Driving back from the Lake Of The Isles dog park just now, I saw a guy in a minivan give a couple bucks to a guy standing on the corner holding a cardboard sign. It struck me that it was one of the few times I've seen that happen since this or even this. It made me curious: When you see someone asking for money, do you give or not? Why or why not? Do you have rules? Does it depend on your mood? Your cash-in-pocket? How do you feel if you do or don't? Please do tell anything helps God bless.

Popular progressive bloggers Jerome Armstrong (MyDD) and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, left, (DailyKos) will be bending elbows and signing books at a special Tuesday edition of Drinking Liberally on May 2. The co-authors of a new book, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, will join the usual unsavories at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. The confluence of local and national lefty bloggers is also rumored to be attracting the presence of Bitch Ph.D. and Pharyngula blogger PZ Myers.

 

UPDATE: Rew from Drinking Liberally has commented below that just Kos will be attending the festivities, and not Armstrong.

 

After all the amendments to the Twins stadium bill had been considered, members of the Minnesota House engaged in about an hour of debate, culminating a marathon, seven-hour session on the issue. What follows is the majority of that final testimony, with just a few gaps due to a tape running out and requiring replacement.

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THESE DAYS

A Georgia gubernatorial candidate, Secretary of State Cathy Cox, accepted the resignation of her campaign manager after he was accused of changing the Wikipedia biography of an opponent in an upcoming Democratic primary.

A recent survey discovered that British women find domestic chores "mentally therapeutic," and many prefer house cleaning to making love.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Find out for yourself what made a Pentagon employee spend over an hour combing through the archives at Saucy Dame Delux.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

From McSweeney's: Old Jokes, Updated to Make Them Even Older

Minnesota writer David Erickson has 2006 NFL draft prospects video highlights to get you prepped for this Saturday.

The theme to Hawaii 5-O played with hands

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"There were many people who said Apple would go bankrupt if they went ahead with the logo."

-- graphic designer Rob Janoff, credited with designing the now-famous multi-colored Apple Computer logo

"Minnesota is such a fabulous state to live and work, it's a stretch to think people would choose not to live in Minnesota because our laws continue to reflect that marriage is between a man and a woman."

-- State Sen. Michele Bachmann, dismissing the theory that a gay marriage ban in Minnesota would make it more difficult for businesses to recruit employees

Folks, I want to step in here again and say that I appreciate all the comments you've submitted to the thread from yesterday's post, the slams as well as the defenses of the item. But actually I have to disagree with one of our defenders, the commenter named Rob--I don't think people are, for the most part, stupid. I think that, in many respects, their instincts are ahead of those of most journalists most of the time. I would say instead that one of the biggest problems with the news media is that they usually presume their readers to be stupid.

Having read a lot of comments and emails in the last 12 hours from readers who've seen the lives of loved ones wrecked or ended by meth, I think the readers were ahead of us on this one. We believed that there was a legitimate point to be made about the dangers of overhyping meth or any other drug of the hour, as I said yesterday. That was why I approved the item. But if you're going to make that point regarding meth, it deserves some careful qualification--clearly, meth is not just any drug in the way it takes hold of many users--and in retrospect, casting it as a gag item in the Best of the Twin Cities issue was not the way to raise the point. For the record, we think it would be a bad idea to go out and try crystal meth, in much the same way it would be a bad idea to go out and try a round of Russian roulette.

What I wrote in my initial note yesterday was prompted in part by the fact that of the first 10 or 11 responses we got at our office, no fewer than five were from TV reporters or radio producers looking to generate an easy one-day media story. I don't have a lot of respect for follow-the-leader feeding frenzies, in journalism or anywhere else.

But since I wrote that, as you can see from the Blotter comment thread below and the one attached to the item itself, we have heard from a number of people whose firsthand experience is palpable, horrendous, and undeniable. If you've read this paper to any extent at all, you know that there are plenty of people whose feet we relish putting to the fire. Drug casualties and their loved ones aren't among them. What makes me feel worse, frankly, is that we have always worked hard in our news and features section to avoid the class biases and blind spots that shape way too much of the news coverage available today. What I mean is that we try regularly to tell stories that cast a light on people most media don't bother with, since those people don't belong to the most desirable ad/demographic niches.

