What once were orchards and citrus groves now is a dense but sprawling urban area. The city of Los Angeles is considering ways to capture stormwater near where it falls so that water can be made use of throughout the city. ; Credit: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

With a historic drought showing no signs of letting up, the city of Los Angeles is drafting a new plan to use more local water sources by capturing storm water throughout the L.A. basin. At recent community meetings, officials from the Department of Water and Power (along with the city's Sanitation Department) have been showcasing potential ideas for the final plan, due out this summer.

This new plan would make storm water about 4 percent of the city's annual water budget. For the first time, LA is talking about making storm water a small but reliable part of the city’s water sources – 25,000 acre-feet, or somewhat over 8 billion gallons of storm water a year. For perspective, a typical one-inch rain event in Los Angeles County produces more than 10 billion gallons of storm water, most of which hits asphalt and concrete, flows into storm drains and goes to the sea.

It’s hardly a new idea. But storm water capture has taken on additional urgency because of the drought, because of the increasing price of importing water, and because of local water quality rules.

On top of that, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued an executive order last October, directing the LADWP to cut its purchase of imported water in half within a decade, in part by cutting water consumption at least 20 percent.

Storm water capture projects have captured the energy and attention of environmental groups who’ve demonstrated them in backyards, neighborhoods, and alleyways.

LA could invest in much-larger-scale versions of those ideas. Good places for those bigger projects tend to be in the San Fernando Valley, where the geology is hospitable to rain water capture and the city has clearest rights. 

Some examples featured in the LADWP’s presentation aren’t yet approved, but are in consideration:

• Water capture and storage at the Van Norman Complex; 
• The Canterbury Power Line Easement, running between the Tujunga Spreading Grounds and the Pacoima Wash, which would capture 1500 acre-feet of water a year; and 
• Converting Strathern Park (near the Hollywood Freeway) from a disused gravel pit/landfill to a wetlands park, in joint operation with L.A. County. 

Storing storm water in the ground means protecting some areas from industrial pollution, and means filtering and treating polluted groundwater as it’s pulled from aquifers. Last November’s $7.5 billion dollar water bond earmarked funds for storm water capture and for groundwater cleanup. DWP officials say they’re hoping to bring some of that money to Los Angeles.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

US-based payments processor Nets has released

This tutorial will explain how to find the version number for Windows Defender in Windows 10. [...]

Windows Defender allows you to perform a Custom scan that lets you specify the specific folder or drive you would like to scan for malware. As you only need to scan that one folder, the scan time will be much quicker than scanning an entire machine. [...]

Agora Financial's Byron King and John-Mark Staude of Riverside Resources offer their viewpoints on markets during the COVID-19 pandemic in this conversation with Maurice Jackson of Proven and...

Visit the aureport.com for more information and for a free newsletter

Ron Struthers of Struthers' Resource Stock Report details the value proposition of Bam Bam Resources and its flagship prospect.

Visit the aureport.com for more information and for a free newsletter

Peter Epstein of Epstein Research looks into the Gross Overriding Royalty that just changed hands on the company's flagship Red Hill project, and discusses what it means for the firm.

Visit the aureport.com for more information and for a free newsletter

Rubber stoppers are placed onto filled vials of the investigational drug remdesivir at a Gilead manufacturing site in the United States.; Credit: /AP

Updated at 4:59 p.m. ET

The Food and Drug Administration has given emergency use authorization to the antiviral drug remdesivir to treat hospitalized patients with the coronavirus, President Trump on Friday told reporters at the White House.

Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day said remdesivir maker Gilead Sciences is donating 1.5 million vials of the drug and will work with the federal government to distribute it to patients in need.

The news comes days after preliminary results from a study of the drug showed it can help patients recover faster. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, hailed the findings earlier this week as "quite good news."

The authorization means remdesivir can be distributed in the U.S. and given intravenously to treat COVID-19 patients — both adults and children — who are hospitalized with severe disease, the FDA says. The agency defines that category as "patients with low blood oxygen levels or needing oxygen therapy or more intensive breathing support such as a mechanical ventilator."

Discussing the findings about the drug's ability to help COVID-19 patients, O'Day cautioned earlier Friday that remdesivir is used to treat advanced cases, in which people are already hospitalized. The recent positive findings, he said, are a starting point in the fight against the respiratory disease.

"We want to continue to see how we can expand remdesivir to more patient populations," O'Day said on NBC's Today show. "Clearly with other medicines and vaccines to come, this is part, I think — the beginning of our ability to make an impact on this devastating virus."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Dr. Anthony Fauci steps out of the West Wing for a briefing on the novel coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House in March.; Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

The White House will not allow the leading immunologist on the coronavirus task force to testify to Congress next week, calling the request "counter-productive" to the administration's efforts to contain the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci's testimony had been requested by the House Appropriations Committee, as part of an investigation into the White House response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A committee spokesman on Friday said the White House had blocked the doctor from appearing before the panel.

"The Appropriations Committee sought Dr. Anthony Fauci as a witness at next week's Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee hearing on COVID-19 response. We have been informed by an administration official that the White House has blocked Dr. Fauci from testifying," spokesman Evan Hollander said in a statement.

Fauci has become one of the most well recognized experts in the administration's coronavirus response team, often speaking publicly during task force briefings, and at times, seeming to contradict statements made by President Trump.

"While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at Congressional hearings. We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wears a mask on Capitol Hill on April 30. Members in the House will not return over coronavirus fears but the Senate is scheduled to return on Monday.; Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a rare joint statement on Saturday, declined an offer from the White House to make rapid COVID-19 tests available for Congress.

