The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, seen here at its first organizational meeting in 1927, remains largely white and male. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

By John Horn, Nicole Sperling and Doug Smith, Los Angeles Times

February 19, 2012

When the names of winners are revealed on Oscar night, months of suspense give way to tears, smiles and speeches. Yet when the curtain falls, one question remains: Who cast the votes?

About 37 million people tuned in to the Academy Awards last year, and a great deal rides on the show’s outcome. Winning a golden statuette can vault an actor to stardom, add millions to a movie’s box office and boost a studio’s prestige. Yet the roster of all 5,765 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a closely guarded secret.

Even inside the movie industry, intense speculation surrounds the academy’s composition and how that influences who gets nominated for and wins Oscars. The organization does not publish a membership list.

“I have to tell you,” said academy member Viola Davis, nominated for lead actress this year for “The Help.” “I don’t even know who is a member of the academy.”

A Los Angeles Times study found that academy voters are markedly less diverse than the moviegoing public, and even more monolithic than many in the film industry may suspect. Oscar voters are nearly 94% Caucasian and 77% male, The Times found. Blacks are about 2% of the academy, and Latinos are less than 2%.

Oscar voters have a median age of 62, the study showed. People younger than 50 constitute just 14% of the membership.

The academy calls itself “the world’s preeminent movie-related organization” of “the most accomplished men and women working in cinema,” and its membership includes some of the brightest lights in the film business ? Tom Hanks, Sidney Poitier, Meryl Streep and Steven Spielberg, among others. The roster also features actors far better known for their television acting, such as Erik Estrada from “CHiPs,” Jaclyn Smith of “Charlie’s Angels” and “The Love Boat’s” Gavin MacLeod.

The academy is primarily a group of working professionals, and nearly 50% of the academy’s actors have appeared on screen in the last two years. But membership is generally for life, and hundreds of academy voters haven’t worked on a movie in decades.

Some are people who have left the movie business entirely but continue to vote on the Oscars ? including a nun, a bookstore owner and a retired Peace Corps recruiter. Under academy rules, their votes count the same as ballots cast by the likes of Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Video: Inside the Academy

Reporters John Horn and Nicole Sperling give an introduction to the Times’ look inside the academy.

To conduct the study, Times reporters spoke with thousands of academy members and their representatives ? and reviewed academy publications, resumes and biographies ? to confirm the identities of more than 5,100 voters ? more than 89% of the voting members. Those interviews revealed varying opinions about the academy’s race, sex and age breakdown: Some members see it simply as a mirror of hiring patterns in Hollywood, while others say it reflects the group’s mission to recognize achievement rather than promote diversity. Many said the academy should be much more representative.

The Times found that some of the academy’s 15 branches are almost exclusively white and male. Caucasians currently make up 90% or more of every academy branch except actors, whose roster is 88% white. The academy’s executive branch is 98% white, as is its writers branch.

Men compose more than 90% of five branches, including cinematography and visual effects. Of the academy’s 43-member board of governors, six are women; public relations executive Cheryl Boone Isaacs is the sole person of color.

And the academy members are…

The full roster of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has never been published. Times reporters confirmed the identities of more than 5,100 Oscar voters — more than 89% of all active voting members — and found that they are:

Source: Times Reporting.
Data analysis by Doug Smith.

Robert Burns, Khang Nguyen Los Angeles Times

“You would think that in this day and age, there would be a little bit more equality across the board, but that’s not the case,” said Nancy Schreiber, one of a handful of women among the cinematography branch’s 206 voting members. “Being a cinematographer should not be gender-based, and it’s ridiculous that it is.”

Academy leaders including President Tom Sherak and Chief Executive Dawn Hudson said they have been trying to diversify the membership but that change is difficult because the film industry is not very diverse, and slow because the academy has been limiting membership growth for the last decade.

“We absolutely recognize that we need to do a better job,” said writer-director Phil Alden Robinson, a longtime academy governor. But “we start off with one hand tied behind our back…. If the industry as a whole is not doing a great job in opening up its ranks, it’s very hard for us to diversify our membership.”

Independent studies of some film crafts show that the academy’s demographics mirror the industry’s. Women make up 19% of the academy’s screenwriting branch, and a 2011 analysis by the Writers Guild of America, West found that women accounted for 17% of film writers employment. The academy’s producers branch is about 18% female, and the directors branch is 9% female, figures comparable to those in a study by San Diego State University’s Martha Lauzen. She examined the 250 top-grossing movies of 2011 and found that women accounted for 25% of all of the films’ producers, and 5% of all their directors.

