Sometimes I wish I knew something about music, just on the off chance that I’d get to be a part of something musically moving. Like this, for example. At the end of their U.S. tour, Bruce Springsteen took a request from the crowd and the E Street Band played one for Levon:
I posted some Levon Helm videos the day before he died. You can see them all here.
In more sobering news, Birmingham Business Journal reports that Alabama lost 36,100 private sector jobs in the last decade. There are less than 1.5 million private sector jobs in the state these days.
There are 4.8 million people in the state. How can there be that few private sector jobs?
The Census says 37.5 percent of the state is younger than 18 and 7.6 percent are older than 65. So that’s 45 percent young and old. And if you trust the Bureau of Labor Statistics — which is increasingly becoming a funny thing to say these days — there is 7.6 percent unemployment in the state, so that gets us up to 52 percent of the state.
And here’s a list of government populations by city, which is eye-opening. According to that list 135 of the state’s 512 cities are above the U.S. median for percent of government employees. Not sure how that list accounts for residents in unincorporated areas, which are prominent in rural states.
If you aren’t doing mobile media you’re behind:
(G)rowth of mobile video usage is increasing dramatically. 108 billion videos were watched on mobile phones in 2011, almost trebling to 280 billion in 2012. However, unlike apps, this isn’t translating into symbiotic revenue levels. Despite a 23.8% revenue growth, Video is likely to account for a mere 2.4% ($3.6 billion) of total mobile media revenues in 2012.
Food as art, history and sociology. I don’t think about these things this way on my own, but this is a wonderful read:
Q. Shouldn’t we all be more in touch with our food heritage? How can we go about doing that?
A. When you follow a family recipe, you have an opportunity to bring life to your family story. What sustained your ancestors and your parents? It becomes exciting because you can say, “This is what my so-and-so ate to celebrate the end of World War II.”
Michael Twitty, the A above, is taking a tour of the South — he’s calling it the “Southern Discomfort Tour” — a journey to follow his ancestral path across the region, covering almost 4,500 miles.
How not to do television news.
And how to embarrass yourself on air in one easy step. I’d embed the video, but that television station hasn’t discovered that autoplay is evil. So I’ll link to it.
I’ll be showing that in class. If you can watch it more than once, I applaud you. But go watch some more Bruce instead.
