The LA City Council is expected to vote on a controversial new trash collection policy. Then, we'll have an update on the Leland Yee case. Plus, Dodgers fans without Time Warner Cable have yet to be able to watch a game on the new SportsNet LA channel, we'll take a look at how much it costs to propose at baseball stadiums throughout the U.S., Mac DeMarco, St. Vincent, Jimmer and Death have new music out, and much more.
Leland Yee's lawyer questions FBI investigation
California State Senator Leland Yee has been accused of accepting bribes from undercover agents in exchange for political favors. He's also been charged with conspiring to traffic in firearms, but his lawyer is raising questions about the case.
RELATED: Undercover FBI agents focus in on local and state politicians like Yee, Calderon
For more on this we're joined once again by Henry Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle.
LA City Council to vote on new trash policy
The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to implement a new way of handling trash pick-ups at businesses, apartment and condominiums, according to CBSLA.
More information here.
Earlier:
The Los Angeles City Council today is expected to vote on a controversial new trash policy.
RELATED: LA City Council to consider dramatic change to garbage collection
Supporters say it will keep garbage out of landfills and cut down on traffic, while opponents say it's bad for small business. For more, we turn now to Emily Alpert Reyes, who's been following the story for the Los Angeles Times.
Dodger fans feeling blue about lack of access to SportsNet LA
The Dodgers today play their fourth game of the season, but many fans have yet to be able to watch any of the games. The channel that broadcasts most of their games, SportsNet LA, is still unavailable to about two thirds of Los Angeles-area households.
RELATED: FAQ: Why two-thirds of Los Angeles can't see the Dodgers on TV
The channel, which is operated by Time Warner Cable Sports, isn't yet available on any major TV providers besides Time Warner Cable. Not DirecTV, not Cox, and not Dish. We'll find out more from KPCC Business Reporter Ben Bergman.
Ballpark figures for proposing at your favorite baseball stadium
Looking for the perfect place to propose to your favorite MLB fan? Dream about seeing the words "Will you marry me?" on the Jumbotron? You might want to check the price tag before you get down on one knee at your favorite baseball stadium.
Molly Fitzpatrick wrote about this for Swimmingly and joined us to talk about just how much it costs to pop the big question at your favorite ballpark.
Oakland's American Steel Studios an industrial haven for artists
Big industrial art spaces are becoming hard to afford in the expensive Bay Area. But American Steel Studios in West Oakland has become a destination for all types of artists: sculptors, woodworkers and especially metal workers. For the California Report, Eric Neumann has the story.
Big industrial art spaces are becoming hard to afford in the expensive Bay Area. But American Steel Studios in West Oakland has become a destination for all types of artists: sculptors, woodworkers and especially metal workers.
Inside the massive American Steel Studios warehouse is a large exhibit made by local artist Nick Dong. He calls it the Enlightenment Room. It’s a rectangular structure the size of a big walk-in closet. In the dark interior, tiny white tiles are barely visible, covering the walls. At one end is a single seat. When a visitor sits down, an ominous sound of chanting begins. A bright light shines down from above and the chanting gets louder and louder, until finally the viewer gets up and the installation stops.
“It started with a little joke,” Dong says. “My father is a really practiced Buddhist, and when we were little he always told us to meditate and envision the light coming from the gods.”
Then Dong had an idea.
“What if I can just allow that transformation to happen with a physical room?” he asks.
While viewers might not become fully enlightened after sitting in Dong’s Enlightenment Room, it’s definitely a unique experience. It just came back from Washington, D.C., where it was featured at the Smithsonian Institute’s Renwick Gallery. Dong is also a metal worker, and at his studio in the building he can be found heating up sheets of copper in a big kiln and hammering them into wall hangings.
In another cavernous section of American Steel Studios, Rebecca Anders has a space near a series of massive welded sculptures. She’s been at American Steel since 2007.
“My training is in metal work,” Anders says. “Sometimes I work in recycled tire, or right now I’m doing some fabric work. I like to think everything’s a potential material.”
