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When We Waste Food We Waste Love

Image a little small piglet. Or a lamb. Or a cute chick or a rabbit. Imagine looking those animals straight in their eyes and telling them that they will grow up with a sole purpose of being slaughtered and tossed in the trash. What a terrible waste of lives.

Unfortunately, this is happening every day across the globe.

According to UN FAO, 20% of the annual global meat production is either lost or wasted - this is equivalent to 75 million cows.

Respect for food
Food waste is not only that piece of uneaten hamburger on your plate. It's also gigantic a waste of resources behind the scenes, when you really take a look at your hamburger and see its story unfold: Animal lives, land, farmer's work, fertilizers, animal feed, water, gas, energy, transportation, packaging, storing. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 51% of annual worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture.

And all of that - and much more - is going to waste when we waste food.

Now, I don't want to sound like a hippie, but in the world of escalating climate change, political instability, shootings, conflicts and repetitive terror attacks all over the world, we really need to talk about something positive. We need to talk about love. Yes, love.

Because when we waste food we waste love.

This year I have participated in 11 panel debates at the Danish political festival Folkemødet. Among the participants were the Landbokvinder - the Farmers Wives Association. They love growing food. When they and their families grow their own food in their farms, they would never waste it. To them, food must be treated with respect.

To the Farmers Wives, respect for food is self-evident, since they have helped growning the animals and the crops, which later becomes food. All that huge work is not to be wasted - a waste of food is the lack of respect for the food and the lack of respect for oneself - it corresponds to denigrate one's own work.

I am not lobbying for all of you to become farmers. Neither am I implying that all farmers are growing their food with love.

But the Farmers Wives's message is simple: Treat the food with respect, treat the food with love.

Any perhaps many of us would treat food with more respect and love, if we can become aware of the gigantic journey of the food getting from farm to our plates.

When your loved one has prepared a delicious home-cooked meal for you, that is a declaration of love. When you have grown your food in your garden with care and efforts, that is love. You don't waste love.

What can be measured can be managed
In my most recent TEDx Talk, I address many food waste traps, which we encounter on our journey from the trip to the supermarket to the depths of our fridge. Fortunately, people are becoming more aware of how not to feed their garbage bins.

The progress in the fight against food waste is now seen almost all over the world.

Lately, the global Food Loss & Waste Protocol measurement standard, created by many international parties, myself included, was launched at the Global Green Growth Forum 3GF in Copenhagen. What can be measured can be managed - especially if we are to achieve the new UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 (By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses).

Become a Stop Wasting Food activist
A couple of days ago, The Guardian proclaimed Denmark becoming a leader in the food waste revolution. Not only because Denmark has achieved a national food waste reduction by 25% in 5 years, but because we are the country in the world with the fastest growing amount of food waste prevention and reduction initiatives. To put it simply, we Danes started to hate wasting food. And because perhaps we Danes started to treat the food with more love and respect.

We can all become Stop Wasting Food activists, no mater the race, color, nationality, religion, country, sexual or political orientation. All you need to do is start caring for your food. Caring where it's come from - and caring where it ends - and stop wasting it.

The solution is not to move out to the country and grow our own food. No, the solution lies in a change of mindset: Food is love. You don't throw love away.

When we live with care and respect for our food - and our other consumer goods as well - we will create a positive effect on our society, the resources and ultimately the nature - where all the resources come from.

Quite simply, it is about treating the nature and our planet, that gives us so much, with love and respect - and not throwing the love away.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Third Class of Fulbright-National Geographic Fellows Named

By Farley Fitzgerald, National Geographic Society

The National Geographic Society and the U.S. Department of State today announced the names of the five candidates selected for the third class of the Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship. The Fellowship provides a unique platform for U.S. Fulbright awardees to build awareness of transnational challenges, comparing and contrasting cross-border issues. Their stories will be shared on National Geographic digital platforms using a variety of digital storytelling tools, including text, photography, video, audio, graphic illustrations and/or social media.

Over a nine-month period, the five storytellers will create stories on globally significant social or environmental topics, including cultures, wildlife and food. They are:

Christiana Botic, a Serbian-American photographer and filmmaker who will document the impact of mass migration of refugees on the cultural landscapes of Serbia and Croatia.

Lauren Ladov, a garden educator who will share stories about those striving to create sustainable, community-centered food systems in India and produce education materials for a gardening curriculum.

