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Not a deal breaker
Associate Professor of Economics Michael Potepan commented on how San Francisco's economy could handle a minimum wage increase for an Oct. 28 Mission Local story. A minimum wage increase is "a blunt instrument" that would impact both minimum-wage workers supporting a family and those who receive support as part of a higher-income family, Potepan said. "I'm not saying there wouldn't be some changes and distortions, but I think [San Francisco's economy] could absorb it. It's not a deal breaker."
LGBT history revisited
Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of History Marc Stein said in an Oct. 28 Windy City Media Group report that the 1965 sit-in at Dewey's in Philadelphia is important to recognize as a precursor to the Stonewall riots. "I think one of the important things to see is that there was a history of these episodes for at least five years before the Stonewall Riots," Stein said. "I think for a lot of us, if there's one thing we want to challenge, it's the notion that the movement began at Stonewall or the notion that Stonewall was the first time that gays and lesbians, that LGBT people, fought back."
Comparative value
Assistant Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management Sybil Yang discussed strategies employed by menu designers to steer customers toward specific foods on the Oct. 29 episode of Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane on WHYY Radio. Whether menus "spell out the price -- like twenty dollars -- or put in the decimal points or even put the dollar sign on, if there is a constant reminder of money, then we find that people start thinking about money and tend to spend a little less," Yang said. "We also see prices being used as decoys ... [like] the Hooters menu ... [with a] 40-piece wing meal with a bottle of Dom Perignon ... you have a $200 price point on the menu and all of the sudden, that 20-piece plate of wings is not the highest price and it doesn't seem all that unreasonable."
Weather wise
On Oct. 29, USA Today interviewed Professor of Meteorology Oswaldo Garcia, who translated the book Father Benito Vines: The 19th-Century Life and Contributions of a Cuban Hurricane Observer and Scientist. Vines was "a Spanish Jesuit priest [who] came to Cuba in the 1870s [when] ... the idea of making forecasts of the weather was still a very unusual concept," Garcia said. "Not only did he make careful scientific observations ... he put together those observations with field work ... and he was able to give hurricane warnings that were soon published in local newspapers. ... He was, in a sense, the first media weather person, going back to the 1870s in colonial Cuba, which is rather remarkable."
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