Minneapolis / St. Paul News Blog

With the Dow average falling on the last day of trading today, the New York Stock Exchange is almost certain to post its first losing year since 2002. As of 12:14 p.m. CST, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 10,728.55, a drop of 56.27 for the day. It needs to nudge above 10,783.01 to close out 2005 in the black.

The silver lining? President Bush's proposal to allow citizens to invest a portion of their social security in the stock market remains politically dead in the water.

A few weeks ago, Ken Bradley was poking around one of the more obscure corners of the Department of Energy website when he came across an eye-popping table. Minnesota, Bradley discovered after scrolling through the chart, is the United State's single biggest importer of electricity.

For Bradley, who works for the non-profit advocacy group Minnesotans for an Energy Efficient Economy, that fact wasn't so shocking; but the margin was. According to the DOE numbers, Minnesota's net imports of electricity--28.2 trillion BTUs in 2001--account for more than a third of the entire nation's imports.

CITY PAGES BLOGS

Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay star in Kickback Mountain, now playing at American Idle.

THESE DAYS

Reno Tobler, a truck driver whose route regularly brings him to the Des Moines area, was charged with littering and harassment for throwing laundry detergent-size bottles of his urine into residents's backyards.

A former officer in the Peruvian army whose hands were injured after handling an explosive has two new "thumbs" after doctors transplanted one of his toes to one hand and turned the index finger into a thumb on the other one.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Cyclist Sascha from Minneapolis spends her holidays making home improvements instead of filling her face with chocolate and white zinfandel. Check out her new and improved living room at First and Last and Always.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

The Smoking Gun looks back at their favorite mug shots of the not-so-famous in 2005.

Aaron Eckhart is a smooth-talking Big Tobacco spokesman in the comedy Thank You For Smoking, also starring William H. Macy, Maria Bello, Rob Lowe, Katie Holmes, and Robert Duvall.

Rex Sorgatz has posted his predictions for 2006 at Fimoculous.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"I think people have different points of view and they can be discussed in school. They don't need to be in the curriculum."

-- Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL), on Darwin's theory of evolution not needing to be part of the Florida's public school science standards

You know it's getting close to election time for Governor Tim Pawlenty when he starts bashing immigrants. Eighteen months ago, when Pawlenty's political priority was burnishing his national credentials for a potential run for the White House, he was full of smiles and praise for Minnesota's immigrant population as he hosted a visit by Mexican President Vicente Fox. But now that he will have to stand for reelection in little more than ten months, the Governor has once again pulled out the Prejudice Card for that time-honored political game of divide and conquer.

CITY PAGES BLOGS

Britt Robson breaks down last night's Timberwolves game at Balls!

The poster for the Bubble Boy sequel, starring a certain sequestered president, is on display at American Idle.

Peter S. Scholtes delivers his Top 10 Albums and Top 10 Singles of 2005 at Complicated Fun.

THESE DAYS

Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

Calum McNeil and his colleagues at the University of Newcastle have created a gyroscopic disc less than 0.1 millimeters across that can be used to "weigh" proteins, which allows it to identify particular proteins produced by cancer cells.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

A new story every day can be found at the prolific Chuck Olsen's videoblog Minnesota Stories.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole posts his Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2005

The Columbia Journalism Review's blog, CJR Daily, compiles the Five Great Stories You Didn't Read in 2005

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"Any girl who is interested must simply be born female and between the ages of 18 and 45. They must have an IQ above 130 and they must be honest. They must not have any clinical, psychological disorders... and a kind heart. Clearly beautiful - but beauty on the inside is more important - but no deformities, third legs, fifth nipples..."

-- John Lennon's 30-year-old son, Sean, looking for love in the New York Post

In the months since revolting shareholders at Knight Ridder announced they wanted the newspaper chain sold off, there has been a plethora of speculation about what this will mean for the KR-owned St. Paul Pioneer Press.