Tim McDonnell, a New York City-based digital multimedia journalist who will document how a changing climate is compounding longstanding problems with food insecurity and rural poverty in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda.

Kevin McLean, an ecologist, conservationist and National Geographic Young Explorer who will use motion-sensitive cameras (camera traps) to report on rainforest canopy wildlife in two of the most biodiverse areas of the world: Amazonian Ecuador and Malaysian Borneo.

Ishan Thakore, a multimedia storyteller, journalist and global health researcher who will create a series of short films to portray a nuanced portrait of the human benefits as well as the human costs of large-scale development in South Africa and Nicaragua.

Finalists were selected by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board following recommendations by National Geographic Society editorial experts. Fulbright-National Geographic Storytellers receive funding for travel, living expenses and health/accident coverage as well as a reporting and materials allowance from the U.S. Department of State. National Geographic organizes a pre-departure training, and staff mentor the Storytellers, helping them tell their stories to a wider global audience.

“We are thrilled to partner with the U.S. Department of State for the third class of the Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship,” said Keith Jenkins, general manager of digital for the National Geographic Society. “This platform is exactly in line with our belief in the power of science, exploration and storytelling to change the world. Our team is excited to work closely with the five Storytellers on their projects throughout the coming year.”

For more information and details on applying for the Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship, visit http://us.fulbrightonline.org/fulbright-nat-geo-fellowship.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Fulbright Program. Established by Congress in 1946, the educational exchange program is designed to increase mutual understanding between people of the United States and people of other countries. The Fulbright Program annually supports more than 8,000 students, scholars, artists and professionals from the United States and more than 160 countries to study, teach, conduct research, exchange ideas and find solutions to shared international challenges.

For media inquiries about the 2016/2017 Fulbright-National Geographic Fellows, please contact:

Farley Fitzgerald, National Geographic Society
(202) 775-6119
ffitzgerald@ngs.org

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Mental Illness, Violence, And Family Homicides
The topic of mental illness and violence is complicated enough in its own right, but also gets badly distorted by the misleading propaganda generated by the shameless National Rifle Association. The NRA attempts to distract attention from its role in gun murders by unfairly blaming the mentally ill. Their story line is that when murderers kill, it's not because guns are so readily available in the general population (courtesy of the NRA and the gun industry that supports it); but rather it's because all the shooters must have been crazy. But here's the hypocrisy. Only after the murder does the NRA claim the the murderer was crazy, whereas before the murder, the NRA would have fought to the death to allow him all the weaponry money can buy.

This is trying to have it both ways. The NRA argues that it is sane societal policy to have everyone armed with guns, at all times and in all places. Then it blames the tragedies that inevitably occur on the insanity of the individuals, not on the societal craziness and greed that has promoted the ubiquity of the guns.

This is nonsense. The vast majority of the mentally ill are not violent and the vast majority of violent acts are not committed by the mentally ill. Mass murders are a US specialty not because we have more crazy people per capita than other countries (we don't), but because we have the world's craziest policy allowing the accumulation of guns.

But we should not be naively politically correct in the other direction- and act as if untreated mental illness isn't a risk factor for violence. It is, and family members are often the victims.
Fuller Torrey has compiled statistics to put this issue into perspective. Dr. Torrey is founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national nonprofit dedicated to eliminating barriers to timely and effective treatment of serious mental illness.

Dr. Torrey writes:

"This is the first study of the role of serious mental illness in all family homicides.

There are approximately 4,000 family homicides in the United States each year. Individuals with serious mental illness are responsible for 29% of these, or approximately 1,150 homicides. This is 7% of all homicides in the U.S.

The role of serious mental illness varies depending on the family relationships. Approximately 67% of children who kill their parents are seriously mentally ill, but only 10% of spouses who kill their spouses,

Although total homicides have decreased markedly in the US in recent years, there has been no decrease in the number of children killing parents or parents killing children, the two types of family homicides most closely associated with serious mental illness.

Women are responsible for 11% of all homicides in the US but 26% of family homicides.
Elderly family members, especially women, are disproportionately victimized. Among all homicides in the US, only 2.2% of victims are ages 75 and older. In a sample of 2015 family homicides, 9.2% of the victims were age 75 and older.

Guns are used as the weapon in less than half of family homicides.

The failure of individuals with serious mental illness to take their medication and their abuse of alcohol and drugs are risk factors for family homicides. The majority of family homicides are preceded by warnings and threats that are often ignored. The adequate treatment of individuals with serious mental illness would prevent the majority of family homicides associated with serious mental illness."

