How the GOP differs today than from George W. Bush's time in office, Sherry Turkle's 'Reclaiming Conversation,' what to know about traveling with food this holiday.
Calif. new groundwater law faces tough local opposition
When rain is in short supply in California, groundwater accounts for about 60 percent of all the freshwater consumed in the state.
Until recently, the state had no comprehensive plan on how to manage the precious resource. Meanwhile, pumping and drilling increased.
That's supposed to change under a law passed last year that seeks to regulate the state's groundwater for the first time in a century.
That process is fraught with challenges on the local level.
Ryan Sabalow with the Sacramento Bee joins Take Two with more.
How to not talk about terrorism
In the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, presidential hopefuls on both sides of the political aisle face a similar question: What do you call the people who commit violent acts in the name of Islam?
At the last Democratic debate, candidates were asked if the U.S. is at war with radical Islam. All three candidates said no. This sparked criticism from the Republican side, where several frontrunners continue to use the term. So who has it right? Take Two put the question to Mustafa Umar, the director of education and outreach at the Islamic Institute of Orange County.
Ben Bergman (BB): This conversation really started after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January. The French prime minister said the country was “at war with radical Islam.” President Obama chose not to use that wording. He refused to use it again after the recent Paris attacks. Was he right to do that?
“Yeah, I believe so. Islam is the name of a religion — it’s not the name of a particular group of people who follow that religion. So when you put this prefix on ‘radical Islam’ … I think it gives the misperception that Islam is a religion that promotes violence or promotes terrorism or something like that, when [that’s] actually far from the truth.”
BB: Several Democrats have been using the phrase “jihadists” instead. Is that better?
“No, it’s not any better because, first of all, that doesn’t represent what the term ‘jihad’ actually means in Islam, according to almost all Muslim scholars throughout 1400 years of Muslim scholarship. Jihad has a number of meanings. One of the meanings is to be fighting against oppression and tyranny. [When] you’re actually promoting terrorism and oppression, you’re not a jihadist — you’re actually the opposite.”
BB: So what terms should we all be using?
“First of all, we can call it religious violent extremism without implicating Islam in particular. When this happens to other people you don’t find someone [saying] ‘this is radical Catholicism, or this is radical Christianity, or this is radical atheism’ or something like that … When it comes to Muslims, automatically they say, ‘you know what? They use their religion to justify these acts of terror.’ It’s very misleading because it gives us this false idea. There’s this false idea that … there are a lot of Muslims out there and they’re peaceful, and when they start reading the Quran immediately they read some verses and they become radicalized by those verses, but that’s not the reality. The reality is these people had certain political grievances and they chose to violently express that frustration and they needed some backing … they used religion and it just happened to be Islam that they chose to quote certain verses.”
Press the blue play button above to hear more.
On the Lot: $100MM 'disappointment,' Star Wars put shivers in Hollywood competitors
Normally, there would be a constant racket from champagne corks popping when a movie has a $100 million opening weekend. But it's all about expectations, and the final episode of the Hunger Games franchise failed to meet them.
And, with Disney set to release the latest Star Wars movie, the rest of Hollywood seems like the cast of Game of Thrones, all muttering that "winter is coming." With $50 million already in the bank from advance ticket sales, The Force Awakens looks to be a Goliath, with some predicting it will dethrone Avatar as the biggest grossing movie of all time.
Plus, a possible end to so-called 'favor movies,' that the studios offer up to big stars so they can stay in their good graces. And a very classy British actor-director takes on a remake of Murder on the Orient Express. The LA Times' Rebecca Keegan has all the stuff you need to know about this week in the film business.
What foods you can/can't bring onto an airplane
Foodies everywhere cried a little bit when word got out that, last week, officials at LAX confiscated 450 tamales from the luggage of a traveler coming from Mexico.
In case you didn't know, it's usually illegal to bring fresh, dried or canned meats into the U.S.
It turns out there are a lot of do's and don'ts when it comes to bringing food on planes.
If you're nervous about traveling with food this holiday season,
, senior aviation correspondent for Condé Nast Traveler, joins Take Two with her advice.
Sherry Turkle on the difference between connection and conversation
In the 1870s Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone— a device designed to enable communication between two people who couldn't be face to face.
What a long way we've come since then.
Our phones can now be used for so many things— to listen to music, watch movies, watch movies, and, of course, we still use them to communicate with each other too.
A study released earlier this year by a Seattle-based research group found that Americans spend, on average, 4.7 hours a day on our phones. Another survey released by AT&T and the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction found 61 percent of Americans sleep with their phones and 53 percent get upset when we're without our phones.
All this is deeply worrisome to Sherry Turkle, who's been studying the relationship between people and computers for decades. Turkle is a professor at MIT and author of the new book "Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age."
To hear the full interview with Sherry Turkle, click the link above.
The web series that's a block-by-block travel guide to LA
To the average newcomer, L.A. can be an intimidating place.
It's big and sprawling, and can be difficult even for locals to wrap their heads around sometimes. One way to make it easier to grasp? Take the city one block at a time.
That's what writer/performers
and
, along with director Davidson Vorhes, are attempting to do with their web series "LAblocks":
Each five minute episode explores a different L.A. intersection and all the history, architecture, and fun things to do there that you might not notice at first glance.
So far, LAblocks has tackled 5th & Spring in Downtown L.A. and Pacific & Windward in Venice. Have suggestions for where they should head next? You can connect with LAblocks on Facebook and
To hear the full interview with Stephanie Carrie and Robert Boesel, click the link above.