Jonathan's blog

From a UPI story of the same title on belief.net:

U.S. scientists, in a first-of-its-kind study, have found decreased brain activity in people "speaking in tongues," a condition known as glossolalia. The unusual mental state is associated with some religious traditions and occurs when people appear to be speaking in an incomprehensible language, yet perceive it to have great personal meaning.

"Our brain imaging research shows us that these subjects are not in control of the usual language centers during this activity, which is consistent with their description of a lack of intentional control while speaking in tongues."

Via Today's Papers, from an article of the same title by Damien Cave in the NY Times:

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery. Under the rule being considered by the city's Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent. Applicants would have to have changed their name and shown that they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but there would be no explicit medical requirements.

Via Today's Papers, in an article of the same title in the Wall Street Journal, Deborah Solomon discusses the results of a minimum wage hike (and mandatory increases to keep pace with inflation) in Oregon in 2002. From the WSJ article:

During the 2002 debate in Oregon, foes of a minimum-wage increase argued that it would chase away business and cripple an economy that traditionally had higher unemployment than the national average. "With so many Oregonians already unemployed, raising the minimum wage and then increasing it annually would devastate our economic recovery," Bill Perry, head of the Oregon Restaurant Association, wrote at the time. Four years later, though it is impossible to say what would have happened had the minimum not been raised, Oregon's experience suggests the most strident doomsayers were wrong. Private, nonfarm payrolls are up 8% over the past four years, nearly twice the national increase. Wages are up, too. Job growth is strong in industries employing many minimum-wage workers, such as restaurants and hotels. Oregon's estimated 5.4% unemployment rate for 2006, though higher than the national average, is down from 7.6% in 2002, when the state was emerging from a recession. Some employers are being squeezed, for sure, and their experiences will become ammunition for those who will fight any increase in the federal minimum wage. Agriculture is pinched because sellers can't raise prices, set on global markets, when labor costs go up. Some businesses say they have avoided expanding in Oregon because labor costs have risen, the sort of change in behavior at the margin that foes of a minimum wage worry about.

Barb Iverson and her brother say higher wages prompted them to stop cultivating daffodils and potatoes at their Willamette Valley farm. "Why grow a potato here when you can do it in Idaho for $5.15 an hour?" asks Ms. Iverson.

Maybe because paying your employees enough to live on is the right thing to do.

From today's The Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor:

Today is Election Day. Millions of people across the country will be going to the polls today to elect new legislators, judges, sheriffs, and school board members. For the first 50 years of American elections, only 15 percent of the adult population was eligible to vote. To be eligible to vote at the time, you had to be a white male property owner. In Connecticut, you had to be a white male property owner of a "quiet and peaceable behavior and civil conversation." Thomas Dorr was one of the first politicians to argue that poor people should be given voting rights. As a member of the Rhode Island legislature, Dorr argued that all white adult men should have the vote, regardless of their wealth. He incited a riot to protest the governor's election of 1842 and went to prison for treason, but most states began to let poor white men vote soon after. Women were given the right to vote in 1920, and many African Americans were prevented from voting in the South until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Today, the only group of adult American citizens who are regularly prevented from voting are convicted felons. Gore Vidal said, "Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for president. One hopes it is the same half." W.C. Fields said, "I never vote for anyone. I always vote against."

Some advice from Slate for the next time you're a guest on The Colbert Report:

Act your age.
Laugh uproariously.
Embrace the theater.
Go on the offensive.