KPCC: Stories by Alex Cohen

Radiolab comes to KPCC

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:24:44 -0800

Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich of WNYC's Radiolab. Credit: The New York Observer

Since 2005, the public radio program "Radiolab" has brought listeners fascinating stories about science and the human experience. Now the show is part of KPCC's weekend lineup.

"Radiolab" is essentially a show about science, but not in the traditional way. The show features seemingly mundane one word show titles like "Stress" and "Zoos," but it uses creative audio and storytelling techniques to present the topics in ways that are both extraordinary and educational.

"Radiolab" co-hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich also don't sound like the typical public radio show hosts. At times, it seems more like they are having a conversation at a diner. Abumrad says that's exactly how the show began years ago when the two became regular breakfast buddies who bounced ideas off of each other over breakfast.

"Fast forward many years and now we do it with a big thick pane of glass between us and with the intent of editing the life out of it," said Abumrad. "But it’s still like those conversations we used to have at the diner."

Krulwich says "Radiolab" approaches stories in a way that's different from other NPR programs. Typically, Krulwich says, reporters will learn everything they can about a story and then assume a position of knowledge.

"We stumble around, we don’t know the answers to the questions we ask, literally, and we work our way toward a conclusion," said Krulwich.

That approach even extends to the way the show presents funding credits: the guests, not announcers, read them via a voice mail message. And if they flub, that's not removed during editing, as it often would be on other shows.

"Radiolab" airs on Saturday at 3 p.m.

Original Beach Boys 'Smile' album released

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 06:00:04 -0700

A publicity shot of the Beach Boy's "Smile" 5 CD box set. Credit: Photo courtesy of Guy Webster

Capitol Records will release the Beach Boys "The Smile Sessions" Tuesday, after the original album "Smile" was tabled nearly 45 years ago.

During the late 1960s musicians were pushing the boundaries of rock music, said Domenic Priore, who wrote the liner notes for the current release, and the book "Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece."

It was "the year of the Monterey Pop festival, the year of the Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'; the year Jimi Hendrix came out and just basically changed acoustics as far as guitars and psychedelic music," he said.

"Smile" was recorded in 1966 and 1967 with the help of Van Dyke Parks who, according to Priore, brought a "more socially conscious, politically oriented lyric" to the traditional Beach Boys sound. The lyrics, however, were not without controversy. Mike Love, the band's lead singer, questioned the lyrics even as they pushed forward into the recording that distinguished the band more from its traditional rock and roll sound.

"Here they were," said Priore, "making this grand leap to where The Byrds and Bob Dylan and the more progressive groups were going; and ... Brian choked, he got too nervous, and couldn't make decisions on the final edit."

The album's tracks are exceedingly complicated, recorded in separate sections and woven together into a single song: "Every single piece of this album is in sections, so sometimes the sections would be 30 seconds, sometimes a minute, sometimes a minute and a half. Everything had to be spliced together, one of the tracks, 'Vege-tables,' has about eight different sections, and you know they're all different, but they work together," said Priore. The modular sound defines the album, and at times stumped even Brian Wilson who couldn't figure out how to to weave together the disperate sections.

The record was later tabled until it was recorded in 2004 by Brian Wilson and his current band, but this is the first time the original 1960s album has been released.

The current release set will contain out-takes and original takes from the band's 1966 and 1967 recording sessions. The album, said Priore, represents "the magnificence of the Beach Boys at its finest."

The album will be released as a five-CD box set and a less expensive two-CD version.

As biodiesel prices soar, Calif. cracks down on kitchen grease thieves

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:00:04 -0700

Matthew Geiger (L) and Cody Brockway pump used cooking oil from a holding barrel behind an Ashton, Maryland, restaurant 20 July, 2006. The two collect the cooking oil to be turned into biodiesel fuel for automobiles and buses. A gallon of grease was worth about 6 cents a gallon only five years ago, but currently sells for nearly 50 cents a gallon. Credit: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

One man's trash is another man's biofuel, which is why state agriculture officials are launching a program to crack down on restaurant grease thieves. The California Department of Food and Agriculture said Thursday that it's contracting with police to target areas where restaurants leave used kitchen grease out to be picked up by rendering facilities.

"Restaurants make arrangements with rendering plants in California to pick up that grease, haul it back to the rendering plant where it can be turned into either an additive for animal feed and then, as is happening more frequently now, biofuel," said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the California Deptartment of Food and Agriculture.

