Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn has joined a growing chorus of environmental and other activists in calling on Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust to accede to the "ask" of Divest Harvard to divest the University's world-record endowment from entanglement with the fossil fuel sector.
You can read his op-ed piece,"Let's Prevent This Crisis: A Letter to Harvard's President Faust,"on the Huffington Post's Green section.
Etopia News has requested an interview with Mayor McGinn and is waiting to hear back.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
"Escape Plan" screenwriter Miles Chapman talks about his work
Published on Oct 15, 2013
Miles Chapman talks about writing
Escape Plan and what it was like for the Philadelphia native to script
fight scenes with Sylvester Stallone. Chapman's comments were recorded
at the Writers Guild of America, West's BEHIND THE SCREEN 2013
screenwriter/press reception held on October 10, 2013 at Capital Grille
in West Hollywood, CA.
All credit for the content of this blog entry belongs to the Writers Guild of America, West. Used with their permission.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Last night at the Writers Guild’s “Behind the Screen 2013”
The
Writers Guild of America West outdid itself last night (October 10, 2013), throwing
an intimate and distinguished shindig at the Capital Grille adjacent to the
Beverly Center to honor and promote their member/screenwriters who have new
films opening soon.
Chief
among them were Miles Chapman, the screenwriter of the soon-to-be-released
“Escape Plan”; Michael Polish, writer/director of “Big Sur,” coming out later
in October; and Karl Mueller, whose picture isn’t coming out for a while yet,
and was more subdued than the other two.
Miles
Chapman has been working since 2007 to see his idea for a film about an escape
artist trapped in a prison he can’t escape from (or can he?) finally come to
the screen. Sylvester Stallone and
Arnold Schwarzenegger play the leads.
Miles met his vivacious wife at the Harvard-affiliated American
Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Michael
Polish recounted filming “Big Sur” in Big Sur, California. His movie is a chronicle of the demise of New
Age icon Jack Kerouac, who was residing in that locale during that time. He related that Kerouac himself had once met
Richard Brautigan, author of “A Confederate General in Big Sur.” He reported that Esalen, once the epicenter
of New Age exploration/hedonism and located in Big Sur, is now a spa. Was Kerouac ever a guest at Esalen?
Did (or would) it have helped him or exposed him to even more of what eventually
did him in?
Press Pass LA Founder and Head of Content Jennifer Buonantony was there, along with her
congenial colleague Lauren, who helps produce a lot of the text pieces derived
from long interviews with worthy Hollywood denizens that run on this
information-packed website that helps its visitors “get what matters.”
The mood
was convivial and the culinary opportunities were plentiful, including slices
of beef, delicious tamari-tasting broccoli florets, Crème Brulee, some kind of
dry and crispy flatbread/cracker, the usual shrimp, and plaster serving spoons
loaded with mini-crab delicacies and kernels of corn. Truffles and high-glycemic chocolate cookies
were also available during the dessert course.
Gregg
Mitchell, Communications Specialist at the Writers Guild, was there “hosting
the event & running around wrangling screenwriters for on-camera
interviews,” He should be commended for
organizing and running a pleasant soiree featuring some of today-and-tomorrow’s
most important screenwriters in a congenial setting with a commanding view of
the streets below.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Compilation of Divest Harvard videos and articles on Etopia News as of October 9, 2013
Etopia
News has been covering Divest Harvard since June 13, 2013, when it presented “Akhil
Mathew talks about Divest Harvard,” at:
This was
followed up with a multi-campus panel discussion of university divestment
entitled, “Talking Divestment Blues: UC Berkeley, Princeton, Brown, Harvard,”
which first aired on June 24, 2013, at:
Prior to
the September 16, 2013 alumni rally for divestment in Harvard Yard, Etopia News
featured a “Harvard Alumni for Divestment 9-16-13 Rally Preview” on September
11, 2013, at:
Following this event, Etopia News convened a panel of Harvard Divest activists on October 7, 2013, to talk about it and about the path forward for the campaign, entitled “Update on Divest Harvard, October 7, 2013, at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KQ_GZcgDFg
Vote Solar’s Adam Browning elaborates his views on solar+batteries vis a vis utilities
In an article published yesterday by Bloomberg
entitled “Battery-Stored Solar Power Sparks Backlash from Utilities,” which
describes efforts by California’s privately-owned utilities to block network
access for residential and commercial solar systems seeking net-metering
benefits, at:
Adam
Browning, executive director of the San Francisco-based lobbying group Vote Solar
Initiative, was quoted as saying, “The next step is that people with solar
and batteries will find a way to make it work without utilities.”
Etopia
News contacted Mr. Browning, asking him to elaborate his views on the evolution
of battery-assisted solar systems and their relationship with utilities. He responded with this statement:
“I think the parallel to the telecom industry is
striking. At one point, customers could only lease a landline telephone
from AT&T. And it came in one, maybe two colors. With the advent of
the mobile phone, choice, innovation, and value exploded…and customers finally
had an option other than to simply take whatever their phone company decided.
In the case of AT&T, they were faced with developing the mobile
business their customer wanted, or losing their customers. Solar +
batteries presents that same proposition: either utilities figure out a way to
make it work for their customers, or customers will figure out a way to make it
work without utilities. With the drop in costs driven by expanding scale
for both solar and batteries (the latter driven by EVs [electric vehicles]),
that day is not far off.”
Monday, October 7, 2013
Update on Divest Harvard, October 7, 2013
A
discussion of Harvard’s attempt to shut down discussion of fossil fuel
divestment at the University, and student and alumni efforts to generate that
discussion, with Akhil Mathew, alumni liaison at Divest Harvard; Beth Newhall,
freelance editor and Harvard alumna, and Harvard alumna and founder and co-director
of Mothers Out Front; recorded from Cambridge and Boston on October 7, 2013.
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