Life & Times - Transcript

About Us \| Contact Us

Life & Times Transcript

10/10/05

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Videogame animators and military trainers. They're lending new meaning to the term "war games".

>> "What can you do for the war fighter?"

>> "Tough, realistic training is the key to building effective teams and my job is to try to make sure that soldiers get that kind of training every time they step into the virtual training area."

Val Zavala>> And then, it's a side of Wilmington you can't see from the freeway. We take you inside an elegant reminder of a different time and place.

These stories and more 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>> Two major industries are merging: videogames and military training. That's right. The realism and violence so prevalent in videogames turns out to be quite practical when it comes to training United States soldiers, and a Southern California university is at the heart of the research.

For a videogame junkie, this is like dying and going to heaven. This is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3. It's the videogame industry's annual trade fair held this year at L.A. Convention Center. This is where the titans of the industry unveil their latest wares, games of speed, whimsy and combat, lots and lots of combat. In fact, sixteen percent of videogames on the market are rated "Mature, For Sexual And/Or Violent Content".

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> But now a new application is emerging for the realism of videogames. Animators and military trainers are coming together for more than fun and games. This is the Institute for Creative Technologies in a warehouse in Marina del Rey. It's affiliated with the University of Southern California and it's where academics and military personnel are collaborating for a deadly serious purpose. Dell Lunceford used to be the Pentagon's top man for interactive technology. Now he's the institute's chief technology officer.

Dell Lunceford>> Most of the work we do here is related to what we call immersive technologies which is getting people that are in a variety of games or other types of simulations deeply involved in it so that they escape reality and begin to believe they are the character that they're playing in whatever this type of simulation activity is.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> The Institute for Creative Technologies, or ICT, has won a $145 million dollar grant from the Army. Their mission? To bring new meaning to the term "war games".

Dell Lunceford>> Over the last thirty years, we did very little of human on human kind of simulation activities. They were usually equipment on equipment, planes fighting planes, tanks fighting planes. Now most of what we're doing is people interacting with people. It's a soldier on the ground interacting with a local citizen, so I'm not modeling air combat. I'm modeling human interaction.

Val Zavala>> This training video is called "Full Spectrum Soldier". In it, a trainee makes his or her way through a violent and battle-scarred city in the Middle East. They encounter threats from quick-triggered insurgents to kids throwing rocks.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> The starring character is a virtual Army sergeant who explains in his own words why he was created.

>> "Tough, realistic training is the key to building effective teams and my job is to try to make sure that soldiers get that kind of training every time they step into the virtual training area."

Dell Lunceford>> It will not replace the need for the soldiers to be able to go out in the desert and practice their skill sitting in a real tank and moving around in real dirt. That will not go away for a long, long time. The days of Star Trek are not here yet, but as a simulationist and a little bit of a futurist, I think it's only a matter of time.

Val Zavala>> There's a good reason why the Army came here to USC. USC has been positioning itself as a leader in videogame development. Yes, that's right. You can get a degree in videogame production.

Anthony Borquez>> I think USC definitely, you know, wants to be the leader in game development, in game research.

Val Zavala>> Anthony Borquez is Director of USC's Information Technology program. He admits his academic colleagues were initially skeptical.

Anthony Borquez>> I think a lot of people are mistaken that you're playing games and you're having a good time in the classroom when it's very different. It's rigorous. Probably some of the hardest technology that we've taught.

Val Zavala>> Borquez may get even more respect now that the military is interested in what videogames can offer. But the military is not the only one enlisting the help of higher education. Private companies are also bolstering video programs at colleges and universities, companies like Electronic Arts, a Los Angeles studio headed by Neil Young. EA is the world's leading developer of video and computer games. Last year, it took in more than three billion dollars in sales, yet even Electronic Art is not resting easy.

Neil Young>> What keeps me awake at night, honestly, is that we're not innovating enough or fast enough.

Val Zavala>> And that's why EA has partnered with USC. The company has donated more than eight million dollars to USC's School of Cinema Television for videogame innovation labs.

>> "The idea will be that you can grab a whole bunch of clouds and bring them over and they'll be able to start a thunderstorm."

Val Zavala>> EA also supports a summer camp for high school students. They come from across the country to learn how to turn their ideas into finished playable games.

Denise Hong>> I've seen like so many amazing games and I feel that I want to contribute to like the production of like a really great game someday.

