In the above video, Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee worries that raising the minimum wage will keep teenagers out of the workforce, preventing them from gaining valuable experience:
I remember my first job, when I was working at a retail store, growing up down there in Laurel, Mississippi, I was making like $2.15 an hour. And I was being taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions, and I appreciated the opportunity.
[W]hat Blackburn didn’t realize is that she accidentally undermined her own argument, since the value of the dollar has changed immensely since her teenage years. Blackburn was born in 1952, so she likely took that retail job at some point between 1968 and 1970. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, the $2.15 an hour Blackburn made then is worth somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today’s dollars, depending on which year she started.
Relatedly, McArdle wonders how indexing the minimum wage for inflation would impact the economy:
Would we see a sharp spike in the unemployment rate? Unlikely. Even if 10% of minimum wage workers were laid off, that would be a fraction of 1% of the overall job market. But I would expect to see higher unemployment among young and low-skilled workers during recessions, when employers are facing a lot of pressure on their margins. If your sales fall by 30%, so does the output of each worker. So that overall, monetary policy would become at least slightly less effective at managing the employment declines during recession.
Dan Shaw celebrates NYT photographer Bill Cunningham as “an incognito activist who has celebrated gay pride week after week even as he excused himself from the increasingly sexualized society that he chronicled”:
Two decades after the Stonewall riots, a new strain of homophobia was sweeping the city, and when the “Sunday Styles” section was born in 1992, Bill stealthily took every opportunity he could to bolster thegay community’s morale. Although he was technically a freelancer, he was given unprecedented real estate in the newspaper every week: a half page for his “On the Street” fashion column and two facing half pages for “Evening Hours” party pictures. He was his own boss in the hierarchical newsroom, and he made sure that AIDS benefits received as much coverage as galas at the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall. …
One of the sexiest “On the Street” columns Bill ever produced was published on Independence Day 1993. The headline read simply: “Men in Skirts.” All of the pictures had been taken at the Pride Parade of buff, bare-chested guys in short kilts and heavy work boots. Bill wrote the caption: “The imagery brought to mind ancient warriors depicted in Greek and Roman sculpture, now reflected in the gym-perfected bodies of today’s generation. The look reveals how a generation that worships the body perceives its image as that of the Uber-male.”
After a recent wave of violence ordered by prison gangs in Brazil, Benjamin Lessing details the difficulties lawmakers must face in trying to control them:
Because [prison gangs] keep order among prisoners, they often win a degree of informal control over inmate life. This gives them leverage over anyone on the outside with a reasonable chance of incarceration. … Paradoxically, policymakers’ go-to responses—anti-gang sweeps, longer sentences, and harsher prison conditions—can make prison gangs stronger. The key is that unlike street gangs, prison gangs can best reward (or punish) their street affiliates after they are imprisoned.
Margaret Heidenry charts the rise and fall of the “spec” script:
Not only were spec sales the industry’s own version of a Hollywood ending, they also broke in a passel of Oscar winners: Alan Ball, who sold American Beauty to DreamWorks for $250,000 in 1998; Callie Khouri, who sold Thelma & Louise to Ridley Scott’s production company for $500,000 in 1990; Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who were movie extras before they sold Good Will Hunting to Castle Rock Entertainment for $675,000 in 1994. … The bull market for specs continued into the 2000s, and then—pick your metaphor—the bank closed, the railway was routed to another town, the well dried up. In 1995, 173 specs were sold. In 2010 the number was 55, roughly where it had stood for at least half a decade.
But the Internet may be giving spec scripts a boost:
New media, while whittling away audiences, have also unearthed fresh voices. The Academy Award–winning screenwriter Diablo Cody was discovered via her blog. Kelly Oxford, a housewife from Alberta, Canada, who amassed hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers, recently sold her first screenplay, a spec. Another spec, The Disciple Program, was snapped up after a series of teasing tweets hyped it, reminding Hollywood of pre-tracking-board days.
