geographic Bee, competing this morning with the top 10 finalists left from several million mostly middle-aged school kids who competed in local and regional bees across the country for the chance at a $25,000 college scholarship and a trip to the Galápagos Islands.
Gopi came up a little short. The Associated Press reports that 14-year-old Rahul Nagvekar of Missouri City, Texas, won this year's National Geographic Bee this morning.
As I noted earlier, if you've ever been to one of the state geographic bees, you know how hard the kids work and how well prepared they are. You might be able to guess your way to the finals of the national Spelling Bee, not the Geographic Bee.
Gopi is good and did Minnesota proud today.
A Wisconsin kid, Vansh Jain, came in second and will take home a $15,000 scholarship.
-- Paul Tosto
The best bee
Posted at 8:34 AM on May 24, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Schools
The National Geographic Bee is hands-down the best of the student academic competitions. The 2012 national finals start today -- and our guy is in it.
By our guy, I mean Gopi Ramanathan from Sartell.
I've covered lots of student academic competitions over the years but the state geographic bee was always my favorite. These are mostly middle school-aged kids and their knowledge of place is amazing. You might be able to guess your way to the finals of the national Spelling Bee, not the Geographic Bee.
If fact, I double dare you to try today's quiz.
The finals start this morning. The winner gets a $25,000 college scholarship and a trip to the Galápagos Islands, as well as permanent membership in the National Geographic Society.
As a society, we spend a lot of time rallying around sports teams. How about a collective cheer for a kid who, as the St. Cloud Times reports, "answered eight of nine questions correctly and then qualified for the finals by answering additional questions after 12 students were tied for the final six spots."
Bonus: Gopi and a few other students spoke to NPR about the competition
Double Bonus: Cottonwood's Nathan Cornelius won the 2005 Geographic Bee .
-- Paul Tosto
When the high school prank isn't so bad
Posted at 11:21 AM on May 23, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(11 Comments)
Filed under: Schools
I have lots of sympathy for high school principals this time of year. You know you're going to have to deal with some kind of senior prank. The only questions are how bad will it be and how do you react?
Often, it's easy. Break the law or damage property and there's no question teens need to be suspended and the cops called. What do you do, though, when the prank is a hassle and kind of disruptive to school but not necessarily bad?
At a high school outside of Boston, the principal applauded the creativity of students who filled the corridors with balloons. The local paper wrote:
Interim Principal Mary Villano told parents what happened.Photos included in an email Monday, May 21, showed what was waiting for school staffers when they arrived that Friday. "The entire stairwell from the cafeteria leading up to the main lobby near media center was filled with balloons," she wrote.Here's a photo the school supplied to media:"I later discovered there were 3,300 of them. It was quite a spectacle and started the day off with lots of laughs and excitement. Many of you probably saw pictures that your children took on their phones.
"Our administrative team fully enjoyed the prank as it was done in good taste and did not have any negative impact on the school.
The principal left the balloons there for an hour so other students could see them and then popped them to clear the corridors and the kids cleaned up.
Contrast that to an Indiana schools superintendent who not happy to see his high school plastered inside with 11,000 Post-its.
That prank led to the firing of a custodian (who thought the kids had permission to enter) and then the suspensions of 57 students who protested the firing.
The suspensions have been lifted but no word yet on the janitor's fate.
I'm typically a no-fun, law-and-order sort. But it's hard to argue against the Arlington principal's approach. A deeper question, though, is: Which group of adults sent the right message to kids about behavior that wasn't stellar but wasn't awful?
How to kill a wolf
Posted at 10:23 AM on May 23, 2012
by Eric Ringham
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Science, wildlife
By Paul Tosto
I don't hunt. But when I heard about plans by the DNR to hold Minnesota's first wolf hunt in decades, my first thought was: That's going to be one tough prey.
Wolves make their living being smart and fast. Killing them won't be easy.
"Hunting wolves in the northwest has certainly proven to be a challenge, and will no doubt be difficult in Minnesota as well," said Jonathan O'Neal, owner of www.huntwolves.com, an Idaho-based website with lots of detail on tracking and killing wolves.
In Idaho's first wolf season three years ago, the wolf quota was only 220 animals. "Even with that small quota, the season had to be extended several months because of the difficulty sportsmen had hunting wolves, and it ended without the harvest goals being met," he said.
Last season was better as the state allowed trapping and lengthened the season, "but many hunting zones still closed without the quota being filled."
