Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

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The school boss in the Rogers school district has appropriately called for everyone to step back from the  brink in the case of a student who apparently helped fan a rumor -- a completely false rumor, it needs to be stressed -- that he had a sexual relationship with a teacher.

 for his part in the Twitter-fed controversy in which he is reported to have acknowledged the phony affair with a sarcastic tweet that said, "actually, yes."

It's a horribly unfair situation for an innocent teacher. At the same time, the story has been developing as a slow-motion train wreck, spinning out of control to the point where the police chief in the city was suggesting the kid might be charged with a felony.

High school kids  -- especially high school 

 -- can be some of the most idiotic carbon-based units on the planet. But the situation called for something journalists rarely advocate: Everyone to stop talking.

 suggested everyone take a big step back before something even more stupid happens:

2) COMPANIES BREAK WITH INDUSTRY GROUPS TO RAISE MINIMUM WAGE       

Could it be that a higher mininmum wage is good business? Unless compelled by law -- and not even then, sometimes -- companies don't do things that don't make profitable sense. When Punch Pizza, the Minnesota chain, raised its minimum wage to $10, its owner noted it wasn't charity. "We think it translates into higher sales and better people and better quality," 

co-owner  John Soranno  told MPR's Tom Crann.

it's raising its minimum wage across its retail brands

 to $9 an hour now and $10 an hour next year. That's an instant raise for 65,000 employees of  Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy.

Chief Executive Glenn Murphy said the firm's move  "will directly support our business, and is one that we expect to deliver a return many times over."

The last arguments against increasing the minimum wage are gone, 

Roger Angell, the great American essayist, is 93 now.  This week 

 piece on what it's like to get old. At least initially, it's pretty much what you'd expect -- arterial stents, plastic parts, and the usual replacement of nuts and bolts.  "The downside of great age is the room it provides for rotten news," he writes.

The things you've got to do to get people to give a damn about Syria. In Norway, SOS Children's Villages made this ad, putting a young man at a bus stop on a cold day without a coat to see how people would react.

The organization is raising money for the children of Syria.

There's absolutely no rational reason why dogs don't live longer. Also: Here's a tissue.

 How to fly a floatplane. First, push it off from the dock (in this case, in Lino Lakes). Hand prop it. At some point, get in. Fly.

Stores can track where you go, using your phone

 Neither Rico Roman nor Jen Lee expected to represent their country at olympic games in Sochi. 

But they didn't plan on losing a limb, either. 

 A look at the Crashed Ice track at the Cathedral of St. Paul, where a priest challenged the track this week, according to the 

In short time, St. Cloud man excels at Crashed Ice extreme sport

 The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the best team in the Eastern Conference last night, perhaps its biggest win of the year. But as the game ended, there were few people to cheer because the Minnesota fans left early.  Why do people do this? If everyone leaves at the same time "to beat the traffic," there's no point in leaving.

(9-12 p.m.) - First hour: Leaders of the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Second hour: An MPR News investigation has found that the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis dealt with child sexual abuse allegations against at least 70 clergy members since 1950..That's nearly double the archdiocese’s official count. The priests served in nearly every parish in the archdiocese.  We'll talk about the report, what it took to put it together, and what it says about leadership at the archdiocese.

Third hour:  “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” showing at the Penumbra Theatre through March 2,  has been called “and “austere, impassioned, and soul nourishing Penumbra co-artistic director Sarah Bellamy said they chose to stage the play in the wake of the Trayvon Martin hearing- hoping to spark a conversation about what she calls a legacy of violence Race, history and art are all up for debate when we’re joined by the playwright and the founder of the Penumbra.

 (12-1 pm) -  Former Vice President Walter Mondale, speaking about national security, intelligence-gathering, privacy and the Constitution.

 (1-2 p.m.) - Hours after a truce was declared between Ukrainian government forces and opposition protesters, fighting broke out once again this morning in the streets around Kiev's Independence Square. Today's show takes a look at the city of Kiev and

 (3-6:30 p.m.) - Supporters of legislation to legalize medical marijuana in Minnesota are considering a new approach for the 2014 session, and the potential changes are winning the backing of some law enforcement groups. The chief author of the bill in the Minnesota House is working on a much narrower proposal that would allow only the use of some non-narcotic, marijuana-derived chemicals. MPR's Tim Pugmire will have the story.

The seaside tranquility of Sochi has made it a destination for the Olympics, Russian tourists  and a Soviet dictator.  A summer home was built there to accommodate Josef Stalin and his paranoia. NPR goes inside Stalin's dacha.

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Bob Collins

Author

A plea to step back from the brink in Rogers, the business of raising the minimum wage, the art of getting old,  from Norway with love,  and a boy and his dog.

The Rogers Twitter scandal, the business of the minimum wage, and the art of getting old (5×8 – 2/20/14)

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