Thanks, Dr. Torrey. The full study is available here.

There is nothing more terrifying than living with the constant worry that your family member will harm you- particularly if there is no treatment available for him/her or if he/she refuses whatever treatment is available.

Family violence is the canary in the coal mine of our neglect of the severely ill- just the most extreme manifestation of the many forms of suffering we inflict on them and their families by failing to provide adequate housing, treatment, and social services.

I have observed first hand the mental health systems for, and the housing of, the mentally ill in most of the developed countries in the world and have concluded that the US today is perhaps the worst place and worst time to be mentally ill.

The defunding and privatization of services has led to 350,000 mentally ill inappropriately imprisoned, 250,000 homeless, and to the tragedies of family violence reported here.

There are two necessary solutions. First, and uncontroversial, is better housing and access to treatment. Our country has badly neglected the severely ill- and we, they, and their families are paying the price. Legislation now before Congress may finally help to reform our mental health nonsystem.

Second, and more controversial, is the need for involuntary treatment for those most obviously in need of treatment and most unwilling to participate in it. For a common sense approach that attempts to balance the two crucial values of civil rights and safety, see 'When Is It Justified to Force Treatment on Someone.'

We mustn't blame our uniquely US gun violence problem on the mentally ill. Most are decent, well behaved people who do no harm. If we want to reduce gun violence, we have to tighten ridiculously loose gun laws.

But we also must not neglect the need to treat mental illness when it is a clear risk factor for violence.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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r0B0t: Why a Key Scene in Mr. Robot Is Scored With Music From the 1974 Thriller The Parallax View

In “Unmask,” the second-season premiere of Mr. Robot, Elliot (Rami Malek) is keeping a tenuous grip on sanity, but he's menaced by intrusive thoughts. His nonexistent alter ego (Christian Slater) keeps turning up uninvited, visiting violence upon Elliot or those who threaten him, so much that it becomes routine. After Mr. Robot blows Elliot's brains out with a handgun, Elliot nonchalantly scribbles in his journal, “He shot me in the head again.”

Mr. Robot, as a show, has porous boundaries, whether it's soaking in current events or regurgitating half-digested chunks of Fight Club. But in “Unmask,” the show latched onto a particularly inspired reference point. As the literally shadowy figures who control the nation's banks addressed Philip Price (Michael Crisfoter), the CEO of the malevolent E Corp, to explain why the country couldn't bail out his beleaguered conglomerate, the only background noise was the faint hum of inside-the-Beltway air conditioning. But as Price rose to his feet, turning the tables on his would-be masters, a musical theme rose to buoy his words: Michael Small's score from the 1974 thriller The Parallax View.

The Parallax View, which was directed by Alan J. Pakula, stars Warren Beatty as a reporter who unearths evidence of a massive conspiracy to assassinate political figures, the work of the sinister Parallax Corporation. It's part of a wave of similarly paranoid thrillers that swept through movie theaters in the 1970s in response to post-1968 disillusionment and the bonafide conspiracy of Watergate: Pakula's All the President's Men, Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation, Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor, and many more. The influence of the genre in general and The Parallax View in particular on Mr. Robot has been noted many times, but this explicit homage—which Vulture's Matt Zoller Seitz was one of few critics to point out in advance — takes us into a different realm, one where those past movies go from reference points to source material. It's as if they're trying to break through the surface of Mr. Robot, as if the show is being hacked as we're watching it.

In substance, Price's speech is hardly groundbreaking stuff, although it's presented with the pomp and circumstance of a major revelation, recalling New York Times' critic James Poniewozik's deadly observation that watching Mr. Robot can be “like being cornered at a party by a guy who was blown away by this Intercept article he read.” It's staged like a key monologue in 1976's Network, the one where TV network head Ned Beatty explains to would-be revolutionary Howard Beale that “the world is a business.” Price's explanation of how the stock market and the economy work—and why the government has to give his company yet another bailout—is similarly entry-level. “Every day when that market bell rings, we con people into believing in something,” he says. “The American Dream. Family values. Could be Freedom Fries for all I care. It doesn't matter as long as the con works and people buy and sell whatever it is we want them to. If I resign, then any scrap of confidence the public is already clinging on to will be destroyed. And we all know a con doesn't work without the confidence.”

