Five at 8: May 8, 2009

Cycling down… newswise.

  • One of the last remaining munchkins has died. MPR’s Tom Weber profiled Mickey Carroll back in 2007, back when he worked somewhere else. And you were there, and you were there, and you, too. It seemed so real.

    Which was the tougher union: the Lollipop Guild or the Newspaper Guild?

    Not related but interesting anyway. Obit writers caught getting their information from Wikipedia.

  • Freedom. Or maybe not.
  • “Go to warp speed, Mr. Sulu!” Sputter…. sputter. “Sorry, captain, we’re out of plutonium that fuels deep space exploration. Nobody paid attention back when a blogger linked to a story back in 2009.

    Did you know the U.S. depends on Russia for plutonium? This just in: Obama pursues better Russia ties.

  • What happens to the American Dream in the middle of the darkest recession in generations? Nothing, a new poll shows, but people define it differently now. “Now, fewer people are pegging their dream to material success and more are pegging it to abstract values,” it says. What’s so bad about that? Have you defined your dream differently?

    Unrelated but worthy of discussion: Have you considered disconnecting?

  • Let’s see. Fishing? Check. Mothers? Check. Star Trek? Check. What else is there to do this weekend? How about Art-a-Whirl, opening this afternoon at 6 in northeast Minneapolis. And after you finish, you don’t stagger away and throw up in the bushes. But as long as we’re on the subject….

    The Tilt-A-Whirl was invented in Minnesota. Why don’t we have Tilt-A-Whirl Days? The company, by the way, is still kicking in Faribault.