 |
HOME |  |
SCHEDULE | |
PROGRAMS | |
KIDS & FAMILY | |
LOCAL | |
SUPPORT KCET | |
ABOUT US | |
SHOP KCET |  |
| About Us | Contact Us | |
 |
|
 |
          |
|
|
 |
 |
||
|
|
Life & Times Transcript
12/05/07 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- The amazing technology that lets pilots in Riverside protect our troops in Iraq. Colonel Randall Ball>> I think that, you know, there's some idea that maybe this is kind of a videogame, that it's not real, but it is real. The folks that are performing the mission takes it as such. Val Zavala>> And then, the animals boarded two by two, but there's room for everyone on board this enchanting Noah's Ark. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> What you're about to see is a remarkable way to fight a war. Trained Guardsmen here in southern California are actually protecting soldiers half a world away in Iraq. It's through an amazing technology called military drones. It's the ultimate in telecommuting. Roger Cooper explains. Roger Cooper>> Just southeast of Riverside is one of the oldest airfields in the United States military, March Air Reserve Base. A lot of history has happened here since it opened way back in 1918. All manner of people and planes have taken off from March to fight in the world's wars. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> Bob Hope performed the very first of his legendary USO shows at March here at the base gymnasium in 1941, but these days, new military history is being made here. March is still flying combat missions overseas, but with one amazing difference. The pilots who fly these missions in the Middle East never leave Riverside County and the planes they fly never land at March. How can that be? [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> It's possible because of this, an unmanned flying drone called the Predator. The California Air Guard members of March used to fly refueling tankers. Now their new mission is to fly Predators by remote control and, in this case, very remote control. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> At any given moment, someone is sitting in a hangar at March in California controlling a Predator that's flying over Iraq or Afghanistan half a world away. [Film Clip] Colonel Randall Ball>> We fly aircraft in distant lands. Yes, that's absolutely true. It's an amazing technology. Roger Cooper>> Colonel Randall Ball is the group commander for Predator operations at March. He oversees people whose job is to mentally enter a war zone by day, then head home to their families in the United States by night. Colonel Randall Ball>> They come to work for basically a normal eight-hour shift and go home and have normal lives. Roger Cooper>> Is that kind of amazing to you that you can be, in a way, in a war zone part of your day and out of it the rest of your day? Colonel Randall Ball>> I think we've kind of adapted to it. It was a novelty when we first began this mission and, like anything else, you grow accustomed to the mission. Roger Cooper>> Colonel Ball is an experienced pilot who flew tankers. Now he sits in front of a bank of monitors using a joystick to pilot a Predator in the air over the Middle East. Colonel Randall Ball>> I think that, you know, there's some idea that maybe this is kind of a videogame, that it's not real, but it is real. The folks that are performing the mission take it as such. [Film Clip] Chief Master Sergeant Bruce Garcia>> Things at home, things around the office, all go away and our mindset is right there with that mission in theater. Roger Cooper>> Chief Master Sergeant Bruce Garcia used to control the tanker booms used in air-to-air refueling. Now he operates the ball, a pod of sophisticated cameras and sensors that can look down from the Predator to see objects on the ground and lock onto them day or night. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> In this situation, the Predator is a surveillance tool that can protect troops on the ground. Chief Master Sergeant Bruce Garcia>> Say we're following a convoy. We're helping look ahead to make sure that they're not going to run into an IED or an ambush situation. They'll say, "Hey, we're going from Point A to Point B. Please clear it for us." We have the ability to, like I say, the feed or the full-motion video goes out to lots of folks and even the guys on the ground. We have an ability to beam that down to them and they can basically watch themselves driving down the road and see what we're looking at. Roger Cooper>> But in some situations, Garcia does more than look. The Predator may be unmanned, but it is not unarmed. It carries Hellfire missiles that can follow a laser beam into a target. >> "Four, three, two, one, bomb. Nicely done, sir. Nicely done." Roger Cooper>> The Predators are launched by United States military personnel on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. But once the drones are airborne, control is handed over to California. A Predator flying on the other side of the globe stays in touch with March here in Riverside County through this satellite dish and, for all its sophistication, the Predator is relatively light. That light weight, both in this mockup and the actual drone, means the Predator's fuel will last long enough to keep it aloft and watching for some twenty hours. Colonel Randall Ball>> One of the advantages of flying this type of an airplane, you can do an eighteen, twenty or twenty-two hour day, but yet not have to be in the airplane for that long period of time prosecuting a mission. Roger Cooper>> The Air Guard members back here in California can change shifts and hand off to a fresh crew and, all the while, the Predator keeps flying and sending back pictures. Colonel