The writing here is Mr. Robot at its worst, regurgitating Econ 101 lessons as if they're closely guarded secrets. (The idea that stocks rise and fall with investor confidence is pretty much a definition of how the market functions.) But Cristofer—who, incidentally, is also a Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright —gives it all he's got, biting down on the “con” in “confidence” like it's his last meal. There's a deliberate unnaturalness to his performance, which, coupled with the creeping dread of that borrowed score, throws the whole scene productively off-kilter, making us doubt our eyes as much as Elliot does his.

In the lead-up to the second season, USA has been at pains to stress Mr. Robot's topical relevance, producing an hour-long special stressing the show's realistic depiction of computer hacking techniques and describing the series, somewhat optimistically, as “a cultural phenomenon.” But like the 1970s movies it draws on, the show is far more powerful as a psychological study of madness and obsession than as a pseudo-profound tract with Something Important to Say About Society.

What makes The Parallax View powerful isn't it the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan were both part of some ominous plot, but the way Beatty plays a man who sounds crazier the closer he gets to the truth, and the way Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis frame the world in ever-more extreme and alienating ways. It forces us to see things as he does, to take on that feeling of madness. That's what Mr. Robot does best, thanks especially to Rami Malek's captivatingly unnerving performance as Elliot. In Season 2, we're moving outside of Elliot's head, seeing the world as it is and not as he imagines it. (In the first episode, we hear E Corp referred to by its real name, and not “Evil Corp,” Elliot's preferred moniker.) But that's a dangerous place for it to go, since Mr. Robot's version of the real world is a lot less interesting than Elliot's delusion.

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r0B0t: The Angle: His Many Friends Edition

Reports on Thursday that Donald Trump may be picking Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate led Mark Joseph Stern to reflect that Pence may be just the ticket: “Pence is a fatuous yes-man, a milquetoast mook with no strong convictions other than a desire to win and be popular,” Stern writes. “He will faithfully follow Trump's whims and commands.”

Meanwhile, Reihan Salam calls Pence a “drearily conventional figure,” and Jim Newell wonders whether Pence can even survive the mind-bending rigors of being Trump's running mate: “Pence has had his disagreements with Trump throughout the campaign, and if he is indeed VP he may struggle to keep up with Trump's relentless bullshit.”

Dahlia Lithwick looks at Ruth Bader Ginsburg's recent attacks on Trump and wonders whether longtime Ginsburg fans are right to cheer her candor. “She may be trying to speak on behalf of the judicial branch itself, a branch that has been almost completely silent in the face of six brutal months of attacks from the right,” Lithwick writes, trying to suss out RBG's reasoning. “In one sense, by speaking up for a judicial branch that has absorbed one body blow after another in recent months, she did nothing but level the playing field.”

Watching the Facebook Live video Diamond Reynolds made after the shooting of Philando Castile last week, John Kelly notes how Reynolds used politeness as “a powerful tool for dignity and subversion.” Reynolds, Kelly writes in a meditation on her repeated use of “sir,” “transforms a title of respect into a refusal to accept brutality, a performance of transcendent dignity, and a disruption of the status quo.”

Willa Paskin surveys this year's Emmy nominations and finds them full of “good taste and blind spots.” Hooray: Mr. Robot for best drama; Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch for Best Actor in a Comedy; many nods for The People v. O.J. Simpson. Boo: No Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? No Jane the Virgin?

For fun: When did you first fall in love with breakout Ghostbuster Kate McKinnon?

Tiny oomails,

Rebecca

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r0B0t: The Emmys Have an Impressive Knack for Being Stodgy and Trailblazing at the Same Time

The Emmys have become a good test for whether you are a glass half-full or a glass half-empty kind of person. With so much television available these days, there is, depending on your perspective, more great stuff than ever for the Emmys to choose from, or more great stuff than ever for the Emmys to ignore. This year's nominations, announced earlier today, abounded with good taste and blind spots. After years of being ignored, The Americans was finally nominated for Best Drama, and its canoodling lead actors, Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, the 'ship to end all 'ships, received best actor nods. And yet the Emmys did not bounce aging snoozes like Downton Abbey, Homeland, or House of Cards in order to make room for The Americans, but rather the much more vital, if still aging, Orange is the New Black, whose cast was also nearly shut out in the supporting categories. Not everything can be nominated and yet—why can't everything good be nominated?