And we blew it on that score here, in my view. Would we have published a satiric item about meth if it were tearing through the city neighborhoods where we live in the way it's tearing through many small towns and suburbs? No, I can't imagine we would; I can't imagine it would even occur to us to do so. We're sorry for the blind spot we put on display, and for the pain it clearly caused for many readers.

Last summer, the St. Paul City Council voted to forgive a $750,000 loan to the Minnesota Business Academy, an experimental charter school that enjoyed the backing of many prominent politicians and business people. At the time, there was considerable skepticism voiced over the bail out. The school--which aimed to immerse its "associates" in the business culture--had struggled financially from its inception six years ago, largely because of the more than $9 million it expended on start up costs.

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In what is being described by organizers as "the largest youth antiwar demonstration in Minnesota since the Vietnam era," thousands of students are planning to walk out of classes tomorrow in protest of the war in Iraq and military recruitment in schools. But at least two area schools (Central and Jefferson) are threatening students with suspension. The students will hold a press conference this afternoon at 3:30 at Minneapolis Technical and Community College (1501 Hennepin Ave., Mpls.), the site of a proposed peace concert for tomorrow that also got unplugged. Here are the students' statements:

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THESE DAYS

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore's son and three Democratic campaign workers were sentenced Wednesday to four to six months in jail for slashing tires outside a Milwaukee Bush-Cheney campaign office on Election Day 2004.

Telecom giant LM Ericsson AB is offering buyouts to up to 1,000 of its employees in Sweden, a voluntary package that is only being offered to employees between the ages of 35 and 50.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Outreach worker Kelly photographs and writes about the Twin Cities homeless population at No Permanent Address.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

Average Homeboy: White Rapper

Web Comics in Tattoo Form

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"I kind of have to get back to my life, go back to making some money."

-- "Lost" actress Michelle Rodriguez outside a courtroom after pleading guilty to driving under the influence. Rodriguez has opted to pay a $500 fine and spend five days in jail versus 240 hours of community service.

In response to a series of inquiries and complaints--a vastly disproportionate share of them from reporters in other media--City Pages editor Steve Perry made the following statement about this week's Best of the Twin Cities blurb for Best Cheap Thrill, which named crystal meth the winner:

"Though it may come as a shock to talk radio tubthumpers and even a few of our readers, every Best of the Twin Cities issue we've ever done has contained items that were mainly satiric in intent. This is one. If you actually read the item, you can see that it calls methamphetamine a nasty drug we'd be better off without. In May 2003, City Pages published the first extensive local print feature [1] [2] on the toll meth has taken in rural Minnesota.

"The point of the item is not to advocate that people consider trying crystal meth when they're planning a cheap evening's worth of fun, and we think only a seriously dense person could conclude that it was. (That probably explains why the topic was such a hit on Twin Cities drive-time talk radio this morning.) The point of the item was that it's possible to make entirely too much of the drug hype of the hour--unless you're in radio or television, of course."

UPDATE: Best Cheap Thrill: a postscript and, yes, an apology

CITY PAGES BLOGS AND NEWS

The Best of the Twin Cities 2006 issue is live!

THESE DAYS

Del Mar College in Texas has blocked MySpace.com in response to complaints about sluggish Internet speed on campus computers.

A recent study by economists of the Bank of England and the universities of Heidelberg and Bonn showed psychologists displaying greater success at picking stocks than physicists, mathematicians, and economists. [via Undernews]

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Raven had the flu and has an IMDB listing. Maybe you can figure out who Raven really is by reading her blog, Narcoleptic Squirrel.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

1984 Newsweek advertising insert from Apple (go to page 10 to see a certain Microsoft founder giving his endorsement)

Fluffer Nutter: the six-toed kitten

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"Democrats are trying to stir up crap."

-- Republican consultant Joe Gaylord, commenting on the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal that continues to reverberate after more than three years