Once thought of as the refuse of fast food joints and other restaurants, the grease has acquired new value as diesel fuel prices soar. The leftover grease can be converted into fuel for diesel cars and trucks, making it a sought-after commodity. A gallon of grease that was worth about 6 cents only five years ago, now sells for nearly 50 cents a gallon.

Police across the country are taking note of the increase in grease thefts.

The April 2011 issue of Render Magazine reported that Baker Commodities, an L.A.-area processing plant, suffered $2 million in damages from lost grease and broken equipment in 2010.

"It's a big problem across the country, but California has more restaurants, so there's a bigger loss,'' said Tina Caparella, the magazine's editor.

The Food and Agriculture Department is responsible for regulating grease transport. A spokesman said that the agency is using fees paid by rendering companies to fund police overtime in the areas hardest hit.

The first major crackdown is in-the-works in Southern California. The exact location is being kept secret while the operation is ongoing. but Lyle said that police are observing high theft areas for people picking up grease. Then, the officers stop these people and make sure they have the proper paperwork and are transporting the grease legally.

"We believe it is individuals who do understand the law and are circumventing it," Lyle said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story

USC computer scientist helps crack centuries-old code

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 06:54:27 -0700

This image provided by the University of Southern California shows a copy of the Copiale Cipher. Scientists in California and Sweden said they have used computer translation techniques to solve a 250-year-old mystery by deciphering this coded manuscript, the Copiale Cipher, written for a secret society. Credit: AP Photo/USC

It sounds like something out of a Dan Brown novel, but this story is no fiction. A USC computer scientist has helped crack the code in a late 18th century manuscript known as the "Copiale Cypher."

The 105-page book was found in East Berlin after the end of the Cold War. Since then, people have been trying to figure out its meaning.

Kevin Knight of USC decided to take on the task after colleagues approached him following a talk in Sweden earlier this year. Knight says he and two Swedish researchers used a combination of computer techniques and human intuition to unravel the code.

The manuscript contains about 90 distinct characters, including all of the Roman and Greek letters. But Knight said there are lots of "strange symbols" and no spaces between the words. Even more problematic, there's no hint of the language in which it was written.

The team went down some wrong paths before hypothesizing that the plain text might be German. That helped reveal the first three words: "Ceremonie of initiation." Knight and his partners were then able to figure out the rest of the manuscript, which contained the rituals of an 18th century secret German society.

Knight's typical job doesn't involve code-breaking; he writes automatic translation software. He says the techniques used in those two tasks could be combined to solve even more difficult codes in the future.

Rare California films see light in new DVD box set

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:31:51 -0700

Seeing Yosemite with David Curry, released in 1916, is one film making up 10 hours of rare footage newly released on DVD.

A new DVD box set featuring never-before-seen films of California and the Western United States hit the shelves Tuesday. The DVD box set by the National Film Preservation Foundation captures the Western United States as moviegoers saw it in the early part of the last century.

For decades, Hollywood has been synonymous with movie-making, but in the early days of the film industry most films were made on the East Coast.

As filmmakers started heading west around 1910 for better weather, it gave movie audiences a chance to see new places that not many had visited in person.

"Treasures from American Film Archives 5: The West" includes ten hours of footage – and while the set does include the popular Westerns, it also includes other movie genres, documentaries and newsreels filmed between 1898 to 1938.

Among the offerings is the 1910 silent movie "The Sergeant," which is the first surviving narrative film shot in Yosemite National Park. The film is also important to Southern California's film history in that it was made by Los Angeles' first permanent movie studio, the Selig-Polyscope Company. Film preservationists rediscovered the movie last year in the New Zealand Film Archive.

“A New Miracle in the Desert” (1935), a Hearst Metronome newsreel

An excerpt from “The Golden West” (1938), an amateur movie by an unidentified filmmaker

The box set also includes a short promotional film by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power called "The Romance of Water," the story of the first Los Angeles aqueduct which brought water from the Owens Valley. A separate Hearst newsreel documents the construction of the Colorado River aqueduct. These films, however, ignore the controversy stirred by the era's water wars.

"You could say it's a conflict-free version of the West's water wars...with the political chicanery left out," said Scott Simmon, the curator of the DVD set.

Another controversial period in Los Angeles' history is documented in the 1936 newsreel "The 'Promise Land' Barred to 'Hoboes'." It tells the story of the Los Angeles Police Department's attempt to crack down on transients settling in Los Angeles.