When it comes to the Emmys I have been, for years, a glass half-full kind of person, and this year's nominations seem to me almost brimming. Joining The Americans as a first time Best Drama contender is the incisive Mr. Robot, whose star Rami Malek adds some fizz to the Best Actor in a Drama category. Thomas Middleditch, who is great as the nervous twitchball at the center of Silicon Valley, was nominated in a Best Actor in a Comedy category that couldn't be better, except for the inclusion of William H. Macy, the most annoying thing about Shameless. Black-ish's Tracee Ellis Ross, UnReal's Constance Zimmer, RuPaul, Laurie Metcalf, Beyonce the Director, and everyone involved with The People v. O.J. Simpson were all rightly recognized, Metcalf three times. I even think that the Emmy voters showed good taste in ignoring the well-done but plodding Show Me a Hero, the brutal Horace and Pete, and Hulu's troubled-in-Silverlake comedy Casual. (Troubled-in-Silverlake comedy You're the Worst deserved some love though.)

It is true that for all these good choices, the Emmys ignored the CW's deserving Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin, whose inimitable narrator was at least nominated in the Best Narrator category. It is also true that Broad City wasn't even in the Emmy conversation. But this is what happens, a little give, a little take; no nomination for Colbert, but none for The Daily Show either. In fact, I feel calm, cool, and collected about almost all of the nominees (Sam Bee, it's your year next year!), except when I realize that Sophie Turner, the best young actress on Game of Thrones by a dragon's length, was not nominated, yet Lena Headey, Maisie Williams, and Emilia Clarke were. God damn you, Emmys!

The Emmys still has vestigial fuddy-duddy taste. It holds on to stodgy favorites like Modern Family, House of Cards, Downton Abbey, and Homeland even as it bounces edgier former-favorites like Orange, Girls, and American Horror Story. (I don't think The Good Wife is stodgy, but it got bounced this year too; so did Jim Parsons.) If I had to guess, I would wager that there is a core group of Emmy voters who like what they like no matter what is cool—PBS costume dramas, big-tent network comedies, apparently Bloodline—and a core group of voters who is sampling more widely, watching TV under the influence of cool, without being slaves to it. I'm sure these groups have overlapping taste, but this dynamic would explain both the Emmy's loyalty and its daring, and should give hope to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: if you can become the Tatiana Maslany or The Americans of the future—i.e. the thing people point to when discussing the Emmys idiocy—you have a pretty good chance of one day getting an Emmy.

The Emmys make an interesting counterpoint to the Motion Picture Academy, which has lately been embroiled in a controversy about how old and white it is, and thus, how staid in its taste. For a few years now, the Emmys have been much fleeter of foot, slowly but surely moving away from reflexively nominating bland network fare to nominating that which is vibrant, excellent and, often, diverse—alongside some bland not-necessarily network fare. There is no surefire “Emmy bait,” except that which has the feel of a phenomenon (Making a Murderer, Game of Thrones, The People v. O.J. Simpson) and as long as this is true, every Emmy nomination day should be as nicely eclectic as this one.

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r0B0t: This Year's Emmy Noms Prove Why It's Great That Emmys Have Replaced Ratings as the Industry's Standard-Bearer

In an essay yesterday for the Los Angeles Times, Mary McNamara argued that the Emmy Awards have essentially replaced ratings—what with the splintering of outlets and audiences—as the standard bearer of industry success. Indeed, the Emmys have defined the programming strategies of upstarts like Netflix and Amazon, and they've reformed cable and broadcast networks alike.

This morning's Emmy nominations announcement affirmed this new Emmy-centric business model. USA Network received its first-ever Outstanding Drama Series nomination for its cyberpunk polemic Mr. Robot; Lifetime, formerly (and still largely) a purveyor of fluffy fare not taken seriously by awards-givers, netted a pair of major nominations for its flagship prestige drama UnREAL; and both Netflix and Amazon continued to build on their success with their distinct new half-hour series—Master of None and Catastrophe, respectively—also cracking the field. Even FX's decision to stick with low-rated critical darling The Americans paid off immensely, as its fourth season was slotted into Outstanding Drama Series and netted recognition for both of its lead actors.

The Television Academy is a voting body that, rather notoriously, tends to be averse to change. But the rapidly shifting shape of television is forcing an evolution in what, and who, is being recognized. The Limited Series/TV Movie categories are dominated this year by The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, FX's historical depiction that pays special attention to the complex racial and gender dynamics of the “trial of the century”; other major players include American Crime, John Ridley's provocative tapestry of intolerance in contemporary American life, and Roots, the urgent update on the classic 1977 miniseries. Over on the half-hour side, five of the seven nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series—Transparent, Black-ish, Veep,Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Master of None—center on either women, LGBTQ people or people of color.

