by Kristin Underwood, San Diego, CA

Shawnee Conference 6.0 on Interactive Digital Technology

announces the selection of Jason Conaway, an Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA) technical engineer with recent video game credits like Medal of Honor: Airborne (2007) as systems engineer; Medal of Honor: Vanguard (2007) as technical director; Medal of Honor: European assault (2005) as engineering lead; Golden Eye: Rogue Agent (2004) with additional engineering as the keynote speaker for the October 31, 2008 event.

“We are pleased to have Jason join us at this year’s conference, said Gary Little, president of the Information Technology Alliance of Appalachian Ohio (ITAAO), one of the founding organizations of the Shawnee Conference. Jason continues an impressive succession of top-notch video game and serious game industry leaders to speak at the Shawnee Conference”, said Little. Jerry Heneghan with Virtual Heroes was the keynote speaker at Shawnee 5.0, and Eric Johnston with LucasArts was at Shawnee 3.0, and Peter Tamte with Destineer Studios was at Shawnee 4.0.
“Since contacting Jason, he has taken a leading role in the development of this year’s conference, said Tom Stead, past Department Chair of the Shawnee State University Fine and Digital Arts department. “Jason was instrumental in the selection of this year’s conference theme: “Expeditions Beyond Imagination” said Stead.
“The theme speaks to much that I see in the video game industry, said Conaway. “Expedition implies an exploratory journey undertaken by a team with a common goal. Teamwork, exploration and goal-oriented progress are all fundamental aspects in modern game development”, continued Conaway. “And Beyond evokes the need to do more and go farther…….beyond classrooms, beyond books, beyond our own thoughts”. And Imagination immediately creates a sense of wonder and sets the stage for inspiration”.

Learn more about the October conference supported by the Ohio Valley Interactive Technology Alliance , the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Employment Training Association (ETA) as a WIRED - Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Developmenthere.

So, where are all the lawyers?

Here's a note from Elisa Young, Citizen Advocate from Meigs County, and who helped to lead the February Midtown Brews conversation about Ohio's Energy Portfolio (See Our Ohio Energy Portfolio and Search Results ). Elisa shared the Meigs county community story with regard to the nine coal fired powered plants planned for construction within a 10 mile area of Meigs County - if built, the largest concentration of coal fired plants in the world and at the highest cost to natural resource and wild life destruction and human life expenditure.

Elisa says...

Send some good thoughts.  Have a hearing on standing for the appeal against the coal mine that has been approved in our community.  Still no attorney to represent us, so doing the best I can with it.  10:30 a.m. tomorrow in Columbus...

Elisa is surely the best and most knowledgeable speaker on the subject, but I have to ask...where are all the lawyers? Powerful topics like energy is some of the best content for lawyering today and most honorable, making the case for the need for energy innovation and the value of healthy communities for sustaining every human life.

Elisa recently lost her job because of her advocacy efforts to inform the world of Meigs County's community's story. She maintains an active lecturing schedule and is currently looking for employment.

We're sending good thoughts to you Elisa.

Save the dates for 3 upcoming events:

2nd Summit on Sustainability & Environment:  Sept. 11-13, COLUMBUS
On Sept. 11-13 the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning  Commission (MORPC) is hosting a Summit on Sustainability & the
Environment to talk realistically about how our communities can make “Green” a reality in Ohio.  The Summit will highlight tools for sustainability such as policy, innovation, education, planning, financing and individual behavior change. Space is limited so register early.  Ticket cost: $80 - $100 per person including meals, an evening reception and a field trip.

Grey to Green Festival: Sept. 13, YOUNGSTOWN
As people all over the world become deeply concerned about the future of the Earth’senvironment, millions are turn-
ing their energies toward education and citizen activism. Youngstown is launching its first Grey to Green Festival on Sat., Sept. 13 in Wick Park on Youngstown’s North Side. The goal of the Grey to Green Festival is to increase awareness of environmental issues in general, the grey to green concept in the Youngstown 2010 Plan and the Wick Park Revitalization effort that is currently underway.

