Reposted from Ecorazzi.com
by China DeSpain Freeman, January 24, 2012
This year, Super Bowl XLVI (or 46, if you don’t do Roman numerals) is being hosted in Indianapolis, and the city, along with the NFL, is doing its part to make this the greenest Super Bowl ever. Here’s how:
1. Playing in an Environmentally-Friendly Stadium
Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis has a bevy of green features.Indianapolis has done a lot to make Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Colts, a green place to play. The building has a retractable roof, a CPI lighting system to utilize natural light, and “Big Ass†fans designed to move air with minimal energy consumption. Along with the Indiana Convention Center, the stadium recycles tens of tons of aluminum, plastic, glass and cardboard each year, and implemented recycling programs in other sports venues in the city. The stadium also purchases supplies in bulk, and its parking lots are swept, not sprayed, to conserve water.
2. Offering Green Options to Fans
Georgia Street in Indianapolis has two electric vehicle charging stations.The Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee has also participated in greening the Bowl. As part of the organization’s “1st and Green†plan, the city implemented “Project Plug-IN†along Georgia Street, the heart of Super Bowl Village. This project helped fund two charging stations for electric cars, which should be operational in early February. Hopefully this means that eco-friendly fans with electric cars can drive to the game and not have to worry about where to recharge their batteries.
3. Composting
The JW Marriott will test a food composting program during Super Bowl week.Another “1st and Green†project in the works: a composting pilot program, set to take place during Super Bowl week. According to the website, “The JW Marriott hotel, which will house the Media Center for the 2012 Super Bowl, is partnering with GreenCycle, Republic Waste Services, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the Indiana Recycling Coalition, and the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee to participate in a composting pilot project during the week of the Super Bowl. Food waste scraps from the JW Marriott kitchens will be collected in compostable bags and conveyed to the GreenCycle facility, where they will be mixed with wood chips and converted into nutritious compost instead of being sent to the landfill.â€
4. Utilizing Renewable Energy
The NFL will use renewable energy from wind farms in the 2012 Super Bowl.For the past 18 years, the NFL has been working to green the sport, and this year, it’s more eco-friendly than ever. The NFL and Super Bowl Host Committee have greened the power at the six major Super Bowl facilities. Their press release explains it all by saying “everything from the computers in the Motorola Super Bowl XLVI Media Center to the lights that shine down on the teams as they compete during Super Bowl will be powered by green energy.â€
Green Mountain Energy Company is supplying the power, which will be generated by windfarms in North Dakota; this will save more than 14,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions normally associated with the Super Bowl and its festivities. According to NFL Environmental Program Director Jack Groh, “Green Mountain Energy Company has helped us reduce the overall environmental impact of Super Bowl activities. Together, we have been able to expand the way we address greenhouse gas emissions and leave a permanent benefit to the host community.â€
5. Giving Back
The NFL plants 1,000 trees in each Super Bowl host city.Using renewable energy isn’t the only eco-friendly step the NFL has taken. Years ago, recycling bins were added to stadiums, and today, the league’s green efforts are much bigger. Leftover stadium food is donated to food banks (one Super Bowl generated more than 93,000 pounds of food). Supplies and equipment used in the big game are recovered and reused, a value Groh places at $250,000. And for the past seven years, the NFL has participated in urban forestry, planting 1,000 trees in each host city.
We can expect even more from next year’s Super Bowl. New Orleans will host the 2013 event, but the NFL made them work for the honor. For the first time ever, potential host cities had to submit an environmental plan with their bid. “The return on investment for us can be as much as 600 percent,†says Groh. That return doesn’t go to the NFL — it’s used to implement eco-friendly initiatives within the host community.
So, just why have green programs become so important to the NFL? â€We did it as part of our operations. Environmental principals are about greater efficiency and reduction of waste. How is that not a good business practice?†says Groh. And David Krichavsky, the NFL’s director of community affairs, adds, “We’re really doing this because we think it’s the right thing to do.â€
The Super Bowl airs on Sunday, February 5, on NBC. Kickoff is as 6:30 EST.
The Minding Animals Conference 2012 offers a platform to discuss scientific, ethical and social issues related to animals and human interactions with animals. The aim of the conference is to bring together academics and scientists from different disciplines (amongst others: animal welfare, (cognitive) ethology, animal ethics and philosophy, and sociology). For a list of themes and confirmed keynote speakers, please see below.
