Disabled are only Discounted in Hollywood: Time for Change

by Pam Vetter,December 13, 2007--------------------- "It's sad. I go into businesses and companies and I'm fully accepted in the corporate world, but not when it comes to a TV show or film project," actress Teal Sherer explained. "I want to bring attention to the problems that performers with disabilities face. Nothing is going to change unless we speak out. We're a minority and we're being overlooked." If you sense Sherer is a strong woman with a vision, you're right. As the Communications Director of the Screen Actors Guild Performers with Disabilities Committee, she is using her voice for change. In 1995, Sherer was a freshman in high school when she got into a car to go see fireworks on Labor Day with a driver she had just met. "It happened really fast. I broke my back in the car accident and suffered a spinal cord injury. Paralyzed from the waist down, I found myself in a wonderful rehab center in Atlanta, the Shepherd Center, with other teenagers who were worse off than me. One of the girls had been shot and she couldn't move any of her limbs and it even affected her speech. I realized how lucky I was that I could move my upper body," Sherer remembers. "My life changed dramatically after the accident. Had this not happened, my life would be boring, I would have stayed in Tennessee, gotten married and drifted into middle age. After this happened, I realized I could do anything." Sherer went onto college and majored in Communications/Broadcasting, where she enjoyed an acting class and got involved in theatre productions. In 2005, the HBO project "Warm Springs," was filming in Atlanta. She earned a part in the film that focused on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was left a paraplegic from polio at 39. The film, starring Kenneth Branagh, followed FDR's struggle with paralysis and his return to public life and politics. "I helped Kenneth to understand disabilities. We went swimming together. I showed him how to walk with braces. It was a wonderful opportunity," Sherer said. "I moved to Los Angeles almost three years ago. I can't live on my acting income because I only have ten auditions a year. There just aren´t that many parts that are written for a wheelchair user. My goal is to get into the audition. I can play a teacher or a girlfriend, I can do anything anyone else can do. I don't only have to play disabled characters. We can play real people because we are real people." Sherer did find recent success on the pilot "I'm With Stupid" for NBC Television. "Wil Calhoun wrote the pilot. It was about a friendship with a guy in a wheelchair and based on the BBC series of the same name. I was cast as a regular, but it wasn´t picked up. Last week I had a commercial role audition and I booked another commercial for Highmark Insurance, but it´s only running in Pennsylvania," Sherer said. "The battle is clearly uphill. I know it´s hard for able-bodied actors as well to break into the industry. But, we just want to have the same opportunities. We feel hidden by TV and film producers. It's very rare that producers want to use us. Sometimes we get auditions but it´s only as a favor to someone we know." Sherer is simply searching for fair access. "We feel excluded from the process. If more writers were writing parts that showed disabilities or if producers had an open-minded spirit toward disabilities, it would be easier. They're already casting different ethnicities and colors, but we're far behind them. We're not even on a pie chart of the Casting Data Report showing diversity," Sherer said. With the upcoming 2008 performances of "The History of Bowling," which Sherer is co-producing with actor Danny Murphy, she hopes to bring attention to performers with disabilities. "I do have hope. I'm pursuing the entertainment industry because I'm positive we can make a change. It's about creating it for yourself and I'm interested in all aspects of writing, producing, and performing. I'm currently studying at the Improv with the Groundlings. With the recent writer´s strike, it's ironic, but with participating on the picket line, it's brought the performers with disabilities together and made us a stronger unit. In the meantime, I do temporary work as an assistant in the entertainment industry. In the corporate world, there is no discrimination. They all want to hire me and entertainment companies greet me with open arms. It's ironic," Sherer added. Not one to sit around and wait for opportunity, she is working on an idea for a documentary to take everyone to task who parks in a handicapped parking space. "It drive me crazy. Just the other day, I saw this beautiful woman leave Starbucks. I couldn't find a parking space, but she found one right up front. It was a handicapped space and she was walking just fine. She clearly wasn´t handicapped. We need a documentary to attack the subject. It's almost 2008 and there are too many handicapped placards being given out or misused," Sherer explained. "I see opportunities to create documentaries because you have to stand up for what is right." Sherer has also written articles for New Mobility Magazine and she's involved with Wheels for Humanity in North Hollywood. "Wheels for Humanity is an incredible organization. They refurbish donated wheelchairs and hand fit them to children and adults with disabilities in third world countries. We just got back from Tijuana where we gave 100 wheelchairs to people who needed them. A wheelchair can change a life. We receive corporate and individual donations, but a lot of wheelchairs end up in landfills. Wheels for Humanity has helped nearly 35,000 people with disabilities since 1996," Sherer added. "If we can get wheelchairs to people in third world countries, we can get performers with disabilities up on the screen." For more information on Wheels for Humanity link to www.WheelsForHumanity.org.

