Google engineer's memo sparks controversy, Scripps scientists make an advancement in developing an HIV vaccine, autonomous cars debuted 20 years ago in California.
North Park Elementary aims to move on from tragedy
In April, North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino was the site of a shooting that left three dead. As they begin a new school year today, everyone is looking forward to a fresh start.
“I've been with San Bernardino City Unified School District since 1987," said Linda Bardere, communications director for North Park Elementary. "In my memory, I can't remember something that touched a school and school community so deeply. However, those events proved how resilient the North Park staff and school community are.”
When North Park first opened in 1968, it was designed with what's called an open-campus concept. That means it was full of wide open spaces and classrooms that didn't lock.
After the shooting in April, school officials had to consider a lot of changes to make it a safer place for students and faculty.
"The renovations included changing the interior of the school to now have actual walls between the classrooms and doors that teachers or staff members could lock from the inside," Bardere said.
In addition to the safety features, the school also redesigned the inside of the school to keep everyone's mind off of the tragedy and onto the new school year.
"The architect in their design said, 'Let's pull in some quotes from famous people and get some inspirational messages.' Rosa Parks, Mohatma Gandhi and several others are now a permanent parts of the school's interior, mixed with the vibrant yellow and blue colors that promote creativity, innovation and hope."
And while the school is doing everything it can to move forward, Bardere believes that it's uniquely prepared to deal with tragedy in San Bernardino after everything that the city has been through.
"We had the terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center. We've seen our city come through a bankruptcy and two different fires shut down the school district in 2003 and 2007. Our community is unfortunately used to dealing with disasters and crisis. That has made our community stronger. Our community is just committed to making things better for our students and making hope happen in San Bernardino."
Women in tech not surprised by Google employee's anti-diversity essay
A conversation about Silicon Valley's lack of diversity is bubbling to the surface after a controversial essay by a Google employee was circulated internally and leaked to the media over the weekend. Data show very low numbers of women, black, and Latino workers in tech and leadership positions at major companies.
Many tech giants are working to increase diverse representation in their workforces. Big players like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have launched programs to recruit more women and people of color. But diversity initiatives are not being universally embraced.
A memo posted on an internal Google forum and later obtained by the blog Gizmodo on Saturday has been shared and dissected across the internet. It's titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber." The author is a male software engineer who is critical of efforts to diversify his industry.
Queena Kim, Senior Editor on the Silicon Valley desk at KQED, joined A Martinez on Monday to explain.
This is a 10-page essay. It's long. What's it say, in a nutshell?
Basically it calls into question Google's campaign to bring in more gender and ethnic diversity...[The author] makes the argument that there are some hard-wired reasons why there are so few women in tech and men dominate the field. The core of his point is there are some genetic differences between men and women that make this inevitable, and this idea of trying to 'socially engineer' a world where men and women are equally represented in the engineering world is false.
Here's a key quote: "...the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
This can't be going over well with the author's female coworkers. What's the reaction been like?
There's been a lot of backlash to this. But there's also been this interesting conversation going on that, 'yeah, this is offensive, but not that surprising,' at least among the women engineers in Silicon Valley. [The conversation has been] that these attitudes are very pervasive in a lot of tech companies, not just Google. I guess it's not very new to them, although there's obviously a lot of anger--the fact that this was put out in a public forum at Google, and nothing really has been done about it. It was allowed to sit for many days until someone leaked it to Motherboard, and they started reporting it out, and Gizmodo got a copy of it.
I think really the backlash has been not so much that it's surprising that people believe this, or there's a certain group of male engineers that hold these views, but the fact that Google hasn't really acted and just let it sit out there.
Is the author getting some support from people who feel left out of the push for diversity?
According to reports, at least from what you're seeing on Twitter and whatnot, a lot of employees say yes. There are men who have secretly, or not so secretly, told this male engineer that we're with you. We agree with what you have to say, and this sort of blind quest for gender inclusion is wrong-minded and overlooks these hard-wired reasons why men dominate tech.