“Is most of commercial narrative filmmaking the product of mostly white men? Sadly, the answer is yes,” said Alexander Payne, the director and co-writer of best picture nominee “The Descendants” who belongs to the director branch.

In 1996, the Rev. Jesse Jackson organized nationwide protest over the absence of black and minority Oscar nominees. (Frederick M. Brown / AFP / Getty Images)

Age and gender have also prompted questions. Sony Pictures executives said last year that they believed their Facebook film “The Social Network” lost the best picture race to “The King’s Speech” because older Oscar voters didn’t relate to the Internet story. This year, some believe that Stephen Daldry’s 9/11 drama “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” made the best picture shortlist because it appealed to middle-aged men.

“The film is about men trying to be good fathers, sons trying to be good sons,” said Terry Press, a member of the public relations branch who for years has helped mount Oscar campaigns for filmmakers. “It’s about unfulfilled conversations with your father and that’s an extremely middle-aged man thing. It’s like ‘Field of Dreams.’”

African American actress and academy member Alfre Woodard, 59, cited the sexually explicit “Shame,” which got no nominations, as an example of a film whose Oscar hopes may have been doomed by the academy’s demographics. “Maybe if the median age was 45 to 50, a film like ‘Shame’ might show up, which I thought was a brilliantly rendered piece but a subject matter that you don’t expect a certain older demographic would flock to see,” she said.

Woodard, who joined the organization in 1985 and has been active on academy committees, said she often encourages women to apply for membership in the academy, believing the best way to effect change is from within. “It’s like sitting out an election,” she said. “The country is only going toward its ideals when people participate.”

But others have lost patience. Academy member Bill Duke, a black actor and director, said: “The black community sees the academy as an entity that ignores the needs, wants, desires and representation of black directors, producers, actors and writers. Whether it is true or not, that is how it’s perceived ? as an elitist group with no concern or regard for the minority community and industry. And there doesn’t seem to be any desire to change that perception.”

Some academy critics believe the organization, through its membership and Oscar picks, reinforces a lack of diversity on screen and in studio decision-making.

“People of color are always peripheral,” said veteran African American character actor Bernie Casey (“Under Siege”), who said he recently quit the academy because he was disenchanted with its racial makeup. “Asians, Latinos, black people ? you never see them. We are 320 million people in America and about 48 million black people and the same of Latin descent ? but you would not believe that based on what you see in films and television shows.”

This year, several minorities did land nominations in the acting categories: Davis and her fellow cast member from “The Help,” supporting actress nominee Octavia Spencer, and Demi?n Bichir, a Mexican-born performer who starred in “A Better Life.” All of the year’s five nominated directors are white men, and none of the 21 producers of the nine best picture nominees is a person of color.

Were there more Latino academy members, Bichir said, opportunities for Latinos would improve. “That would mean there would be a lot more roles for Latin actors,” the actor said, “and a lot more movies for [Latin] cinematographers.”

Growth and change

The academy was founded in 1927 with two aims: to mediate labor disputes and improve the movie industry’s image. Louis B. Mayer, the legendary head of MGM, initiated the idea and invited an elite cadre of professionals, including actress and United Artists studio co-founder Mary Pickford, director Cecil B. DeMille and producer Irving Thalberg, to join.

The academy’s membership grew steadily over the years as the organization moved away from labor management issues to focus on film preservation, research and the Oscars, first presented in 1929 in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Today, the academy oversees more than $196 million in assets and dispenses more than $20 million in grants and scholarships a year, including to Streetlights, a job training and placement group that works to promote ethnic diversity in Hollywood. It donates $750,000 annually to film festivals around the country and sponsors an annual screenwriting competition that rewards winners with $35,000 fellowships. According to its tax filing for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, the Oscars generated $81.3 million in total revenue for the organization.

The academy grew rapidly between 1990 and 2000, adding close to 800 members. Former executive director Bruce Davis alerted the board to the steep increase and noted there had not been a commensurate growth in the film business. The organization attributed the membership surge to a relaxed attitude toward admission.

India’s Resul Pookutty, who won an Oscar for sound mixing on “Slumdog Millionaire” in 2009, was invited to join the academy a year later. (Indranil Mukherjee / AFP/Getty Images)

“The guilds are a democracy. If you have credits, nobody asks how good you were,” said Davis, the executive director from 1989 to 2011. “But the academy has to be different.”

In response, the organization in 2004 began limiting membership growth to 30 per year, not including those admitted to fill vacancies created by deaths, resignations or retirement. It also clarified and stiffened its policies for admittance. The available slots are allocated among the 15 branches and the academy’s at-large division.

