Front and Center: Literacy series
Feb. 9, 2012Making your own job event
Jan. 31, 2012
If you walked into a coffee shop on Tuesday afternoon ten-years ago, you might ask, “Who are all these people who don’t work?” But if you walk in to that same coffee shop today, you’ll likely witness a sea of people hunched over their laptops and typing. Many of them are working, just not at a regular job. Last Thursday, WBEZ organized an event for these untraditional workers called “Making Your Own Job.”
Freelancers and one-person businesses are growing part of the workforce. And it’s just not just the journalist and artist we typically associate with freelancing. Educators, miners, construction workers, and cooks—they all have a growing ratio of contract work to full-time jobs.
“Even though there may not be jobs in the conventional sense, there is still work. That's the whole idea of the 1099 economy.
The Great Lakes least loved creature (VIDEO)
Jul. 6, 2011Listening to Catherine Winter's recent story for Front and Center you can see that the sea lamprey might be the grossest creature in the Great Lakes. This invasive species sucks the life out of fish, leaving giant fish-hickies with its toothy suction cup mouth. The sea lamprey is so gross, in fact, that being a “sea lamprey exterminator” made it on to a reality TV show about disgusting jobs.
No doubt, the incredible harm they present to environment and economy is the major motivating factor behind the herculean efforts to exterminate them from the lakes. But I can’t help but wonder if the gross-out factor has played a role. If baby pandas invaded the Great Lakes, even if they did great environmental harm, it would be much harder to get the public behind their extermination. If in the gross jobs TV clip they were spitting on a panda, people would be outraged. Could you see the below PSA being made about baby pandas?
Poor sea lamprey, you just can't get love.