In some ways, the story is the same: Game of Thrones only built on its control over the drama field with first-time nominations for Kit Harington and Maisie Williams, and it was once again joined in the top category by past-their-prime veterans Homeland, House of Cards, and the concluded Downton Abbey. And Veep is on top again among comedies. But of more pressing interest is the new crop of series and voices introduced to the ceremony—the future of the Emmys.

Considering the eligible new drama series, voters could have easily gone for HBO's Vinyl (which was abruptly canceled near the end of the voting period) or Showtime's Billions to replace the departed Mad Men (and snubbed Orange Is the New Black). Both represent quality cable television as it's been traditionally defined: anchored by an antihero, exceedingly dark in tone, and of a masculinized aesthetic. Their omissions are especially stark in comparison to the multi-nominated Mr. Robot and UnREAL, whose radical thematic underpinnings—a trippy call for revolution and redistribution in the former's case; a boldly feminist rewiring of tired TV tropes in the latter's—reflect the medium's turn toward a narrower commercial focus and broader artistic license.

Such heightened political aspirations speak volumes about what distributors are looking for in the new media market. American Crime, which this season advocated forthrightly for victims of sexual assault and LGBTQ bullying, was recognized for a second straight year in the Outstanding Limited Series category, and—despite low ratings—is beginning production on a third season set in North Carolina. After a single major nomination last year, ABC's Black-ish fit into Outstanding Comedy Series for its sophomore year on the strength of its powerful, issue-centric episodes, which tackled the use of the N-word and police brutality, among other prescient topics. It also bears noting that a season of television steeped in queer theory and intra-feminist discourse—that'd be Transparent's second season—is among the most cited series this year, with 10 nominations.

But no nominee shows this more clearly than Aziz Ansari. As the campaign season was ramping up, he told the Hollywood Reporter that he'd been initially sure that no network would give him "a show like Master of None. It definitely would have gone to some white guy.” Of course, Netflix—the original pioneer of this new specific programming strategy—did just that. And now, as a Best Comedy Actor nominee, he's the first South-Asian person ever to be nominated for a lead acting Emmy. (In fact, he received four nominations—for acting, writing, directing, and producing Master of None—this year alone.) You can bet that his success, along with that of many others this morning, will continue pushing outlets toward more Emmys—and more voices.

Below is a list of the nominations.

Outstanding Drama Series
The Americans
Better Call Saul
Downton Abbey
Game of Thrones
Homeland
House of Cards
Mr. Robot

Outstanding Comedy Series
Black-ish
Master of None
Modern Family
Silicon Valley
Transparent
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Veep

Outstanding Limited Series
American Crime
Fargo
The Night Manager
The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
Roots

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
Claire Danes, Homeland
Viola Davis, How to Get Away With Murder
Taraji P. Henson, Empire
Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black
Keri Russell, The Americans
Robin Wright, House of Cards

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Kyle Chandler, Bloodline
Rami Malek, Mr. Robot
Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul
Matthew Rhys, The Americans
Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan
Kevin Spacey, House of Cards

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Ellie Kemper, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Laurie Metcalf, Getting On
Tracee Ellis Ross, Black-ish
Amy Schumer, Inside Amy Schumer
Lily Tomlin, Grace and Frankie

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Anthony Anderson, Black-ish
Aziz Ansari, Master of None
Will Forte, Last Man on Earth
William H. Macy, Shameless
Thomas Middleditch, Silicon Valley
Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie
Bryan Cranston, All the Way
Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock: The Abominable Bride
Idris Elba, Luther
Cuba Gooding Jr., People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
Tom Hiddleston, The Night Manager
Courtney B. Vance, People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series of Movie
Kirsten Dunst, Fargo
Felicity Huffman, American Crime
Audra McDonald, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill
Sarah Paulson, People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
Lili Taylor, American Crime
Kerry Washington, Confirmation

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Jonathan Banks, Better Call Saul
Ben Mendelsohn, Bloodline
Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones
Kit Harington, Game of Thrones
Michael Kelly, House of Cards
Jon Voight, Ray Donovan

Outstanding Supporting Actress—Drama Series
Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey
Maisie Williams, Game of Thrones
Lena Headey, Game of Thrones
Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones
Maura Tierney, The Affair
Constance Zimmer, UnREAL

Outstanding Supporting Actor—Comedy Series
Louie Anderson, Baskets
Andre Braugher, Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Keegan-Michael Key, Key & Peele
Ty Burrell, Modern Family
Tituss Burgess, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Matt Walsh, Veep
Tony Hale, Veep

Outstanding Supporting Actress—Comedy Series
Niecy Nash, Getting On
Allison Janney, Mom
Kate McKinnon, Saturday Night Live
Gaby Hoffmann, Transparent
Judith Light, Transparent
Anna Chlumsky, Veep

Outstanding Supporting Actor—Limited Series of Movie
Jesse Plemons, Fargo
Bokeem Woodbine, Fargo
Hugh Laurie, The Night Manager
John Travolta, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
Sterling K. Brown, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
David Schwimmer, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story

Outstanding Supporting Actress—Limited Series or Movie
Melissa Leo, All the Way
Regina King, American Crime
Sarah Paulson, American Horror Story: Hotel
Kathy Bates, Iris
Jean Smart, Fargo
Olivia Colman, The Night Manager

Outstanding TV Movie
A Very Murray Christmas
All the Way
Confirmation
Luther
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride

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Opportunities and Barriers for Food Waste Reduction
According to recent studies by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, the value of our wasted food at the retail and consumer levels is $160 billion dollars per year. On a caloric basis, this amounts to 1250 calories per person - 61% as much as we actually eat!

Food waste may be "slop" to most Huffington Post readers, but to an environmental engineer, it is a vast opportunity. Getting there however, is a challenge. The first course of action should be to reduce food waste at the "upstream end" as much as possible. In the U.S., most of our food waste occurs at the retail level (grocery stores) and consumer level (restaurants and homes). For grocery stores and restaurants - industries with very low profit margins - reducing food losses could translate into substantial gains in profit, by not purchasing foods that are not sold or eaten. Personally, as empty nesters, my wife and I eagerly await the availability of half-loaves of bread!

On the "downstream side", after food is discarded, there are additional opportunities. A modest number of cities are now turning toward collection of food wastes, which is then mostly composted. As a gardener, I appreciate that, but if we really start recycling food waste in a large scale, we'll need to look for the highest and best use of various types of food wastes in specific contexts. For example, in our "Waste Not" initiative at the University of Minnesota, my swine nutritionist colleagues have learned that food waste from homes, grocery stores, and dining halls is highly nutritious - for swine, at least. Dried, sterilized feedstocks developed from food waste would be competitive in price with conventional feedstocks like corn and soybean meal. Food waste-derived feedstocks would not be used alone, but blended with other ingredients to create nutritionally optimal animal feeds. We've also used food wastes to create valuable oils and gases that could be used for fuels or raw materials for the chemical industry. Many European cities and a few in the U.S. have built large "anaerobic digesters" to convert food waste to methane gas, which is used as fuel.

As we enter a transition period to close the loop on food waste, many silver bullets will be promoted, but few will succeed. Yes, we can convert food wastes to swine feedstock, but can it be produced economically? Will swine producers accept it? These types of questions need to be answered for each promising food waste conversion process. To do this, we need a vigorous, national research program to provide unbiased results. My sense is that no one technology will prevail; instead a suite of conversion technologies will emerge, each suitable for specific situations.

We also face social barriers in this transition. Many cities now have disorganized waste collection, in which every household selects its own waste hauler (an outcome of the "private sector always does it better" mentality of the 1980s), yet this makes it nearly impossible to segregate and collect food wastes separately. Many folks also resist in-home composting, even where cities do offer separate food waste collection. These and other social and policy questions need to be addressed. Technology alone will not provide the solution.

I predict that most cities will transition to reducing and recycling food waste over the next two decades. It just makes good sense from both an economic and environmental perspective. Our children will cringe at the idea of dumping food waste into landfills (did you really did do that?!), as older adults now cringe when we recall the practice of open dumps that often caught fire, spewing pollution, just 50 years ago. How disgusting!

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More Screeching

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Several weeks back I wrote about the three baby Screech Owls my wife and I raised and released in our yard, "overflow" from the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA's Wildlife Rehab Program (it is apparently the Year of the Raptor here in the San Francisco Bay Area!). Overused expression that it is, this was truly a most magical experience.

In that piece, bemoaning while also celebrating the fact that these wild animals were now truly wild, I wrote: "...the only evidence of their successful return to nature is the lack of evidence. Despite our worrying about them, that will just have to do."

How happy I am that I was, at least in part, wrong. Yes, they are wild but they are not gone.

The photo above is of the fourth Screech who joined us, a lone baby raised at PHS/SPCA who came to our home aviary (like the three before her) to more fully develop her wings and get ready for final release. Every night of her stay we'd peek out a back window to watch her swoop down and fetch her meal of frozen mice and mealworms, and then fly up to the highest post in the aviary to eat while perched just below one, two or three (depending on the night, and our luck of timing) of the original Screeches who also returned to dine atop the aviary.

Two nights ago, when the moon was at a neat half and the skies very clear, we placed food once again on top and opened the aviary's double doors. We then retreated, quietly as we could, to chairs in the yard. Slowly one, then another, and finally all three of the original group returned. For the first time since they came home we heard their voices, calling I suppose to the fourth Owl who shifted about and then suddenly took flight.

Her first flight out of an enclosure was awkward and she landed just a few feet from our chairs. We held our breath and stared in delight and wonder as she sat, maybe a minute, maybe two, and then just lifted into the air (and it is that: a silent lift more than a launch) to join the others.

There was just enough light for us to enjoy the next half hour as each of the four flew to perches often quite literally a few feet above our heads, then off to invisible corners, and then back again. It was an amazing evening. And last night, at just after 9, the four returned in shifts to repeat the performance.

I am so looking forward to tonight!

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r0B0t: Researchers Create Robot Skeleton With Human-Like Muscles

In the hunt to create the ultimate cyborg researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have unveiled a robot which uses human-like muscles to move.

The robot has been, rather worryingly, built over a human skeleton and shows a network of microfilament muscle “tissues” which are able to accurately able to mimic human movements.

What makes them really scary is that the researchers have created the muscles as an almost exact replica of our own muscle groups, allowing them to contract and expand just as you would your own limbs.

The team even went so far as to try and mimic the muscle groups in the jaw, which they did to worrying effect:

Ok so this robot isn't going to be winning any 100m contests anytime soon, but what it does show is that we both have the technology and understanding to use our own biology to shape the future of robotics, and in particular humanoid robots.

At the moment the team's prototype is still very much a prototype, so much so in fact that it can't walk without being held up.

We're going to regret saying this but we can't wait to see what they come up with next.

Robots In 2016: These Are The Robots And Drones That Will Change Our Lives

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Paris Agreement Very Likely to Enter into Force this Year

In order for the Paris Agreement to "Enter into Force" and become international law 55 countries that account for 55 percent of the world's emissions will need to ratify the agreement through their domestic processes. Recent developments in Brazil and Ukraine highlight that both countries are on the cusp of formally joining this year. It is now looking very likely that the Paris Agreement will reach the entry-into-force threshold this year based upon publicly announced intentions from countries.

Earlier this week, Brazil's House of Representatives unanimously approved a legislative decree to ratify the Paris Agreement. The bill now moves to the Senate. Brazilian observers are confident that the Senate will pass a similar bill, possibly in the coming days or weeks. It would then be sent to Acting President Temer for his approval in order to make it domestic law. Each of these steps is very likely to happen this year. Brazil accounts for 2.5 percent of emissions towards the threshold.

The Ukraine government moved even closer to formally joining the Paris Agreement as its Parliament voted to ratify the agreement. The Ukrainian Government will now need to take the final step and formally notify the U.N. that they have ratified the agreement. Ukraine accounts for one percent of emissions towards the threshold.

Eighteen countries have formally notified the U.N. of their ratification and 29 (including Brazil and Ukraine) have already announced their intent to join this year. The emissions from these 47 countries account for 54.08 percent of the world's emissions. With India, who signaled with President Obama their intent to join this year and have started their domestic process, we would be at over 58 percent of emissions. With Japan, who hasn't said anything publicly but could easily do it this year, we would be at about 62 percent of emissions (see figure and table). And reaching the 55 country threshold should be easily within reach as a number of small emitting countries are likely to join but haven't yet said anything publicly.

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It now looks very likely that the Paris Agreement will enter-into-force this year. This continues the huge momentum for stronger climate action that has occurred since the agreement was finalized and signifies that countries are formally committed to delivering stronger climate action in the years to come.

NRDC has been tracking the countries that have publicly announced that they will ratify the Paris Agreement this year. The table below is based upon those public announcements. Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, have sent some public signals that they will ratify this year but since these aren't formal announcements we haven't included them at this stage.

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