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Jucy Lucy, hearty eating.

Bad news for anyone who crowed about the Twin Cities' spring ranking as the American College of Sports Medicine's fittest city in America.

Minnesota has ballooned in the last 16 years, going from a 14.6% obese population in 1995 to 25.3% today, according to a report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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We'll do anything for exercise. We'll even run in Snowmageddon.

The Twin Cities may not be home to the most exercise junkies in the country. That title goes to Seattle. Nor do we habour the greatest number of layabouts. Lexington takes the cake there.

But according to Men's Health magazine, Minneapolis and St. Paul rank No. 10 among America's fittest cities.

We probably could have placed even higher, but our polite Minnesota Nice ways prevented us from upstaging everyone and drawing too much attention to ourselves. Also, we eat too many cheese curds and spend half the year cloaked in sub-zero darkness.

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Newsweek says Edina High School is the best in the state. Last year, the honor went to Minneapolis Southwest.

​Nine Minnesota high schools have been named to Newsweek's list of the best high schools in the country this year, but none of them are in Minneapolis or St. Paul.

We bring that up only because last year, Newsweek named Southwest High in Minneapolis the best school in the state. But evidently the criteria changed to the benefit of the schools in the 'burbs and elsewhere, "in hopes of highlighting solutions."

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Minneapolis is so much cleaner than most places. St. Paul is too.

What's Salt Lake City got that we don't in the Twin Cities? Less trash, evidently.

Travel and Leisure magazine's readers named us the second cleanest city in the country, right behind the city that gave us Donny and Marie. And let's face it, you can't get much cleaner than an Osmond. (Prince? Don't even go there.)

So thanks, T&L readers. That's some tough competition.

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peta.org

Jason, with animal companion.

We have a question for Waconia resident David Velick, who's just been named PETA's 2011 Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door: Are those your wife's arms wrapped so lovingly around your neck in the PETA promo photo?

Because if they're not, you may be headed for your animal companion's house. Which would be too bad, seeing as how you've just won a seven-night vacation in Maui for yourself and a friend.

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Lake of the Isles runners plow through Snowmageddon.

The day the blizzard deflated the Metrodome, there were runners slogging their way around Lake of the Isles. The day the tornado ripped through north Minneapolis, there were cyclists zipping along the Greenway.

Is it any wonder we took the No. 1 spot in the American College of Sports Medicine's 2011 list of America's fittest cities? We may be the land of tater tots and the Jucy Lucy, but nothing stops us from working up a sweat, it seems.

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billypalooza

Most Minnesotans haven't read this best seller, it would seem.

The next time some driver cuts you off in traffic or blazes through a stop sign, and you holler, scream and pound your steering wheel, console yourself with this thought: Things could be a whole lot worse.

As bad as the drivers around us seem to be, they're smarter than those in 46 other states and the District of Columbia, at least according to the GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test, which ranks Minnesota drivers 4th in the nation for driving knowledge.

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garlandcannon

Your mail carrier doesn't want to see this.

All winter long, Minneapolis mail carriers slog through snow drifts. In the summer they're bombarded by the State Bird (not that one, this one). And all year long they have to worry about mean-ass dogs tearing a chunk of meat out of their hide.

It could be worse, the U.S. Postal Services says. They could be working in Houston.

Never the less, Minneapolis was the seventh worst city in the country last year for dog attacks on mail carriers, with 35 reports. Houston topped with list with 62.

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Photo: aturkus

One of the fabled 10,000.

​Fresh off being named one of Men's Journal's coolest cities in America, and one of National Geographic's 10 Best Summer Trips, CNN has gone and called the Twin Cities "hot for summer."

Indeed we are. Especially when we suffer the indignity of watching snow fall on May Day.

And we appreciate the positive notices, even if we're too polite to jump for joy and send out press releases.

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McKeague gets the duck call.

Daniel McKeague can really rock a duck.

The 36-year-old sales manager with KQRS beat out 12,500 other entrants in a nationwide competition to be the next voice of that really irritating duck that in the Aflac Insurance commercials, a role originated by comedian Gilbert Gottfried.

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