Joe Soucheray: Maybe Minnesota Public Radio will stop the bluster about LRT and just leave - TwinCities.com

MPR is getting windmilled, a term brought about by the Kennedy family, as in JFK. "Windmilled" is a more up-to-date term for what used to be called NIMBY, or "not in my back yard." When the Kennedy clan learned of plans by a private company to install windmills in the ocean off Cape Cod, they went bananas with concern that they, the Kennedy clan, might see the yonder blades of the windmills when they were down at the beach having a clambake. And considering that a few of the younger Kennedys, particularly Bobby Kennedy Jr., have been strong advocates of wind power, I guess we learned that they are strong advocates only if somebody else has to actually see or hear the windmills.

The argument could easily be made that public transportation and all it connotes has had no better friend in the media than MPR. Why, the prospect of us politely shuffling aboard a train while carrying our cloth MPR bag to hold the vegetables we purchase at various small local markets has been right up their editorial alley.

Except now, when they might actually have to be the train's neighbor. That's when they fire off letters and unleash the lawyers and plead for a public understanding that their studios, more than any other studios, apparently, are too delicate and fine-tuned to withstand the bells and whistles and rumbling of the great rolling collective.

With little space but lots of snow, malls and airports are turning to snowmelters. - TwinCities.com

Airports, including Manchester in New Hampshire, Logan in Boston, and JFK and La Guardia in New York, use them. Moscow just bought a couple of dozen and New York City has 60 of them. More than 470 have been sold worldwide in the past three decades.

But they're not cheap. New models can cost $350,000.