"Congress is grateful for the Administration's generous offer to deploy rapid COVID-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill, but we respectfully decline the offer at this time," Pelosi and McConnell said. "Our country's testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly."

McConnell, R-Ky., plans to bring the Senate back into session on Monday, while Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said this week the House would not bring representatives back over coronavirus fears.

On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on Twitter that the Trump administration would send three Abbott "point of care testing machines and 1,000 tests for their use" to Capitol Hill.

President Trump on Saturday tweeted: " No reason to turn it down, except politics. We have plenty of testing. Maybe you need a new Doctor over there. Crazy Nancy will use it as an excuse not to show up to work!"

Pelosi and Hoyer said they made the decision based on advice from the Capitol's attending physician, Brian Monahan. "The House physician's view was that there was a risk to members that was one he would not recommend taking," Hoyer said Tuesday.

So far, Rand Paul of Kentucky is the only senator to have tested positive for the coronavirus. In the House, seven members have tested positive or presumed to be positive for the coronavirus.

On Friday, McConnell shared guidelines from Monahan urging lawmakers and staff to maintain six feet of distance, limit the number of people in offices and to wear masks when possible.

Monahan has told Republican leaders that his office does not have the capacity to proactively test all 100 senators and can only test those who are ill, Politico reported.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A woman passes a closed Social Security Administration office in Los Angeles in 2013. Some 53,000 of the agency's workers are now working from home.; Credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

The coronavirus pandemic has forced many people to work from home, and that includes employees of the federal government. The numbers vary by agency, but at the Social Security Administration, some 53,000 workers are doing so.

Social Security field offices are closed. But the shutdown hasn't stopped the agency from processing claims for new benefits and appeals of benefit denials. And according to statistics that the SSA sent its workers, the agency has been doing so at a faster pace than before.

"Telework is proving a great boon to the service Social Security provides to the American people," says Ralph deJuliis, who works at the SSA's office in Tulsa, Okla. "We are getting the checks to people faster and quicker."

DeJuliis is president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 220, which represents many Social Security workers. And he says he hopes the SSA will continue allowing employees to work from home.

Telework, he says, is "good for the employees, good for the public. We've got the work done. We kept the public out of harm's way because, let's face it, we deal with mostly people who are old or disabled. They are at the highest risk."

According to deJuliis, the SSA has found that its backlog of pending cases has fallen by 11% since March 23, when the agency instituted wide-scale telework, and that calls from recipients are answered more quickly.

Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says it's not surprising that productivity is up.

"Actually, there are studies that have been done, including studies in government agencies — small-scale studies, to be sure — but they have shown that productivity does rise when people get to work from home," she says.

Jeff Neal, a former head of human resources at the Department of Homeland Security, says it's not surprising that people become more productive when they work from home.

"The really good workers might be sitting there at their home desk, wherever that is," he says. "And they're supposed to stop at 5 o'clock, and they look at their watch or their computer and they realize it's 7 o'clock and they've still been working, because they get into things and they start getting stuff done and they just keep on going."

It's unclear how many federal workers across the government are teleworking. According to the most recent statistics, from two years ago, 42% of the some 2.1 million government employees were eligible to telework, although only about half of those were in fact working from home.

The Trump administration had been hostile to teleworking, Neal says, because in its view it sees it as a benefit to federal workers. But Neal says it's also a benefit to taxpayers.

"If people view it as what it really is, which is something that is in the interest of the federal government to have, then they would continue it because it helps them hire. It helps them retain people," he says. "And most importantly, it helps them remain operational during a national emergency. So it's a very good thing."

And Sawhill at Brookings says she expects teleworking will continue to increase both in government and the private sector after the coronavirus crisis ends.

"This experience has showed us that we can get work done at home and that we can meet people's needs, the public's needs, by doing so," she says. "That doesn't mean there aren't lots of downsides. But overall, I think this is a trend that is going to accelerate sharply as a result of this recent experience."

The federal government has not given any guidance as to when it expects all federal workers to return to their offices.

The SSA issued a statement saying it continues to monitor the COVID-19 situation across the nation, promising that when it does reopen offices, it will provide a safe environment for the people it serves and its employees.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seen in February, has been released from the hospital after treatment for a gallbladder condition.; Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP

After being treated on Tuesday for a gallbladder infection at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was discharged on Wednesday.

"She is doing well and glad to be home," according to a Supreme Court press release.

The court said over the next few weeks Ginsburg will return to Johns Hopkins Hospital for follow-up outpatient visits, and for a nonsurgical procedure to remove the gallstone.

Ginsburg, 87, participated in a virtual Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday from her hospital room. The justices and lawyers held unique oral argument sessions by phone all week because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last year Ginsburg underwent three weeks of radiation for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas, and in December she was operated on for lung cancer.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

"Deepfakes" are digitally altered images that make incidents appear real when they are not. Such altered files could have broad implications for politics.; Credit: /Marcus Marritt for NPR

Sophisticated fake media hasn't emerged as a factor in the disinformation wars in the ways once feared — and two specialists say it may have missed its moment.

Deceptive video and audio recordings, often nicknamed "deepfakes," have been the subject of sustained attention by legislators and technologists, but so far have not been employed to decisive effect, said two panelists at a video conference convened on Wednesday by NATO.

One speaker borrowed Sherlock Holmes' reasoning about the significance of something that didn't happen.

"We've already passed the stage at which they would have been most effective," said Keir Giles, a Russia specialist with the Conflict Studies Research Centre in the United Kingdom. "They're the dog that never barked."