What is leadership at Google saying about all this?
They have a new head of diversity and inclusion, Danielle Brown. She posted a memo internally. The title is "Affirming our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion." They don't agree with [the essay]. Google's taking a very different course, and diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of their values and their culture.
What's also sort of interesting is a response by a former Google engineer, a senior engineer there named Yonatan Zunger. He's left the company because he has no more confidential knowledge about what's happening there.... He was saying [the essay has] many misguided notions of gender...a lot of it doesn't ring true in terms of any research or real science behind it. [Zunger also says] as an engineer, a lot of it doesn't make sense to him. The guy who wrote this manifesto says one of the things that keeps women behind is they are very cooperative. They like to work more collaboratively. And this is what keeps them back, because they're always trying to work with people rather than trying to get ahead and having sharper elbows. But this guy Yonatan Zunger makes a really interesting point. He says that maybe on the lower level, people are working in silos. And that might be true. But when you're working at a company like Google, when you're literally building for the world... it takes an incredible amount of cooperation. You're working with many different teams across many different time zones, from management to the lowest engineer. And that is all, according to Zunger, about working cooperatively.
This interview has been edited for space and clarity. Please click on the blue media player above to hear the full conversation.
HIV/AIDS community in SoCal hopeful for a preventative vaccine
For many in the fight against HIV and AIDS, a preventative vaccine is the scientific holy grail.
While a vaccine is still years away, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego have made a breakthrough that could speed up the process.
The HIV virus is notoriously difficult to beat because it has a unique shield that protects it from antibodies – the little defenders in our blood that fight off infection.
Dennis Burton is a professor and chair of the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute. "This outer protein coat of the virus is covered in sugars, explains Burton. "And it turns out that antibodies struggle in sticking to sugars."
In order to maneuver through the HIV virus' sugar coat and attack it, our antibodies need to have long, finger-like structures. Humans can technically make that kind of antibodies, just not very consistently or well. But cows are really good at producing them.
In their study, cows were vaccinated with multiple strains of HIV and the results were better than expected. The cows were able to defeat virtually all of the strains.
There's still a long road ahead to a vaccine but this was a productive step forward. The next step is to trying to get human antibodies to act like cow antibodies. Burton says one way of doing could be to "actually take the piece of the cow antibodies that does so well and we can transplant it onto a human’s antibodies. It's just a little piece of protein."
Burton's study and other announcements from HIV/AIDS researchers have many hopeful that a vaccine could be a reality in the foreseeable future.
is Editorial Director for The Advocate magazine and Editor-in-chief at HIV Plus Magazine. "It would be an enormous game changer because doctors could take the onice off of people in deciding their risk," says Anderson-Minshall. "We can eliminate the stigma of that for people who have to explain to their doctors why they want to go on PrEP, which we know has been a problem."
A vaccine would mean a lot of Southern California communities. "About half of the state's HIV people living with HIV live in LA county," says Anderson-Minshall. "And of those, half of them don't engage in healthcare." She also says that Southern California's immigrant and transgender communities struggle the most to get healthcare.
As researchers continue working for a vaccine that could make huge difference around the world, local advocates keep hope alive. "The idea that we could do the same thing with HIV is astounding, especially for someone like me who did live through the '80s when all of my friends died," says Anderson-Minshall.
Quotes edited for clarity
To hear the full segment, click on the media player above.
World Police and Fire Games begin in Los Angeles
While the Olympics won't be in Los Angeles until 2028, the city is currently getting a sneak preview of what it looks like to have thousands of athletes descend on the city.
Yesterday, more than 10,000 athletes from over 70 different countries came to LA to kick off the 32nd World Police and Fire Games. They will compete in 56 different sports during the next two weeks.