Val Zavala>> It's young people like Denise who will keep the videogame production pipeline pumping, and it will be new users like the United States military who will keep the markets growing. As for the $145 million dollars the Army has spent on soldier training games, they have yet to lead any victories on the battlefield, but they have scored a clear victory with gamers. "Full Spectrum Soldier", that training tool, has been adapted and is now a critically acclaimed video being marketed to civilian gamers.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> And now for this Life and Times story update. You may recall that we told you about a clash between senior citizens in Orange County's Leisure World and the Department of Motor Vehicles. Residents of Leisure World accused the DMV of discriminating against seniors to get them off the road. They claimed the DMV sometimes failed them on their driving test solely because of their age.

Well, now the DMV announced it is making some changes in how it treats older drivers. The DMV denies any charge of age discrimination, but says it has issued new guidelines. From now on, if an elderly driver fails, the DMV will discuss the test results with them. Before, drivers sometimes lost their license with little or no explanation. And another change. From now on, where possible, an elderly person's driver's license will be restricted rather than revoked.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> When people in the Gulf states talk about the big one, they mean a hurricane. When we talk about the big one, we mean an earthquake and we are overdue for the big one. So what can we expect? Hena Cuevas talked with earthquake expert, Lucy Jones, from the United States Geological Survey.

Hena Cuevas>> When you see something like what just happened in New Orleans and you follow earthquakes, what are your thoughts about the preparedness in California?

Lucy Jones>> I can see things happen that I think won't happen here because we have been planning. It also makes me aware that there are times when the disaster can overwhelm the existing systems and we've just got to do everything we can to make our system as strong as it can and therefore more likely to survive.

Hena Cuevas>> With something like this, is this a really good opportunity to have people then start thinking about what could happen here?

Lucy Jones>> I think that everyone in Southern California watching what's happening in the Gulf Coast is taking that step and thinking, well, maybe it really is going to be bad when we have that earthquake. I found it myself in ending up talking with my husband saying, you know, we really haven't been keeping up the water supplies. It's been a long time since Northridge. Everybody forgets. You know, my running shoes got out of the car and I really need to make sure they get back in. I hope everyone takes this opportunity because we are going to have a major disaster at some point. How you survive it is going to depend a lot upon the choices that you make between now and then.

Hena Cuevas>> One of the obvious differences between a hurricane and an earthquake is that we don't have warning.

Lucy Jones>> Right. We don't have that type of feeling. You know, here's the hurricane moving across and it's going to be here in twelve hours. We do sometimes have -- you know, we just had a magnitude 5 on the San Andreas. Our chance of the big one is up today and people should be aware of those things. But the preparedness needs to be somewhat different. You can't do it by leaving. It means, instead of having a hundred thousand people in the disaster zone afterwards, we're going to be having fifteen million.

Hena Cuevas>> You've been following all the different tremors and all the earth movements in California. What is the situation with the big one? What does the scientific community think?

Lucy Jones>> We know that earthquakes are inevitable. We see the rate at which they happen. As far as we can tell, there is not a buildup to the big one. Rather, there's an ongoing process. And the other part, in Southern California, we have over three hundred faults capable of a damaging earthquake, so we need to be concerned about the San Andreas because it's the biggest and fastest of the faults. But we can't put our planning only on that one because there are so many others that we need to worry about.

Now when we get to our biggest one, when we have the San Andreas event, we know that on average that happens once every couple hundred years. The last one was in 1857 near Palmdale. You go down by Palm Springs, there hasn't been one for over three hundred years. That doesn't say it has to happen tomorrow. We've gone three hundred years without one. But it does mean that's a very likely place for it.

One of the big issues is we'll be disrupting our infrastructure in a way that we did not with a smaller event like Northridge. Because the San Andreas surrounds Southern California and, when it moves, one side will be moved offset from the other side after the event. That means, for instance, pipelines that cross the fault will now be separated by twenty feet. They're probably not still going to be continuous after that process unless we mitigate. That's what science and engineering can do for us. We can tell you where the motions are going to happen and then we could go in and build the system that can handle that motion.

Hena Cuevas>> You described Northridge as a little earthquake. Can you describe the big one?

