A look at voter outreach on California's last day of voter registration, Palm Springs in the aftermath of the tour bus collision tragedy, the science of Pixar.
Officials to probe cause of deadly Palm Springs bus crash
In one of the worst crashes in California for decades, 13 people were killed and more than 30 others were injured when a tour bus hit a big rig near Palm Springs early Sunday morning, according to the California Highway Patrol. The driver of the bus was one of the fatalities in the wreck.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
"We know that stretch of freeway has a fair amount of truck traffic," said Rosalie Murphy, reporter with the Desert Sun who has been covering the crash.
Federal safety officials are set to give a press conference this afternoon in Indio for more details about the fatal crash on the I-10 freeway.
Officials say they are still looking into what might have happened Sunday morning.
"They'll immediately begin a mechanical fitness inspection," said Collin Mooney, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, a nonprofit made up of local, state, and federal safety officials and industry representatives.
Click the blue audio player to hear the full interview.
California Secretary of State Padilla on voter registration deadline, security and the future
The election is now just about two weeks away and Monday marks a very important deadline in California:
It's the last day to register to vote.
Earlier today, Alex Cohen spoke with California's Secretary of State Alex Padilla about the importance of Monday's deadline.
Interview Highlights
What's the deadline?
"In order to cast a ballot this November you have to be registered to vote. Good news? There's more than 18 million people already on the voter rolls in California. We're at a record high for the state's history. The bad news is there's another six and a half million plus people eligible but not registered so anybody who wants to cast a ballot this November has to be registered. Today is the last day to do so. You can go find that form at the post office or the library but you can also do it online at registertovote.ca.gov."
Why is today the deadline, what does that say about the process...how long does it take and what's the process for registering voters?
"I'll be honest, in this day and age, there really is no good reason why we have a 15-days-before-the-election deadline to register to vote. It used to be a 30-day before election day deadline for no other reason other than at some point the county has to stop the process of registration and go to print the list of voters that they will then dispatch to every polling place in the county and we know who's on the list and who's not.
The good news is, starting next year the sam- day registration law that's been passed and signed into law in California will kick in. But for the purposes of this November, you have to be registered before the deadline, today is that deadline so you can do it on paper or do it online before midnight at registertovote.ca.gov."
There's been talk of things potentially being rigged, there've been all sorts of digital data breaches of late, tell us why people should not be concerned that the elections could be rigged.
"The more this question keeps coming up, it's doing a disservice to the extent that people feel that their vote may not count. When we raise questions, we raise doubts, it may give folks a reason to maybe not participate which may be the objectives of some that keep raising these false questions and concerns. But the reason I feel confident that in California our systems are secure are many. Number one, the machines that we use to vote on in California to mark our ballots, to cast our ballots, to even count our ballots, by law cannot be connected to the Internet. So, there is just no way for somebody to systematically hack or rig our elections sitting from a garage somewhere, a basement somewhere whether it's in California or anywhere throughout the world and more people need to be aware of that..."
Let's talk about the future. Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 450 not that long ago, which you sponsored. This will modernize elections here in California. Can you remind us how exactly they'll change going forward, and when?
"So starting next July, anybody who's eligible to vote when they go to the DMV to apply for or renew a driver's license or a state ID, or even if you're renewing online, you'll be systematically registered to vote in the process and we think that'll go a long way in getting those six million plus eligible unregistered voters in California on the rolls for future elections...
The bill that went through this year, Senate Bill 450 gives counties the option of connecting elections in a way that just means modern times. Currently, our options for voting are either by mail, which is pretty convenient and more and more people are doing it. But if you want to vote in person your only option is one designated location close to where you live on election day between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. What we've called for is a system where every voter can automatically receive their ballot in the mail, you don't have to ask for it or sign up for it...
In the weeks leading up to the election and for the people who prefer that in-person option, with a little bit of technology we can afford voters the option of going to any voting location in the county not just that designated place by where you live because maybe it's more convenient to vote closer to work...and not just on election day, Senate Bill 450 calls for at least 10 days of in-person voting leading up to and including election day..."
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
(Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity)
New exhibit explores the science behind Pixar movies
For those who want to learn about the math and science behind some of Pixar's biggest hits like "Brave," "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo," they can now go to the California Science Center's newest exhibit, a 12,000-square foot interactive exhibition.