Here are some of O'Neal's recommendations for a good hunt:
Scout heavily for tracks, wolf kills and den sites well in advance of the season to find wolves and try to pin down their home range and travel habits.
Use wolf howlers to locate and call wolves in.Use prey distress calls (rabbit calls, calf elk cries and fawn bleats) to call wolves in.
Take advantage of every fresh snowfall to make tracking easier.
Minnesota's wolf population is much larger than Idaho's, and the DNR here will allow some baiting. But the wolves learn quickly, O'Neal said.
"Wolves will definitely become even more difficult to find the longer they are hunted. They learn quickly and adapt their travel & hunting patterns to minimize human encounters."
-- Paul Tosto
Is your appetite killing the ocean?
Posted at 5:10 PM on May 22, 2012
by Michael Olson
(0 Comments)
Filed under: wildlife
Folks from flyover country are easy to spot on ocean beaches. They tend to linger longer. You may have seen similar behavior from your South Dakota cousin in the way he looks at the tall buildings in Minneapolis.
We've known for some time that these distant bodies of salty water aren't faring well, but the news keeps getting worse. A new report from the World Wildlife Fund details the extent of overfishing among other negative environmental indicators.
We have our own problems with the fish in Minnesota lakes, but overfishing isn't the leading culprit.
Getting the Busy Signal
Posted at 3:05 PM on May 22, 2012
by Michael Olson
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice
If Dancehall artist and deejay Busy Signal comes to Minnesota anytime soon, it likely won't be to share his riddims and impressive studder-step vocal styles. He is under arrest in Jamaica, and authorities in Minnesota are seeking his extradition.
Drug conspiracy charges were filed against Glendale Gordon, his legal name, in 2002. The extradition request follows his failure to appear in Minnesota to face those charges.
Court documents alleged he was involved in a conspiracy to distribute 5 or more kilograms of cocaine, which at 2002 prices would fetch more than $100,000. An amount like that would certainly surpass usage of, say, a backstage party.
Musically, in 2002, Busy Signal was shaping his craft. In 2006 he released "Step Out," which helped lift the Dancehall genre to popularity far beyond Jamaica. Here's a lesser known track from that album that showcases his vocal talent.
Unrelated, but interesting, a gram of cocaine in Colombia costs less than a Big Mac.
Scotty beams up at last
Posted at 10:55 AM on May 22, 2012
by Eric Ringham
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Aviation, Marketing and advertising, Science
SpaceX says it took humans into space after all. Their ashes, anyway.
With the Dragon capsule now safely in orbit, a SpaceX official confirmed that the ashes of a few hundred people went along on the Falcon 9 rocket. One whose remains were on board is Gordon Cooper, one of the original U.S. astronauts. Another is James Doohan, the beloved Scotty from "Star Trek."
Which is all the excuse I need for this:
-- Eric Ringham
No small step
Posted at 6:08 AM on May 22, 2012
by Eric Ringham
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Aviation, Science
There's something extremely cool about Elon Musk. I mean cool in the "Right Stuff" sense, cool the way the first astronaut, Alan Shepard, was cool: "I'm a hell of a lot cooler than you guys. Why don't you just fix your little problem and light this candle?"
Musk is the brainy entrepreneur behind SpaceX, the commercial firm that launched a resupply mission to the International Space Station in the wee hours this morning. The launch was the second attempt, coming after an effort last weekend that was aborted when sensors detected a temperature spike. Musk and his people took the setback in stride, and said, in effect: O.K., no big deal. We'll try again on Tuesday.
SpaceX is developing a reputation for quickly fixing problems that might have bogged down NASA for months. I'm not sure that's fair to NASA, which does, after all, improvise quickly and brilliantly from time to time. But it's fascinating to see a nimble private enterprise function in such a high-stakes environment, doing what only governments could once do - and not many of them, at that.
(Disclosure: An in-law of mine works for SpaceX. I have zero understanding of what he does, but I regard the work with enthusiasm, envy and a touch of awe. As he does, I'm sure, my work in public radio.)
The mission to ISS is intended as a demonstration. Each step of the way, the spacecraft will have to prove itself before it proceeds to the next level. If the Dragon vehicle actually docks with the space station, that will mean everything has gone superbly well - and SpaceX will be that much closer to flying a human crew into space, which it intends to do in the next few years.
Jon Stewart did an interview with Musk a few weeks ago.
-- Eric Ringham
Twins playoff odds? Still bad
Posted at 2:46 PM on May 21, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(4 Comments)
Filed under: Sports
Hope springs eternal. But it shouldn't -- at least when it comes to baseball.