The perils of deepfakes in political interference have been discussed too often and many people have become too familiar with them, Giles said during the online discussion, hosted by NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

Following all the reports and revelations about election interference in the West since 2016, citizens know too much to be hoodwinked in the way a fake video might once have fooled large numbers of people, he argued: "They no longer have the power to shock."

Tim Hwang, director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, agreed that deepfakes haven't proven as dangerous as once feared, although for different reasons.

Hwang argued that users of "active measures" (efforts to sow misinformation and influence public opinion) can be much more effective with cheaper, simpler and just as devious types of fakes — mis-captioning a photo or turning it into a meme, for example.

Influence specialists working for Russia and other governments also imitate Americans on Facebook, for another example, worming their way into real Americans' political activities to amplify disagreements or, in some cases, try to persuade people not to vote.

Other researchers have suggested this work continues on social networks and has become more difficult to detect.

Defense is stronger than attack

Hwang also observed that the more deepfakes are made, the better machine learning becomes at detecting them.

A very sophisticated, real-looking fake video might still be effective in a political context, he acknowledged — and at a cost to create of around $10,000, it would be easily within the means of a government's active measures specialists.

But the risks of attempting a major disruption with such a video may outweigh an adversary's desire to use one. People may be too media literate, as Giles argued, and the technology to detect a fake may mean it can be deflated too swiftly to have an effect, as Hwang said.

"I tend to be skeptical these will have a large-scale impact over time," he said.

One technology boss told NPR in an interview last year that years' worth of work on corporate fraud protection systems has given an edge to detecting fake media.

"This is not a static field. Obviously, on our end we've performed all sorts of great advances over this year in advancing our technology, but these synthetic voices are advancing at a rapid pace," said Brett Beranek, head of security business for the technology firm Nuance. "So we need to keep up."

Beranek described how systems developed to detect telephone fraudsters could be applied to verify the speech in a fake clip of video or audio.

Corporate clients that rely on telephone voice systems must be wary about people attempting to pose as others with artificial or disguised voices. Beranek's company sells a product that helps to detect them and that countermeasure also works well in detecting fake audio or video.

Machines using neural networks can detect known types of synthetic voices. Nuance also says it can analyze a recording of a real known voice — say, that of a politician — and then contrast its characteristics against a suspicious recording.

Although the world of cybersecurity is often described as one in which attackers generally have an edge over defenders, Beranek said he thought the inverse was true in terms of this kind of fraud detection.

"For the technology today, the defense side is significantly ahead of the attack side," he said.

Shaping the battlefield

Hwang and Giles acknowledged in the NATO video conference that deepfakes likely will proliferate and become lower in cost to create, perhaps becoming simple enough to make with a smartphone app.

One prospective response is the creation of more of what Hwang called "radioactive data" — material earmarked in advance so that it might make a fake easier to detect.

If images of a political figure were so tagged beforehand, they could be spotted quickly if they were incorporated by computers into a deceptive video.

Also, the sheer popularity of new fakes, if that is what happens, might make them less valuable as a disinformation weapon. More people could become more familiar with them, as well as being detectable by automated systems — plus they may also have no popular medium on which to spread.

Big social media platforms already have declared affirmatively that they'll take down deceptive fakes, Hwang observed. That might make it more difficult for a scenario in which a politically charged fake video went viral just before Election Day.

"Although it might get easier and easier to create deepfakes, a lot of the places where they might spread most effectively, your Facebooks and Twitters of the world, are getting a lot more aggressive about taking them down," Hwang said.

That won't stop them, but it might mean they'll be relegated to sites with too few users to have a major effect, he said.

"They'll percolate in these more shady areas."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block Congress from seeking the materials, saying, "The government will suffer irreparable harm absent a stay."; Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP

The Supreme Court has temporarily put on hold the release of redacted grand jury material from the Russia investigation to a House panel.

The Trump administration is trying to block the release.

Last October, a district court judge ruled the Justice Department had to turn over the materials, which were blacked out, from former special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

An appeals court upheld the decision, but the Trump administration, hoping to keep the evidence secret, appealed to the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice John Roberts' order temporarily stops the process. Lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee have until May 18 to file their response to the Justice Department's attempts to keep the materials from the House panel.

The Justice Department had until Monday to turn over the material following the appeals court order. But on Thursday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block Congress from seeking it, saying, "The government will suffer irreparable harm absent a stay."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Two years after it released the first season of the show 13 Reasons Why with a graphic suicide scene, Netflix has announced that it has edited it out.

The show is centered on the suicide of fictional teen Hannah Baker, and the first season's finale shows her taking her own life. Several organizations, including the National Association of School Psychologists, raised concerns that it could romanticize suicide for vulnerable teens.

"Our creative intent in portraying the ugly, painful reality of suicide in such graphic detail in Season 1 was to tell the truth about the horror of such an act, and make sure no one would ever wish to emulate it," show creator Brian Yorkey said in a statement. "But as we ready to launch Season 3, we have heard concerns about the scene from Dr. Christine Moutier at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and others, and have agreed with Netflix to re-edit it."

"No one scene is more important than the life of the show, and its message that we must take better care of each other," he added. "We believe this edit will help the show do the most good for the most people while mitigating any risk for especially vulnerable young viewers."

After some initial criticism, Netflix added a warning card to the beginning of the episode, alerting viewers that the episode contained "graphic depictions of suicide and violence."

The show also has a website, 13reasonswhy.info, containing resources about suicide prevention. It contains videos of cast members discussing topics such as bullying, consent, depression and how to talk with a teen about the series. The site also warns: "If you are struggling, this series may not be right for you or you may want to watch it with a trusted adult."