"The L.A. chief of police James Davis had the idea that he would send L.A. policemen to every rail and auto entrance route into California and check to make sure that, as he put it, 'the better class' citizens were coming to Los Angeles," said Simmon.

Two other moves in the set are the Clara Bow silent film "Mantrap," (1926) in which Lake Arrowhead stands in for a Canadian Lake; and a home movie showing early scenes of Wilshire Blvd. and Olvera Street.

KPCC's Rob Strauss contributed to this report.

FBI probes civil rights abuse in LA County jails

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:29:16 -0700

File photo: The Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Sheriff Lee Baca shot back Monday at the tactics the FBI is using to probe allegations of civil rights abuses in Los Angeles County jails.

Federal authorities are targeting the country's largest jail system, even smuggling a cellphone into one facility so an inmate could gather information for FBI agents.

"What we learned is that the FBI, unbeknownst to the Sheriff's department, snuck a cellphone into Men's Central jail in downtown Los Angeles to an inmate informant.. who is believed to have been sharing reports from inside," the L.A. Times' Robert Faturechi told KPCC.

The investigation is one among several the FBI has undertaken recently into the workings of the Sheriff's Dept., including an investigation into an inmate's claim that he had a racist slur etched into his scalp, and that of an A.C.L.U. monitor who says she witnessed guards beating an inmate unconscious.

"What we've seen for years is that there're tons of allegations that come out of the jails," Faturechi said. "They're often hard to substantiate one way or another because you've got a deputy's word against an inmate's and obviously a deputy brings more credibility, and rarely are there independent witnesses."

Sheriff Lee Baca on GDLA: MyFoxLA.com

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Monday that the investigation was not warranted, and noted that several independent agencies already keep a close eye on L.A.'s jails, which house about 15,000 inmates.

Sheriff Baca told MyFoxLA Monday morning that he resented the FBI's investigation, and in particular its sneaking a cell phone into Men's Central jail.

"It's illegal. It's a misdemeanor. And then there's a conspiracy law that goes along with it," Baca said. "Quite frankly, it's unacceptable, no matter the reason."

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller declined to comment on the investigation other than to confirm federal agents were investigating allegations of civil rights abuses in at least two separate cases.

Audio: Interview with L.A. Times reporter Robert Faturechi about the FBI investigation into alleged beatings at county jails.

Rancho Cucamonga seniors compete in Wii bowling championship

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 06:12:39 -0700

Lotte Eberle (C), standing next to student Josef Kiener plays Nintendo Wii bowling at the Malhaelden seniors home on August 4, 2008 in Pforzheim, Germany. Credit: Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images

Some local seniors are competing in a national bowling championship Friday morning, but they won’t have to go to a bowling alley or use real bowling balls. They’ll play virtually on a Nintendo Wii game system.

The four seniors from Rancho Cucamonga are competing against teams in Ohio, Connecticut and Florida in the Wii Senior Bowling Championship.

Geoff Wolfsont, 67, is on the Rancho Cucamonga team, dubbed "The A Team." He says he used to bowl with a real ball several decades back but he stopped after he suffered some injuries to his back. Now, the virtual bowling may actually be improving Wolfsont's health.

"One of the reasons why I keep doing it is because I have Parkinson's [disease] and I want to improve or just maintain the hand-eye coordination that I still have, which varies from day to day," said Wolfsont.

Although the virtual action keeps them from having to worry about errant shots from other players, they do have to watch out for flying Wii remotes. Part of the fun of playing bowling on the Wii is that you can simulate the throw of a bowling ball by flinging your arm forward, which has led to stories (and YouTube videos) of people throwing their remotes into their TV. One of the rules of the tournament is that the players have to have the remote's wrist strap on at all times or they will be penalized five points.

The action will begin at 11 a.m. on Friday morning at the James Brulte Senior Center in Rancho Cucamonga. Veteran TV game show host Bob Eubanks will provide live play-by-play of the championship at the AARP Life@50+ event at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Long Beach firefighter receives 'Medal of Valor' award

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:47:47 -0700

Gov. Jerry Brown presented the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor to 13 law enforcement officers and firefighters on Tuesday. One of the recipients was Long Beach firefighter Charles Hakopian, who rescued a toddler from a burning building.

Last December, Hakopian and his crew responded to a fire at a two-story buidling in North Long Beach. Witnesses told the firefighters there was a 2-year-old boy trapped in an upstairs apartment, so Hakopian and another firefighter ran to the second floor to search for the toddler.