Randall Ball>> I think you need to know that this is the most requested asset in theater by the battlefield commanders. The reason for that is full motion video. Full motion video that we datalink down is very desirable for situational awareness for all the commanders. They want to know what's going on. Roger Cooper>> Predators are in great demand in today's military and many are in the air at any given moment. Predators are made in San Diego by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. And it's not just the military. During the southern California wildfires, a NASA version of the Predator flew over the fires burning near Lake Arrowhead and San Diego. It stayed over the flames sending back these pictures even after other firefighting planes were forced to land. Chief Master Sergeant Bruce Garcia>> When it becomes nightfall or the wind is too bad or whatever, they're gone. This aircraft can stay up and continue to watch and monitor those kinds of things. Colonel Randall Ball>> It's very capable because of its infrared sensors to give situational awareness to a fire captain on the ground, to beam down our picture to him so he can effectively fight a fire. You know, fire, floods, earthquakes, riots or whatever it may be called for, this is an ideal tool. The future of this airplane in the state of California should be very bright. Roger Cooper>> And federal immigration officials are also pressing Predators into service along the United States-Mexico border. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> Back at March, the Predator missions are now going on round the clock with more than a hundred Air Guard members now involved. Chief Master Sergeant Garcia says, at the end of the day, he heads home to Riverside with satisfaction. Chief Master Sergeant Bruce Garcia>> Because you know that you have the potential to save lives and we actually have saved American lives of American troops. Roger Cooper>> You have to wonder what Bob Hope would think of all this. Surely he'd appreciate people who go to such lengths in support of United States troops overseas. At March Reserve Air Base, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> So what do you think of military drones? We'd love to hear your comments and you can post them on our blog. Just go to kcet.org/lifeandtimes/blog. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> There are more than a thousand murders in Los Angeles County every year, but did you realize that ninety percent of them never even get reported in the paper? Well, that bothered one Los Angeles Times reporter who decided to do something about it. Her name is Jill Leovy and she started a Homicide Blog. Vicki Curry talked with Jill outside a police station in Watts. Vicki Curry>> Jill Leovy, you've been a crime reporter with the Los Angeles Times for several years. Why did you decide to start this blog about homicide? Jill Leovy>> Well, space in the newspaper is limited by how much paper there is and how much space. Los Angeles County has eleven to twelve hundred homicides a year. There's no way to cover them all in the paper and the paper typically covers maybe ten percent of them, which means that ninety percent of the homicides are not being reported by the newspaper. If you cover ten percent of the homicides, you're almost inevitably going to create a distorted picture of homicide. You certainly aren't going to convey the statistical nature of homicide to the readers. That's one of the purposes of the site. It's not just to be a list of names, but to give people a fuller picture of what homicide looks like on a statistical level. Vicki Curry>> So much of the crimes that we hear about, they get a lot of major media coverage and are actually not typical. They don't represent what's normal in terms of homicides in our area? Jill Leovy>> Yeah. A lot of homicide is a non-story. It's not a traditional news story in that the events are very like each other, at least viewed distantly not in their personal details. In their circumstantial details, they're very similar. But the issue, you know, is a statistical issue. Our problem in America is that our homicide rate is inordinately high for a first-world country. It is the rate per hundred thousand per year that we should all be thinking about in this country. Vicki Curry>> What are those homicide rates? The national average is between five to six homicides a year per one hundred thousand people. In Los Angeles, both the city and the county, the average is between eleven and thirteen deaths a year. Jill Leovy>> If we were in almost any European country, it would be one or even below one per hundred thousand a year. So that gives you a sense of the level. We're in a precinct area right now where I've done a lot of work southeast. This is the Watts area of Los Angeles. It's the poorest in terms of median income of all the nineteen LAPD precincts and there are about seventy homicides a year here. That translates to a homicide rate of about forty-five per hundred thousand per year. So that helps you put into perspective. If it's five nationally, you've got seven times the homicide rate here in this small area. So that's something very important to see about homicide and I'm gratified to see that the website seems to show this, the way homicide is highly concentrated. Many, many people live in this country with no experience of homicide whatsoever, and some people are drowning in it. That's something that is, again, hard to convey journalistically. Vicki Curry>> So what kinds of things are you including on the blog? Jill Leovy>> Well, the backbone of it is just a list of names. It's just the people who die, anyone who's killed by the hand of another. In Los Angeles