Environmental Awards Ceremony & Lecture: Oct. 3, CLEVELAND

Fri., Oct. 3 at 7:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History for the 2008 Northeast Ohio Environmental Awards Ceremony & Lecture. Biodiversity Alliance and Dominion will honor the 2008 Northeast Ohio Environmental Award recipients.  Dr. Michael Hutchins, Executive Director/CEO of The Wildlife Society, will speak about pressing issues facing wildlife managers and conservationists today in his talk. Tickets are $8. 

Go here to read more about these events on page 15 of the August-September Earthwatch newsletter.

An interview with Joe Biden about energy and the environment

By Amanda Griscom Little - This is part of a series of interviews with presidential candidates produced jointly by Grist and Outside.

Joe Biden says his top priority as president would be "energy security." "If I could wave a wand, and the Lord said I could solve one problem, I would solve the energy crisis," he said this spring at a political rally in South Carolina. "That's the single most consequential problem we can solve."

During his 34-year Senate career, Biden, now chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, has been known more as a chieftain of foreign policy than a champion of environmental protections (though he has earned a respectable 84 percent lifetime voting score from the League of Conservation Voters). These days, he's emphasizing how closely geopolitics and environmental stewardship are intertwined. To solve what he sees as the defining challenge of our time, Biden has been pushing for more U.S. involvement in international climate negotiations, more compact fluorescent light bulbs, more-stringent fuel-economy regs, and a whole lot more biofuels.

How well will Biden be able to balance his energy-independence goals with an ambitious climate agenda? I tracked him down on the campaign trail in Iowa to find out.

Q. Why do you consider yourself the strongest candidate on energy and the environment? What sets your platform on these issues apart from the rest?

A. I would be most capable of getting this country back into an international climate regime, getting us back to the table the fastest and with the most prospect for success, because of my extensive engagement in foreign policy. I'm also in the best position to make it clear to the United States Congress that this is not merely an environmental issue, it is a security issue. I held hearings this year pointing out that if we do not do something of consequence about global warming, drastically and soon, we literally are going to find ourselves reconfiguring our entire military to deal with occasions for new wars, which are going to be about territory and arable land. You see what's happening in Darfur now -- that's part of the problem.

Q. You've said that your first priority is "energy security." Can you clarify what this goal means and how you'd achieve it?

A. If the predictions of the scientists are correct, you could see ocean levels rise three feet. If that occurs, you're going to displace over 35 million people just in South Asia, and they're going to physically be looking for a new place to land. Just that, all by itself, is going to initiate major new conflicts relating to war. You're going to have nations fighting over arable land, more border disputes, and, as a consequence, a great deal of instability.

Q. How would you achieve energy security? What specifically do we need to do to get there?

A. To deal with global warming, you have to change the attitude of the world, particularly China and India, the two largest developing nations. But in order to do that, to have any credibility, you have to begin here in the United States by capping emissions, increasing renewable fuels, establishing a national renewable portfolio standard, requiring better fuel economy for automobiles. I would cap emissions at 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and set a national RPS of 20 percent. I would announce an executive order that the federal government would not purchase one single automobile for its fleet that gets less than 40 miles to the gallon. And I would not build a single solitary federal project without it being a green project. That would have the effect of getting states to do the same thing, and that would create a pot of somewhere between a third and a half a trillion dollars that would be a lure to every major business in America to go green.

These measures would put us in a position to be able to actually attempt to lead the world. But we have no credibility right now.

Q. How would you bring China and India to the table on a global climate treaty?

A. By engaging in significant joint ventures with them both on new technologies. You're already having an awakening awareness in China about the consequences of pollution.

Q. Sometimes the goals of achieving energy independence and reducing climate change are at odds. Would you --

A. Exactly right. You're the first one who's ever asked me a question that way.

Q. Would you, as president, oppose subsidizing technologies that would worsen global warming, even if they would reduce our reliance on foreign oil?

A. Yes, I would, because at the end of the day it's a net loser for us.

Q. What role does "clean coal" play in your vision for energy independence and climate security?

answer I don't think there's much of a role for clean coal in energy independence, but I do think there's a significant role for clean coal in the bigger picture of climate change. Clean-coal technology is not the route to go in the United States, because we have other, cleaner alternatives. But I would invest a considerable amount of money in research and development of clean-coal and carbon-sequestration technologies for export. China is building one new coal-fired plant per week. That's not going to change unless there's a fundamental change in technology, because they have about 300 years of dirty coal, and they're going to use it.