The edited version, now on Netflix, shows Hannah looking at herself in the mirror, full of emotion. It then cuts to her parents finding her body in the bathroom and reacting to her death. The previous version was nearly three minutes long, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and showed her cutting her wrists with a razor blade.

Netflix's decision has drawn praise from a number of suicide prevention advocates, such as American Association of Suicidology, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American School Counselor Association, Dr. Helen Hsu from Stanford, advocacy group Mental Health America, the Trevor Project and Dr. Rebecca Hedrick from Cedars-Sinai, according to THR.

"We support the decision to edit the scene in which Hannah takes her own life from 13 Reasons Why. There has been much debate about the series in the medical community," they said in a joint statement, as THR reported. "But this positive change will ensure that 13 Reasons Why continues to encourage open conversation about mental health and suicide prevention — while also mitigating the risk for the most vulnerable teenage viewers."

Ron Avi Astor at the University of Southern California, who studies adolescent bullying and mental health, discussed with NPR's Anya Kamenetz how the images of self-harm on the show could affect teens.

Avi Astor told Kamenetz that the depiction could be contagious — but just for certain teens. "It's not just that any random kid would see it and do it," he said, but for a kid who was already thinking about suicide, it had the potential to influence their behavior.

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Blade Runner future that we haven't quite reached. ; Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros.

The biggest puzzler of Blade Runner is perhaps not whether Harrison Ford's character is a replicant, but what's up with all the Asian people wearing rice hats?

Asians heavily populate this cyberpunk version of L.A., their cultural and economic clout obvious in the graffiti and neon signs in Chinese and Japanese that crowd every streetscape. Building-size digital ads with a geisha flashes repeatedly throughout the film, her beatific smile increasingly at odds with the rising body count.

Read more at LAist.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Money talks ... in verse.

"Money is a kind of poetry," the poet Wallace Stevens once wrote. That might be so, but poems rarely pay the poet's bills. Still, poetry reading in the U.S. has skyrocketed in recent years, according to the National Endowment for the Arts' Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

The Academy of American Poets announced Thursday that it has received a $4.5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Poets Laureate Fellowship program — believed to be the largest-ever from a philanthropic institution for poetry. That's enough to fund the program for the next three years.

Poetry is like "the little engine that could ... with its outsized power, with its tremendous potency," Elizabeth Alexander, who is the president of the Mellon Foundation, tells NPR. As a poet, she believes the grant will help that engine "move a little faster."

Through fellowships to individual poets laureate, "we're able to create the conditions and open up the creativity of poets, not only to make their own poems, but also to think 'how can communities use poems? How can we let poetry be a way that we can explore what it means to be American in all these different places in real time?,'" Alexander says. (The Mellon Foundation is among NPR's recent financial supporters.)

"It's a game-changer," says poet and former NEA Chair Dana Gioia. He says that while multimillion-dollar grants to performing arts institutions is commonplace, the poetry world has made do on tiny grants from small funders. "Usually it's $25,000 and you're supposed to be grateful."

The Poets Laureate project began last year and provides grants from $50,000 to $100,000 to 13 poets around the country. Molly Fisk, the poet laureate of California's Nevada County, spearheaded workshops that encouraged more than 800 schoolchildren to write poems responding to devastating wildfires in the state. Ed Madden, poet laureate of Columbia, S.C., tells NPR he believes in "poetry as public art," including poetry readings on city buses. For his fellowship, he launched a youth and community workshop and interactive map called "Telling the Stories of the City."

Claudia Castro Luna, Washington state's poet laureate, held workshops at eight stops along the Columbia River — "places where cultural programming of the kind I am providing is rare," she tells NPR. Luna says the yearlong project One River, Many Voices "brought an injection of joy and beauty, an enthusiasm for words."

Academy of American Poets Chairman Michael Jacobs says in a statement that the organization is "thrilled that this extraordinary grant from the Mellon Foundation will help us continue to fulfill our mission and enable us to meaningfully fund poets who are involved in the civic life of their communities."

The $4.5 million grant is not the largest philanthropic gift to poetry. That distinction goes to Ruth Lilly who pledged an unrestricted $200 million to Chicago's Poetry Foundation in 2002. But it is believed to be the largest grant ever made by a philanthropic institution to support poets.

Gioia says having a large foundation like Mellon put real money toward the art form "is both visionary and practical," and a reflection of poetry's growing popularity among all age levels and backgrounds.

"Thirty years ago, I was seen as an eccentric for loving poetry. Now I'm just stating the obvious," he says. As Gioia's own poem Money puts it:

It greases the palm, feathers a nest, holds heads above water, makes both ends meet.

Guidelines for the 2020 round of fellowships are posted on the Academy of American Poets' website. Poets laureate "of a state, city, county, U.S. territory, or Tribal nation after having been formally appointed" are eligible.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Pinwheel; Credit: /iStock

About The Reflections:

Over the past weeks, most us have had to adapt to a new normal. We reached out to a few TED speakers to ask how their lives have changed and what they're thinking about these days.

Who We Hear From:

Dawn Wacek is the Youth Services Manager of the La Crosse Public Library in Wisconsin. She will appear on an upcoming episode. Her talk is A Librarian's Case Against Overdue Book Fines.

Dixon Chibanda is the director of the African Mental Health Research Initiative. He's based in Zimbabwe, and he has appeared on the episode, Erasing The Stigma.

Susan Pinker is a developmental psychologist and writer, who has most recently researched the importance of social interactions. She is based in Montreal, she will appear on an upcoming episode, and her talk is The Secret To Living Longer May Be Your Social Life.