Anders stands next to a project she helped build called the “horse car.” It looks like a big covered wagon. Coming out the front is a surprisingly real life-size model of a horse’s head made out of tires.
“We built this art car for Burning Man a few years ago,” she explains. The horse’s bust on the front is made of steel tubes and it has flame effects that shoot out of the nose when it’s in action.
According to Anders, San Francisco isn’t really an option these days for artists like her who need industrial workspaces. This is one reason American Steel Studios founder, Karen Cusolito, created the studios in the first place.
“What inspired me to make this happen was the people that started showing up, needing a space like this,” says Cusolito.
Cusolito first rented part of the building in 2005 to build a 30-foot-tall sculpture. Over time, more and more people asked her about the space, and in 2009 she signed a lease on the whole building. Today, about 170 artists use it to produce commercial and public work that can be seen around California and beyond.
“These people have amazing skill sets,” Cusolito says. “They have amazing vision and creativity.”
Cusolito says having workspaces like this is what allows the Bay Area to foster the creativity for which it’s known.
How science can improve your April Fools' jokes
Your jokes may have your friends rolling in laughter, but could you take your humor on the road?
Laughter may be universal, but often times it doesn't translate over seas or over time. Authors Peter McGraw and Joel Warner delved into the science of what makes things funny in their new book, "The Humor Code." It boils down to an idea: the Benign Violation theory.
"Humor develops when something appears to be a violation of something, while simultaneously seems benign or somehow just OK," Joel Warner said on Take Two.
Here's an example: When a friend starts tickling you, you start to laugh. Being tickled is seemingly a violation of your personal space, but because you're familiar with the person, it's benign.
But "you probably wouldn't laugh if some creepy stranger ran up to you on the street and tried to tickle you, because nothing about that is benign," says Warner.
Knowing the science can better help you understand how humor works around the world, although there are limits in it being able to make you the funniest person in the world.
"The biggest predictor of success in the world of comedy is how hard you work," says Warner, "So you need to create a lot of material. You have to start with a lot of violations and a lot of things that are benign that you can mine, tweak, polish and refine over weeks and months."
Joel Warner and Peter McGraw will offer more insights into comedy on April 15 at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre so you can learn more in person.
#CancelColbert and the power of Twitter
Yesterday on the program, we talked about the controversy brewing over a tweet from "The Colbert Report," which many perceived as racist.
That tweet launched a series of tweets with the phrase #CancelColbert. It doesn't look like Comedy Central will be axing its popular late night show any time soon, but the #CancelColbert campaign has gained a lot of momentum and provoked a very testy debate nationwide.
RELATED: #CancelColbert: Suey Park, the activist behind the hashtag
This lead us to wonder about the power of Twitter. It's a subject our next guest has spent a lot of time thinking about. Marcia Stepanek teaches social media strategy at New York University and is the author of the forthcoming book, "Swarm: The Rise of the Digital Anti-Establishment."
Tuesday Reviewsday: Mac DeMarco, St. Vincent, Jimmer and Death
It's time for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment. This week, we have journalists Shirley Halperin and Roy Trakin from The Hollywood Reporter. They've brought in four new albums, which they've profiled below.
Shirley's Picks
Artist: Mac DeMarco
Album: Salad Days
Songs: "Salad Days", "Passing Out the Pieces"
Indie rock is riding a crest of awesomeness right now with artists like Courtney Barnett and Tame Impala bringing back the sounds of sludgy lo-fi in the most fantastic ways. Both of those artists are from Australia, while 23-year-old Mac DeMarco is from Montreal but has since moved to Brooklyn. Hipster central has been good to him, garnering accolades for his first two albums, which led to sold out shows in Europe and now the fawning praise for his new album, "Salad Days." It's no wonder, check out "Passing Out the Pieces."
He's self-deprecating, good-looking, witty and entrepreneurial. He has a singles club based around him where people receive two Mac DeMarco 7 inches every 6-8 weeks. He likes to dole out relationship advice in his songs. And his hero is Jonathan Richman, and like him, he's a highly prolific musician and very DIY.