County, that means I put the police shootings on there too. If you died by human means, you make the Homicide Report. I try to include the most basic information that I can get out of the police or the coroner, the where, when it happened, who it was, age, gender, ethnic background. Beyond that, I try to add whatever information I can glean from just gumshoe reporting like what I'm doing here today, which is talking to detectives, going out and meeting families if I can. That adds to sort of the story of what happened. I'm also doing little entries about homicide issues and things like that to the extent that I can. Vicki Curry>> And have the law enforcement agencies been pretty receptive to helping you? Jill Leovy>> Yeah, to varying degrees. But mostly, they've been helpful. There's an understanding certainly for detectives that the press has been ignoring these homicides and there's something wrong with that. I'm gratified that so many sort of see the point of at least mentioning somewhere that these people have been killed. I've gotten actually a couple of nice emails from a trauma doctor in one case and a paramedic in another who said to me, "Finally. I see this all the time. I see it every day. At last, I see that it's represented somewhere in the press." So you do get some of that reaction. Vicki Curry>> You choose to include race in the information that you put out there. Is that because of the statistics involving the different ethnic groups? Jill Leovy>> Yeah. You know, I've gotten lots and lots of emails on that and it takes a little bit of a steady nerve because I get some very ugly emails about that. The racial differences in a homicide victimization are stark. They're astounding. The degree to which certain people in this society are vulnerable and unprotected when it comes to homicide is something that we should all be thinking about and looking at. The rate particularly for African Americans is vastly higher than for anybody else, even for Latinos in Los Angeles. If rates were the same across the board, I think maybe you could argue for a colorblind approach. Vicki Curry>> The homicide rate for young men of color in Los Angeles County is particularly high. Between 1991 and 2002, Latino men ages twenty to twenty-four were five times more likely to die than white men the same age, and black men were sixteen times more likely. Jill Leovy>> And the rate for young blacks in Los Angeles County was in the two hundreds. Again, think about those numbers I just gave you. Five per hundred thousand overall, thirteen as a mass here in Los Angeles County. So you have one group of people with a rate of in the two hundred deaths per hundred thousand per year, so that's a level of suffering that's off the charts compared to everyone else, and you have to say that as a journalist. It's amazing how non-public these events are even though they're very, very catastrophic. Vicki Curry>> Jill Leovy of the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. Jill Leovy>> Thank you. Val Zavala>> It's been five years in the making and now the Skirball Center has brought to life the story of Noah's Ark in a way that it's never been told before. This is the entrance to a unique experience, Noah's Ark, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. It's designed with children in mind, but anyone with an imagination will enjoy eight thousand square feet of this marvelous menagerie. Visitors can explore, touch, climb, build and, most of all, pick up a message especially relevant to southern California, one of the most diverse cultures on the planet. The Ark was the dream of Skirball's CEO and founding president, Uri Herscher. He wanted to convey themes of hardship, community and triumph, but he didn't know exactly how. Uri Herscher>> Frankly, it became concrete when a remarkable board member introduced me to his Noah's Ark collection which he had been collecting for decades and to numerous children's books in various languages and arks created in different cultures. That's when I became aware that Noah's Ark is a story that's told in at least four hundred fifty different cultures throughout the globe. Then I knew we had a good idea. Val Zavala>> The Ark begins as it does in the Bible, with a storm. Uri Herscher>> So we have wind, we have rain and we have lightning, so let's demonstrate that. [Film Clip] Uri Herscher>> We could do this all day (laughter). Storms? We all have storms in our lives. We all yearn, all of us. All human beings yearn for shelter and they yearn for a community that knows one another, not a ghettoized community. So this Ark is meant to be "Welcome everyone. Get out of your ghettos and let's get to know one another." Val Zavala>> Next step? Loading the animals into the Ark. Uri Herscher>> These animals were created by the children of LA's BEST and every child painted the animal, put their name and the grade. Then the children come here and this is their favorite activity and, with their own hands, they're actually loading the Ark two by two. I must admit, at this moment, I am a fourth grader and I am enjoying this and I don't want to stop. Val Zavala>> There are more than three hundred animals, many of them made with reused materials like rope, mops or belts. A team of creative artists, puppeteers and architects worked together to bring the Ark to life. With the animals on board, it's time to step inside. Uri Herscher>> So this is a place in the Ark where everybody begins to get to know each other, feel safer and talk with one another and touch the animals and play with the animals. This is just another way for you to participate and see that giraffe moving. Val Zavala>> Oh, look at that. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Everything is meant to be touched and played with, even this ark within the Ark. This is beautiful. Uri Herscher>> For those of us who may have missed having fun with these are able to do so at this time. Just bring your inner child in and expose it. Val Zavala>> Do any of these disappear (laughter)? Those little hands? Those little pockets? It's so tempting. Uri Herscher>> We have a major supply of these, so if one of these little animals disappears, we make them reappear and we hope that whoever might have taken them home will be enjoying them. [Film Clip] Uri Herscher>> We're now walking through a bridge from one part of the Ark into another part of the Ark, so pretend as though it's been stormy for twenty days and these are now the latter twenty days before you reach the shore. So here you know you've lived together and the only way you can survive living together is by working together. Here we are bringing nourishment to every animal on this particular Ark. Val Zavala>> (Laughter) Gotcha. Ingrained in all this fun is a message, a lesson for children who will be growing up in a world of conflict and challenges. Uri Herscher>> Here, for example, you have your hope for humankind, which is that the lion and the lamb will actually enjoy one another's company rather than devour. The lion, so much stronger, could devour the lamb, but here they're enjoying each other's company. The best of David and Goliath not destroying one another, but actually shaking hands and saying, you know, it will be better if both of us remained in the world. Val Zavala>> So after the storm and after being in the Ark together and working things out, they finally finish their journey. Uri Herscher>> They finally reach the land again and the first signal that they're safe is the rainbow because it tells you that the rains have receded and the sun has arrived and the two intersect to give you a hopeful sign that you've got another chance. But I think before we reach rainbows, we've got to work awfully hard. We are not born with rainbows. I think we're born with storms. There is a journey looking for shelter. It's clear that no one person can really build a shelter. It's a communal effort and that's what we teach when our wonderful kids come here from all over the city. Val Zavala>> And, of course, the iconic dove which means hope. Uri Herscher>> Exactly. This gallery is all about second chances. It feels awfully good to know that there is another chance for all of us and that we get it usually by working together with others in the community. Without hope, there is no life. There is just no life because you need to hope that things will change. But you need to also say, "I will be part of that change" and then you need to say, "I alone can't change anything. We will do it. We will have a communal mission of making this city a better city. We will try to get health care for everyone in California. We will try to find employment for those who are unemployed. We will find a way to feed those who are hungry." So the story of Noah's Ark is that we shall reach this rainbow, but we've got a lot of hard work to do before we actually find that rainbow. Val Zavala>> Noah's Ark is a permanent exhibit. You can get information by going on the website at skirball.org or calling (310) 440-4500. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> When it comes to Christmas lights, who could do a better job than the company that keeps our lights on all year? Well, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is putting on its Annual Holiday Light Festival. It draws tens of thousands of visitors and just that many cars. So to save you the traffic hassles, we sent a camera there. Kim Hughes>> Hi, I'm Kim Hughes. I'm with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. We're here at the Holiday Light Festival. The festival keeps growing every year. We're expecting close to six hundred thousand visitors this year. It gets pretty busy, but we have a lot of options for visitors that want to enjoy the festival. They can certainly take a car and we would recommend Mondays through Thursdays to try to beat some of those crowded lanes of cars. We also offer free shuttle service every single evening so that visitors can come, park at the Los Angeles Zoo parking lot, take one of the shuttles, be nice and cozy and enjoy it with your family. Also, a lot of visitors like to come and park at the zoo and walk the festival. In fact, rumor has it that it's a great first date night or a special romantic evening to bring someone and hear the holiday music and stroll. It's just a little, as somebody said, romantic, so that's something else people can enjoy and do. [Film Clip] Kim Hughes>> Well, it's certainly become a tradition. We hear every year of families that have brought their children and come every single year. Also, I think it brings the city together. It's an activity that one can enjoy. It's free. One could come many times. Also, I think we are able to, in one spot, celebrate the uniqueness and diversity of Los Angeles. Many of the displays depict those landmarks that make Los Angeles truly something special, whether it's City Hall, the Vincent St. Thomas Bridge, the Hollywood Bowl or Venice Beach. All those things are brought together right here. So even if you tend to stay in your neighborhood, you can come to the festival and get a true flavor of all of Los Angeles. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> The Holiday Light Festival will be up at Griffith Park through December 30. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
|
Home | Features | Arts | Health/Science | OC Edition | L&T Blog | Archives | About Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use |