Leticia Gasca is co-founder of the movement F***up Nights and Executive Director for the Failure Institute, the first think tank devoted to studying business failure and the reasons behind it. She's based in New York and has appeared on the episode, Setbacks.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Brian Dennehy, known for his interpretations of characters created by Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, has died at the age of 81.; Credit: Mike Piscitelli /Dennehy Family

Brian Dennehy could go from viciously intimidating on film to weak and weary on stage. The actor died yesterday of cardiac arrest. His family says his death was not related to COVID-19. He was 81 years old.

Dennehy had a vast and varied body of work. On screen he was known for his roles in First Blood, Cocoon, and Tommy Boy. In theater, he earned wide acclaim for his depiction of the beleagured Willy Loman in the 1999 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. That performance earned him one of his two Best Actor Tony Awards. He earned the other in 2003 for his portrayal of family patriarch James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Days Journey into Night.

Brian Manion Dennehy was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on July 9, 1938, and grew up on Long Island, New York. He was tall and broad-chested and played football in high school, but was also in love with theater. As an Irish Catholic, he didn't see much of a future for himself in acting until he saw Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. "For the first time when I saw that picture, I realized there were people in the business who looked like me, and who sounded like me. And who came from places I came from" he said in an interview with WHYY's Fresh Air in 1999. "Before that time, acting was like ballet — something I could appreciate but never consider myself a part of."

On stage, Dennehy was a revered actor, particularly in the Chicago theater scene. His two Tony-award winning performances began at the famed Goodman Theatre, where he also performed in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. On Broadway, his credits include Translations, Love Letters, and Inherit the Wind.

Earlier in his career, Dennehy wasn't picky about his roles — and he wasn't shy about it either. "I had kids," he said in the Fresh Air interview. "I had kids who were ready to go to college, and I knew I had the responsibility — which I did not resent — to make sure they had good educations." Dennhey said his wide range of roles on television, where he acted in everything from Dynasty to M*A*S*H to Just Shoot Me, helped him become a more efficient actor. Dennehy worked all throughout his life, most recently appearing in the television series The Blacklist, as well the upcoming independent film Driveways.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

NSF-funded Laird Kramer transforms the undergraduate physics experience

The status of soil can be represented by many properties. However, how well they represent soil status depends on the level of rainfall in the area. Researchers in Spain found that in wet regions soil status is strongly linked to biological factors, such as vegetation cover and biodiversity. In drier regions, status has a stronger link to the physical properties of the soil.

A new study has investigated the effects of set-aside management —when fields are taken out of agricultural production — on common invertebrate decomposers in soil. The diversity of woodlice species was higher in set-aside fields compared to neighbouring wheat fields and this effect increased in older set-asides. This study highlights the importance of set-aside areas as habitats for soil invertebrates, which are important for soil health.

I know these Presidential debates aren’t debates in the historical sense.  Regardless, I’m looking forward to seeing how both men do on a topic of immense complexity.  Is Mitt Romney going to be more forthcoming about what tax deductions he’d want cut to keep his tax reform plan from ballooning the deficit?  Will President Obama  give more detail about how he would improve the economy, short of a government stimulus that could never get through a GOP Congress?

I’ll be live tweeting during the debate.  Join me @AirTalk #debates.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

I thoroughly enjoyed the VP debate and its fast paced back-and-forth.  Democrats had to love Joe Biden's energy and willingness to challenge Paul Ryan on almost every point.  Republicans had to love Ryan's poise and discipline in how he handled himself, even as Biden was dismissing him throughout the 90-minutes.

Both of our "AirTalk" political strategists, Democrat Darry Sragow and Republican Jonathan Wilcox, agreed that Biden's performance fired up the Democratic base and provided tremendous relief after the President's flat performance the week before.  However, they also agreed that it wasn't likely to have much effect on the small number of undecided voters still out there.

The passionate performances of the VP candidates certainly sets a higher bar for the next Presidential candidates debate.  Will Obama and Romney up their games on Tuesday?  I suspect most of us will be tuning in to see.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

I’ll be live tweeting @AirTalk tonight during the debate.  Of greatest interest to me about President Obama is whether he’ll be able to crisply make his arguments and maintain a high level of energy for the full 90-minutes.  With Mitt Romney I’ll be looking to see whether he can loosen up in the town hall format and make a good connection with the questioners.

What was most striking for me about the first debate was how strongly Romney played with women.  That had been a huge problem for him throughout the campaign.  In fact, a couple of months ago I joked about the “ten single women in the country who were voting for Romney.”  He found a way to connect with women two weeks ago and he’ll attempt to build on that tonight.  The President, obviously, hopes to reverse his loss.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

US President Barack Obama and Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney debate on October 16, 2012 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Undecided voters asked questions during a town hall format.; Credit: STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

There continue to be questions about how moderators approach Presidential debates and about whether the extra time President Obama has received in the first two debates indicates moderator bias in his favor. 

I had chalked up the concerns to Republican hyper-partisanship, such as we saw with many Democrats criticizing Jim Lehrer for his moderating — as though Obama would’ve won the first debate if only Lehrer had asserted himself more.   However, even CNN has been doing significant follow-up on its own Candy Crowley’s performance in debate number two. 

Maybe it’s not just hardcore GOP loyalists who are questioning Crowley’s decision-making on when to cut in and when to allow the candidates to take more time. I thought she did pretty well, but there are plenty of critics.