Lucy Jones>> Well, let's look at our history as the best way to understand what could happen. If you look over the twentieth century, there were six earthquakes that caused what would in modern terms be, say, over a billion dollars worth of damage. Northridge was one of those, so it isn't just a small one. But of those six, the 1906 Great Earthquake in San Francisco eclipses the rest of them. It really did pretty much eliminate a city. That's what we're seeing in New Orleans. It's the ability to take out a whole metropolitan area, and the 1906 earthquake did that. So those are the earthquakes that we're most afraid of.

When we get to our magnitude 8, that 7.9 and 8, the one thing is that they can probably only happen on the San Andreas fault. Because to be an 8, you need to have a very long fault and the San Andreas is really probably the only one long enough. But that also means that you need about two hundred fifty miles of fault length to get up to a magnitude 8. That means a two hundred fifty mile long area is all going to be right on top of the earthquake and therefore we're going to see a much more extensive area of destruction than we see in something like Northridge which was really confined to a very small area. The earthquake is also going to last for a longer time because earthquakes don't happen at epicenters, but they begin at epicenters.

Then you essentially have a tear that rips down the fault and that travels at two miles a second. Through a two hundred fifty mile long fault, you need a hundred twenty-five seconds. That earthquake is going to last for two minutes. By comparison, Northridge lasted for seven seconds. So we're going to see a much bigger area involved. It's going to take much more time to bring in mutual aid because they're going to have to be coming from much farther away and we're going to have an earthquake that lasts for a much, much longer time.

Hena Cuevas>> When there is an earthquake of that magnitude, what is the range of the area that would be affected, as much as you can predict?

Lucy Jones>> Well, actually, we can predict the consequences of the earthquake very well. The only part we don't get is the time and, of course, that's the part that people want. But to have a magnitude 8 means that we'll have a fault about two hundred fifty miles long. The most likely one for Southern California is the San Andreas fault, say, from the Salton Sea up through Palm Springs, through Beaumont-Banning area, up through Riverside-Redlands, San Bernardino, Wrightwood, Palmdale, up to Fort Tejon. That's two hundred fifty miles. That's a section that we think has gone coherently in the past producing one magnitude 8 earthquake. Anywhere within ten or twenty miles of the fault from Fort Tejon all the way down to the Salton Sea is going to be as badly damaged as the worst part of the San Fernando Valley in the 1994 earthquake.

Hena Cuevas>> So anytime there's a big disaster like this one, it's actually good for you because you're able to get peoples' attention and kind of warn us?

Lucy Jones>> One doesn't want to enjoy anything that's happening here, but there is a positive side that we're watching California really wake up to the possibilities. It's much easier to carry that message that you need to be self-sufficient for a week when they sit and watch what's happening in the Gulf Coast. Let's not just study the earthquake. Let's implement the findings and we can reduce the losses. What I keep on trying to tell people is that the earthquake is inevitable, but the disaster is not and we have choices to make to reduce that.

Hena Cuevas>> Thank you, Dr. Jones, for the information and we'll pass it along.

Lucy Jones>> Thank you.

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 you think of Wilmington, what do you think of? Those smoky old oil refineries right alongside the 405 Freeway, right? Well, there is a side of Wilmington you wouldn't believe.

In the middle of a town known for its cargo ships and oil refineries is a home whose historic elegance would be impossible to replicate today. This is the home of a nineteenth century entrepreneur, politician and civic leader. It's a twenty-three room mansion built in 1864 just as the Civil War was ending and before the telephone was invented. It was built by a man whose imagination was as big as his ambitions, a farm boy from Delaware named Phineas Banning.

Michael Sanborn>> Farming was not for him and he discovers that at a very early age and, by the age of thirteen, he has left home.

Val Zavala>> Michael Sanborn has spent years in this house as director of the Banning residence, which is now a museum. So, Michael, there are eighteen rooms open in the house?

Michael Sanborn>> Yes, there are. We opened our first floor and our second floor for touring for the public. What we're in now is the parlor and, during its time, this was the room where Phineas Banning did his entertaining. During the 1840's, he's seeing Philadelphia change from a colonial sea town to a mid-industrial super power. In the 1800's, he sees the railroad coming in to Philadelphia. He sees the canal system. He sees the whole waterfront change and he sees what industry can do. This is what makes the most impression upon him as a young man.

Val Zavala>> Banning's first job was to move supplies from the East Coast through Panama before the canal was built and on to San Diego. He was only nineteen.