There are classics like cycling and wrestling, and more unusual competitions, like pistol shooting and an ultimate firefighter competition.
And all the athletes are a mix of active - and retired - police officers and firefighters.
Take Two spoke with LAPD Senior Lead Officer Eric Mollinedo, who also serves as a cycling coordinator for the games.
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
Can more dorm rooms speed up CSU graduation rates?
It's no secret, A Martinez is a proud Cal State Northridge Alumnus.
His parents' house was right next door, so it was a no brainer to attend the CSU, even if it meant he would be getting something different than a "traditional" university experience.
That's because most students at Cal State schools are commuters. They drive to get there. At the moment, Cal State's can only house about 11 percent of their 400,000 students.
But there's an effort to shift that. Officials say more housing means more students are likely to graduate.
Elvyra San Juan is assistant vice chancellor for the CSU system. She spoke to A Martinez about CSU's plans to add dorm rooms.
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
California was testing self-driving cars 20 years ago
Twenty years ago today, on August 7, 1997, Bill Clinton was president, Puff Daddy ruled radio and the Sylvester Stallone drama, Cop Land, dominated at the box office.
But there was something else going on in Southern California that’s still relevant today. Interstate 15 was playing host to the country’s largest autonomous vehicle test. Mandated by an act of Congress, and run by the Federal Highway Administration, it was called Demo 97. For four days, 21 different vehicles traveled more than 8,000 miles all by themselves.
"Those cars were using human drivers, and steering, but they were using radars to pace off the vehicles in front of them and also following magnets in the pavement,” said Malcolm Dougherty, director of the California Department of Transportation. "Back then, that was very innovative. Today, we know we can’t put magnets in the pavement everywhere for cars to follow so now the modern car that has equipment like this is following the lane lines, using cameras."
CalTrans was one of several California organizations that participated in Demo 97. The University of California also participated, along with engineering firm Bechtel, aerospace company Lockheed Martin and now defunct Hughes Aircraft. The effort was led by General Motors, which deployed a fleet of eight Buick LeSabres in a platoon formation to move more cars, more quickly, and closer together, to ease congestion.
"I felt like I was at the Indy 500," U.S. Senator from California, Barbara Boxer, told a television news reporter after she hitched a ride in one of Demo 97’s Buicks.
Never mind that she only traveled a half mile on a closed course. Demo 97 also ran tests on 7-1/2 miles of HOV freeway lanes in San Diego, testing a lot of the systems that have only started showing up in cars recently. Things like collision and lane departure warnings and adaptive cruise control, which automatically speeds up and slows down a car to keep pace with the vehicle in front of it.
At the time of Demo 97, traffic was doubling every decade without any new lane miles being added to the country’s freeway system, so the demo was designed in part as a test of technologies that could help double or even triple the flow rate of traffic. But there were other goals, like improving safety and reducing the environmental impact of getting around.
That’s right. All the same problems that modern autonomous cars are hoping to solve today were identified 20 years ago. It’s taken a couple decades, but today 36 different companies are testing self-driving cars on public roads in California in the hopes that in the very near future, they’ll no longer be a test but reality.
On the Lot: Who will lead the Academy now?
Temperatures here in L.A. are high but box office numbers are low.
This past weekend saw the wide release of Kathryn Bigelow's "Detroit" and Stephen King's "The Dark Tower."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjwfqXTebIY
"The Dark Tower" only grossed about $19.5 million domestically, even though it had a budget of about $60 million.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv74LqiumXE
The bleak numbers are part of an overall movie ticket sales decline this month. The reason for the decline? No standout movies on the horizon.
Meanwhile, the Academy is readying itself to select a new leader on Tuesday. The new Academy president will have to grapple with paying for the Academy’s costly new museum, reaching its ambitious diversity goals, and organizing the first Oscar telecast after Envelopegate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCQn_FkFElI
And jumping to another award show that's just around the corner - the Emmys. Voting starts next week and thanks to "Game of Thrones" the sci-fi/fantasy genre is dominating. But could is this trend here to stay? Probably not.