"This exhibit is not about the creative side," explained Tom Porter, Pixar's senior vice president of production. "This is about the ten departments represented on the technical side of Pixar."
Porter recently sat down with Alex Cohen to talk about the exhibit.
Attendees can learn about how Pixar used math to create the bumpy surface on Mr. Potato Head in "Toy Story," or how they created water in "Finding Nemo." There's also an entire video on Merida's curly hair in the movie "Brave," which Porter said was particularly difficult to build and creating realistic curly hair in an animated film hadn't been done before.
"You know, this is the main character. She's going to be in 80 percent of the shots of the film. She's going to be in a lot of different situations with wind blowing. She's on horseback. Maybe rain's falling in the hair. There's a lot of work that you have to do in the early days of the film as you come to understand what that character looks like to prepare for maybe 1600 different shots of the film with her hair in all sorts of situations."
Ultimately designers at Pixar turned to a real-world item to solve their curly hair problem: springs.
To hear the entire conversation click on the audio link embedded at the top of this post.
Will bicycles ever get the infrastructure they need in LA?
Next month, LA County residents will vote on a Traffic Improvement Plan, also known as Measure M.
The ballot initiative would help build out the region's transit system with new rail and bus lines, fix roads and create bike paths.
So to test out how you can get around L.A. without a car, our very own Sue Carpenter started an interesting experiment.
Sue is the host of The Ride, our series about cars and mobility ... but she decided to try navigating around L-A without a car...
For the entire month of October.
She found that without a car, the fastest way to get around L.A. is often on two wheels. It's a truism that's long been known by bicyclists and was underscored earlier this year in KPCC's "great race" between a bike, a car and Metro from downtown L.A. to Santa Monica during rush hour.
The bicycle won.
Still, infrastructure to support bicycling lags. To ride in L.A. County is to navigate a patchwork of dedicated bike lanes and streets with fast-moving traffic. Hardcore cyclists may be willing to use such a disconnected system, but what about regular folks who may be on the fence about using a bike instead of a car?
"The majority of the population is not going to really get on their bike and go out there and ride on the streets unless they feel like they have a place to do it without as much conflict with motor vehicles," said Colin Bogart, education director for the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition.
"If you look at a map of bike lanes right now, if you pretended that map was a map of streets for cars and saw they weren’t connected, you’d be like, no wonder nobody’s driving, right?"
So how does L.A. become more bicycle friendly?
Potentially through Measure M. Two percent of the funds raised through the ballot measure to increase L.A. County's sales tax in support of transit is slated for bicycle and pedestrian improvements — or, as Metro calls it, “active transportation.”
Should Measure M pass, Metro will allocate $2.4 billion over the next 40 years for active transportation projects, the largest of which are slated for pathways along the L.A. River. Plans call for closing a 12-mile gap in the existing L.A. River bike path from Canoga Park to Glendale, an eight-mile gap through downtown L.A. to the City of Maywood and another stretch from downtown toward Pasadena.
All of the L.A. River bike path improvements are scheduled to break ground in 2023 with a completion date of 2025, according to Metro chief communications officer, Pauletta Tonilas. While many of the other pieces of Measure M’s bike infrastructure improvements haven’t yet been determined, "Metro has embraced bicycles as a part of our multimodal system," Tonilas said.
In addition to allowing bikes on trains and buses, it launched a bike-sharing program in downtown L.A. earlier this year that will soon expand to Pasadena, Venice and the Port of Los Angeles.
Right now, about five percent of Metro users ride their bicycles to the train or bus, and once they’ve arrived, Metro gives cyclists the option of bringing their bikes along or parking them in lockers. There’s also a new system of bike hubs that will soon be available in Union Station, Culver City and North Hollywood for cyclists to safely park their bikes and also get them repaired.
Can L.A. be the next great U.S. city for bicycles? Maybe. But it’s still a long pedal uphill to get there.
On The Lot: 'Madea's Halloween, 'Moonlight's critical success and a new Lando Calrissian
Every week Rebecca Keegan of the Los Angeles Times joins Take Two to talk about the latest in the film business. This week we've got news about Tyler Perry's box office domination, the critically lauded "Moonlight," the casting of a young Lando Calrissian and some surprise Donald Trump documentaries.