Natalie Shapero recounts the evolution of the lie detector, as told in Geoffrey C. Bunn’s recent book The Truth Machine. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, criminality was viewed as an inherent trait and “an individual person was either inherently law-abiding or inherently degenerate”:
That’s where fiction comes in. This harsh conception of human predisposition caused problems for the burgeoning genre of the whodunit, which derives its suspense from the premise that anyone at all could be the culprit. In order to justify the suspicions thrown on each and every character, mystery writers of the early twentieth century had to embrace a new, equal-opportunity model of criminality. The detective novel, Bunn writes, presupposed the shift in attitude that came in the 1930s, when many people in the U.S. and the U.K. rejected a eugenics-oriented approach to eradicating crime and began to think of criminality as a behavior rather than an identity. To go with this new conception of crime, several detective novels of the day imagined a new kind of sleuthing technology: the lie detector, which could be strapped to any ordinary person and distinguish his moments of earnestness from his moments of deception.
This President’s Day weekend, Andrew ruminated on women’s role in the Church, pondered Benedict’s radical resignation, gave the reasons why Hagel matters, commented on Gallup’s news that TGBQLXs number 3.5 percent of the population, riffed on Orwell, spotted a Platonic Kaus-file, noticed Ponnuru channeling the Dish, kept asking where Barack Obama has gone on torture, and lamented the death of a mighty beard.
We also provided our usual eclectic mix of religious, cultural, and books coverage. In matters of faith, doubt, and philosophy, La Stampafound another possible clue to the Pope’s abdication, reports indicated Benedict will receive immunity by staying in the Vatican, Cardinal Mahoney lauded his own humility, Gregory Burke thought the Vatican needed its own Roger Ailes, and The Economist broke down the languages used by Catholics around the world. Peter Leithart decided to laugh through Lent while Melissa Steffen detailed what Twitter indicated we’re giving for the liturgical season. Joshua Knobe asked Ara Norenzayan if atheists should come out of the closet, Ian McEwan admitted he’s doubted the God of fiction, and Matthew Linder leveled a Christian critique of the modern cult of romance. Raymond Tallis explored the philosophy of psychedelics, Isaiah Berlin considered Machiavelli and the modern mind, and Alva Noë emphasized nature’s unknown unknowns.
In literary coverage, Avi Steinberg continued the conversation about advice to young writers, Alan Jacobs provided further reflections on editing the greats, and Hillary Kelly wasn’t satisified with book recommendations from Amazon, GoodReads, and Bookish. Alastair Fowler reviewed why Thomas Wyatt mattered for English literary history, Elizabeth Powers turned her attention to Oscar Wilde’s wife, Kate Bolick praised Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sexually empowered poetry, Carolyn Kormann celebrated the erotic poetry of John Donne, and Benjamin Nugent explored recent fiction’s Theory-laden language of love. Michael David Lukas welcomed the return of the polyphonic novel, Susan Orlean shared her favorite aspect of writing, Ed Smith took issue with Orwell on language and sincerity, and Seamus Heaney stayed true to his roots. Read Saturday’s poem here, Sunday’s here, and Monday’s here.
In assorted news and views, Chloe Angyal found that a dwindling number of women keep their maiden names, Rob Horning feared that Internet dating sites trivialize love, John Del Signore examined the geography of sex in New York City, and Rex Teixeira tackled prescriptions to increase America’s fertility rate. Mark Boal consulted John Brennan while writing Zero Dark Thirty, Forrest Wickman laid out the etymology of “motherfucker,” Roger Ebert revealed his Oscar predictions, and Hunter Oatman-Stanford unraveled the mystery of Bill Cosby’s sweaters. A professional soccer player came out of the closet, Adrien Chen appraised the state of online friend-finding, and Andy Cush noted a new project that catalogues our gadget habits. David Banks and Nathan Jurgenson analyzed the rise of “dashcams” in Russia, our defenses against meteors proved almost non-existent, and Scott Shackford rejected the argument for government intervention against violent video games. Scientists missed the 300-pound gorilla, Colors Magazinehighlighted a fascinating story and slideshow about hair shaving in India, Steven Leckart reported on cold temperatures impact on weight-loss, and Kevin Lincoln profiled Ken Jennings of “Jeopardy” fame. Jen Rubin doubled-down against Hagel, Chris Dixon met the Big Iron Man, The Economist looked at investors trying to cash in on pot, and Vaughan Bell analyzed a recent study examining the chemicals in synthetic drugs.