They immediately saw two rooms engulfed in flames. Hakopian went into the first room and nearly fell through the floor.

“When I made entry, I was in a crouching position and fell through up to my elbow," said Hakopian. "Luckily I was able to pull myself out, pushing off a wall that was on the first floor with my feet.”

Hakopian and his partner didn't find the boy, so they moved on to the second room and saw the toddler lying on the ground.

"He was directly below a window on the ground, face down," said Hakopian. "When I picked him up, he was pretty limp, didn’t have any muscle tone and he was not breathing."

By that time, another fire crew was battling the flames. Holding the boy, Hakopian crouched low and was able to escape the building.

The boy suffered second-degree burns to his legs and was in critical condition, but he has since recovered.

Other Medal of Valor recipients include two California Highway Patrol officers who were involved in a deadly shootout in Fresno County last year.

The Medal of Valor is California's highest public safety award.

Indie rock band Foster the People welcomes community volunteers on tour

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:49:31 -0700

Do gooders en route to an unknown destination. Credit: Bonnie Hawthorne/ Do Good Bus

A Los Angeles-based volunteer organization is taking its show on the road with a well-known indie rock band in an attempt to "do good" across the country. The "Do Good Bus" is a program that brings volunteers to service projects across the Southern California region.

The program is partnering with the band Foster the People on its national tour.

Rebecca Pontius is the founder of the Do Good Bus and the sister of Foster the People drummer Mark Pontius. Rebecca came up with the idea for the project after her brother organized a party bus for her 30th birthday. She realized that she could turn the fun atmosphere of the party bus into something positive for the community.

"My partner and I came up with this great idea: what if we put all our friends on a bus, and we show them how to volunteer and, in the meantime, kind of create that community like we did on the party bus?" said Rebecca.

Volunteers sign up online for the Do Good Bus and are then taken to a surprise service project in the Southland. In the past, volunteers have helped with gardening projects in the region and at a homeless camp in Malibu.

The bus will make 28 stops across the U.S. during the Foster the People tour. The first project is today in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"We actually as a band have always been really adamant since the beginning about trying to be involved in charity anyway we can," said Mark Pontius, "so this is the perfect thing to start off this whole thing."

The bus returns to Southern California with stops in Los Angeles and Pomona in mid-October, but there are no more spots available for those projects.

Caltech contest challenges students to prepare asteroid mission

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:00:00 -0700

An image mosaic of the asteroid Eros, with sunlight coming from the northeast, taken by the robotic NEAR Shoemaker space probe. Credit: NASA/Newsmakers

Nearly three dozen students from Caltech and around the world are competing this week in the "Caltech Space Challenge." The goal: design a mission to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid and return with a sample.

The five-day competition will involve two teams of 16 students.

Jon Mihaly is a doctoral student at Caltech and one of the organizers of the event. He says scientists know of about 8,000 near-Earth asteroids, but we have the capability to get to only about a dozen or so of them.

"Right now the main challenge is time-of-flight," said Mihaly. "Next to the moon, asteroids are the easiest things to get to. But we're still looking on missions on the order of anywhere from 60 days to as long as you want it to be. You could design a mission that was more than a year long if you really wanted to."

Caltech professors, along with scientists from Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other space agencies, will pick the winning mission.

The prize has yet to be announced. Mihaly says that will be revealed at the beginning of the competition.

LA City Council President Garcetti announces run for mayor

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:02:00 -0700

Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti delivers a speech during a press conference to launch a new Muslim-Jewish Partnership Program in Los Angeles on March 8, 2007. Credit: Hector Mata/Getty Images

Democratic Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti’s announcement that he’s running for mayor came as no surprise. The fourth generation Angeleno filed candidacy papers Thursday morning.

"It’s a city that right now I think needs a vision that inspires us, but also gets things done," he told KPCC on Thursday.

Garcetti said in a written statement that he'll bring to the job "focused leadership based on experience, practical know-how, and a willingness to embrace innovation."

Garcetti has already played a fictional L.A. mayor on TNT's "The Closer."

Garcetti co-chaired Barack Obama’s California campaign for president; he’s an executive committee member of the Democratic National Committee and received the New Frontier Award, given to one elected official in the country under 40 who best embodies the leadership and idealism of John F. Kennedy.

