How play can make you more innovative and productive at work
At first glance, the MIT programmers may have looked like just a bunch of gamers goofing off, as they fired spaceship torpedoes in a video game they built. (more…)
Tag Archives: work
Sociologist Robert Crutchfield examines the relationship between work and crime in ‘Get a Job’
In his new book, “Get a Job: Labor Markets, Economic Opportunity, and Crime,” University of Washington sociologist Robert Crutchfield takes on the popular notion that the unemployed are more likely to commit crimes. A former juvenile probation officer and parole agent, Crutchfield explains the nuanced links between work, unemployment and crime.
Q. You write that the stratification of labor contributes significantly to a person’s lifestyle and whether or not they commit crimes. Can you explain?
A. When someone has a low-end job (what some scholars refer to as secondary sector jobs), such jobs don’t pay well, and have few or no benefits and limited prospects for the future. Young adults in that situation may feel like they don’t have to conform to society’s expectations, and are at risk of getting involved in crime because they are likely to spend time with similar young men. People with good jobs, what some scholars call primary sector jobs, by contrast have something to lose if they do not constrain their own lifestyles. So they spend less time in situations where crime might occur. The stratification of labor that I write about is the structuring of the labor market into primary sector (good) jobs and secondary sector (bad) jobs. (more…)
Film Producer’s “Pi” in the Sky Dreams Become Reality
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – You may not know Lee Berger by name, but you may have seen the work of his production teams in many of 2012’s biggest movies: “Django Unchained,” “The Hunger Games,” “Life of Pi” and “Snow White and the Huntsman.”
Berger ’76 is president of the film division of Rhythm & Hues Studios, a Los Angeles-based company that does everything from animating the Chipmunks to creating fantastic worlds (“The Chronicles of Narnia”).
“This is a very competitive industry,” says Berger. “We don’t normally get to pick and choose, and we’re lucky that Ang Lee chose us (for ‘Life of Pi’).” (more…)