Artist: Death
Album: III
Songs: "North Street", "Yes He's Coming"
Death was an African-American punk trio formed by the Hackney brothers in Detroit in 1971 after they saw Alice Cooper and The Who play. After that they decided they didn't want to do Funk-R&B, so they created the protopunk band Death, which led to a war with their neighbors, the black community and the music scene they were ensconced in at the time.
They were closer to the spirit and mono-maniacal quality of the Ramones than anything else happening in Motown at the time (or later hard black bands like Living Color, for that matter). You can really hear that on the song "North Street."
They saw some success, with Clive Davis backing them for a bit. But Clive wasn't feeling the name and after financing recording sessions, he abandoned the project when the group wouldn't change it.
After recording demos, the idiosyncratic threesome couldn't get a record deal without changing their name, so they moved to Vermont and then broke up the band. Visionary brother-leader David was the songwriter and lead singer, he died in 2000. About a decade later they were re-discovered (2009) when Drag City Records released all seven Death songs from their 1974 United Sound sessions on CD and LP under the title "For the Whole World to See." The Third and final installment of their unreleased masters from back in the day went gospel and spiritual - you can sense that in the song "Yes, He's Coming."
Roy's Picks
Artist: St. Vincent
Album: Self-titled
Songs: "Prince Johnny", "Severed Crossed Fingers"
Born Annie Clark in Tulsa, OK, she spent part of her career as a member of Polyphonic Spree and with Sufjan Stevens before launching her own solo career with Marry Me in 2007. This is her fifth album, but prior to this she collaborated with David Byrne and Love This Giant, with whom she also toured and performed a memorable show two summers back at the Greek Theatre.
Sort of reminiscent of a Texas psychedelic version of PJ Harvey, she is known to shred on guitar and has a varied palette of sounds at her disposal. This is her major label debut for Loma Vista/Republic, an imprint of former Warner Bros. President Tom Whalley.
Artist: Jimmer Podrasky
Album: The Would-Be Plans
Songs: "The Far Left Side of You", "She Has Good Records"
He's an ex-member of pioneering Americana country-rock band, the Rave-Ups, who put out two critically acclaimed albums on Epic Records with 1988's "Book of Your Regrets" and 1990's "Chance", an album which was named after the son he had with Molly Ringwald's sister, Beth.
Known mainly for their role in several key scenes in "Pretty in Pink", Podrasky took some time off to raise his son, and served as a script-reader for William Morris, before Endeavor came in and booted him out. A remarkable songwriter with a classic sound, he digs deep into the human condition, and captures people in the midst of difficult circumstances trying to reinvent themselves.
"I used to sleep upon/The wrong side of my life/Now that you are gone/The other side is mine," he sings in The Far Left Side of You," complete with wordless back-up harmonies.
Is fracking connected to the recent earthquakes in Southern California?
After a series of earthquakes hit Southern California recently, some residents and city officials turned their attention to hydraulic fracturing— or fracking — and possible links between the controversial practice and seismic activity.
RELATED: La Habra earthquake: KPCC's map of ongoing aftershocks
But what is the evidence behind this claim?
“There are some earthquakes in the U.S. that have been linked to fracking,” said Justin Rubinstein, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, on Take Two. “But these are earthquakes on the order of about magnitude 3.”
Most notably, there’s been an increase of sesimic activity in Oklahoma: the state averaged just one magnitude 3 earthquake per year in the 40 years up to 2009. That’s risen to 40 per year since 2011, said Rubinstein.
But the geophysicist cautioned against making the link to recent seismic activity in Los Angeles.
“Right now, I don’t believe there’s any evidence that indicates these earthquakes are related to waste water injection or fracking within the Los Angeles area,” said Rubinstein.
The greater concern is over waste-water injection, said Rubinstein, a practice in which salt water and the waste from drilling is thrust deep into the earth and can have the potential to disrupt already-existing fault lines.
These injection wells can take place in a gas field whether or not fracking is taking place.