Garcetti was first elected to the city council in 2001. He represents a district that includes Hollywood, Los Feliz, Echo Park and Glassell Park. He cannot run for his seat again because of term limits.

Garcetti enters a field that includes fellow councilmember Jan Perry, among others. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is said to still be deciding whether he will run.

Garcetti becomes the environment and progressive candidate in the race, said Jaime Regalado, political analyst and director of the Edmund G. "Pat'' Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

At the same time, Regalado said, Garcetti can pull support from labor unions and building trades. "That's important because the`hard hats' of labor have not gotten along very well with environmentalists in the past,'' he said.

Because of Garcetti's history of pushing sustainable development, Regalado said, he might be the kind of candidate who can walk the thin line between the two camps.

Garcetti also speaks the most fluent Spanish of any major candidate in the race, which could be an advantage for him since Latinos account for one-fourth of primary voters and one-third of general election voters.

"At the end of the day, I’m just a guy from Los Angeles who loves this city and wants it to be a great city again,” Garcetti told KPCC's Alex Cohen on Thursday.

Correction: Yaroslavsky has not yet announced that he will run for mayor, as was mistakenly stated in the original story.

Long-missing Hollywood Walk of Fame star returns to its orbit

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 07:25:31 -0700

Hollywood Walk of Fame Credit: Christian Haugen/Flickr (Creative Commons-licensed)

A 300-pound chunk of stolen property has been orbited back to its rightful owner – the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Four decades ago when the NASA Apollo 11 astronauts were the biggest stars going, the Walk of Fame displaced others – including Jimmy Stewart’s and Kirk Douglas’ – to make way for special honors at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce planned to destroy the old star plaques and replace them with new ones. That was supposed to happen with actress Marilyn Miller’s star – but somebody stole it from a construction site.

Fast forward to this week, when the Chamber fielded a call from a man who said he had Miller’s star. The caller, identified only as “Bill,” says someone gave it to him.

When Chamber officials told him it’d be a crime to keep it, he quickly handed over the large chunk of concrete. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce says it’ll store the recovered star in its archives – saving it from what could have been a very different fate. “Bill’s” wife had wanted to turn it into a patio table.

'Yuri's Night' celebrates anniversary of first man in space

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 06:21:26 -0700

Yuri Gagarin, 27, (1934-68) wearing cosmonaut helmet, prepares to board Soviet Vostok I spaceship 12 April 1961 at Baikonur rockets launch pad shortly before its take-off to became the first man to travel in space, completing a round-the-Earth circuit. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Fifty years ago this week, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space. People around the world will mark that anniversary with a celebration called "Yuri's Night."

Former astrobiologist Loretta Whitesides of Pasadena cofounded "Yuri's Night" a decade ago. Whitesides noticed that Gagarin's famous flight and the first space shuttle flight (April 12, 1981) happened on the same day. She figured holding a global celebration each April 12 would be a great way to get people to pay more attention to space.

This year, there will be nearly 470 events in 71 different countries.

“We even have events in Tokyo," said Whitesides. "Our colleagues in Japan have said, you know, even though we’ve had this earthquake, we’re still going to do our part to be a part of the global event, which we were really touched by."

Over the years, people have found unusual ways to mark "Yuri's Night." One couple in South Africa even held a wedding at a planetarium, complete with a cake in the shape of a space shuttle.

For this year's celebration, the Griffith Observatory will hold a "Yuri's Night" event from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. A museum curator will offer a history about Gagarin and his flight.

Whitesides' husband will also speak about the future of space travel. He's chief executive of Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's private space enterprise.

Journalist, civil rights activist Almena Lomax dies at 95

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:05:42 -0700

Civil rights activist and noted black journalist Almena Lomax has died. She was 95 years old. Lomax was the founder of the Los Angeles Tribune, a weekly newspaper that chronicled black LA. It was published for nearly for two decades, beginning in 1941.

Lomax began her journalism career in 1938 when she went to work for the California Eagle, a premiere black weekly in Los Angeles. Three years later, she decided to raise $100 to buy the Tribune, which was then a religious newspaper. Lomax and her future husband turned the paper into a publication covering the growing African American community in Los Angeles.

The paper examined civil rights issues and other stories important to the black community, including the relationship between police and African Americans. Lomax also covered the black entertainment scene in Los Angeles, meeting legendary musicians like Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. Both Holiday and Ellington were regulars at the Dunbar Hotel, a hotel in South-Central Los Angeles that was owned by her father-in-law.