Q. Would you impose a moratorium on the development of old-style coal power plants in the U.S.?

answer I believe that all new coal-fired power plants should be built with carbon capture and sequestration capacity.

Q. What's your position on liquefied coal?

A. Again, I don't think it's the way to go in the U.S., but we could invest in technologies for export. I don't think there's any reasonable prospect that China, as it continues to grow to 1.4 billion people, is not going to use their coal.

Q. What role do you see for nuclear power?

A. I see a role for nuclear, but first you've got to deal with the security as well as the safety concerns. I'd be spending a whole hell of a lot of money trying to figure out how to reconfigure the spent fuel into reusable fuel. I would not invest in [growing our nuclear-power capacity in its current form], but I would invest in sorting out the storage and waste problems.

Q. What fuel-economy targets do you support?

answer I think we should be able to get to 40 miles per gallon by 2017. I think we should have every single vehicle in America have to get one mile per year additional fuel economy, based on the class and size of the automobile, not on CAFE standards.

Q. Where does ethanol fit into your plan?

A. Ethanol is a good start. Because of the amount of [resources] that go into producing corn-based ethanol, it has only marginally less impact on the consumption of fossil fuels. But it has two real advantages: it begins to give us the margin of flexibility we need to deal with being held hostage to any one of the seven unstable countries that supply 35 percent of our oil -- Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, etc. No. 2, it's a transitional means by which you're going to be pouring billions of dollars into the fields of the Midwest, rather than the sands of Saudi Arabia or the pockets of Chavez.

Q. How would you structure policies to shift the ethanol industry away from corn and toward cellulosic or other more climate-friendly fuels?

A. With considerably more research and incentivizing. Right out here in Iowa, where I am right now, you already have producers and cattlemen and the rest saying, this is not such a good deal for us having this corn-based ethanol orgy that's going on here, because long-term it's not sustainable. Corn ethanol will always be a part of the alternative fuel mix, but it is not long-term sustainable as the only feedstock for ethanol because we can only produce around 12 billion to 17 billion gallons of ethanol from corn grown in this country. But we can produce 86 billion gallons of ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks, which could replace more than half the gas consumed by this country. An awful lot of these farmers are already looking for the next step, and they know it is cellulosics.

Q. What environmental achievement are you proudest of?

A. It took me 10 years to protect all of the beach on the Delaware coast from Cape Henlopen down to Rehoboth Beach, and put it in trust for the people of the country so that no development can take place on any of that area. I'm also proud that I convinced the state of Delaware to take the entire White Clay Creek watershed and turn it into a scenic river, stop the development in that whole region, and purify that watershed.

Q. Who is your environmental hero?

A. Russell Peterson. I was a young [county] councilman in 1970 when he was a Republican governor of Delaware. I introduced legislation saying that Getty Oil and these other companies could not build any refineries within one mile of the high-water mark of the Delaware River and Delaware Bay. He turned that into the first coastal zone act in the United States of America. He later left the Republican Party and became a Democrat, but that's not why I admire him. He was for years the president of the National Audubon Society, where he did a great deal for the environment.

Q.  What has been your most memorable outdoor or wilderness adventure?

A. My most memorable outdoor adventure was traveling 1,500 miles in Alaska with the National Guard, going from Prudhoe Bay to the Tongass Forest and all the way out into the Aleutian Islands in the Bering Sea. I found it an absolutely remarkable, fascinating, incredibly moving event. I landed in a Mustang suit up in the North Slope when they were trying to talk me into allowing more drilling. Two of the great things I've fought for in my career were protecting the Tongass National Forest and preventing more drilling in the North Slope.

Q. What have you done personally to reduce your energy and environmental footprint?

A.  A little thing we've begun to do is replace all the traditional light bulbs in our house with fluorescent light bulbs. I introduced a bill to promote compact fluorescent light bulbs. If every family in America changed just one bulb, we could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 7 million tons per year. There are a lot of little things we can do to make a gigantic change.