A January study from the USGS found an increase in seismic activity across Western states where oil and grass drilling is taking place, but noted that fracking is only “very rarely” the direct cause of the quakes.
It also notes that “induced earthquakes,” or quakes caused by man-made activites, have been documented for decades and can be caused by a variety of factors, including “impoundment of water in reservoirs, surface and underground mining, withdrawal of fluids and gas from the subsurface, and injection of fluids into underground formations.”
Science is a careful, complex process that can be at odds with how the public views a current topic, said Dr. Jay Malone, executive director of the History of Science Society at Notre Dame University.
“We like to think of science as having these Eureka moments where scientists can tell us definitely this thing happened for this reason,” said Malone. “And it just usually doesn’t happen this way.”
Environmentalists, such as those with the Center for Biological Diversity, warn that a fracking boom poses the risk of increased seismic activity, while the industry maintains that the warnings are overblown.
In the meantime, Rubinstein and scientists at the USGS say more research needs to run its course before the link is established in quake-prone Southern California.
Apple and Samsung back in court fighting over patent issues
Tech giants Apple and Samsung are back in court fighting over patent issues. The outcome of the case could change the face of the highly lucrative smartphone market.
Apple is accusing Samsung's phones of violating several of their patents related to software features on the phones. They include slide to unlock, the autocorrect feature and other things like auto dialing a highlighted phone number.
Apple wants $2 billion for the patent infringement, which comes out to about $40 a phone. But it's not the money that Apple is necessarily interested in, says Mark Lemley, Professor of Law at Stanford.
"I think what Apple really wants is to shut down Samsung's phones or at least make them go back and redesign them in fundamental ways to get rid of some of these features," said Lemley on Take Two.
Apple could shake up the smartphone marketplace, but the likelihood of that happening is in question, according to Lemley.
"I do think that Apple has a somewhat tougher story here than they did in the first trial. Because the first trial was about their design," said Lemley. "They could hold up the Apple phones and Samsung phones and say look how similar they are. This is just a little bit more technical and it's a bit of a harder story to tell to the jury."
Samsung is challenging the patents, arguing that its features don't infringe as Apple claims. The debate goes on about whether something like swipe to open is too universal of a feature at this point. Samsung will likely be arguing that these kinds of software patents should be limited to the particular code used to create certain features.
Apple did however win the first trial, where they were awarded $930 million, which is currently being disputed in appeals court by Samsung.
"I keep waiting for the parties to sit down and settle this," says Lemley. "...but it looks like we're going to go court as long as we've got new phones coming out. And I think that's because Apple really wants to hold on to its market share and it sees Samsung as stealing its momentum. So far Apple's been successful in court, but that hasn't translated to success in the marketplace."
SoCal Marine Corps base suffers high non-combat death rate
The specter of death in the desert is one that many Marines have faced in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But a special report by the Desert Sun newspaper finds they're also facing it at home.
Since 2007, the Marine Corps base in Twenty Nine Palms, California has seen more deaths among its ranks from car crashes and suicides, than in combat. Reporter Brett Kelman has spent the past year investigating this trend and he joins me now.
Researchers take to skies to survey marine protected areas
Faced with dwindling fish stocks and degraded habitat, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife created dozens of marine protected areas off Southern California two years ago. With these closures, state officials want people to stay out of about 15 percent of the region’s coastal waters in an effort to make the ocean healthier.
Emerging science suggests new insights about how commercial and recreational fishermen are responding to the change.
Marine protected areas, scattered like scrabble tiles on the sea between Santa Barbara and Mexico take up more than 350 square miles. The easiest way to see that territory fast is from the sky.
KPCC's Molly Peterson reports.
The Atavist: One man's quest to perform Shakespeare as it was originally spoken
The English spoken during William Shakespeare's time is vastly different from the way that we speak the language today. Aside from our usage of hashtags and pop culture references, the pronunciation and inflection of words 500 years ago varies significantly from what we are used to hearing today.