There are three ways to become a candidate for membership: land an Oscar nomination; apply and receive a recommendation from two members of a branch; or earn an endorsement from the branch’s membership committee or the academy staff.

The membership committees then vote on the candidates; those who get a majority are invited to join. The academy says almost everyone accepts the offer.

Actors, for example, now must have three significant credits to be considered for membership, and producers need two solo producing credits or the equivalent. Such criteria benefit people with more experience. “The academy is always going to be slightly older ? if just because you have to have about five years of credits before you’re even considered,” said Joe Letteri, a four-time Oscar winner for visual effects.

In practice, the bar for admittance varies widely from branch to branch. Last year, actress Rooney Mara and visual effects supervisor Tim Burke were among 178 invitees academy wide. Mara had had small roles in “The Social Network” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (she had yet to star in her current Oscar-nominated role in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”). Burke, in contrast, had won an Academy Award a decade earlier for his work on “Gladiator.”

The academy began making public the names of its invitees in 2004, but does not say which ones accept and become members.

The more than 1,000 people invited to join since 2004 include black actors such as Jennifer Hudson, Mo’Nique and Jeffrey Wright. But overall, the group was only slightly more diverse than the academy it was joining ? 89% white and 73% male. Sherak pointed out that in 2011, the invitees were 30% female and 10% nonwhite.

The academy’s overall composition before and after the 2004 policy shift remained close to 93% Caucasian and 76% male, and its median age dropped from 64 to 62.

As part of the 2003 tightening of membership rules, Davis urged that a wider circle of potential invitees be considered. In 2009, he suggested to the sound branch committee that it had overlooked India’s Resul Pookutty, who won an Oscar that year for sound mixing on “Slumdog Millionaire.” Davis admired the technician’s work and was moved by his emotional acceptance speech on Oscar night. (The committee extended the invitation a year later.)

“When I got the letter from them saying they would like to invite me into the academy, I was literally screaming in the studio,” said Pookutty, who flew from Mumbai to Los Angeles to attend the new member luncheon. “It means a great deal. More than the pride of it, I feel that my whole fraternity in India has been recognized and honored.”

Sherak and other academy officials said they’re eager for more applications from women and minorities, and more involvement from those who are already members.

“I’m hoping your story runs and 7,000 phone calls break the lines here,” Sherak said. “We’ve been trying to reach out to the constituency and we’re looking for help. You want to be on a committee? Tell us what committee. If you are sitting waiting for us to find your name in our make-believe book and we are going to call you, we are not going to do that. Come to us, we’ll get you in. We want you in. That would help us a lot.”

john.horn@latimes.com

nicole.sperling@latimes.com

Times staff writers Jasmine Elist, Deborah Vankin, Reed Johnson and Emily Rome contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1924582/news/1924582/

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Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum shakes hands with supporters following a rally, Monday, Feb. 20, 2012, in Muskegon, Mich. (AP Photo/Al Goldis)

PHOENIX (AP) ? Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says he was an outsider while inside Congress, a lawmaker who attacked corruption from within.

The former Pennsylvania senator also told a lunchtime audience in Phoenix that he is not a manager or a visionary, polite put-downs of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

Santorum spoke one week before the Arizona Republican primary, a contest that has been overshadowed by Michigan’s primary on the same day, Feb. 28.

Romney is favored to win in Arizona, where the victor gets all 29 delegates at stake. There has been relatively little television advertising in the state, a sign that his rivals have scant hopes.

Romney, Gingrich, Santorum and Ron Paul are expected to debate Wednesday night in Mesa, their only joint appearance before the two states’ primaries.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-02-21-Santorum/id-9a58e9ef079245d6846646ac81016ea4

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Or maybe it?s time for those old kitchen counters to go.

Perhaps it would be better to add another bedroom than move?

After three years of slumping business, builders anticipate that the home remodeling and improvement sector will pick up in 2012.

?We have been in a downturn and a weak market for a really long time,? said Paul Emrath, a researcher with the National Association of Home Builders. ?But we are starting to edge up to the tipping point.

?The phones are ringing, people are calling and making appointments,? Emrath said recently at the association?s annual meeting in Florida. ?But the next challenge is to turn those over into actual jobs.?

In 2011, U.S. residential remodeling added up to an estimated $279 billion, about the same as in 2010 but down almost 15 percent from 2007.

And new-home starts have fallen more than 70 percent around the country since the market peak in 2005.

?All things considered, remodeling has held up well in this cycle,? said Kermit Baker, a senior fellow at Harvard University?s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

?We think we are going to see better numbers coming out of the industry as we move into the second half of this year and into 2013,? he said.

The National Association of Home Builders is forecasting an almost 9 percent increase in remodeling this year and more than an 11 percent jump nationwide in 2013.