We are glad to have received an impressive number of abstracts before the deadline of 15 January. However, we have received many requests to submit an abstract after this deadline, and we would like to particularly encourage the submission of abstracts on the topics below, especially in the themes of 2. Animal Welfare and 3. Animal Capacities. We have therefore decided to extend the deadline for abstract submission to February 15. To submit an abstract, please visit (www.uu.nl/hum/mindinganimals).
We particularly welcome abstracts on the following topics:
1. The Human-Animal Relationship
1a. The animal in art, literature and film.
1b. Animals in a human society
1c. The influence of animals on physical and mental health of humans
1d. Sharing hybrid communities
1e. Communication on animal issues
1f. Educating animal welfare issues
2. Animal Capacities
2a. Positive emotions in animals
2b. Higher order cognitive capacities in animals
2c. Capacities and moral status of non-mammalian animals
3. Animal Welfare
3a. Measuring welfare
3b. Concepts of animal welfare
3c. The end of life/ killing animals
3d. Genetic welfare problems in companion animals
3e. Domestication and animal welfare
4. Animal Ethics
4a. The moral relevance of socio-cognitive abilities in animals
4b. Animals and the harm of death
4c. Moral concerns beyond animal welfare: changing what animals are
4d. New developments in animal ethics
4e. Ethics and law
5. Animals and Sustainability
5a. Farm animal welfare in sustainability: re-balancing people, planet and profit?
5b. Animal resilience
5c. Animal movements and migrations
5d. Sustainability aspects of the human-animal interaction beyond the animal
6. Animals and Public Policy
6a. Political philosophy and the representation of animals in politics
6b. Context-dependency of duties of care to animals?
6c. The relevance of stakeholder-relations and stakeholder involvement for the development of measures to safeguard animal welfare
6d. Animal welfare – the veterinarian’s role
Samuel Mann, Associate Professor at Otago Polytechnic (in Dunedin, New Zealand) has a blog called Computing for Sustainability: Saving the Earth One Byte at a Time.
I found his post, Visualizing Sustainability , which highlights his recent book, “Sustainable Lens: A Visual Guide†published by NewSplash, both interesting and quite useful.
Mother Jones and other publications have recently teamed up to produce this video documenting the presidential candidate’s views on climate change. Is this ineffective propaganda or an effective tool to draw attention to the issue and help voters distinguish between the candidates. To date, John Huntsman is the only candidate in the Republican primary willing to agree with the scientific community’s consensus on the issue.
As a montage piece, I’d say the piece is a bit busy – trying to play the hip with lots of editing and quirky facial expressions. But the sound bites come across as being taken out of context “preaching to the choir”.
Reposted from DeadlineHollywood.com
By JAMES FRANCO
The new Planet of the Apes film, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, belongs to Andy Serkis. Narratively it was always his film: I play an emotionally stilted scientist who in the process of mistakenly unleashing a lethal virus on the human race, learn
s to care for others; Serkis gets to play Caesar, essentially Che Guevara in chimp form. There is no question that his character arc is much more dynamic and fascinating, it is the story line  that takes the franchise’s central theme of culture/racial/species clash and turns it on it’s head by making the maligned apes the unequivocal heroes. We get to watch the fall of mankind and enjoy it because we root for the underdogs, the apes.
But this narrative structure is only half of the story; there is also an acting revolution that has taken place. Andy Serkis is the undisputed master of the newest kind of acting called “performance capture,†and it is time that Serkis gets credit for the innovative artist that he is.
When Serkis was hired to play the inimitable character, Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy it was initially only for his voice, the character was meant to be entirely animated. But Serkis got so physically involved in the production of the character’s odd voice – Serkis was inspired by his cat coughing up a hairball – that Jackson decided to find a way to capture the performance so that it could be translated into a digitally rendered character. This was the birth of performance capture as we know it, the process that led to the nuanced performance behind King Kong, the blue things in Avatar, and now Caesar. Audiences are used to large scale effects: impossible explosion, space travel, fantastic fairytale worlds, boys in tights swinging around New York, men with Squids for faces, but there is still a disconnection that happens when a character’s outer surface is rendered in a computer like Caesar’s was. We want to forget that there is a human underneath, the effects are so well rendered we either forget that the spark of life in it’s eyes and the life in its limbs is informed by a breathing human or we are so drawn into the ontology of the character we can’t grasp its artistic origins or exactly how it was created. What this means is that we can enjoy such a character – enjoyment testified by the response to such films as Avatar, Return of the King, and Planet of the Apes – but we don’t give artistic credit where it is due.