Baseball loves statistics and the numbers show that, despite winning four of the last five games, the Twins have almost no chance of making the playoffs. The projections from two baseball data sites bear that out.
Coolstandings.com gives the Twins slightly more than a one percent chance of making the playoffs this season.
Baseball Prospectus is, shall we say, less sanguine, putting the odds at zero.
On Friday, Sports Illustrated declared the glory days gone for the "bumbling Minnesota Twins.
Fifty years after the 1962 Mets pushed the possibilities of ineptitude to a modern-era low by going 40-120 in their debut season, the Twins are on pace for a 51-win season. Only four other teams over the past half-century have been so disastrous over a full 162-game season: the 1963 Mets and 2004 Diamondbacks, both of which went 51-111, the 1965 Mets that went 50-112, and the 2003 Tigers, who finished 43-119, the worst record in American League history.Sadly, the piece reaches for the "Minnesota Nice" cliche and notes, "no one's throwing tantrums to protest the losses."
Maybe the team needs to take its cue from ex-Twins player David Ortiz.
Frustrated by the poor start of his Boston Red Sox, Ortiz pulled together a private team meeting, calling on the so-far lousy starting pitchers to step it up.
It's already paid off, with the Sox winning eight of 10 since the heart-to-heart.
Anyone on the Twins willing to call out their teammates? Maybe more daunting: Who on the team has had a good enough year so far to point the finger at others?
-- Paul Tosto
Disco wins
Posted at 11:32 AM on May 21, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(6 Comments)
Filed under: Music
I hated disco music as a teenager. Hated it. I played the Eagles and Steve Miller Band. When punk rose up in the late 1970s, I embraced it. Finally, some angry music!
I was convinced then that the punks would end disco for good. But the punk era came and flamed out. Now, 35 years after "Saturday Night Fever," it's disco that endures.
Robin Gibb's death this weekend confirmed it. Gibb was part of the Bee Gees, the group whose music cemented disco's place in American music and made the "Saturday Night Fever," soundtrack one of the best-selling albums of all time.
The tributes to Gibb and the Bee Gee's music continue to roll in from across the globe. None of the punks will ever get that. When Joe Strummer, founding member of The Clash and one of the icons of the punk movement, died in 2002, it barely made my local paper.
But with Gibb's death, I couldn't help but start looking for Bee Gees music online. It generated a little family discussion. Turns out my 16-year-old son knew some of the Bee Gees songs, but not The Clash.
It occurred to me that while I spent a lot of time singing Clash songs in the shower, I never sang them anywhere else.
You don't really share punk with other people. But start singing, "Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk...." and everybody wants to jump in, laugh and enjoy it all.
Not that I'll be buying an album, er, CD, uh download, any time soon. But three-plus decades later, it's OK to like it.
-- Paul Tosto
We're number 26?
Posted at 9:38 AM on May 21, 2012
by Paul Tosto
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Economy
I don't usually put a lot of stock in city rankings. But a new look at the Best Cities for Tech Jobs seems to have some good research behind it. And if you're a tech booster in the Twin Cities, you will not be pleased by the numbers.
NewGeography, a site that's good at telling stories using data and demographics, put together the tech jobs rankings using data crunched by the economics research group EMSI. It counted some 95 federally recognized science, technology, engineering, and mathematics occupations -- yes, the STEM jobs believed to be the keys to our economic future.
No shock that Seattle tops the list. But as you scroll down looking for the Twin Cities, you find Jacksonville, Fla., Cincinnati, Columbus and other smaller cities. Minneapolis-St. Paul is ranked 26 on the list.
The worrisome thing is that Minnesota officials have made STEM education and jobs a priority for years. So if we've made STEM education a priority in Minnesota, pouring resources into building a trained workforce capable of taking these jobs, will the jobs really come?
Here's NewGeography's Top 30:
If it's any consolation to the Wisconsin's-eating-our-economic-lunch crowd, the Milwaukee metro area comes in ranked 50 in the tech jobs list.
-- Paul Tosto
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Master Archive
About the Writer
Bob Collins has been with Minnesota Public Radio News since 1992. He is the former managing editor of online news, and former political and broadcast editor for MPR. Collins is the creator of two games — Select a Candidate and Minnesota Fantasy Legislature, as well as the MPR blog, Polinaut. He also chats about the news regularly with Mary Lucia on The Current at 4:20 and 5:20 p.m., Monday through Friday, and is an occasional contributor to MPR's All Things Considered.
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