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
‘The Martian Chronicles:’ An out-of-this-world projection of LA
Every Monday this summer, Take Two has brought you great books of the Golden State as part of our summer reading series, The California Canon.
For this installment, we're bringing you something a little farther out in "The Martian Chronicles."
It doesn't even take place on this planet, yet this Sci-fi classic by longtime resident Ray Bradbury has a lot to say about L.A. in the early 1950s.
is a book editor and founder of the Libros Schmibros lending library. You can take Bradbury out of L.A. but you can't take L.A. out of Bradbury, he says.
Finding hints of Los Angeles in the craters of Mars
Bradbury moved around. Ultimately he lived the last few decades of his life in Cheviot Hills which a local architect recently bulldozed. But he also lived quite a while in Venice. And I hear echoes of a bygone Venice in ‘The Martian Chronicles’ unmistakably and mysteriously, and I think, very enjoyably if you know what to listen for.
Bradbury binds individual stories into one, 30-year narrative
"The Martian Chronicles" has a fascinating structure. These are stories over a period of three decades in which the human presence on Mars grows, and evolves, and eventually bids fair to destroy itself. It grew out of a short story that Ray Bradbury wrote called "And the Moon Still Be as Bright." And it's about this first expedition of American astronauts to Mars. This becomes the kernel of "The Martian Chronicles." And the book develops around it in the early 1950s in a fairly interesting way. He starts writing more and more stories about Mars until it's suggested to him that wouldn't it be cool if you could make a book out of your Mars stories. And Ray creates these inter-chapters so "The Martian Chronicles" alternates between short-story-sized chapters and just one- or two-page chapters. It's in those inter-chapters which he adds in between the short stories he's already written that you get a feel for the passage of time.
Parallels between native peoples of Earth and Mars
The stories add up to something greater than the sum of their parts. They add up to this parable of what Ray experienced as an immigrant to Southern California where the only remnant left that he could readily see of the Tongva, of the Chumash, were some cave paintings up in Santa Ynez, and a lot of place names like Tujunga – like Topanga. The Native Americans were here but there weren't where Ray Bradbury grew up on Alexandria or Kenmore in Hollywood. Ray was not going to see much evidence of that. So it's this sense of a bygone civilization of which only remnants remain. Ray, as a guy coming to LA in the 1930s with his family, was only going to get these kind of ghostly hints of the people who once lived on this same land for thousands of years before. And he transmutes that into the way he presents the Martians as these people very much in sync and in sympathy with the land, and rather otherworldly, and at the same time, endangered.
An LA writer on any planet
"The Martian Chronicles," in addition to being written in Los Angeles, is in my mind, in large part about Los Angeles and what Los Angeles represents as an invented place. It's a mistake if we think of these Los Angeles novels as these really cool time capsules. That's all a lot of fun but there's also a Los Angeles sensibility. And Ray has that down to his toes. And you have only to look at the "The Martian Chronicles" which is a parable of suburbanization... and that's exactly what the astronauts are doing on Mars. They're creating this kind of mass produced, fabricated civilization on top of the bones of of a preexisting civilization.
Echoes of Cold War anxieties
Midway through "The Martian Chronicles," to get the idea that something very bad has happened back on Earth that makes going home suddenly, a much less appealing option. This is a novel written among the first years when mankind had to contemplate the possibility of its own extinction.
Bradbury uses rockets as a means to an end
When he's writing about space, he's even more writing about the play of the human mind. And so, he writes "The Martian Chronicles" completely innocent of what the Apollo Program and NASA would be up to a good ten years later.... There's mentions of rockets in every chapter and yet, it's as if rockets are just another mode of transportation. It's a tool for him. And so, space was a blank canvas for him onto which he could project all of his hopes and fears....
Quotes edited for clarity and brevity.