Californians get out the vote in other states
California is in a unique position during presidential elections.
In presidential elections, it has voted solidly blue state for decades. The means California often has a surplus of Democratic volunteers who want to get out the vote.
These volunteers may spend their time making calls to neighboring states— or even traveling to knock on doors in Arizona and Nevada—where they can reach undecided or reluctant voters in swing states.
How is that dynamic impacting the 2016 election?
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Jack Pitney, Roy P. Crocker Professor of Politics at Claremont McKenna College
- Thad Kousser, Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego
Click the blue audio player to hear the full interview.
Feeling stressed by the election? Mindfulness can help
If this election season has got you feeling a little stressed out, you're not alone.
Earlier this month, a survey released by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that more than half of American adults are feeling "very" or "somewhat" stressed by the election.
To help reduce election stress, the APA recommends limiting media consumption, avoiding discussions about the election, and maintaining "a balanced perspective" about what will happen after November 8.
But how to keep a balanced perspective when our minds so often leap ahead to the worst-case scenario? One way may be to practice a little mindfulness.
Diana Winston, director of mindfulness education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center, explains how mindfulness can help reduce election-related stress.
Interview highlights:
What is it that's so stress-inducing about the election?
There seems to be just a general feeling of anxiety that people have. There's so much uncertainty, and then there's also all this anger and hatred. It's confusing, people feel overwhelmed. I think it's just a combination of so many factors coming together that we're all stressed out.
What is mindfulness?
I define mindfulness as paying attention to our present-moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is. It's really about how can we live in the present moment— not lost in the past, not lost in the future— but right here right now. That's what mindfulness can teach us to do.
It's so easy though to skip ahead in your mind and end up in a stress spiral about all the possibilities ahead. How do you not do that?
That's exactly what the human mind does. We think of one thing and it leads to the next and it's like a snowball effect. But what we can learn to do with mindfulness is actually to become aware of our mind. And when we notice that our mind has gone off into the worst-case scenario, you can come back to the present moment and actually find a place of peace inside yourself.
What are some tips if you're completely new to mindfulness meditation?
The simplest way to do it is to focus on your breathing. That's something that everybody can have access to. We can just take a moment to feel our breath in our body, and what we would do in a meditation practice is just notice breath after breath— maybe in your stomach or chest or nose— and then when your attention wanders, you bring it back to the sensations of your breath. And then you just keep practicing it. It may be hard to do in the beginning, but over time it gets easier to stay in the present moment.
How does mindfulness help reduce stress?
The science shows that just doing a practice such as meditation— and it can be mindfulness, there are many types of meditation and mindfulness is one of them— it has a calming effect on the nervous system, it can boost the immune system, it can reduce stress-related responses. So just in and of itself it's a very helpful practice for reducing stress. But the second level is how it can help us work with difficult thoughts and emotions so when we go into the worst-case scenario or to feelings of fear or anxiety, we can check into our bodies and notice what's happening in the moment and not get so caught in it. Instead, we can actually have a little bit of space, a little bit of distance, so that we're not overwhelmed by these emotions.
What about the stress that comes along with conflict with friends or family members about the election. Can mindfulness help with that as well?
It can, but you have to practice it. So my suggestion is to start a meditation practice, so you begin to have some basic tools. On our UCLA website, we have some free guided meditations you can download. But when you're in a heated conversation, in the middle of it, you can actually just take a mindful breath. Feel your feet on the floor, notice that your heart is racing, notice that you're having a strong feeling of irritation, and that you don't have to act on it. You can just be aware of it without letting it take over you.
Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.
To hear the full interview, click the blue player above.
Remembering Tom Hayden's impact on American politics
Longtime political activist Tom Hayden passed away Sunday in Santa Monica. He was 76.
Hayden was one of the Chicago Seven, a group of protestors charged for inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In later years, he became a politician. He ran for mayor in Los Angeles (losing to Richard Riordan) and he served in California's state senate and assembly for 18 years.
Take Two's Alex Cohen spoke with Todd Gitlin, who succeeded Hayden as president of Students for a Democratic Society, as well as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who knew Hayden for many years.
"It's a cliché, but sometimes clichés are true: he was the voice of a generation," Gitlin said.
Click the blue audio player to hear the full interviews with Todd Gitlin and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.