As someone who has moderated hundreds of debates, I thought I’d share my thoughts on what we’ve seen so far in this election. Though I’ve never moderated a Presidential debate, with its incredible level of attention, concern about rules, and demands by campaigns, there are certain fundamentals regardless of the office or issue at stake.

Time Doesn't Matter...Too Much
First, as strange as this may sound, the time taken by each candidate has little to do with who has an advantage.   Yes, it’s always possible for a candidate to use another minute to fire off the defining line of the night. However, the well-practiced zingers or essential policy explainers are not left to the end of a candidate’s statement, as the clock is running out. 

I’m sure Mitt Romney wasn’t thinking after the last debate, “If only I would’ve had that extra 90-seconds, and Obama hadn’t gotten 90 more than he deserved.”  Both men front-loaded their major talking points and were going to get them in. Neither man could legitimately say he didn’t have a chance to make his strongest points. At some point, a time advantage could make a difference in who wins or loses, but an extra 90-seconds in a debate longer than 90-minutes isn’t going to do it.

Serving The Audience
As a moderator, you also have to think about what best serves your audience. I never guarantee candidates equal time, as it’s my job to serve the listeners, not their campaigns. I strive to get close to equal time, but can’t make any guarantee. Some speakers get to the point succinctly and have their points well put together. Others are messier in their arguments and eat up time just building up any head of steam. 

If the moderator holds to a strict time limit, you run the risk of frustrating listeners by cutting off the rambler just as the candidate is getting to the point. There are methods a moderator can use to help guide the speaker toward being more succinct, but there’s no guarantee the person will be able to comply.

Isn’t this inherently unfair to the succinct speaker? No. The purpose of the debate is to allow the ideas to compete.  It’s not a boxing match that’s about landing punches in a given time. The succinct debater has a big advantage, regardless of how much time the candidate has. That’s why Mitt Romney’s victory in the first debate was so lopsided — he won on the conciseness and clarity of his answers, coupled with Obama’s inability to get to his central points.  Obviously, there are those who thought Obama’s arguments were still more compelling than Romney’s, and that Romney lacked essential details.  However, for most viewers of the first debate, it was stylistically no contest.

Equal Time Is Not A Guarantee
When candidates are allowed to talk to each other directly, it’s very difficult to assure equal time. Even CNN’s clock that registers elapsed time for each candidate is subject to squishiness. Unless a debate is extremely formal, with carefully controlled time limits and a ban on candidates following-up with each other, you’re only going to have an approximation of time balance. I thought Crowley did pretty well to land the second debate with the balance she did. I’m not sure I could get it that close for a debate of that length. She had the added challenge of trying to determine when to cut in on President Obama’s lengthier answers. Also, Romney’s speaking rhythm allows more space for interruption. It’s tougher to break in on Obama.

Moderating Is A Balancing Act
Moderators are always trying to balance a need to move on to the next topic with allowing a candidate to answer an opponent’s charge. Sometimes, you open that door for a candidate, only to regret it later when the politician starts into a monologue, instead of confining the response to the previous challenge. Sometimes moderators, having gotten burned, will become less tolerant of such expansive rebuttals, as the debate goes on. Moderators are always juggling competing goals, and it’s a difficult job (at least for me).

Unfortunately, there are those who think debate moderators attempt to influence the outcome of the debate and the performances of the candidates. Maybe I’m naïve, but I can’t imagine any journalist who’s worked hard enough to get to the position of Presidential debate moderator subordinating his or her career in an effort to getting someone elected. Mainstream political journalism is like national sports reporting. You really don’t care who wins the Super Bowl, you want great story lines to explore with your audience. Yes, sports reporters have affinities for the hometown teams of their youth, but that can’t compete with the professional goal of covering great stories. 

Yes, most journalists in mainstream media probably have a stronger cultural and political affinity for Obama, as he’s more like them. However, it doesn’t mean a journalist is going to sacrifice the better story to intentionally provide a benefit to the President.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

2006-2011

Virus Melt

One of 4,000 "The Far Side" panels Gary Larson drew over 14 years. The full collection is now out in paperback.; Credit: Gary Larson

Off-Ramp animation expert Charles Solomon reviews "The Complete Far Side: 1980-1994" by Gary Larson.

It’s hard to believe the last panel of Gary Larson’s wildly popular comic strip “The Far Side” ran 20 years ago: January 1, 1995. The comics page of the LA Times (and many other papers) still feels empty without it.

RELATED: Charles Solomon interviews artists responsible for look of "Big Hero 6"

During its 14-year run, "The Far Side" brought a new style of humor to newspaper comics that was weird, outré and hilarious. The strip became an international phenomenon, appearing in over 1,900 newspapers worldwide. Larson won both the National Cartoonists' Society Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year and the Best Syndicated Panel Award. An exhibit of original artwork from the strip broke attendance records at natural history museums in San Francisco, Denver and here in L.A. Fans bought tens of millions of "Far Side" books and calendars.

Much of the humor in “The Far Side” derived from Larson's seemingly effortless juxtaposition of the mundane and bizarre. When a bug-housewife declares "I'm leaving you, Charles...and I'm taking the grubs with me," it's the utter normalcy of the scene that makes it so funny. Mrs. Bug wears cats eye glasses, while Mr. Bug reads his newspaper in an easy chair with a doily on the back.

Or, a mummy sits an office waiting room reading a magazine while a secretary says into the intercom, “Mr. Bailey? There’s a gentlemen here who claims an ancestor of your once defiled his crypt, and now you’re the last remaining Bailey and … oh, something about a curse. Should I send him in?”