I, as much as anyone, can get anxious when I think about the future of movies and the possibility of the obsolescence of actors, or at least actors as we know them, but after making Apes I realize that this is backward thinking. Performance Capture is here, like it or not, but it also doesn’t mean that old-fashioned acting will go the way of silent film actors. Performance Capture actually allows actors to work opposite each other in more traditional ways, meaning that the actors get to interact with each other and look into each others eyes. For years computer technology forced actors to act opposite tennis balls if a movie wanted to have CG creatures, but now the process has come full circle so that actors playing CG creatures can perform in practical sets, just like the “human†actors. In acting school I was taught to work off my co-stars, not to act but react and that was how I would achieve unexpected results, not by planning a performance, but by allowing it to arise from the dynamic between actors, and on The Rise of the Planet of the Apes that’s exactly what I was able to do opposite Andy as Caesar. And Andy got to do the same because every gesture, every facial expression, every sound he made was captured, his performance was captured. Then, what the Weta effects team did was to essentially “paint†the look of Caesar over Andy’s performance. This is not animation as much as it’s digital “make-up.â€Â There are plenty of Oscar winning performances that depended on prosthetic make-up to help create the characters: John Hurt’s in The Elephant Man, Nicole Kidman’s in The Hours, Sean Penn’s in Milk. Those actors depended on make-up artists to augment the look of their characters, but the performance underneath came solely from the actors. Well, that’s exactly the same position that Andy is in, his problem is that the digital “make-up†is so convincing that it makes people forget that he provides the soul of Caesar. That soul, the thing that was so compelling about that film, came from Andy, and the way he rendered that soul is of equal importance, if not more important than the photo
realistic surface of the character.Andy doesn’t need me to tell him he is an innovator, he knows it. What is needed is recognition for him, now. Not later when this kind of acting is de riguer, but now, when he has elevated this fresh mode of acting into an art form. And it is time for actors to give credit to other actors. It is easy to praise the technical achievements of this film, but those achievements would be empty without Andy. Caesar is not a character that is dependent on human forms of expression to deliver the emotion of the character: despite the lack of any human gestures, and maybe two or three words of human speech Caesar is a fully realized character, not human, and not quite ape; this is no Lassie and this is no Roger Rabbit, it is the creation of an actor doing something that I dare say no other actor could have done at this moment.
 Can you make out this image on your iPhone? How about on your 72″ LCD HDTV? Could you tell immediately that it was a gun wrapped in a rainbow (or candy twizzler)? Did you think “Peace and Love” or “No more guns”? Did you see Ringo? Certainly it’s hard to imagine anyone choosing the “go Army” option. What we have then is a seeming effective example of high-concept marketing – the same idea used by the film industry to promote blockbuster films. Just as most of us can immediately recall the images from our favorite movie posters for Jaws, Star Wars, and the like, or the golden arches of McDonald’s, so to do most of us immediately associate the peace symbol with “the 1960s”.
Among environmentalists, the flowing triangular image intended to convey “reduce, reuse, recycle” has been successful as a means of communicating a concept among a wide audience. It makes one wonder if perhaps climate change initiatives could use a similar ‘high-concept’ model to convey the immediacy of the situation and need for action. I think Ringo’s new initiative, meant to honor the work of his fallen comrade John Lennon, demonstrates the ability of images to invite viewers to think – and although what the viewer thinks is determined individually it’s hard to deny the ability of images like Ringo’s to convey “meaning” almost instantaneously by tapping into shared awareness among an audience.
