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photo by P. A. Jensen
SportsData-Driven

Does Home-Ice Advantage Melt without Fans?

  • March 24, 2021

My latest data-driven article at College Hockey News asks whether fans actually contribute to home-ice advantage in college hockey. (A season of empty arenas has served as an unintentional experiment — one we’ll hopefully never repeat.)       P.

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Politics & PolicyData-Driven, Education

Teachers of Color: When More Is Never Enough

  • March 13, 2021

As nice as it sounds to spend millions of dollars to recruit more teachers of color, some pesky demographics and arithmetic get in the way. My latest in the Duluth News Tribune.     P. A. Jensen (@RuralityChecker) lives in

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Uncategorized

Cigarettes on Wheels

  • February 19, 2021February 19, 2021

She clutched two things with one arm. A Styrofoam coffee cup, already half-empty, apparently, was tucked between her elbow and her black jacket, its black lid somehow holding on for dear life, surviving the squeeze. “Holiday,” it smushedly said. The

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Politics & Policy

A Minimum-Median-Maximum Wage, or Something

  • February 14, 2021

A “minimum” wage is hard to define across a country as diverse as ours. A wage that’s truly “minimum” in South Dakota would be sub-minimal in California; a “minimum” wage on the coasts would approach the median in Mississippi. But

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Politics & Policy, Rural Life

Is affordable housing still a ‘human right’ in an unaffordable place?

  • January 8, 2021

My latest opinion column in the Duluth News Tribune raises the point that spending millions on “affordable housing” in unaffordable places is a slap in many rural Americans’ faces. Beware cheesy references to Aesop’s fable about the Country Mouse.  

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Politics & PolicyFor Fun

A Whopper of a Wage

  • December 4, 2020

My opinion article in the Duluth News Tribune considers the effects of a “living wage” on multi-earner vs. single-earner families. It also features a slew of bad Burger King puns.       P. A. Jensen (@RuralityChecker) lives in Minnesota

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural LifeFor Fun

For Fun: Liberal House on the Prairie

  • November 12, 2020November 12, 2020

“Well, Caroline, the world’s going to hell in a handbasket.” “Charles!” “But it’s true,” Pa said, stomping off his boots at the door. He handed her a rabbit by the back feet. “Did you know McSweeney’s isn’t carrying fresh produce

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photo by P. A. Jensen
SportsData-Driven

Do Teams that Lose More Also Lose by More?

  • August 12, 2020

Or, do teams that win more win by more? My latest data-driven article at College Hockey News answers both questions by examining game data from the last seven seasons of NCAA Division-I men’s hockey.       P. A. Jensen

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Uncategorized

Beware “The Million”

  • July 29, 2020July 29, 2020

She was squatting and lunging like a powerlifter, heaving, her neck straining, little ligamentendons popping under a blonde ponytail. A nursing-assistant MMA fighter in pink scrubs, locked in a death match with a super-heavyweight. Which was kind of true, except

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photo by P. A. Jensen
SportsData-Driven

Pattern Recognition: Trends in Goal-Scoring among College-Hockey Conferences

  • July 11, 2020July 12, 2020

Do some conferences in men’s college hockey score more goals than others? Have more lopsided margins of victory? More ties? My latest at College Hockey News crunches the numbers.   P. A. Jensen (@PrideOnIceCream) lives in Minnesota with his wife and

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photo by P. A. Jensen
SportsData-Driven

Not-So-Photo Finish: Competitive Balance within College-Hockey Conferences

  • July 5, 2020

I recently wrote a data-driven article for College Hockey News about whether some conferences’ championship races are routinely more competitive than others. As always, thanks for reading.       P. A. Jensen (@PrideOnIceCream) lives in Minnesota with his wife

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural Life, Sports

Do You Golf? A Case for Small-Town Generalism

  • July 2, 2020

“Alright—let ‘er rip.” That’s my friend Matt, kind enough to go golfing with me. He’s a good enough golfer to know how to help you, and a good enough teacher to make you feel like you’re learning instead of being

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural Life

Jensen Fawn Care: Man’s Struggle Against Nature, Kinda

  • June 12, 2020June 13, 2020

My captor is a fawn, young enough to have spots. It waits, watching sentinel over my backyard, nosing itself and panting in the sun, then lounging in the shade as the afternoon rotates around it. It waits diligently, probably just

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Rural Life

Outsiders: The Gender Balance of Housework, Inside and Out

  • May 28, 2020

Our editor has written an article about household gender roles for A Voice for Men. Check it out here.

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photo by P. A. Jensen, of a book by poet Jim Johnson, featuring a painting by Carl Gawboy
Uncategorized

Poe-try

  • May 19, 2020May 19, 2020

He died before I could get another chance to see him for the first time. Louis Jenkins, plainspoken prose poet, was speaking at a poetry reading in the biggish city, in a liberal church, hosted by the independent bookstore. So

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural Life

Support Local Journalism, They Said: A Small-Town Model

  • April 27, 2020April 27, 2020

The gnome was on its ass, face up, smiling. It had obviously been in a street fight, and lost to the street—or driveway, anyway. The tan-and-rusted minivan doing its predawn rounds with hazards flashing had wandered off that driveway, its

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural LifeFor Fun

For Fun: Post-Viral Parenting

  • April 22, 2020April 27, 2020

The virus lays bare the trades we’ve made. Trading our time for money, we’re told, is what we all do. Fair enough. Trading our kids for money, we’re not told, is also what we all do. Fair not enough. Foul.

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Sports

Arc Enemies: Comparing a Two-Point Arc in Hockey to Basketball’s Three-Point Arc

  • April 15, 2020

A two-point arc in hockey? No thanks. Our editor’s latest at US College Hockey Online outlines why an extra-point arc works in basketball, but wouldn’t in hockey. (Our editor sorts his social media into separate accounts; to get his takes

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Politics & Policy

The Progressive Flat Tax

  • April 14, 2020April 14, 2020

Imagine that we didn’t pay income taxes online, or by check. Imagine that we paid them in person, in cash, on Tax Day. Maybe everybody in town would bring sacks of cash to the Central Tax Pit and dump them

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photo by P. A. Jensen
Rural Life

Coronavirus and Gratitude

  • April 4, 2020April 14, 2020

By writing this I hereby forfeit the popularity contest that I was never going to win. Friends, I come bearing inconvenient news: we’ve missed the point about the coronavirus. Yes, yes, this flavor of coronavirus is, indeed, a big deal.

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Older posts

More Rurality

Does Home-Ice Advantage Melt without Fans?

Teachers of Color: When More Is Never Enough

Cigarettes on Wheels

A Minimum-Median-Maximum Wage, or Something

Is affordable housing still a ‘human right’ in an unaffordable place?

A Whopper of a Wage

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