Reviewing a collection of interviews with Seamus Heaney called Stepping Stones, Barra Ó Seaghdha focuses on how the famed poet invokes his humble beginnings:
The depth and length of Heaney’s engagement with the matter of childhood suggests that what is involved goes far beyond nostalgia: we are dealing with the kind of imaginative loyalty that underpins a whole life. Regardless of where he is living at the time or what creative phase he is in, Heaney persists in working and reworking the material given him by birth and inheritance. We might recall the lines from “The Badgers” in Field Work:
How perilous is it to choose
not to love the life we’re shown?
We are dealing not just with a poet’s loyalty to his own imaginative world, but with human loyalty too: it is as though Heaney could not bear to live with himself if his life-journey away from home involved any posture of superiority or condescension.
Kevin Lincoln profiles Ken Jennings, the record-holding contestant who had 74 straight wins in 2004:
“For so long, I was always the guy in the office who you could ask the name of a TV show or guys in a band, but that’s not really valuable in the Google age,” Jennings says. “I’d always been good at that, but I turned my back on it because I didn’t really think I could make a living that way. I thought being a programmer was a safe thing to do, and by accident, I became much more successful doing what I was actually good at.”
How he’s converted that talent into a career:
If Trebek is the show’s Virgil, Jennings is Dante, the one guy who made it out alive. Even if you’re the kind of person who knows that the Tournament of Champions, the show’s annual best-of-the-best showdown, started yesterday, we bet you that you can’t name another Jeopardy contestant. (OK — except for Leonard, the daring and daringly Afroed Teen Tournament champ who became a star Tuesday night.) But you know Ken Jennings — and Jennings, the onetime programmer of health-care software, is taking advantage of your familiarity to this day, publishing nonfiction books, writing a weekly news quiz for Slate, writing a weekly column about obscure world destinations for Condé Nast Traveler, debunking myths for Woot.com, creating a trivia puzzle for Parade magazine, one-offs for sites like ESPN’s Grantland, tweeting a handful of times a day, and doing whatever else he can to keep rolling in his career as a professional smart person.
In 2013, merely knowing a bunch of arcane stuff isn’t enough to impress anyone outside of a pub quiz — that’s what our phones are for. But parlaying both intelligence and effortless charisma into not just celebrity but also a seemingly permanent spot in the pop-culture landscape is a pretty specific hustle. Don’t let the clean-cut Mormon good looks or aw-shucks demeanor fool you: Ken Jennings is on the grind.
Their power to terrify may be in part due to their content, but even the most benign hallucination is deeply unsettling precisely because, as [Oliver] Sacks says, there is no “consensual validation”. Nobody else can see, hear, feel, smell or taste what you are experiencing. To be in the grip of such incorrigibly private experiences, adrift in a world populated with items that others cannot confirm, is to be sequestrated in the most profound solitude. Even before we speak, we will point out things that we see and desperately want to share with others. Joint attention to items that we all agree are before us is the basis of a common human world. The involuntary perceptual dissidence of the one who hallucinates reminds us how frail and transient is our occupancy of this world; and how, even when you and I are side by side in the sunlight, each of us may be sealed in the privacy of our minds.
From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron (1788-1824):
He, who grown agéd in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him—nor below
Can Love or Sorrow, Fame, Ambition, Strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance—he can tell
Why Thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell
Still unimpaired, though old, in the Soul’s haunted cell.
’Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do know—
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow
Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings’ dearth.
(Portrait of Lord Byron, from the National Portrait Gallery in London, via Wikimedia Commons)
The Dish 