Lomax shut down the Tribune in the 1960, a year after she and her husband divorced. Lomax then moved with her children to the Deep South to join the civil rights movement. That experience particularly affected her son Michael, who now heads the United Negro College Fund.

Michael Lomax told KPCC's Alex Cohen he'd like people to remember his mother as a pioneering journalist and as someone who broke down barriers for women and African Americans in that field.

"And as someone who climbed the rough side of the mountain so others could have the opportunity to tell their story in the media," said Mr. Lomax.

Almena Lomax's late daughter Melanie, a civil rights lawyer, was the first African American head of the L.A. Police Commission. Lomax, who died on March 25 in Pasadena, is survived by three other children.

Elderly Santa Anita Park employee saves girl's life

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:36:39 -0700

A 90-year-old race track worker at Santa Anita Park put his own body on the line and pushed a 6-year-old girl out of the path of a runaway horse. KPCC's Alex Cohen spoke with Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke, who wrote about this heroic story.

John Shear has worked as a paddock guard at Santa Anita Park for five decades. His job is to keep the horses away from the race track crowd.

But Shear's devotion to his job has probably never been tested as much as it was on March 12. On that day, a father brought his two children to the racetrack so they could see the jockeys up close. The man's 6-year-old daughter was worried that she was small for her age, so the father pointed to the jockeys as an example of people who are short but still successful.

While the man and his children were looking at the jockeys, a runaway horse started heading toward an opening in the fence where the family was standing. The crowd began to scatter but, in the commotion, the father lost his grip on his daugther's hand. That's when Shear came into the picture.

“He was guarding the rope at that point, saw the horse running toward the rope, and he looked and he saw the little girl standing by herself," said Plaschke. "So he turns and jumps onto the girl and throws her, pushes her out of the way of the horse and, as he did, the horse trampled him.”

Shear suffered multiple fractures of his pelvis and was left with gashes on his arm, face and wrist. Plaschke says he'll probably be hospitalized for a couple months and will have to re-learn to walk.

The LA Times columnist spoke with Shear and asked him why he put his life on the line.

"He says, 'Look, I’m 90-years-old, she’s 6'," recounted Plaschke. "'She's a little girl, she has the rest of her life ahead of her, I’ve pretty much lived out my life. This is just something a man does.’"

LA County Fire Department team join search and rescue efforts in Japan

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:24:16 -0700

Los Angeles County Fire Department urban search and rescue team members load US Agency for International Development supplies to be flown to Haiti in the aftermath of the magnitude-7 earthquake onto truck on Jan. 13, 2010 in Pacoima, California. Credit: David McNew/Getty Images

L.A. County Fire Battalion Chief David Stone is a member of the Los Angeles County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue team, one of two U.S. teams that are trained and authorized to help in rescue missions abroad. The team arrived in Japan on March 13. He spoke with KPCC’s Alex Cohen about the devastation he’s seen so far.

Even after deployments in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and Haiti after the earthquake there, Stone is still awed by the devastation wrought by Japan’s earthquake and tsunami last week.

“Pictures and videos don't do justice, you have to stand there and look at it,” Stone said from Ofunato, Japan. “It's pretty awesome to see the power of nature.”

Over the past several days, Stone's witnessed houses uprooted, large ships dragged a mile inland, thousands of wrecked cars, 30 to 40 feet high debris piles and twisted steel.

The team has been working with the local government to conduct search and rescue missions.

“We'll go into an area where there's already been a surface sweep by the local officials and they'll give us some targets of areas where they don't have the expertise or the technical equipment,” said Stone.

The team also employs specially trained dogs that can pick up the live scent of trapped human beings. If the team finds a survivor, they employ listening devices to pinpoint his or her location.

Realizing the parallel dangers that Japan and Southern California share, Stone has already taken away some lessons from his experience.

"For us, education is the key point to the public, provide the warning system and then practice," said Stone.

'Found Footage Festival' puts spotlight on bad videos

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:42:36 -0800

Screenshot of "Learn the Dances of the '80s" Credit: FoundFootageFest.com

On Sunday, the Oscars celebrated the best in film. But on Tuesday, The "Found Footage Festival" will celebrate the best (or worst) in videos found in dumpsters, thrift stores and garage sales across America.

Nick Prueher, one of the festival’s curators, says the idea for such a show began when he was working at a McDonald’s in high school.

