from items published in the
Minnesota Star Tribune
and predecessors
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December 25, 2011

Measured against the sweep of history, we live in extraordinarily peaceful times, perhaps in the safest and most tranquil era that humanity has ever enjoyed. Going back 5,000 years to human prehistory, then moving through ancient Greece, the epics of the Hebrew Bible, the birth of Christ, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and into modern times, violence has unevenly but steadily declined, and not just by a little.

As Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker recounts in his convincing and exhaustive new book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” violent death in 14th-century Europe was 50 times more likely than it is today. Through nearly all of human history, life fit neatly into the Hobbesian summary: nasty, brutish and short. Tribal warfare, genocide, savagery, torture, slavery, blood feud, the rape of women and the mistreatment of children prevailed far beyond what we imagine today.

1. An Lushan Revolt (China, eighth century)
2. Mongol conquests (13th century)
3. Mideast slave trade (seventh-19th centuries)
4. Fall of Ming Dynasty (China, 17th century)
5. Fall of Rome (third to fifth centuries)
6. Timur Lenk conquests (Central Asia, 14th-15th centuries)
7. Annihilation of American Indians (14th-19th centuries)
8. Atlantic slave trade (15th-19th centuries)
9. World War II (20th century)
10. Taiping Rebellion (China, 19th century)

By Herón Márquez Estrada
Dec. 7, 2007

The clerk filled in the $18,900 proposed valuation, but then mistakenly hit the key to exit the program. The computer added four zeroes to fill out the nine numerical spaces required by the software, thus indicating the value was $189,000,000.

credited to “news services”
Nov. 1, 2008

In English, the road sign was just fine, warning drivers that the route ahead is not suitable for heavy trucks. But the translation in Welsh didn’t work so well. “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated,” it said. The Swansea Council said the error occurred when officials didn’t realize an e-mailed reply from a translator said he wasn’t available, and was not the wording to be used on the sign.

By Sarah Lemagie and Emily Johns
June 6, 2009

Minnesota needs to resolve its testing “wars,” Pekel said, so the state can move on to more important questions, such as how it can do a better job actually teaching students. As he put it, “Weighing the cow doesn’t fatten it.”

By Rick Nelson
June 27, 2013

Culinary brainstorming of the highest order has yielded deep-fried pumpkin pie, deep-fried meatloaf on a stick, deep-fried olives and, yes, cheddar cheese bits that are breaded in Cocoa Puffs and — you got it — fried.

[...]

Antacids are sold at Steichen’s Grocery & Deli in the Commissary Building.

By Liz Szabo
KFF Helth News
published in the Star Tribune November 19, 2023

Doctors can now save most gunshot victims, said Jessica Beard, a trauma surgeon at Temple University Hospital who was not involved in the study.

“We have more experience with bullet wounds than even many battlefield surgeons,“ said Beard, who is also director of research for the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting. “Surgeons from the military will get stationed in hospitals in Philadelphia to learn how to do combat surgery.”

By James Walsh
December 28, 2023

And he shared a joke from a friend. “How many St. Paulites does it take to change a light bulb?” he asked.

credited to “news services”
Apr. 7, 2024

Inmates in New York are suing the state corrections department over the decision to lock down prisons during next Monday’s total solar eclipse. The suit in federal court in upstate New York argues that the April 8 lockdown violates inmates’ constitutional rights to practice their faiths by preventing them from taking part in a religiously significant event.

Editorial, July 4, 1873

reprinted by the Star Tribune July 4, 2009