?We are still not going to be back to where we were at the peak,? said NAHB?s Emrath. ?It?s difficult to get financing.

?And a related problem is the decline in house prices?people don?t have as much equity,? he said. ?People may not want to remodel when they are seeing house prices going down.?

Houston, Dallas and Austin are all ranked among the top five home fix-up markets for 2012, according to a new forecast by Remodeling Magazine.

More than half of the home remodeling projects last year cost in excess of $25,000.

And total home remodeling and improvement expenditures now add up to more dollars than new-home construction, according to the builders association.

Remodeling accounts for close to 70 percent of U.S. residential construction expenditures.

The biggest share of home improvement spending, roughly 20 percent, goes for exterior repairs or upgrades. But kitchen and bathroom jobs are a close second at 19 percent of remodeling work.

Some of the glitzy fix-up jobs of years past are on hold, regardless of what they show on home decorating television shows.

?The growth we saw in the industry in the early and middle part of the last decade was driven by a lot of upper-end discretionary projects,? Baker said. ?A lot of that is not going to come back.

?There is a lot of concern out there that the housing market has changed and people are making different decisions.?

Until nationwide home values improve, homeowners will be more conservative with their remodeling, Baker predicts.

If pre-owned home sales pick up, that will help the industry, he said.

?The time of purchase?particularly if you are buying an older home?is the most common time for undertaking a home improvement project,? Baker said.

Previously foreclosed homes needing repairs will benefit remodelers as new owners get those properties in shape, he said.

Lenders are also spending money to improve distressed houses.

Mortgage company Fannie Mae spent more than $600 million fixing up foreclosed properties last year, Baker said.

?We see a lot of potential fixing up these distressed properties to repair them for sale,? he said. ?There are almost 2 million homes nationally that are likely to go into foreclosure sometime soon.

?There are over 2 million homes nationally that are already in the foreclosure process,? he said. ?And there are about 400,000 homes that have come through the foreclosure process and are owned by banks.?

?2012 The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.)
Distributed by MCT Information Services

?

Copyright? 2011 RISMedia, The Leader in Real Estate Information Systems and Real Estate News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be republished without permission from RISMedia.

Source: http://rismedia.com/2012-02-20/home-remodelers-betting-on-a-rebound/

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Scheduled to open in the fall of 2012, the center will include fitness equipment and a quarter-mile exercise track. Also on offer: health assessments, lifestyle coaching and disease-management services.

The 2,200-square-foot health-and-fitness center will be part of a larger LEED-certified, 10,000-square-foot facility that also includes a conference center.

Bill Young, director of compensation, benefits and risk management, calls the center part of the firm?s ?Shwellness? program.

?Like many companies across the country, we recognize that having healthier employees helps us manage our health care costs, improves our productivity and sets Sheetz apart as a great place to work,? he says.

By combining a fitness center with health and wellness services, Young says, the firm can work with employees to lower their risk for heart disease and diabetes.

Contact: Monica Jones of Sheetz, (814) 941-5183.

Source: http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/29146/sheetz-builds-fitness-center-for-employees-and-families

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Very little is actually known in regards to the public?s perceptions of depression within the young. However, American people appear to believe childhood depression is usually a more serious illness than adult depression and in need of formal, even involuntary, treatment. 5 They in addition perceive depressed youngsters as potentially violent, probably as effect of the publicity adjoining the tragic Columbine Graduation events and similar incidents elsewhere. ? This shows plus depression in your young is recognized as a serious Illness but additionally that it however carries considerable stigma (at the. g., sufferers are perceived as weak, potentially dangerous). By contrast, evidence indicates that depression from the young is frequently not detected and also treated. Of the adolescents who had consulted a physician, all had i went to counseling services, and almost just about all had used mind health services. Only 3% possessed taken antidepressant relief medication. This situation could be improving because with education campaigns targeting health professionals and the local community at large. There are suggestions that depression is starting to become more common together with successive generations and presenting in the younger age. 5 It is also likely that most people who ever put up with depression will have experienced their earliest episode before 20 years of age. Childhood depression can be therefore too common to be the exclusive area of specialist services. Just as principal care physicians deal with many adults with mild to average depressive illness, they may increasingly provide a similar service for you to children and adolescents; to do so will require gaining knowledge and skills during this area.

Major depression is a episodic or serious disorder characterized simply by persistent and pervasive unhappiness or unhappiness. loss of entertainment of everyday activities, irritability, boredom, and associated symptoms for instance negative thinking, lack of vitality, difficulty concentrating, and appetite and sleep disturbance. To have a despression symptoms, the individual?s functioning also needs to be impaired. Depression exists in the continuum, although manifestations are different according to time, gender, and cultural history. The various subtypes are identified around the basis of indicator severity, pervasiveness, practical impairment, or the presence or absence regarding manic symptoms.