None of the commonly mentioned scenarios have been especially heartening. That is, with one exception: news of a Newspaper Guild proposal to buy nine K-R properties (among them, the Pi Press, the Duluth News Tribune, and the Grand Forks Herald) and turn them into employee-owned operations.

It looked like a long shot from the start. Now it looks downright impossible. According to a report in today's San Francisco Chronicle, K-R execs are refusing to even consider offers to sell the chain's assets piece-meal. Why? Evidently, that manner of sale would trigger a major capital gains penalty.

THESE DAYS

President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the war in Iraq.

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Peter Pace said that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase next year, not decrease, if the insurgency continues.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Mick is a musician and writer from St. Paul. He's just finished eight years of school and is currently blogging from beautiful Hawaii at Sweet Immolation.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

The Wizard of Oil starring President Bush in pigtails

2005 Year in Review from Blogpulse

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"As much as I would like to share some delicious Minnesota treats with Senator Allen to ring in the New Year, I look forward to snacking on some tasty peanuts from the Old Dominion at the conclusion of a great college bowl season."

-- Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), ruminating on a Music City Bowl bet with Sen. George Allen (R-VA) that would have Coleman eating Allen's Virginia peanuts if the Gophers prove victorious

CITY PAGES BLOGS

Britt Robson breaks down last night's Timberwolves game at Balls!

Steve Monaco announces last week's Monday Movie Quiz winners at Couch Pundit.

THESE DAYS

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a database with close to 500 names, all of them Hurricane Katrina victims whose whereabouts are still unknown.

A Jesuit magazine has apologized after inadvertently publishing an advertisement for a Virgin Mary statue wrapped in a condom that an artist intended as a protest against the church's opposition to condom use.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Relive Christmas dinner with photo-blogger Aaron Landry at s4xton.com.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

Icky Dick Cheney/Donald Rumsfeld slash fanfiction [via Boing Boing]

It's a GameTap commercial, but this Pac Man puppet show is pretty good.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"If we look at the vaccine, HIV vaccine, we're going to have an HIV vaccine. It's not going to be made by a company. They're dropping out like flies because there's no real incentive for them to do it. We have to do it."

-- Dr. Edmund Tramont, head of the AIDS research division of the
National Institutes of Health, declaring the U.S. government will eventually have to create an HIV vaccine

CITY PAGES BLOGS

Steve Monaco has your Monday Movie Quiz at Couch Pundit.

THESE DAYS

The first evidence that some of the basic organic building blocks of life can exist in an Earth-like orbit around a young Sun-like star has been provided by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Internet guru Jakob Nielsen discusses the future of the now one-billion strong internet.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Minneapolitan John Andreini is a senior copywriter who's posted his predictions for 2006 at That's Going Too Far!

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

St. Petersburg Times A&E writer Rick Gershman's Top 10 Worst Films of the Year

Activate the ultimate polypsychotronic transdimensional superhero identity calculator to find the super hero inside you. BTW, I'm really Demon Wolf and I have invisible hands.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"The girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity, and see the torture as a 'cool' activity."

-- University of Bath researcher Agnes Nairn, who interviewed children as part of a branding study and found them to be fans of the vice president

A few weeks ago, Hank Kaszynski celebrated a friend's birthday at the Liffey in St. Paul. An Irish band was playing, the whiskey and Guinness was flowing, and the 80-year-old father of eight ended the night by dancing enthusiastically with all comers.

For much of the night, Hank and his wife Mary Helen sat back and played the role of wallflower party guests. They talked about their passion for walking and biking, and about the spirit of their oldest son, Bruce, who was born with cerebral palsy and who has lived with the couple all their lives. There was also some worried talk of their 39-year-old son Kyle, a St. Paul policeman who had recently taken leave from his job to work for a private contractor in Iraq.

Kyle Kaszinski was killed Thursday when a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle as it traveled from Baghdad to Baquaba. Last night, the devastated family's home in south Minneapolis was surrounded by candles, lit by well-wishers and fellow mourners, many of whom received this email, forwarded by Hank at the beginning of the week: