KPCC: Living News

Tournament of Roses volunteer arrested for allegedly killing fellow volunteer in 2004

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:50:39 -0800

Members of the Tournament of Roses Honor Band on the field at Pasadena City College. Credit: Grant Slater/KPCC

A former volunteer director for the Tournament of Roses, Richard Allen Munecke, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly killing a fellow volunteer in 2004.

Munnecke, now 71, was arrested at his Alhambra home on suspicion of murdering Donna Lee Kelly, according to Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Bob Bishop.

Bishop says Kelly's daughter discovered the volunteer's body in the trunk of her car after she was missing for three weeks in 2004. The 59-year-old's cause of death was not immediately available Thursday.

Tournament of Roses Association chief William Flinn confirmed that the two volunteered for the Pasadena organization that helms the annual Rose Parade and Rose Bowl football game.

Bishop says Munnecke was linked to Kelly's death through DNA evidence.

Munnecke is being held on $1 million bail.

Birth control battle: Congress debates Obama rule requiring employers to offer free birth control prescriptions

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:42:24 -0800

File: President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the economy February 1, 2012 at the James Lee Community Center in Falls Church, Virginia. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Capitol Hill has taken up the political battle over an administration rule that requires all employers to offer free birth control prescriptions in their workers’ medical coverage. The conflict began between the White House and U.S. Catholic Bishops, but it’s turned into a partisan fight.

The new health care law requires all employer health care plans to cover contraception and sterilization. President Barack Obama exempted religious organizations — but not the hospitals, schools and social services they operate.

Don Clemmer, spokesman for the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, says that’s a problem. "Forcing religious organizations to do something that violates their religious beliefs," he says. "In this case, paying for products and services that they believe are immoral."

Clemmer says the issue is about more than birth control pills. "In the United States, under the First Amendment of the Constitution, can the federal government compel a religious body to do something that is against its belief? Where does that leave religion in this country?"

In a speech on the House floor, Republican Speaker John Boehner pledged that the new rule from Health and Human Services “will not stand.” He said, if the president "does not reverse the department’s attack on religious freedom then the Congress, acting on behalf of the American people and the Constitution, that we are sworn to uphold and defend, must." Speaker Boehner said the House Energy and Commerce Committee would lead efforts to find what he called an “effective and appropriate solution.”

Five Senate Democrats, including California’s Barbara Boxer, accused Boehner’s party of denying American women a health care benefit. "Women in this country are tired of being treated like a political football by Republicans in Congress, who have tried continually and are continuing to try to take away their benefits, to take away their rights."

House Democrats also denounced GOP calls to reverse the rule. Congresswoman Lois Capps of Santa Barbara, a registered nurse, said California and 27 other states already require contraception coverage in medical insurance plans. "And the new federal standard is based on the one that has worked in my home state of California for years with no harmful detriment to employment of anyone."

But a spokesman says L.A.'s Roman Catholic Archdiocese is self-insured and has been for more than a quarter century. That means it’s exempt from the state requirement to pay for contraceptives.

Senator Boxer insists that it’s possible to make the new requirement work for Catholic organizations.

"Many hospitals do this their own way," Boxer said. "One way is they will contract with an outside entity to provide the particular benefit. So there’s many, many ways."

This is an election year, though, and compromise and calm discussion are in short supply. Now the focus is on the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services to craft a plan that lawmakers won’t debate from now until November.

LA artist Alex Braidwood explores LA's sonic topography

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:00:04 -0800

LA is loud. Cars roar, helicopters buzz, waves crash and (occasionally) subways rumble. Instead of muffling the noise out, Alex Braidwood decided to tune in.

Open your windows, take out your earbuds, and turn down your radio (unless, of course, it's on KPCC). What you'll hear is the cacophony of Southern California. Cars whirr by and screech stop on the freeway; helicopters cut and dice the air; subway trains rumble like sleeping giants underground; and water rushes and rolls over sand.

Southern California is a loud place. But one L.A. artist decided to stop muffling the noise – and start tuning in.

"There's a risk of not being able to understand an environment when you disconnect from it," says Alex Braidwood, a designer, media artist and educator who originally hails from the Midwest. "The idea basically came from there wondering how I as a creator could compose the noise that exists around somebody."

To manipulate the sound around him, Braidwood sticks two footlong copper tubes on a pair of professional grade headphones. Next, he attaches rubber stoppers that suction in and out - to add some mechanical rhythm.

Between his long, grey-streaked beard and the resonant tubes that extend majestically towards the sky from a top his head, Braidwood looks like a visitor from Mars.

"I wanted it to be as visual as it was experiential," he says. "I wanted to peak people's curiosity enough that they would be interested in putting it on."

Braidwood is used to getting stares as he roams the Southland in search of new sonic landscapes, sometimes using Google Maps to chart as-yet undiscovered aural lands.

Some of his favorite spots are where nature collides with the city, such as Dockweiler Beach, where the ocean blends with the planes leaving LAX.

Or the spots where the city folds in on itself - like a metro station, on top of a freeway, on top of another freeway, on top of a bus.

"The way that the revving of the engines and the stop and go traffic that was at the same time above us and below us... [it] had a real sort of natural effect on the soundscape."

Sadly, these transformative headphones won't be coming to a store near you. But Braidwood is working on an iPhone app that will add a little sonic sensation to your everyday aural reality.

Secondhand smoke an unwelcome passenger in cars with kids

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:54:00 -0800

About 1 in 5 kids in middle school or high school is exposed to secondhand smoke in cars. Credit: Richard Clark/Stockphoto.com

Sitting in a car with a smoker is about as close to lighting up as a nonsmoker can get.

And quite a few schoolchildren get exposed to secondhand smoke this way, according to an estimate by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 1 in 5 nonsmoking kids in middle and high school reported sharing a car with a smoker who had lit up within a week of answering a survey in 2009. The researchers say the survey, which included responses from thousands of students, gives an accurate snapshot of what's happening across the country.

"The car is the only source of exposure for some of these children, so if you can reduce that exposure, it's definitely advantageous for health," CDC researcher Brian King told the Associated Press. The findings appear in the latest issue of Pediatrics.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that any exposure to secondhand smoke is unsafe for kids.

And the latest report does find that nonsmoking kids' exposure to secondhand smoke in cars declined to 22.9 percent in 2009 from 39 percent in 2000. The researchers figure that laws barring smoking in many public places may have been a factor.

A decline in smoking prevalence and a hardening of attitudes against secondhand smoke also could be helping.

Still, researchers say more should be done. They recommend a ban on smoking in cars when children are present. That's already the law in a few places, they note, including California and Arkansas (for children under 14).

Giants beat Patriots 21-17 to win the Super Bowl

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:28:15 -0800

Eli Manning #10 of the New York Giants reacts in the first half while taking on the New England Patriots during Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium on February 5, 2012 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Manning, named MVP, led the Giants to a 21-17 victory. Credit: Al Bello/Getty Images

Take that, Brady. You too, Peyton.

Eli Manning is the big man in the NFL after one-upping Tom Brady and leading the New York Giants to a 21-17 victory over the New England Patriots in Sunday's Super Bowl — in older brother Peyton's house, at that.

Just as Manning did four years ago when the Giants ruined New England's perfect season, he guided them 88 yards to the decisive touchdown, which the Patriots didn't contest as Ahmad Bradshaw ran 6 yards with 57 seconds left.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick reasoned the Giants would run the clock down and kick a short field goal, so he gambled by allowing the six points.

The gamble failed.

And now Manning not only has stamped himself as the elite quarterback he claimed to be when the season began — in the same class as Brady — he's beaten the Patriots in two thrilling Super Bowls. The Giants (13-7), who stood 7-7 in mid-December, now own the football world, and Manning owns two Super Bowl MVP awards, the same number as Brady.

It was a classic can-you-top-this showdown, and Manning won. He finished 30-for-40 for 296 yards and one touchdown, while Brady was 27 for 41 for 276 yards, with two TDs and one interception.

"It's been a wild game, a wild season," Manning said. "This isn't about one person. It's about one team, a team coming together."

Manning led six comeback victories during the season and set an NFL record with 15 fourth-quarter touchdown passes. He showed that brilliance in the clutch on the winning drive. He completed five passes, including a sensational 38-yard sideline catch by Mario Manningham to open the drive.

On second down at the Patriots 6 and with only one timeout remaining, Belichick had his defense stand up as Bradshaw took the handoff. Bradshaw thought about stopping short of the end zone, then tumbled in untouched.

"I was yelling to him, 'Don't score, don't score,'" Manning said. "He tried to stop, but he fell into the end zone."

Brady couldn't answer in the final 57 seconds, although his desperation pass into the end zone on the final play fell just beyond the grasp of All-Pro tight end Rob Gronkowski. New England (15-4), winner of 10 straight since a loss to the Giants in November, was done.

"I want to give the Giants a lot of credit," Brady said. "It's a very good football team and they put a lot of pressure on us. We just came up a little bit short."

Brady headed off with his head bowed, holding his helmet, while around him was the wild celebration by the Giants, NFL champions for the eighth — and perhaps most unlikely — time.

"Great toughness, great faith, and great plays by a number of guys today," Manning said, deflecting some of the attention. Still, he one-upped Brady. And Peyton.

"It just feels good to win a Super Bowl, it doesn't matter where you are," Manning said.

It was the fifth trip to a Super Bowl for Brady and Belichick, tying the record. And it looked like a successful one when they stormed back from a 9-0 deficit and led 17-9 in the third quarter. But the Giants, who reached New England territory on every possession except a kneeldown at the end of the first half, got field goals of 38 and 33 yards from Lawrence Tynes. And it looked like Tynes, who kicked them into the Super Bowl four years ago at Green Bay and again this year at San Francisco, both in overtime, would get called on again.

Then Belichick, known to try just about anything in a game, took a risk that didn't pay off.

"I thought we played very competitive. ... We were in the lead for a good part of the game. We just came up a couple of plays short," Belichick said. "You don't feel good after you lose this game."

The Giants are the first Super Bowl winner that was outscored during the regular season. They were 6-2 after that 24-20 victory at New England, then lost four straight and five of six.

Coach Tom Coughlin insisted "the prize" was still within reach. Now the Giants are holding tight to that Vince Lombardi Trophy.

"What I was concerned with was these guys making their own history," Coughlin said. "This is such a wonderful thing, these guys carving their own history."

New England had the ball for all of one play in the first 11 1-2 minutes, and that play was an utter failure, a rare poor decision by Brady. After Steve Weatherford's punt was downed at the New England 6, Brady dropped to pass in the end zone and had time. With everyone covered and Giants defensive end Justin Tuck finally coming free to provide pressure, Brady heaved the ball downfield while still in the pocket.

Only problem: No Patriots receivers were anywhere near the pass. The Giants were awarded a safety for Brady's grounding in the end zone.

Manning, meanwhile, couldn't have been more on target early, hitting six receivers in the first period, completing his first nine throws, a Super Bowl record. He also was aided by Ahmad Bradshaw, who hardly looked like a running back with a bad foot. Bradshaw broke a 24-yard run, and New England made another critical mistake by having 12 men on the field on a third-and-3 on which the Giants fumbled.

Instead, New York got a first down at the 6, and two plays later Victor Cruz beat James Ihedigbo on a slant to make it 9-0, prompting Cruz to break into his signature salsa move.

Manning's first incompletion didn't come until 1:19 into the second quarter.

At that point, it was 9-3 after Stephen Gostkowski's 29-yard field goal. The Patriots got to the Giants' 11, but All-Pro DE Jason Pierre-Paul blocked a third-down pass.

Soon after, when the Patriots had a three-and-out and Pierre-Paul blocked another throw, Belichick and offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien had a quick discussion. Then O'Brien, soon to take over as Penn State coach, went over to the struggling Brady.

The talk must have helped. On the final series of the opening half, Brady was masterful. Starting at his 4, and ignoring the last time the Patriots began a series in the shadow of the end zone, he was vintage Brady.

With New York's vaunted pass rush disappearing, Brady went 10-for-10 for 98 yards, capping the drive that included two Patriots penalties with Woodhead's 4-yard TD reception with 8 seconds to go in the half. Hernandez and Woodhead each had four catches on the drive that, stunningly, put New England ahead despite being outplayed for so much of the first 30 minutes.

Brady kept firing — and hitting — in the third quarter, with five more completions. The Giants didn't come within shouting distance of the record-setting quarterback. He capped a 79-yard drive to open the second half with a 12-yard TD to Hernandez, but then the game turned. Again.

Consecutive field goals by Lawrence Tynes of 38 and 33 yards brought New York within 17-15. Brady then threw deep for his tight end after weaving away from two pass rushers. His throw was short, and Chase Blackburn picked it off early in the fourth quarter.

Although the Giants moved into New England territory again, as they did on every drive to that point, they bogged down and punted.

Recliners score big with Super Bowl watchers

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:00:04 -0800

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum walks among recliners during a campaign stop at a furniture store in Iowa in December. Recliner sales have been rising fast leading up to the Super Bowl. Credit: Charlie Neibergall/AP

And now the final preparations for Super Bowl Sunday. Chips and salsa? Check. Buffalo wings and beer? Got 'em. Recliner? Wait, what?

Sales of reclining chairs and sofas are as hot as New York Giants receiver Victor Cruz's touchdown dance. Or, for you New England Patriots fans, as popular as star tight end Rob Gronkowski's sprained ankle.

It might seem an odd connection, but retailers say the Super Bowl, America's most watched sporting event, sends football fans bursting into showrooms like a bruising running back.

In the past two weeks before the big game, as the hype of the Eli Manning vs. Tom Brady quarterback duel has built, furniture stores have experienced a run on recliners.

"So far, we're looking at what we would hope will be double-digit increases in sales over these two weeks," says Nancy Christiansen, senior buyer for recliners at Art Van, the Michigan-based furniture retailer.

Christiansen, known among her colleagues as the Queen of Motion (recliners are formally categorized as "motion" furniture), says the fall and winter months are the busiest period for recliner sales, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. As the temperatures drop, people spend more time indoors and tune into the football.

In the otherwise laggard furniture business, recliners are driving revenues. Sales of reclining chairs and sofas totaled roughly $3.5 billion in 2011, according to the trade magazine Furniture Today. The publication projects recliner sales will grow by nearly 21 percent over the next five years.

Since La-Z-Boy introduced the first chair in 1928, Americans have enjoyed a love affair with these heavily cushioned thrones that flip out and back into a daybed with a pull of a lever. And they go well with America's latest obsession — home theaters with flat-screen TVs, which also have been selling at a faster clip ahead of the Super Bowl.

But today's hot models aren't your dad's Barcalounger. Remember that big wooden handle on the side that took some muscle to work and expanded the chair with a jarring clunkety clunk?

Now, for the latest technological advancement in lounging: smooth-action reclining at the touch of an electric button. Power recliners have hit the market like a Tim Tebow-esque sensation.

"Power is very, very important. You can stop and start it wherever you want. It's a little bit more money, but over half of what's on our floor right now is power. It's a category that's really exploded for us," says Eric Easter, president and CEO of Kittle's Furniture in Indianapolis.

Indianapolis also is the site of Sunday's Super Bowl, and the excitement swelling locally has been a windfall for Kittle's, which operates its flagship store downtown, not far from Lucas Oil Stadium where the game will be played. Easter says his power recliner sales are up at least 15 percent over last year.

"I hadn't really expected the immediacy of it. People are coming in, like, 'We're having guests over, and we need it now,' " Easter says. "More than beds, anything ... This has never happened before in our history. People are filling their room with this power, just lapping it up. They love it."

Christiansen says the power button gives an ease of use that is attracting women customers: "We're seeing more his-and-hers purchases. You can imagine how busy that makes a Saturday afternoon in the showroom."

The recliners don't come cheap. And the names of some models are as extravagant as their cushioning.

Like the Catnapper Deluxe Soother Power Lift Lounger, offering heat, massage and effortless motion, all by remote control. This bad boy retails for $999.99. Or the sleek, leather styling of La-Z-Boy's Spectra Contemporary Power Recliner, featuring a "plump, channel-tufted back" and other luxuries for about the same price.

If you're a football fan reading this and hoping to find a last-minute deal, you're in luck: Current sales of recliners are running up to $250 below list prices.

Hurry, so that by kickoff on Sunday, you can grab a cold one, take a load off, reach for that power button and, as ESPN's Chris Berman would say, lean back-back-back-back-back-back.

This one's for the chicken: A Super Bowl party with a purpose

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:00:04 -0800

Many will compete, but only one will be crowned Chicken Bowl champion this Sunday. Credit: Photo illustration by NPR Staff

This Sunday will mark the 16th annual installment of "Chicken Bowl," my Super Bowl party, which doubles as a grand fried-chicken-eating contest. As many as 80 friends, coworkers, enablers and hangers-on will cram into my long-suffering house for this noble occasion.

But even with all the extravagances I've cobbled together to keep them happy — large TVs, vintage arcade machines, working toilets — there has never been a shred of doubt that chicken is king.

I spend more at Popeye's on this particular Sunday than I spend on my wardrobe in a year, so great is the demand. Even vegetarians are both welcome and well-fed at Chicken Bowl, though I insist that they be cordoned off from the rest of the party and forced to watch "tofutball," a meatless football substitute in which slightly built men strike each other gently with pillows.

Chicken Bowl began back in 1997, as a way to combine my love of football with my love of sitting still and eating fried chicken while watching football. But over the years, it's grown into a heated battle in its own right, with past contests mirroring the thrilling heroics of the Super Bowls themselves.

In 2003, as the New England Patriots kicked a last-minute field goal to beat the Carolina Panthers, I set a Chicken Bowl record for most pieces eaten during the game, with 18. But I lost that year: A coworker of mine at The Onion had consumed 17 pieces, yet scored more points. In Chicken Bowl, as in life, breasts are worth 1.5 points, thighs 1 point, legs 0.5 points, and wings 0.5 points. The Al Gore of competitive chicken-wolfing, I had lost in the poultry equivalent of the Electoral College.

My luck would improve. Ever since I moved from Wisconsin to the East Coast in 2006, I've enjoyed a natural advantage over the arugula-chomping soccer-watchers with whom I work at NPR. At my first D.C.-area Chicken Bowl, surrounded by scrawny temps and horrified onlookers, I breezed to a virtually uncontested victory. My Midwestern roots and history of gluttony served me well, as I ate 14 pieces and barely broke a sweat.

But the East Coast is finally catching up to the trend-setting Midwest, gluttony-wise, though I've helped spur on the progress by providing incentives to compete. Back in Wisconsin, Chicken Bowl champions would settle for the entirely figurative Chicken Bowl Championship Trophy. In lieu of a statue of a chicken — or a fist holding a drumstick — winners were urged to find the trophy within.

Eventually, however, it occurred to me that "the trophy within" consisted of a giant wad of partially digested fried chicken, which seems scant if bragging rights aren't your thing. Thanks to the magic of mail order, I now bestow upon each year's winner a very real Chicken Bowl Championship Tiara.

On Sunday night, I will dig deep, look to my months of training, and hope that luck and skill conspire to help me don that tiara after eating several entire heavily breaded fried chickens. When and if that time comes, I will feel like a Super Bowl champion and the prettiest princess in all the land, rolled into one greasy, misshapen ball.

A writer and editor with NPR Music — and a panelist on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour — Stephen Thompson intends to periodically shirk his Chicken Bowl hosting duties long enough to live-tweet the big event at @idislikestephen.

Super Bowl Sunday, SoCal law enforcement patrols for drunk drivers - 12 tips for a safe Super Bowl Sunday

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:23:56 -0800

A general exterior view of Lucas Oil Stadium decorated with official Super Bowl XLVI on February 4, 2012 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Southern California law enforcement join officers around the country looking for drunk drivers this Super Bowl Sunday.

"We're reminding everyone that real Super Bowl fans don't let fans drive drunk," said Glendora police Chief Rob Castro, whose agency is among numerous law enforcement organizations around the area participating in the Avoid the 100 DUI Task Force.

"We are asking all party hosts and bar owners to take extra care of designated sober drivers this year," Castro said. "Drafting a designated driver this weekend will be the correct play call for a sure win."

Authorities offered the following tips for party hosts:

serve plenty of food, and offer a variety of non-alcoholic drinks;

serve only one drink at a time, and serve measured drinks;

only serve alcohol to guests over 21 years of age;

determine ahead of time when you will stop serving alcohol, such as one hour before the end of the party, or at the end of the third quarter of the game;

begin serving desserts when you stop serving alcohol; and

add the phone numbers of local cab companies into your phone, so they are just one touch away.

Authorities offered the following tips for individuals:

designate your sober driver before the party begins, and leave your car keys at home if you plan to drink;

find unique ways to recognize the designated drivers when you are out at a bar or restaurant;

offer to be the designated driver the next time you go out;

cover the cost of parking for the designated driver, or even pay for a tank of gas;

avoid drinking too much alcohol. Pace yourself, and eat enough food; and

take appropriate steps to prevent anyone from driving while impaired.

At noon today, LAPD officers will begin an eight-hour saturation patrol traffic operation in the 77th Street Station's jurisdiction south of downtown Los Angeles.

Funding for the extra law enforcement efforts is provided by the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Anyone seeing a suspected drunk driver was urged to call 911.

The "Avoid" program was named that because their goal was to make not driving drunk the only way to avoid law enforcement. "Avoid the 100" refers to the 100 law enforcement agencies involved in cracking down on drunk driving.

Why do we love the Giants? It's all psychology

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:37:06 -0800

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning warms up before the NFC championship game against the San Francisco 49ers last month in the City by the Bay. Oddsmakers have their money on Manning and his Giants to once again prevail over the Patriots on Sunday. But is that prediction based more on psychology than facts? Credit: Julie Jacobson/AP

The Super Bowl: an annualized marketing event-cum-gambling extravaganza. That they have to play a football game to justify the ads, gambling and Ines Sainz's career is still in the official rule book somewhere, but that rule book is now sponsored by the Gatorade G2 series. Why does Gatorade have more series than Telemundo?

Anyway, a casual survey of fans, experts and Ines Sainz indicates that on the real question — Who will win the GAME? — there is a building consensus. The Giants are the pick of not only the vast majority of people I casually survey on the streets of Indianapolis, but also 39 out of 71 ESPN personnel, 5 out of 5 CBS experts, and 60 out of 110 celebrities.

How much credence should one give Mamie Van Doren, whose qualifications are starring roles in Sex Kittens Go to College and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women? Well, she also had an affair with Joe Namath, so her pick of the Giants should carry at least as much weight as Placido Domingo's.

Actually, I don't put any more stock in the "expert" predictions than those of the stars (or has-been quasi-stars), because all are being governed by some interesting psychological tendencies.

The Patriots are a 2.5-point favorite in this game. When the matchup was first set, they were a 3.5-point favorite, which might seem like an insignificant difference, but actually indicates that huge amounts of money were bet on the Giants, forcing oddsmakers to revise the point spread. The layman loves the Giants. The question is, why?

From a game perspective, you will hear that the Patriots have a terrible secondary, which is true; that their record-setting tight end is hurt, which is true; and that the Giants have a terrific pass rush, which is also true. But beyond those facts, there is more psychology at play than solid analysis.

Some No-Good Reasons To Favor The Giants

One point being made by celebrity and football experts alike is that the Giants are a "hot" team. "They're the hotter team," says ESPN's Mike Greenberg.

"Giants are on such a good roll right now," says Holly Madison, who is described by Scripps Howard as an "entertainer" (she was one of Hugh Hefner's Girls Next Door).

Artist LeRoy Neiman, who perhaps sees life in impressionistic dapples, predicts: "Positively the Giants, because they're on a winning streak."

True, the Giants have won five straight. But the Patriots have won 10. Focusing on the features of only one team while ignoring the fact that they face an opponent is a classic predictive fallacy when it comes to team sport.

One version of this is thinking that a certain team will be very motivated. "Coach X has really gotten his boys up for the game," you'll hear. And what, Coach Y is playing Enya music in the locker room and telling his players not to overexert?

History Repeats Itself — Or It Should, Anyway

Another logical fallacy is the similarity heuristic. Heuristics are mental shortcuts, and this one posits that people, when attempting to envision future results, like to have a model to hold onto.

Of course, if you were asked to imagine what will happen in a Super Bowl between the Giants and Patriots, wherein the Giants have the much worse regular season record, and in fact barely made the playoffs, you would think back to Super Bowl XLII. Because the Giants won that game, it's easy to imagine the same script playing out in Super Bowl XLVI, even if your imagining isn't conscious.

Also, once a team or politician, or an American Idol contestant, wins, that win is seen as inevitable. The Giants got very lucky, what with catches off players' helmets and so forth. If Eli Manning had been sacked on that particular third-down play four years ago, would so many people be picking the Giants today?

What Have They Done For Fans Lately?

Then there is the recency effect, which is sort of self-explanatory: that we tend to value the things we see more recently. The Patriots' greatest strength is their offense, but the offense didn't look great against the Ravens. So we say, "Ah, the Patriots' offense is over-rated."

Perhaps a better explanation is that against the conference's best defense, any offense will do less well than they do normally. The Patriots looked awesome the week before, but that result is dismissed by noting it was achieved against a weak Broncos team. Yes, the Broncos were weak, but most of their weakness was on offense. Denver had a pretty good defense for the second half of the year, a fact that is totally brushed aside.

Overall, I do think the Giants' pass rush will bother Brady. But I also think the Patriots' pass rush will hound the Giants, who have the second-worst pass protection in football. I do think the Patriots' secondary is weak, but the Giants aren't exactly top-notch.

I don't have an easy counterpoint to the fact that Rob Gronkowski's injury is a setback for the Patriots, except to note that New England is the most creative team around. This is why my Super Bowl prediction is LeRoy Neiman's career over Mamie Van Doren's by a point.

3 hidden themes of this year's Super Bowl ads: Sex, animals and our inner child

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:17:46 -0800

Many of this year's Super Bowl ads, like this one from CareerBuilders.com, play off our affection for animals. Credit: CareerBuilders.com/AP

Come Sunday millions of Americans will be watching Super Bowl XLVI. This year's NFL championship football game features New versus New — England and York. There will be dens of thousands swilling and spilling beer and pontificating about play action passes, blind-side sacks and franchise quarterbacks scrambling in and out of pockets.

But for many nonfans, the football is merely filler material between lavishly expensive commercial advertisements. Research conducted in 2011 by Hanon McKendry showed that more than half of those tuning in want to see the commercials as much as — or even more than — the game itself. They're hooked by the quick and quirky ministories for a hurried world.

Spots — created after months of planning — can cost several million dollars apiece to air. During the game, people will compare the commercials and contrast the campaigns. They will score the music scores and high-five the hyped-up humor. They will play Super Bowl 2012 Ad Bingo. On this given Sunday, everybody is an ad critic.

Drew Lange, a student at North Dakota State University who has designed a Super Bowl 46 drinking game for Midwest Sports Fans blog, suggests a similar contest for the ads.

"I suppose," he says, "it would be smart to include 'drinking rules' that also cover the commercials, since most times people pay more attention to those than the actual game. This would be like: Take a drink every time a beer commercial comes on. Take three drinks if a commercial includes a baby. Take two drinks if the commercial doesn't make any sense. Something similar to that."

Watching the Super Bowl ads every year has become not only a parlor game but an annual checkup of the national zeitgeist. Inevitably, there are new wrinkles and twists, but there are also dependable, underlying eternal verities that recur — and that marketers will milk for time immemorial.

Here are three to watch for in this year's ads:

1. The quest for our inner child. Americans may talk a good game about looking forward to the future, but we sure can get nostalgic for the past — especially for the way things felt when we were younger.

"Marketing to the inner child is, I think, a response to wider trends in Western societies: specifically, the growth in complexity of modern society people's growing anxiety about modern life and the erosion of people's trust in institutions such as big corporations," says Jonathan Fletcher, creative director of the global marketing firm Illuminas.

And so big corporations try to appeal to the part of us that has not grown jaded and cynical — about big corporations.

"By evoking childhood," Fletcher says, "brands can enable customers to regress to a simpler, more innocent time and take temporary shelter from the complexity and stress of adult life."

In the tradition of the E-Trade babies and Volkswagen's pint-size Darth Vader, Chevrolet will play to our youthful yearnings during the Super Bowl with its Spy Thriller and OK Go ads. And Honda appeals not only to the pasts of the Gen Xers but to Matthew Broderick's as well, with the Ferris Bueller homage: "Matthew's Day Off."

"It's a mystery to me why marketers don't play much more on boomers' childhood nostalgia," says Bob Garfield, longtime ad critic for Ad Age. "The smell of Play-Doh. Baseball cards. Baseball-card gum. Chatty Cathy dolls. Where's the Lone Ranger movie? These are the Proustian madeleines of the Eisenhower administration. They remind us of the past — when we were, you know, happy."

2. Our affection for animals. Cats and kittens may rule the Internet, but this year's Super Bowl is going to the dogs. The ads — from Volkswagen, Chevy, Skechers, Doritos, Toyota and others — promise more pups than a Westminster show ring. (Warning to drinking gamers, do not take a swig every time you see a tail wag. On Monday morning, nothing will help – not even hair of the dog.)

In a doggone wild move, Volkswagen posted a canine chorus trailer on the Internet to introduce its "Dog Strikes Back" ad. The spot (get it?) boomerangs back to boomers because it's about getting back in shape and, at the same time, in a meta way, creates nostalgia for last year's Volkswagen ad.

There will be lots of other animals on display as well, including animated polar bears, an inanimate panda, chimpanzees, a cheetah, dancing holographic monkeys, a runaway bunny and swarming bees.

"People like animals," Garfield says. "If the animals talk, so much the better. This is a very quick way of arresting human attention. In my opinion, the State of the Union address should not begin with the speaker of the House blabbing about 'high privilege and distinct honor.' It should begin with a kitten going down a sliding board."

3. Um, well, uh, sex. And in case you didn't get the txt msg: Sex sells. Some of this year's spots are steamier than a pot of lobsters. Fiat, Toyota, Doritos and other companies feature wily women enticing gullible guys to buy products.

True, H&M counters tarts with tats in its ad showcasing a scantily clad, and slinkily inked, "David Beckham."

But, as usual, Go Daddy sells its services with in-your-face salaciousness. "Who won't notice a hot model in body paint?" asks one woman in its "Body Paint" ad.

If you are not too deep in a drinking game you might ask: What exactly does a painted naked body have to do with domain names?

"In all the hoopla, we forget football is a game played by young men," says advertising copywriter Steffan Postaer, who's perhaps best-known for his Altoids mints curiously strong ad campaigns. "Does it not follow that adolescent humor and sexual innuendo fit right in? Said another way: Boys will be boys."

The cavalcade of commercials, he says, "is "a lot like a large and raucous class of teenagers all vying to be the class clown — the one who gets the laughs, the attention, the props, even the girl."

And that, Postaer says, brings us back to the inner child, and why it's an underlying theme of Super Bowl ads.

He points to something he wrote a while back: "The older I get the more I realize how important it is to stay connected to my 'inner child.' The best creative people do not grow out of it when they grow up. We remain inquisitive like children. Lovers of fun. You see it in our bicycles in the hallway. Our dubious wardrobes. Our playlists. Our flirty snapshots on Facebook. Alas, you also see it in meetings, where we become pouting and defensive, wilting under criticism, frustrated by the grown-ups ruining our fun. I know we can be insufferable."

Postaer's blog is called Gods of Advertising and its motto, apropos for understanding the Super Bowl ads, is this: "We make you want what you don't need."

LA County juvenile hall girls get makeovers, fashion show

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:58:53 -0800

A girl getting a makeover at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall Credit: Corey Bridwell/KPCC

About 50 teenage girls spent their Friday afternoon being meticulously prepped for an evening fashion show. Three stylists hovered around each girl, frantically painting nails, straightening hair and curling eyelashes.

Students and teachers from beauty colleges across L.A. compared notes on which girl was an autumn and what kind of up-do worked with which extensions.

The setting? The Los Angeles County Probation Department. And the teens undergoing intense makeovers? They're all current residents of Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall.

"I like working with teen girls," said Jovanna Moss, director of the Pacific Beauty College of L.A. "I asked them if I could do a fashion show... I don't think they knew to what degree."

The Los Angeles County Probation Department, in collaboration with volunteer hair, fashion and make-up artists, hosted a fashion show Friday as the grand finale event of a week-long program aimed at empowering young women currently being held at the facility.

Moss, who came up with the idea, says the makeovers are really about making the girls feel "empowered from the inside out."

All 50 girls were selected by the Hall to participate, based on good behavior. Girls were led into the multipurpose room in small groups, where representatives from three different beauty schools did their make-up, hair and nails in preparation for an evening fashion walk in the gym.

The theme? "Viva Glam/Valentine's Day" — designed to feel like a homecoming dance, complete with paper catwalk, a fancy dinner, place cards ("Reserved for the Divas") and, of course, evening colors.

"The colors are black, white and pink," explains Moss, "which represents for me beauty and glam and diva. And Valentine's."

Moss hopes to make the makeover/fashion show a yearly collaboration between the Probation Department and her beauty school.

Many hits, rather than a big one, pose greatest concussion risk

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:10:24 -0800

Members of the Jefferson High School football team took 200 to more than 1,800 hits to the head in a season. Credit: Purdue University

High school football players have changes in their brain function long before they have recognizable signs of a concussion, according to a new study.

The more hits a player got, the more brain function changed. The findings support the growing belief that a concussion comes as the result of a succession of insults, not just one bad hit.

"I think what you're seeing here is the sum total of what happens throughout the season," says Eric Nauman, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University and lead author of the study.

This researchers followed players on the Jefferson High School football team in Lafayette, Ind., over two seasons. The athletes wore special helmets with sensors that measured the number and severity of head impacts. The researchers also put the players in an MRI scanner to measure their brain activity while the students took a test of thinking and memory.

Then they compared the brain scans with the hits. Those hits weren't rare. Each player logged from 200 to more than 1,800 hits to the head in a single season. Over two seasons, six players had concussions, but 17 others showed brain changes even though they didn't have concussions. There were 21 players in the first season, and 24 in the second, 16 of whom were repeat participants in the study.

Over time, the changes in brain function that showed up in the MRIs correlated to the number and distribution of hits. Mental performance didn't change, but brain activity did.

"The magnitude of changes in the brain were a function of how many hits you took, and where you took them," Nauman told Shots.

Those brain changes may be workarounds, with the brain using other areas to replace those affected by the hits, according to Thomas Talavage, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University and a co-author of the study. The results haven't been been published yet, but the work has been accepted by the Journal of Biomechanics.

This study raises a lot of questions that it can't answer. It doesn't tell us if these brain changes will improve over time, or if they're the beginnings of permanent brain damage.

The researchers have expanded their work to include two more football teams, and a girls' soccer team. They're also looking for a boys' soccer team, to see if they can test the widely held belief that girls are more vulnerable to concussion.

And they are following the players who took the most hits to see if the brain changes seen are permanent.

Since millions of teenagers play football, soccer, hockey and other sports where hits to the head are common, a clear sense of when those hits start to cause damage would be the start of better ways to prevent and diagnose what has become a major issue in children's health.

Yesterday, Shots reported on a study that found that widely used computerized tests used to establish a baseline of cognitive function for student athletes aren't accurate enough to diagnose concussions, or to determine if a player is safe to return to the action.

Have economists got it wrong about the US?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:38:43 -0800

Workers build a Jeep Compass at the Chrysler assembly plant in Belvidere, Ill. Friday's employment report showed growth in manufacturing, much of which reflects the rebirth of the U.S. auto industry. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Five years ago, a subprime mortgage firestorm was melting down the U.S. economy, but most analysts didn't see it happening.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, testifying before Congress in February 2007, said the housing sector "is a concern, but at this point we don't see it as being a broad financial concern or a major factor in assessing the course of the economy."

If he and the vast majority of economists were blind to the economic and financial calamity taking shape then, could they also be missing the start of a huge economic boom now?

A boom? Really?

Maybe. On Friday, the Labor Department said employers added 243,000 net jobs – about 100,000 more than most economists were predicting. The unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent, dropping two-tenths of a point to the lowest level in three years. As recently as August, the jobless rate was 9.1 percent.

In recent months, economists have been consistently wrong about the strength of hiring. In fact, the Labor Department said it had been too negative. It revised previous months to show that the economy gained a total of 60,000 jobs more than originally reported for November and December.

So if they were so wrong in seeing the Great Recession coming, it's possible they are blind to the "Great Recovery" that might be under way. If there is indeed a boom taking shape, it's being led by the new strength in the energy sector, agriculture, technology and even manufacturing.

Yes, manufacturing. Friday's report confirmed factories have been on a roll, adding 50,000 jobs for the month. A lot of that growth reflects the rebirth of the U.S. auto industry. Chrysler, for example, said Thursday that it plans to add 1,800 workers at its Illinois plant this year.

When people get jobs, they spend money. So companies involved in health care, leisure and hospitality added lots of jobs in January.

Maybe the surprising gains were just a fair-weather fluke last month. Temperatures were exceptionally warm in much of the country, so that might have boosted hiring. But the upward revisions for November and December suggest this could be a powerful trend.

Most economists have been predicting overall economic growth of only about 2 percent to 2.5 percent this year. Are they misunderstanding what's happening?

Here are some experts on why economists got it wrong, and whether there are reasons for optimism — or pessimism — today.

Why did Bernanke get it wrong five years ago?

Answer: The Fed had no experience with the kind of recession that unfolded in 2007, the root cause of which was massive private borrowing.

"I think they got it wrong because they thought of it as a recession instead of what it was — a financial crisis," says Jeffrey Keefe, a professor at Rutgers University's School of Management and Labor Relations.

When the housing market went bust, he says, the credit markets ground to a halt because the economy was shot through with leverage based on the sector's continued growth.

Joseph Gagnon, an economist who was at the Federal Reserve when Bernanke was making his less-than-clairvoyant forecasts in 2007, says he and many of his colleagues did foresee a housing crisis, but they thought it would be a small one.

"What we thought would happen when it popped was a similar mild recession to the one we had in 2001 when the stock market bubble burst," says Gagnon, now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"We were surprised by how serious the recession ended up being," he concedes.

The cause of the Great Recession almost guaranteed a slow and difficult recovery. In the past, the Fed had always lowered interest rates to spur the economy, but with this recession, that tool lost much of its effectiveness, Gagnon says.

"It wasn't just that you could lower interest rates and that people would suddenly spend again," he says. Individuals and institutions "had to repair their balance sheets and that was going to take some time. Lowering interest rates does help, but it doesn't help as quickly as it would in a normal recession."

Are financial experts missing signs of a major upswing?

Answer: It depends on who you talk to. Even the most optimistic economists are unwilling to break out the champagne — even with an unemployment report as good, relatively speaking, as this one released Friday.

You can count Brian Wesbury, chief economist at First Trust in Wheaton, Ill., as one of those on the cautiously optimistic list.

Everything about the latest employment report, he says, "shows that the economy is strengthening and should continue to get stronger in 2012." Retail, manufacturing, construction, mining — it's all looking better.

But even Wesbury, who expects the unemployment rate to be about 7.8 percent by Election Day, acknowledges that it's "very difficult right now for people to feel optimistic about the economy."

Keefe of Rutgers University worries about the situation in Europe. He says it's muddling through for now, but could take a turn for the worse and throw the world back into a serious crisis.

And the U.S. residential housing market is still in pretty miserable shape, he says.

"There's enormous inventory," Keefe says. "I am pretty confident we're not going to have a real recovery until that real estate piece is straightened out."

Which U.S. sectors are likely to see strong growth and which might lag?

Answer: Friday's jobs report showed gains in nearly all sectors.

"The most impressive thing is that it's really hard to find any weak figures in this report," says Stephen Bronars, senior economist with Welch Consulting in Washington, D.C.

Keefe sees a brighter horizon for some sectors: "Financial services, I suspect, will recover fully. Health care continues to grow, retail continues to grow and business services will continue to grow."

Even though there was growth in construction, housing remains in the doldrums.

Gagnon is more optimistic about the housing sector than some of his fellow economists. He thinks we've been building too few houses lately and that "demographic trends that are going on regardless of the recession will lead to pent-up demand."

He's also willing to make what he describes as a risky prediction.

"I think exports might be a surprising help to the economy," Gagnon says. "But that depends a lot on the policies of other countries. It depends on how the Europeans react to their crisis, because our exports will be hurt if they have a serious crash there. I am not expecting that. But it is a risk."

What have we learned from this recession?

Answer: "I learned the importance of leverage, but I can't speak for all my colleagues," says Gagnon. "The importance of that caught me by surprise."

He says individuals and institutions will be more on guard against financial fraud and unsustainable borrowing.

But Keefe thinks we've missed opportunities to revisit the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law aimed at keeping banks from engaging in risky financial practices. Many economists believe that its repeal in 1999 contributed to the financial crisis.

"We also completely missed the boat on 'too big to fail,' " says Keefe, referring to a congressional push to try to put limits on massive banks and financial institutions.

"Instead, they are bigger than ever," he says.

Santa Monica yoga company removes Hindu god Ganesha from mats after complaints

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:12:20 -0800

Yoga practitioners at a studio in Raleigh, NC. Credit: waynesutton12/Flickr.com

A Southern California yoga mat maker has pulled a design featuring a Hindu deity because of a complaint from the Universal Society of Hinduism.

The Santa Monica Daily Press says society president Rajan Zed wrote to YogaMatic.com officials on Jan. 27 demanding that that they stop making mats featuring Lord Ganesha.

The design shows a human body with the head of an elephant. It represents the power of the supreme being that removes obstacles and ensures success in human endeavors.

Zed says Lord Ganesha is one of the most highly revered deities and standing or sitting on a mat with his likeness is inappropriate.

Yogamatic founder William Cawley says his Santa Monica firm removed the design after receiving Zed's letter, adding he apologizes to anyone who may have been offended.

Archaeologists dig into San Gabriel's past in wake of construction project

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:47:09 -0800

Archaeologist Henry Chodsky clears dust from the wall of an adobe house discovered in an excavation near the San Gabriel Mission. Credit: Grant Slater/KPCC

An excavation near the San Gabriel Mission has uncovered remnants of one of Los Angeles’ most important early cultural centers.

Archaeologists began digging in November near the mission, where San Gabriel city officials are creating a subterranean path for freight and passenger trains. The legally mandated dig has unearthed the remnants of a mill dating back to the 18th century, as well as a group of other buildings.

Some members of the native Gabrieleno tribe attended an open viewing of the excavation.

"Our concern for our people is basically for the handling with dignity and respect of the human remains," said Art Zuniga, a member of the Gabrieleno band of Mission Indians.

As of yet, no human remains have been found.

Chief archaeologist on the dig John Dietler said the railroad construction offers a unique opportunity.

"The value of archaeology isn’t really in the objects," Dietler said. "It’s in the things that we learn. And the best way we learn these things is through excavation, which is itself a destructive process."

He went on to say that while the city development's moving of the artifacts was "a bit of a tragedy," it was also undeniably "an enormous benefit to science."

The 2.2-mile construction project will lower one-and-a-half miles of the Union Pacific railroad and route it through San Gabriel via a trench. The city is also planning to build bridges at Ramona Street, Mission Road, Del Mar Avenue and San Gabriel Boulevard so that pedestrians and traffic can pass over the tracks.

"Grade crossings are very dangerous," San Gabriel Mayor David Gutierrez said. "Once completed, the grade separation project will eliminate congestion, emissions from idling vehicles, train warning horn and bell noise and, most importantly, the potential for deadly crossing collisions."

The dig will continue through March. Construction on the San Gabriel trench will begin once excavation is complete.

The excavation is being funded in part by the Alameda Corridor-East Construction Authority.

Parents cheat on booster seats, despite safety risks

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:04:24 -0800

Booster seats reduce children's risk of injury by more than half. Credit: iStockPhoto.com

Grade-schoolers are supposed to be riding in booster seats. But anyone who's ever chauffeured a bunch of second-graders can tell you that the day will come when you don't have enough boosters to go around. Faced with this obvious safety risk, most parents (including this one) buckle up the kids without boosters, and pray.

That's confirmed by a new survey in this week's Pediatrics, which found that parents are good at using booster seats when driving 4- to 8-year-olds in the family car, with 76 percent using boosters.

But they were not so good when carpooling. Only half make their children use booster seats when they are riding in the family car with friends who don't have boosters, and 21 percent let their own child ride booster-less when in someone else's car.

Some parents resorted to obviously unsafe choices, including buckling two children in one seat belt, or putting a child in the cargo area.

That means a lot of children are being exposed to the risk of serious injury. Children in this age range still aren't big enough to be safely restrained by car seat belts. Using a booster to position the lap and seat belt properly reduces injury risk by half.

The 681 parents surveyed said they didn't use booster seats for a number of reasons, including difficulty getting seats from other parents, and being unable to fit enough seats in the car.

Legal pressure clearly helps; parents were far more likely to use boosters if they live in one of the 47 states that require them for children up to 4 feet 9 inches in height. (Here's an earlier NPR story on state efforts to require booster seats.)

I've never known a child injured in a car crash, even though it's the most common cause of death in children ages 3 to 14. But I figured I should find out what can happen to a child if they're in an accident without a booster seat. It's not pretty. In this 2005 study, eight children ages 4 to 8 who were wearing only seat belts suffered serious abdominal injuries. Five broke their spine. And four are permanently paralyzed. That sure got my attention.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration spells out the details for safe use of boosters in children ages 8 to 12.

Off the record: a quest for de-baptism in France

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:05:05 -0800

A child is baptized. Credit: birmingham_lms_rep/Flickr.com

In France, an elderly man is fighting to make a formal break with the Catholic Church. He's taken the church to court over its refusal to let him nullify his baptism, and the case could have far-reaching effects.

Seventy-one-year-old Rene LeBouvier's parents and brother are buried in a churchyard in the tiny village of Fleury in northwest France. He himself was baptized in the Romanesque stone church and attended mass here as a boy.

LeBouvier says this rural area is still conservative and very Catholic, but nothing like it used to be. Back then, he says, you couldn't even get credit at the bakery if you didn't go to mass every Sunday.

LeBouvier grew up in that world and says his mother once hoped he'd become a priest. But his views began to change in the 1970s, when he was introduced to free thinkers. As he didn't believe in God anymore, he thought it would be more honest to leave the church. So he wrote to his diocese and asked to be un-baptized.

"They sent me a copy of my records, and in the margins next to my name, they wrote that I had chosen to leave the church," he says.

That was in the year 2000. A decade later, LeBouvier wanted to go further. In between were the pedophile scandals and the pope preaching against condoms in AIDS-racked Africa, which LeBouvier calls "criminal." Again, he asked the church to strike him from baptismal records. When the priest told him it wasn't possible, he took the church to court.

Last October, a judge in Normandy ruled in his favor. The diocese has since appealed, and the case is pending.

"One can't be de-baptized," says Rev. Robert Kaslyn, dean of the School of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America.

Kaslyn says baptism changes one permanently before the church and God.

"One could refuse the grace offered by God, the grace offered by the sacrament, refuse to participate," he says, "but we would believe the individual has still been marked for God through the sacrament, and that individual at any point could return to the church."

French law states that citizens have the right to leave organizations if they wish. Loup Desmond has been following the case for the French Catholic newspaper La Croix. He thinks it could set a legal precedent and open the way for more demands for de-baptism.

"If the justice confirms that the name Rene LeBouvier has to disappear from the books, if it is confirmed, it can be a kind of jurisprudence in France," he says.

Up to now, observers say the de-baptism trend has been marginal, but it's growing. In neighboring Belgium, the Brussels Federation of Friends of Secular Morality reports that 2,000 people asked to be de-baptized in 2010. The newspaper Le Monde estimated that about 1,000 French people a year ask to have their baptisms annulled.

There is much anger across the continent by the recent pedophile scandals. In September, Germans marched to protest the pope's visit. Christian Weisner is with the German branch of the grassroots movement We Are Church. He says Europeans still want religion, and they want to believe, but it has become very difficult within the Catholic Church.

"It's the way that the Roman Catholic Church has not followed the new approach of democracy, the new approach of the women's issue," he says, "and there is really a big gap between the Roman Catholic Church and modern times."

Back at the church in Fleury, LeBouvier stands by his parents' grave. When asked if the case has ruined his chances of being buried in the family plot, he says he doesn't have to worry about that. He's donating his body to science.

Angelenos mark Holocaust Remembrance Day with a flash mob

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:12:53 -0800

A closeup look at Mary Bauer's concentration camp tattoo. Credit: Corey Bridwell/KPCC

In 1939, the Nazis took over a 15-square mile area in southwestern Poland for the purpose of building the infamous prison camp Auschwitz. Fast forward nearly 75 years, and Angelenos gathered Friday to mark an area of the same size around Los Angeles with a flash mob.

From 12 p.m. to 12:10 p.m. on Friday, participants stood and held up signs to represent groups the Nazis persecuted — including Jews, homosexuals and political prisoners. Cars honked and passersby stopped to stare.

The remembrance, sponsored by the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, was a part of International Holocaust Remembrance Day — and the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

At least 30 people showed at the corner of Pico and Robertson, including a Holocaust studies class from Bishop Conaty-Loretto High School. Mark Rothman, the event's organizer, said he predicted hundreds showed at the other boundary checkpoints.

At least two Holocaust survivors were present to speak to participants, including Elisabeth Mann, who was sent to Auschwitz when she was 18 and lost her whole family there.

Mann described one of her last days in Auschwitz, when the S.S. took she and other prisoners outside to begin hustling them out of the camp in the wake of approaching American troops.

"We were lined up and the machine gun was behind our backs, ready to shoot us," said Mann. "But I was so overwhelmed by the spring day — the sky was blue and the grass green. I was so happy that my girlfriend who was standing next to me and many others told me, 'No — they'll really kill us.' I didn't believe it."

Sure enough, Mann said that several months later she and others were escorted out of cattle cars in Sweden.

"They didn't want to shoot us," she explained, "because the Americans were coming. And the sound of the gunshots would have brought them straight to us."

"We're doing this to give people an understanding of the commitment the Nazis made to evil," organizer Rothman explained. "We know what we can do with a space of this size if we're not careful. What can we do with a space of this size and bigger to make sure we have a 21st century that's better than the 20th?"

Rothman wanted something that would "include as many different neighborhoods as possible." And the signs, emblazoned with labels like "JEW" and "HOMOSEXUAL," were regularly held by those who didn't claim that identity.

"Catholic girls held up the sign for Jews, for example," explained Rothman. "The bottom line being that when one group is persecuted, fundamentally, we are all persecuted."

(Audio of Holocaust survivor Elisabeth Mann telling her story is above.)

Beyond black beans and rice: Cuban chefs go modern

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:35:52 -0800

Lobster salad, pineapple sorbet and truffle oil-infused black sesame seeds, as prepared by Cuban Chef Luis Alberto Alfonso Pérez. Credit: Robert Vesco

Ham sandwiches, hot-pressed and gooey with cheese. Neat piles of black beans and rice. Grilled chicken.

This is the simple, filling fare served at Cuban restaurants around the world. And like the iconic, rusty Studebakers that line the streets of Havana, Cuban food hasn't changed much since the 1950s. The communist government's stranglehold on the economy, combined with the U.S. trade embargo, has meant that Cuban chefs haven't picked up the modern cooking techniques, or exotic ingredients, that have invigorated the cuisines of much of the rest of the world.

But that, according to some chefs, is starting to change. This month, I got a taste of some of the most innovative cooking in Cuba. Luckily, I didn't have to fly to Cuba to try it. For the first time since the embargo against Cuba was imposed in 1960, a Cuban chef came to the U.S. to cook for Americans.

Luis Alberto Alfonso Pérez, who goes by Lucio, is a strapping bearded chef who runs El Gijonés restaurant in Havana. In 2010, he met Guillermo Pernod, the James Beard award-winning chef behind the successful Cuba Libre chain in the U.S. Pernod, who's Argentine but learned to cook Cuban food from his Cuban wife, went to Havana, determined to discover something that might inspire his own cooking.

Instead, he was pleasantly surprised to meet a handful of chefs who, like Lucio, are trying to take their country's cuisine to the next level. "They want to do it, but they don't really have the ingredients," says Pernod. "But you can see they are trying to experiment with different styles. Some are now using cold smoking and steaming – these are not traditional techniques in Cuban cooking – and they're using new cuts of meat."

He thought diners outside of Cuba should get to know these chefs, so he decided to bring them, one by one, to Cuba Libre's Washington, D.C., branch for a series of pop-up paladares — a term used to describe Cuba's privately owned, usually family-run restaurants.

"I thought, people are bringing Cuban musicians and artists to the U.S. Why can't we do it with chefs?" Pernod tells The Salt.

It was clear from Lucio's first course, prepared for those of us assembled in the restaurant's back room, that this would be an unquestionably 21^st century Cuban meal: lobster carpaccio salad was paired with pineapple sorbet and topped with truffle oil-infused sesame seeds.

Truffles, of course, are not readily available in Cuba. Even though more than 70 percent of the island's food is imported, much of it is commodities like chicken and grain. Specialty items are breathtakingly expensive and out of reach even for chefs; the few that enter the country are often smuggled in suitcases by visiting relatives.

The local supply of fresh produce isn't especially reliable, either. Lucio says he frequently has to go two weeks without potatoes — a nettlesome problem, given that they're a fixture on his menu.

After the lobster, Lucio teased us with a twist on ropa vieja — a quintessential Cuban dish of pulled beef, named for the old rags it resembles. Lucio's ropa vieja was a marvel, made of lamb, wrapped in a thin layer of eggplant and doused with a minty broth. Next, he served the kind of dish he can usually only fantasize about in his Cuban kitchen: baby wild boar rib chops, with sour orange-cinnamon compote and a tamal made from yuca.

This was actually the most traditional off all the dishes on the menu, and yet the hardest for Lucio to execute in Cuba. Why? Because wild boar is now so scarce on the island, he says.

"When Lucio saw the wild boar I was able to get him here, he said, 'Oh my god, this is so beautiful," says Pernod. "So I've got to find a way to get it to him." Pernod isn't kidding. He's looking into ways to send Lucio 500 pounds of wild boar in a shipping container, enough to last him a few months.

Lucio's meal was capped with a cheese flan, made modern with a sprinkling of garlic confit on top and a small pool of guava coulis. Three out of four courses featured the vibrant fruits of Cuba — pineapple, orange and guava — paired with savory flavors: unquestionably Caribbean, but distinctive and intrepid.

Unfortunately, very few Cuban are enjoying Lucio's intriguing dishes back in Havana; he caters mainly to tourists. Dining out at restaurants is out of the question for most Cubans, who earn less than $20 a month on average. This is a country, don't forget, where most people have to make do with the meager monthly food ration from the government, as NPR's Nick Miroff has reported.

But there are plenty of signs of economic changes afoot in Cuba, slow as they are. And in the meantime, Pernod will do his part to promote the newest iterations of Cuban food with more pop-up paladares.

Lucio is already back in Havana, dreaming of wild boar.

Study: 1 in 14 people has oral HPV infection

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:21:06 -0800

Human papilloma virus as seen through a colored transmission electron micrograph. Credit: Pasieka/Science Photo Library RF via Getty Images

So how many people have human papillomavirus in their mouths?

Quite a few, say researchers who got more than 5,000 volunteers across the country to spit into a cup and answer detailed questions about their sex lives.

The bottom line: 6.9 percent of people in the U.S. (ages 14 to 69) have oral infections with HPV. Some types of HPV are linked to cancer and genital warts.

About 3.7 percent of people have "high-risk" oral infections from types of HPV that are most likely to lead to cancer. About 3.1 percent have "low-risk" infections.

The results were just published online by JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. An accompanying editorial says "these results are remarkable...."

How come?

A dramatic increase in cancers of the head and neck has been linked, in part, to HPV, which is also a cause of many cervical cancers. Now we have some real numbers about the extent of infection in the U.S. to go on.

For instance, a virus type dubbed HPV-16 was found to affect about 1 percent of people. That's the one that's been detected in about 85 percent of oral cancers.

There were some other noteworthy findings. Men are much more likely to have an oral HPV infection than women (10.1 percent vs. 3.6 percent). And people who have had more sex partners and more frequent sex are more likely to be positive for HPV.

Merck and GlaxoSmithKline make vaccines against HPV. The vaccine is recommended for girls and, recently, boys to guard against cancers of the cervix and anus, as well genital warts.

But the vaccines aren't approved to prevent oral cancers. And the researchers note that the vaccines' effectiveness against oral HPV infections is "unknown, and therefore vaccination cannot currently be recommended" to prevent oral cancers.

Ohio State's Dr. Maura Gillison, lead author of the paper, has served as a consultant to both Merck and Glaxo. Merck was one of the funders the study.