This week the climate conference in South Africa has received barely a mention among the major news outlets in the United States. Representatives of the Obama Administration have gone to the conference and taken the position that unless China, India, and other “developing” nations agree to the same rules as the US and the Western World there will simply be no bargain and the US will continue the status quo – ie doing nothing. A delegation of so-called “environmentalists” (in other words that’s how NPR and other outlets referred to them) failed in their attempt to force the US to leave the conference. This delegation included delegates from island nations and other regions facing more direct and immediate effects of warming and sea level rise. It really makes you wonder if they should have spent more time coming up with a “high concept” image – something that would convey the seriousness and scope of the problem. Of course, part of the reason why the gun wrapped in glass is such an evocative image is that it sends a message that is beyond “no” or “stop”. The swirling colors and smooth line suggest “yes” we can do this and here’s how we do this. Can we imagine an image that conveys both the problem of climate change and a solution. Is there one solution that can be conveyed in a single image? To my mind it starts with an end to fossil fuel consumption. But as Ringo’s image suggests as well, and as the Beatles music suggests, is that climate change, like the peace movement, requires a change of heart and mind that goes beyond simple solutions – especially if we’re to avoid species extinction and war as well. Just some thoughts on a Friday. Big picture, one of the debates at the heart of ecomedia studies – as it is for feminism, cognitivism, marxism, and post colonialism – is whether or not certain aesthetic choices on the part of the producer of media can have a measurable and predictable impact on consumers. While many viewers might not “get” the broader implications of a film like March of the Penguins it is also true that many express disgust at being lectured to, even when it’s by someone as earnest and reliable as Al Gore. High concept art, however, conveys a message immediately, or at least it seems to. And so relativists and pluralists must also remember that branding and marketing are so pervasive in our culture precisely because extensive analysis and research have proven to businesses that it works in some way on consumers minds. However, this also does not mean that viewers perceptions cannot be retrained to some degree by engaging with media that does note immediately communicate its ideas to the viewer (ie avant garde).
If I am able to recognize Ringo’s candy gun as an argument against weapons, it is because I have been so well trained from birth by my culture to recognize high concept art and advertising. Its codes, such as the color choices, composition, and display of Ringo’s art, have been imbedded in me as a child of the blockbuster era and cable television. I remain ambivalent about such questions and the power of ecomedia to move audiences to action or the power of scholars and cinephiles to somehow “get something” about certain films or images.
On the set of ‘The Muppets,’ a 23-year-old environmental steward made sure Kermit wasn’t the only green aspect of the production.
REPOSTED FROM:Â
It’s lunchtime on the set of “The Muppets,” the high-profile Hollywood production, bringing the beloved characters back to the big screen for the first time since 1999, and co-writer/star Jason Segel is in the mood for mischief. Looking over the vast array of trash and recycling bins designed to accept various forms of waste, Segel turns to the 23-year-old woman standing guard over the receptacles and loudly asks, “Hey, Yazmin! What bucket does the vomit go in?”Yazmin Watkins blushes and laughs along with the rest of the cast and crew. She’s good at taking a joke, which might as well be part of her job description. As the environmental steward for the film, she’s the person responsible for reducing the amount of waste produced on set and cutting down on the energy, water and other natural resources that go into production — not an easy task on a project with a reported $40 million budget that involves months of shooting and thousands of cast and crew members.
Since then, Disney has placed an environmental steward on every production. Watkins (right, on set with Kermit) applied for the job as a senior at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., where she learned from career services that Disney was hiring for a new position requiring passion for the environment and an interest in film. As a vegetarian and someone who cares about the environment, Watkins thought the position sounded like a dream. “The Muppets” is her second complete gig, after working in Utah on the science fiction film “John Carter” (about a former Confederate soldier who is transported to Mars) and a shorter stint helping out on “Pirates of the Carribbean IV.”
We invite proposals about nature and religion in diverse expressions of popular culture, including films, television, comics, fiction, music, sports, graffiti, clothing, and festivals. As always, while we encourage proposals focused on the conference’s theme, we welcome proposals from all areas (regional and historical) and from all disciplinary perspectives that explore the complex relationships between religious beliefs and practices (however defined and understood), cultural traditions and productions, and the earth’s diverse ecological systems.  We encourage proposals that include theoretical frameworks and analyses, emphasize dialogue and discussion, promote collaborative research, and are unusual in terms of format and structure.
The deadline for proposals is 1 April 2012.
For more information and updates, please go to:Â http://www.religionandnature.com/society/conferences.htm#malibu
Jacob Jones