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Brown on the Air: TIME and TIME AGAIN
My weekly essay for the KAXE Saturday morning program “Between You and Me” focuses on the show’s topic of “Time.” Specifically, host Heidi Holtan and the listeners will be talking about ways to better use time in the new year. My piece is entitled “The Seven Habits of Highly Stressed Parents” which pretty much speaks…
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Happy 2009!
The new year was rung in with all my old traditions: Watching the Gophers lose an obscure bowl game to an obscure team, Dick Clark counting down when he should be resting, and trying to stay awake long enough to acknowledge an arbitrary passage of time. Happy 2009, folks! Related posts: No related posts.
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The Iron Range blog experiment: a year in review
Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone. Here are the most viewed posts from this blog in 2008, according to Google. 1. Go to Hell, KSTPAfter Twin Cities ABC affiliate KSTP did a misleading hit piece on Ironworld under the guise of “investigative journalism,” I gave them the business. The day the story ran I was getting…
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In all things, moderation
Thomas Friedman isn’t as bad as my fellow progressives think he is. From his latest column in the New York Times: … we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among…
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And in the end …
I honestly thought I would write a comprehensive post about the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota before the end of the year, but it appears that I won’t have that chance. There’s a lot of information we just don’t know yet. There will be lots of armchair analysis from both sides on this race, but…
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Stats in the middle with you
Nate Silver provides a fascinating look at the importance of the middle class in our economy today. It has the appearance of being boring but it simplifies some large concepts very well, explaining how incomes are related to stability in the housing sector and how both are related to the policy that emerges from Washington.…
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Another one bites the dust
Here’s a New York Times story about an NPR reporter who was laid off while reporting on the unflappable American spirit that sustains people recently laid off from their jobs. Seriously. She was doing a series and before she got to do the last story, she got canned. So she did the last story about…
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In the Info Age, facts are the new oil
By way of the Politics in Minnesota morning report, I found this story from the St. Paul Legal Ledger about the massive workload of Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor. From the state’s health care system to the JOBZ economic development program, the OLA staff has exhaustively investigated many important aspects of state government, saving…
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Biomass: a "copy cat" with nine lives
The Mesabi Daily News is reporting on a program to encourage biomass fuel use in the heating of Iron Range schools, dubbing it a “copy cat” program from one that is 25 years old. Iron Range Resource Board officials are quoted recollecting that the idea for using biomass in schools goes back to the Rudy…
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Steel bottom?
Check out how steel industry stocks leveled off last week after a huge price drops over the year. They’re not exactly up, but the free fall is more like a gentle roll. Nate Silver contends this has to do with high hopes for the Obama stimulus/infrastructure plan. Spending on bridges, roads and technology across the…
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Iron Range year-enders start pouring in
It’s that special time of year when media vacation schedules collide with a news vacuum to produce year-in-review specials! From my spot here in the North, here are a few good roundups I saw over the weekend: The Duluth News Tribune offered its top 10 stories of 2008 on Sunday which include a couple of…
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Klobuchar to head broadband roundtable on Monday
Below is a press release of note to fans of rural broadband expansion. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is convening a broadband roundtable this morning. It’s good to see a northern name on the list in Bill Coleman from the Blandin Foundation of Grand Rapids. The Blandin Foundation is working to expand internet infrastructure and use…
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After a wild year, 2009 could get wilder
UPDATE: The Christmas production schedule apparently led to my column not running in its usual Sunday spot again. Generally, I am the last to know in these situations. I expect the column will run during the week before the New Year. At least that’s usually how this goes. This is my weekly column for the…
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Brown on the Air: ICE!
My weekly essay for Saturday morning’s episode of “Between You and Me” on 91.7 KAXE will cover the show’s topic of “ice.” Ice is a big deal in Northern Minnesota. Ice on roads. Ice on lakes. Ice in drinks. Ice really covers the gamut. My essay explores the world of ice and will again serve…
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A brief Iron Range Christmas story from MinnesotaBrown
One Iron Range Christmas Eve just after LTV Steel’s taconite mine and plant shut down in 2002, my dad’s family gathered in full force — as we always do — at grandma and grandpa’s house just outside Eveleth. The house pulsed with children, raw heat and wine vapors as what represents normal in our world.…