"The Complete Far Side" contains every strip ever syndicated: more than 4,000 panels. It should probably come with a warning label, "Caution: reading this book may result in hyperventilation from uncontrollable laughter." Except for a few references to Leona Helmsley or other now-forgotten figures, Larson’s humor remains as offbeat and funny as it was when the strips were first printed.

Andrews and McMeel initially released this collection in 2003 in two hardbound volumes that weighed close to 10 pounds apiece. You needed a sturdy table to read them. The three volumes in the paperback re-issue weigh in around three pounds and can be held comfortably in the lap for a while.

Because “The Far Side” ended two decades ago, many people under 30 don’t know it. The reprinted collection offers geezers (35 or older) a chance to give a present that should delight to that impossible-to-shop-for son, daughter, niece or nephew. How often does an older adult get a chance to appear cool at Christmas or Hanuka? 

And if that ingrate kid doesn’t appreciate it, "The Complete Far Side" also makes an excellent self-indulgence.

Charles Solomon lends his animatio expertise to Off-Ramp and Filmweek on Airtalk, and has just been awarded the Annie's (The International Animated Film Society) June Foray Award, "for his significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation." Congratulations, Charles!

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

I got the word this week from The Crest of Westwood that they'll be streaming coverage of the Golden Globes at The Crest on Sunday.

It's free and open to the public; doors open at 4:30 and the event starts at 5pm.

The Crest's Virginia Chavez writes, "We're encouraging formal attire, but it's not required for entrance."

But Off-Ramp says, "Phooey! Dress up. It's what classy people do." Like this stunning couple:

(Anne Knudsen/LA Public Library Herald-Examiner collection)

The caption of this 1985 photo reads, "David Hasselhoff in a burgundy-and-black striped tuxedo kept pace with wife Catherine Hickland's high fashion style: Ellene Warren's silk shoulder-beaded jacket, silk jacquard pants and matching evening bra. Hasselhoff and Hickland attended the Emmy Awards at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

There's such a thing as an "evening bra?" I don't think so.

The Crest - 1262 Westwood Blvd. LA, CA 90024 - (323) 553 - 3500

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Andrew J. West stars in Anna Mastro's "Walter"; Credit: "Walter"

It's always dicey to characterize a major film festival based on the movies you personally see there, because no matter how diligent you try to be, your impression will always be statistically anecdotal.

I'll see perhaps 10 percent of the films at this year's Palm Springs International Film Festival by the time they roll up the red carpets for the final time, added to the 25 or so I'd watched before I got here, owing to the festival's unique programming policies.

Not bad considering there are 190 movies being screened. So I think I've got the feel of things here. I wouldn't want my doctor to diagnose me based on a test with a 35 to 40 percent chance of accuracy, but I'm not a doctor. Instead of "Do no harm," I quote Spencer Tracy to myself. He said the secret to the creative process is to "just look 'em in the eye and tell 'em the truth."

And the truth is, with the exception of a couple of documentaries and a horror movie, virtually every film I've seen at Palm Springs so far shared some obvious characteristics: the Palm Springs International Film Festival loves it some poignancy and affirmation.

I've already commented on "Match," the Patrick Stewart acting showcase, and "Cowboys," a very funny Croatian comedy with cross-currents of seriousness. I may comment later about "Today," Iran's Oscar submission. (It's terrific by the way, a deeply affecting story about a burnt out cab driver who gets yanked into the world of a battered, unwed mother who steps into his cab.)

(Still from "Today” (Emrooz) by Iranian filmmaker Reza Mirkarimi)

I also saw an Anne Hathaway passion project called "Song One" here. I'm not going to write about it because I'm not in the mood to stomp on somebody else's butterfly. Plus the dramedy "1001 Grams" by the splendiferous-ly named Norwegian Bent Hamer, whose deadpan satire is routinely compared to Jacques Tati.

WATCH the official trailer for "1001 Grams," which includes some foreign languages

At their best, these are all movies that want to move the audience to tears before bouncing a ray of hope off the screen at them. At their worst, these movies are about pain in the same way Novocain is. They acknowledge its reality, in order to neutralize it.

Filmmaker Anna Mastro's debut film "Walter" (one of the Palm Springs premieres) fits what seems to be the festival's programming model, too, and is, I think, a really quite appealing little indie film, with the by now familiar mildly magical realist bent.

It's is a story about grief, though one with a screwball premise so that it doesn't quite present that way at first. Walter (portrayed with charisma and nuance by Andrew J. West) is a 20-something slacker, but a very uptight one, with a soldier's commitment to dress and routine.

He still lives with mom (Virginia Madsen, now shifting toward the character actress portion of her career with ease and grace) and has a job one rung above fast food worker on the ladder of success: He's a ticket taker at the local multiplex.

But what the world surely sees as failure, Walter knows to be his cover for a far more important vocation. Walter's father died when he was just 10 years old; ever since the funeral, Walter has realized something we don't: His real job in life is to decide where people go after they die.

His snap judgments secretly send people to heaven or hell ... until a dead guy from Walter's past shows up and demands that Walter determine his fate, and then all hell breaks loose.

It's an odd premise, bordering on the labored, but Mastro and her extremely appealing cast pull it off, in part by wearing their influences on their sleeves. The fingerprints of Wes Anderson are all over this picture, especially in terms of the way shots are framed and music is used, and I was able to identify the pivotal contribution of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" co-composer Dan Romer by ear, long before I noticed his screen credit.

I suppose that's supposed to be a damning criticism of a first-timer, but I don't see it that way. Tarantino aped Scorsese for years and virtually remade a minor Hong Kong gangster picture when he debuted with "Reservoir Dogs."