Referrals:
Bipolar Test
Personality Disorder Test

Source: http://www.pnwhi.com/challenging-syndrome

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The Very Best Customer Service Tips for Twitter

Twitter is a great place to start and build relationships. This is especially true for those businesses and online ventures that are hoping to find a way to connect better with their buyers and shoppers. When you have a business that sells things online it is in your best interest to offer your customer service through Twitter. There is so much that you can offer to your customers when you stay in touch with them on Twitter. You?ll make it easier for them to send you a query and get a timely response. Even though you have other ways to serve your customers, it?s not a good idea to ignore social media. Here are three simple ideas that you can use to make your customer service better with Twitter. Win Spy Software

You need to offer your customers more than one way to get in touch with you. For instance, when your customer urgently needs a solution to their problems, they should be able to reach you on the phone. This is the reason that you need to put your phone number in your Twitter bio alongside your email. This might not seem all that important to you but it really does make a big difference. Not every person is going to try to visit your site to find your contact information. So when you make their lives easier, even a little bit, you?ll see a much better result. It won?t take long for your Twitter customers to show you how much they appreciate this. Flirt Mastery

Here are there, you will receive some nonconstructive feedback, despite whatever items you may be selling online. On the contrary, when you receive it, you should use Twitter for dealing with the negative exposure you have received. Unpleasant circumstances can be helped and improved, by having chats on Twitter. It will benefit you, by allowing you to make a better impression for whatever may be going on. Getting negative comments does not have to be so bad; interacting with your customers will help you immensely. It lets you take back your loyal customers, by simply collaborating with them via Twitter. So it is just about using social media for the best results with customer service. RegistryFix

Make sure you take messages from your customers on Twitter seriously. Even a brief tweet from a customer must be treated as an essential matter. If someone takes the time to contact you with an issue, it?s obviously important to them. All problems and questions should be resolved as promptly as possible. On the other hand, you won?t be able to solve every problem instantly, so don?t make unrealistic demands on yourself. So do your best to reassure customers, but don?t go crazy trying to do everything at once.

Providing superior customer service to your customers should not be ignored. You can make your job simpler, when you leverage Twitter and other social sites, plus you can please your customers. You become easier to approach, if you are on Twitter. It makes your customers feel like they are a part of your business. By giving timely service to your customers, you end up making a good impression and earn more business from them. So, if you want to improve your customer service and get more excellent responses, move forward and take advantage of Twitter.

Source: http://yotube1.info/?p=2918

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The original Optimus LTE caught our eye with its 4.5-inch AH-IPS display, but now LG is throwing something different into the mix: a lower-specced version that does away with that lovely 326ppi display and then attempts to make up for it with the addition of NFC. This lets the handset communicate with “special stickers” that automatically switch its settings to suit a particular location. Put a sticker on your dash and you can set it to switch on the handset’s Bluetooth and GPS, for example, as well as boost the volume. It’s hardly a new concept, but LG’s marketing mavens reckon it merits a full relaunch in Korea under the name “Optimus LTE Tag,” and who are we to tell them otherwise? Read on the full specs in the PR.

Continue reading LG’s Optimus LTE gets NFC variant, wants to be known as Optimus LTE Tag

LG’s Optimus LTE gets NFC variant, wants to be known as Optimus LTE Tag originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/20/lgs-optimus-lte-gets-nfc-variant/

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Brainworks Sensory Diet Creator For Autism And Spd
Brainworks Is The Premier Sensory Diet Creation Tool. Sensory Diets Are Designed Primarily For Those With Autism And Other Sensory Processing Disorders.

Children And Divorce.
Smart Divorce Outlines A Step-by-step Holistic Approach On How To Help Your Children Not To Just Survive, But Thrive!

Social Media Awareness For College Kids
Focused At Ensuring That Parent Can Monitor And Correct Their Kids Social Media Profiles Before College Admissions Officers Reject Them.

Ten Steps To Parent Involvement
Successful Strategies Done At Home That Will Assist Parents With Educating Thier Children.

Source: http://adventuresinthebellfamily.blogspot.com/2012/02/parenting-families-great-products-16.html

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What’s the world coming to when a man can’t partake in a crack-fueled, clothing-free shopping spree without the police being called? It’s tyranny, I tell you, tyranny. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/iBKce9j5wGo/walmart-security-cameras-catch-chunky-naked-guy-stealing-socks

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