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1 Hour 33 Minutes,fuck the governments.....take a stand and say no! no more cars,re-plant tree's,save us all,kill the governments THIS IS A COPYRIGHT FREE FILM-------------------------- Part 1 Part 2

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has been charged with plagiarism

Posted : Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:53:40 GMT------------------- Los Angeles - Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has been charged with plagiarism by the author of a novel published on the internet. According to celebrity website TMZ.com, author Jordan Scott claims in a cease and desist letter obtained by the website that Meyer lifted parts of Breaking Dawn from Scott's 1996 vampire tale The Nocturne. The letter claims several similarities in the plots and in the wording of several passages, but a representative for Meyer dismissed the allegations out of hand. "The claim that Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer somehow infringes on an alleged book by someone named Jordan Scott is completely without merit. Neither Stephenie Meyer nor her representatives had any knowledge of this writer or her supposed book prior to this claim."

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THE POLICE TRIED TO BAN AND CHARGE HIM,BUT HE WON..THE COPS WERE NOT VERY HAPPY

Climate protection 'to cost more'

Protecting societies against the impacts of climate change will be much more expensive than previously believed, according to a new analysis. In 2007, the UN climate convention came up with a sum of $49-171bn per year. The new report says the UN sums omitted important factors and the true cost will be two to three times higher. Developing nations want rich countries to provide major sums for adaptation as part of the new UN climate deal due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. "The amount of money on the table at Copenhagen is one of the key factors that will determine whether we achieve a climate change agreement," said lead author Martin Parry, a visiting research fellow with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. "But previous estimates of adaptation costs have substantially misjudged the scale of funds needed." Professor Parry co-chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group on climate impacts for its 2007 assessment. The new report - issued under the aegis of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Grantham Institute - says that some aspects of the UN estimates were wrong by a factor of more than 100. Call to caution The UN climate convention (UNFCCC) made its assessment in 2007 after the IPCC concluded the task was too difficult; and Professor Parry suggested it had been done in a hurry, with some vital caveats ignored in subsequent deliberations. A spokesman for the UNFCCC defended the process but said the organisation had a responsibility to be conservative. "Looking at what was out there in 2007, these were best estimates, which we simply collected; and we had to err on the side of caution," he said. Recently the UNFCCC's executive secretary Yvo de Boer has tended to use the figure of $100bn (£60bn) per year. Professor Parry told BBC News that a key point of the new report, Assessing the Costs of Adaptation to Climate Change, was that it included "bottom-up" as well as "top-down" analyses. "One study shows the cost of adapting a single watershed in China - that's one of the few case studies that's been done - comes in at a billion dollars a year," he said. "So when you start adding up the various figures you soon start to exceed the global number (in the UN's analysis)." He said UNFCCC calculations had taken into account only half of the extra disease burden due to emerge from climate change, assumed low levels of future development in Africa (so giving less infrastructure to protect), used low estimates for sea level rise and had not included the economic costs of nature loss. Mr de Boer told BBC News he was happy that thinking and understanding on the issue was evolving. "For me, the priority is not to try and determine with scientific precision exactly how much is going to be needed to cover the cost of adaptation in 2030," he said. "The point is to put in place a robust architecture for raising adaptation funds and allocating them over time." Financial key Securing funds for climate protection, or adaptation, is a key priority for developing countries in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference, which is supposed to secure a new global agreement supplanting the Kyoto Protocol. Earlier this week the African Union suggested it would be asking for $67bn (£40bn) per year for Africa alone. "Finance is the key that will unlock the negotiations in Copenhagen," said IIED director Camilla Toulmin. "But if governments are working with the wrong numbers, we could end up with a false deal that fails to cover the costs of adaptation to climate change." Most is expected to be raised through levies on carbon trading, but Mr de Boer believes developed countries will need to pledge an up-front sums in the region of $10bn to enable poorer nations to begin assessing their needs and priorities. Further analyses from the World Bank and management consultants McKinsey and Company are due out before the Copenhagen talks. """"""""SEE FUCKING MONEY AGAIN.....ALL IT TAKES IS A BRAIN""""""""