Spielberg acknowledges his debt to David Lean. Hitchcock's apprenticeship at Germany's UFA film studio resulted in a lifelong visual and thematic debt to the great Expressionist master Fritz Lang.

The question is, what do you do with your influences, how do you make them your own? And Mastro — who has a real gift for casting, pacing a scene and maneuvering her actors easily between farce and seriousness — has her own talents. She understands how Anderson's visual syntax has become a cinematic shorthand for quirk, and she deploys it to that effect, then tells the story at hand.

There are some issues with that story, though. There's a girl in concessions (Leven Rambin) Walter likes, and there's a bully at work. For all its surface oddity, the mechanical underpinnings of "Walter" frequently feel like they belong in an "American Pie" sequel.

And yet this movie won me over. I liked its faith in the movie palace as a place that still vibrates with the marvelous. I found a dream sequence, where Rambin undresses to camera while sprawled on a rich yellow bed of movie house popcorn hilarious and deeply expressive.

But I think my affection for this picture is mostly centered on Mastro and her cast, which includes a standout performance by Justin Kirk as a very grounded ghost and a broad but successful cameo from William H. Macy as Walter's psychiatrist. They're all groping toward something rather grim and real about loss, while doing their best to serve up some laughs and wonder along the way.

It touched me, because it feels kind of wise.

Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene, former editor of Boxoffice Magazine, is in Palm Spring this week to cover the 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. Look for his missives here, and listen Saturday at noon to Off-Ramp, when he'll interview Chaz Ebert about her late husband Roger Ebert's contributions to the film festival circuit.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

At the corner of Glendale and Glenfeliz, Jeff Harmes created an art garden completely from scratch. ; Credit: Alana Rinicella

On the median on the Atwater Village side of the Hyperion bridge, Jeff Harmes built a garden. It's an act he calls "taking nothing and making it into something that everyone can get something out of, that can inspire everyone."

Having lived on the streets for 30 years, Jeff says grew to hate litter. He used to sweep street gutters with a piece of cardboard and remove trash packed into the forks of trees. He thought of them as small acts that would go mostly unnoticed.

On a whim last spring, he started tilling the median — or "the island," as he likes to call it ... although "oasis" is more like it, now. He made rock sculptures from stones he scrounged out of the L.A. River. In celebration of spring, he made a peace sign out of flowers. 

He says he doesn't know much about gardening or landscaping. He learns as he goes and looks to commuters for suggestions. In the absence of running water, he relies on rainfall.

Vibrant succulents sit next to kitschy items like gnomes and plastic flamingos. Intricate formations of seashells and stones contrast starkly against the neatly patted dirt. A young girl even donated her seashell collection for the peace sign. 

Recently, though, a vandal smashed the peace sign and wrecked Jeff's plants, including his squash crop. With help from the neighborhood, Jeff has been able to rebuild the garden. New plants have sprouted and the stonework has been repaired.

Jeff says his new goal with the garden is for people to draw something positive from it. "I want hate to be transferred into something beautiful," he said. Moving forward, he hopes to expand it down the island. 

(Note: This post has been edited. The original called it a "meridian," which is an invisible geographic line. "Median" is correct.)

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A cleaning crew disinfects a New York City subway train on May 4, 2020 in New York City. ; Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

As of Monday afternoon, L.A. County has at least 1,260 deaths and 26,238 confirmed cases of coronavirus. The United States has more than a million cases of the virus with more than 67,000 deaths. Meanwhile, new models put together by FEMA project that we could see up to 200,000 new cases a day by the end of the month, according to the New York Times. 

The L.A. Times reports that scientists have discovered a new strain of the deadly coronavirus that is even more contagious. The study finds that the new strain first appeared in February in Europe and has been the dominant strain across the world since mid-March. Plus, some COVID-19 patients are experiencing issues with blood clotting even after respiratory issues have died down. Today on AirTalk, we get the latest with an infectious disease specialist who will take your questions. Call 866-893-5722 to join the conversation. 

With files from LAist. Read the full story here.

Guest:

Dean Blumberg, M.D., professor of medicine and chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Police and lifeguards patrol as people walk on the beach south of Newport Pier on May 3, 2020 in Newport Beach, California. ; Credit: Michael Heiman/Getty Images

After the cities of San Clemente and Laguna Beach were given the OK by state officials on Monday to reopen beaches with limited conditions, the California Natural Resources Agency gave Dana Point, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach the green light on Tuesday after approving the plans they submitted for safe reopening.

The plans vary as far as when the beach can be used, but the common thread through each is that leisure activities like sunbathing or large gatherings of people would not be allowed, and that beachgoers will be required to remain active while on the sand. 

The news comes as Orange County Supervisors voted 3-2 on Tuesday to submit a plan to submit to Sacramento that would create a set of uniform rules for reopening beaches countywide. Supervisor Lisa Bartlett spearheaded the proposal, which received pushback from Supervisors Don Wagner and Michelle Steel who argue that after being singled out by Governor Gavin Newsom last week when he ordered a “hard close” on all state and local beaches in Orange County, taking issue with the idea of the county bowing to pressure from the state.

Today on AirTalk, we’ll check back in with Supervisor Bartlett, who joined us Monday on AirTalk, to find out more about the specifics of the county’s plan to reopen its beaches.

Guest:

Lisa Bartlett, Orange County Supervisor representing the Fifth County District, which encompasses South County cities like Aliso Viejo, San Clemente, Laguna Beach, Dana Point and more; she tweets @OCSupBartlett

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.