Q. If you could spend a week in a park or natural area of the United States, where would it be?

A. I'd go back to Yellowstone. I took my kids there early on, and God, I loved it.

I just received my latest economist.com issue on line and the article Business and Water leaped out at me.  Not two hours ago, a neighbor came over to visit and we had a long conversation about land and its relationship with water and how we are sitting on the banks of probably one of the most important natural resources in our future--Lake Erie.  She worries that others will be the decision-makers on the use of our land, our water, our wealth.  So do I.  The importance of citizen engagement in the public process to create balance and integrity may never be so critical as it is now.  As citizens and voters, we need to be aware of issues that we would probably rather avoid--taking a stand or leading the way are often lonely places to be.  If we do not take part and become engaged in the process who will stand in the place of the seventh generation?  And if we do not take a stand today, will there be a seventh generation? 

First, there's a new effort in Cuyahoga County to promote transparency...

This site is dedicated to starting a new approach to County governance.

By showing the power of Social Network Analysis, the citizens of Cuyahoga County can inaugurate a new day of transparency, civility, and shared responsibility in government.

Spread the Word
We can clean up the mess, but first we need to map it.
Map the Mess
http://mapthemess.net

Map the Mess Forums
http://www.mapthemess.net/forum/all

Get inspired...See:
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
http://www.citizensforethics.org/

Pat Fallon, is Professor & Chairperson, The Art Department & Professor, Ursuine Studies Core Program, Ursuline College, Cleveland, Ohio. Pat has offered to lead the November 2008 Midtown Brews conversation focusing on art and advocacy.

I recently asked Pat about her views on her work and how her passions connect to her students, colleagues and the public. Here are her responses:

1. What are you most passionate about now?  Teaching and exploring possibilities in my printmaking  as well as painting to further my career as an artist but also to share with students my findings, concerns, advocacies, and studio results in a teaching/learning situation.
   
2. What should people know, think, feel, and do?  People should know what is going on in the world and in their communities.  I don't tell people how to feel or think, though I do believe if more people "centered themselves" in a quiet time, they would think and feel better.  What people do, though their own business, is exactly what I am about.  I would like all people to respond positively to those in need, without judgment or blame.
   
3. What do you see for the future?  A better world.  I am a born optimist.

From the SSTI newsletter August 20:

Join fellow SSTI conference attendees for an opening reception at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland. Just like the music it pays homage to, inside and out, the Rock Hall exudes coolness. In addition to celebrating the opening of SSTI’s annual conference, we will be joined by Ohio Lt. Governor Lee Fisher, director of the Ohio Department of Development to mark the 25th anniversary of Ohio’s Thomas Edison Program and the state’s sustained investment in a broader set of TBED strategies and programs.
 
The opening reception promises to be a wonderful pre-conference opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and network with conference attendees, speakers, and our local hosts over delicious cuisine, drinks, and light music. The opening reception is made possible by the support of more than a dozen. 

To learn more about the conference agenda go here.

Read the post on Innovating Networks by Stacy Wagner about creative thinking and innovation in America's future employees - integrated arts education. Click here to read more.

Also be sure to take a couple of minutes and watch Sir Ken Robinson's video when he presented at TED.  Ed Morrison said that the presentatioln is one of the most inspiring he has seen. And it is hilalrous. Watch video here

Here's a note from Pat Fallon, Dept Head and Chair of the Art Department at Ursuline College. Pat has offered to lead the Nov 2008 Midtown Brews conversation addressing art and advocacy.

From Pat:

"I will talk about advocacy in the visual arts in terms of artists who have put their work in the service of advocating a particular point of view.  Actually it is much more dramatic than that.  Visual artists speak through images when they advocate and that is what affects the viewers of their work. "

Pat will have returned from leading an October presentation at The Twenty-Second Annual National Conference co-hosted by The Humanities and Sciences Department of the School of VISUAL ARTS Presents on Liberal Arts and the Education of Artists:

Design, the Arts and the Political:  images and words that propagate and dissent

Guest speaker at the conference is Steven Heller, Graphic Designer who will address, "Iron Graphics: Branding Totalitarian States."  More information on the conference.

In NYC, Pat will talk about advocacy, using images, and hopes to be able to present the same info or something similar for the Brews.  That presentation involves how we teach art students about the power of art and advocacy.  I would also like to involve one of our faculty, and possibly some students also.

A rough outline would be: 

• Introduction to the topic
  
• multi-media presentation
• Another point of view-------one of our faculty possibly from El Salvador
• A student presentation and/or a short video of UC students protesting at the gates of Fort Benning, GA