"It turned out to be one of the most insultingly dumb videos I’d ever seen," said Prueher.

Prueher took the tape home and showed it to his friends, who loved it. Soon, watching the video became a weekly ritual.

Prueher and his friends eventually decided they needed new material and they started scouring thrift shops and garage sales for new videotapes. By 2004, they decided they had enough material to actually make a show based around their "found footage."

Prueher, and a co-host, will perform that show on Tuesday at the Largo Theatre in Los Angeles.

There are two criteria that a video has to meet to be featured in the show: the video has to be unintentionally funny, and it has to fail (in an entertaining way) at what it was attempting to accomplish.

One of the videos that will be shown at the Largo is a 1985 tape called "Rent-A-Friend." The idea behind the video was that a lonely person could pop the tape into the VCR and spend time with their "rent-a-friend," but in this particular video the "friend" starts revealing very intimate, uncomfortably personal details. Prueher has asked us to not put the video on the website, but you can hear the audio in our interview.

Here's another video that meets the "Found Footage" criteria:

Prueher says despite the cultural shift to DVD and other newer forms of media, there's no lack of material for their show.

"You know, I guess the thing that we’ve found is that the formats change, and the production values change, but the bad ideas never do," said Prueher.

New feature offers a whole new view of the Oscars

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:57:32 -0800

The Academy Awards are going high-tech this year. A new feature will offer online viewers an inside look at everywhere from the red carpet to the exclusive Governor's Ball after party, and the viewers will be able to control the action through 360-degree cameras.

The Dallas-based company BigLook360.com set up the cameras, which will stream video at the Oscars website.

For a $5 fee, Oscar fans at home can peek into “areas that people have never seen before,” Stephen Zalenka, executive producer for BigLook360, tells KPCC’s Alex Cohen.

You get to control which direction the camera points, navigating around such places as the red carpet outside the Kodak Theatre, the area where the Oscars are engraved and a private backstage bar.

The “wow factor” of the 360-degree cameras, says Zalenka, is that they’ll offer real-time panorama views of the Academy Awards that viewers can control at home.

Director John Waters brings one-man show 'This Filthy World' to UCLA

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 06:00:09 -0800

John Waters Credit: Photo courtesy UCLA Live

The 83rd Annual Academy Awards is just over a week away. Director John Waters is a member of the Academy and he’ll share his Oscar insights at UCLA’s Royce Hall in an upcoming one-man show called “This Filthy World.”

Waters says "This Filthy World" is his worldview. "I use the word 'filth' because I think the word 'trash' is used up," said Waters. "God knows the word 'camp' is used up. To me, 'filth' has more of an edge, but I think it’s a positive word."

In the show, Waters talks about his childhood in Baltimore and his early experiences as a filmmaker. John Waters told KPCC’s Alex Cohen that he didn’t have the slightest clue about editing when he began to make movies like "Pink Flamingos."

"Those early films, critics said they were raw," said Waters. "What 'raw' meant was 'terrible.'" But Waters believes his early movies worked, despite their amateur appearance.

Waters now has a chance to judge others' movies as a member of the Academy. He says one of the movies that most impressed him during the past year, although it's not up for any Oscars, was the Ryan Reynolds film "Buried." It's about a man who is trying to escape from a coffin, and the whole film takes place in that underground environment.

Waters will perform the show “This Filthy World” at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Wednesday, February 23.

Audio: Listen to an extended interview with John Waters.

Monrovia company develops hummingbird-shaped drone

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:07:39 -0800

The "Nano Hummingbird," developed by Monvrovia-based AeroVironment Inc., has a wingspan of six-and-a-half inches and weighs less than an AA battery. Credit: Via AeroVironment

A Monrovia company has developed a miniature drone that doesn't look anything like your normal drone. It's in the shape of a hummingbird.

The "Nano Hummingbird," which was developed by AeroVironment Inc, has a wingspan of six-and-a-half inches and weighs less than an AA battery.

"In fact it has a body design that has the coloring scheme of a hummingbird," said Steven Gitlin, a spokesman for Aerovironment. "It’s got a little beak that sticks out of it and those two wings provide all of the propulsion and the control for this vehicle."

The company developed the prototype for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The hummingbird can fly for about eight minutes at a time. Its developers predict that someday it could spy on enemies by flying through a window, or settling onto a power line.

Some critics have raised concerns about the privacy issues that could arise with miniature drones like the "Nano Humminbird."