Hamilton Meadows, a Vietnam veteran and Shakespeare aficionado, seeks out the original pronunciation, or OP, of the legendary bard's English in the hopes of putting on his own production.
Daniel Fromson wrote about Meadows and his journey to perfect the pronunciation of Shakespeare's English and wrote about it for The Atavist.
Excerpt:
On Easter Sunday 2011, a 39-foot sailboat motored into the Chesapeake Bay. “Tangier Island!” its captain cried. “Dead ahead, about five miles off of the starboard beam.” He said these words even though he was alone, bouncing through a choppy sea toward a place where he knew no one. He recorded himself with a handheld camera, as if starring in an adventure film of his own creation.
The sailor’s voyage had begun a day earlier, on April 23—the day, many believe, that William Shakespeare was born, in 1564. He called his ship the Tempest, a reference to both Shakespeare’s play and the storm that had wrecked the boat years before he bought and rebuilt it. Sailing without radar or other instruments, he had dropped anchor that evening and spent the night in the cabin, a warren of unfinished wood, dangling wires, and peeling metal foil suffused with a distinctly lived-in shabbiness. Now, however, he stood on deck in the afternoon sun, glided into a marina, and tied up at a berth amid stacks of crab traps and thickets of salt-marsh cordgrass, silencing an engine that had no reverse.
Shaped like an apple turnover, Tangier Island—officiallyTangier, Virginia, as its inhabited portions are known—measures three miles by one mile, sits just a few feet above sea level, and is so grooved with waterways and pounded by waves that several acres, every year, simply vanish into the bay. The place lends itself to hyperbole: Writers have called it “an island out of time” and “the quaintest and most isolated community in the United States.” Its 500 or so residents, descended from Englishmen who arrived in the late 1700s, drive golf carts instead of cars, passing clapboard houses and stone coffins that protrude above the saturated ground. “Interesting to notice how many people here don’t put up curtains at night, living with no fear,” the sailor wrote in his journal. “Never experienced that before”—and he was nothing if not experienced in the world’s diverse living arrangements, from a former embassy in Dubai to the space under an evergreen in Central Park.
For a few days, the sailor prowled the island with his video camera. He looked younger than his 65 years, with blue eyes that flickered between glowing and dim, framed by delicate, childlike lashes. On either side of a strawberry-shaped nose, his ears jutted crookedly from a bald skull. He often moved, despite his gut, with vigor, his face blossoming into extravagant smiles and frowns, but on Tangier Island he seemed lost. That, at least, is what Debra Sorenson—an artist who ran the Tangier History Museum and was a rare nonnative citizen of the island—thought when she spotted him near the local grocery store. His name, he told her, was Hamilton Meadows.
Meadows said he was a Shakespearean actor and filmmaker from New York City, although his acting résumés had typically listed a number of additional “special skills”: “offshore sailor, scuba diver/underwater cameraman, commercial fisherman, lumberjack, US Army ranger Viet Nam, expert marksman, stonemason, carpenter, undertaker’s assistant, wedding photographer, home birth assistant.” For several years, he told Sorenson, he had longed to see Shakespeare’s plays as they were performed centuries ago in Elizabethan England—and after he’d started repairing the Tempest in a Virginia shipyard, in 2007, he had learned that Tangier Island’s fishermen still spoke with the Elizabethan accent of their ancestors. Meadows hoped to convince some of them to recite Romeo and Juliet and to let him film them doing so. He would then return to New York and replicate their readings in an Off-Broadway production of the play, in which actors would speak Shakespeare’s words as they originally sounded.
You can read more of "Finding Shakespeare" on The Atavist.
House music pioneer DJ Frankie Knuckles dead at 59
Back in the late '70s and early '80s, Frankie Knuckles spun at a Chicago club called The Warehouse, which is where his special brand of music, House, got its name. The 59-year-old DJ passed away yesterday from complications related to diabetes.
House music was more than just a local phenomenon: The popularity of house music exploded around the world and continues to have legions of fans, decades after Frankie first started spinning.
For more on his legacy, we're joined another legend in the house music scene, Steve "Silk" Hurley