Michael Sanborn>> But something happens on that route crossing the Panama and that is that his employer dies. His employer dies, which leaves a nineteen year old in the middle of the Panama jungle with a load to deliver. He does do that, reputation preceding him, gets it through Panama and then to San Diego.

Val Zavala>> He then headed north to San Pedro. The population at the time? Fifty.

Michael Sanborn>> He also sees that San Pedro is a blank canvas basically. I can just imagine seeing that empty canvas and the wheels just start turning of what can happen here.

Val Zavala>> The resourceful young Phineas started a lucrative stagecoach route taking passengers and supplies from the harbor to downtown Los Angeles. Before long, he'd made a small fortune. He and his partners renamed the town Wilmington after Banning's east coast hometown.

Michael Sanborn>> The other really wonderful and important thing that we have here is indeed the first map of Wilmington ever made.

Val Zavala>> Banning became a state senator, but his political views weren't always popular. He was always anti-slavery, is that right?

Michael Sanborn>> Very staunch unionist. His views were very, very well known about supporting the unions. During the Civil War, Southern California is primarily southern sympathizers and he was in the minority. So his views were always outspoken in support of the whole union cause during the war.

Val Zavala>> After the Civil War, Banning set out to make San Pedro and Los Angeles a major commercial center. He traveled to Washington, D.C. and got funding to dredge the harbor.

Michael Sanborn>> The Father for the Port of Los Angeles is a really wonderful reference for him.

Val Zavala>> Along the way, he built this house and started a family. Life was obviously very different a hundred fifty years ago.

Michael Sanborn>> They were very musically gifted as a family and singing and playing instruments was always part of what they did.

Val Zavala>> That's a piano?

Michael Sanborn>> Piano, and what is behind us is a Melodeon which is an early organ. In this room, this is where, of course, all of the formal dinners took place. Not only that, but the everyday meals took place here as well.

Val Zavala>> Really? Look at this. This is how they would call the family?

Michael Sanborn>> Absolutely.

[Film Clip]

Michael Sanborn>> This also had another purpose and this was to let the kitchen know with a series of tones that they were ready for another meal. Now a formal Victorian dinner could have as many as five or six courses and, when you came here for a dinner or for a party, you were here for several hours. This was not a sit-down, eat and go.

Val Zavala>> Upstairs, the bedrooms are beautifully furnished with antiques and, wherever possible, with the original furniture.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Today the museum is supported by a dedicated group of eighty volunteers who help keep it in perfect condition. Just outside in back of the house is a former ranch office converted to a one-room schoolhouse. It's a popular place among the hundreds of students who visit the Banning home.

Joyce Seltzer>> The children come in and they put on a little bit of costume. We give them new names from an 1880 census.

Val Zavala>> Really? Real names?

Joyce Seltzer>> Real names, Matilda or Wilbur. It starts a lot of giggling at that point (laughter).

Val Zavala>> Joyce Seltzer is president of the Banning Museum volunteers.

Joyce Seltzer>> They read from the McGuffey Reader. They do some arithmetic, no math, no computers.

Lisa Hansen>> You feel the presence of history here.

Val Zavala>> Lisa Hansen is president of an important support group, the Friends of Banning Museum.

Lisa Hansen>> And we would like everybody that comes through the doors to know about Phineas' entrepreneurial spirit and how he came here with a dream, a vision and a hardworking ethic and now he has created the third largest port in the world.

Val Zavala>> But Banning's life was not all about success. He lost a fortune in cattle raising. Seven out of twelve children didn't survive into adulthood. His first wife died young in childbirth and Banning himself didn't live long.

Michael Sanborn>> In 1884, he was in San Francisco and the story has it that he was stepping off of a cable car and was knocked to the ground by an expressway -- that's a kind of irony for you -- and he was run over and suffered with internal injuries.

Val Zavala>> He was on the mend, but complications set in. Banning died of pneumonia at age fifty-four.

Michael Sanborn>> This was a room that also unfortunately after he passed away, he did lay in state in here for several days and thousands of Angelenos came to the house just to pay their final respects to him. He was such a beloved and wonderful pioneer for the city.

Val Zavala>> In 1925, the home and the surrounding grounds were sold to the city of Los Angeles. Today it's run by the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Lisa Hansen>> We hope the kids will grow up to be whatever it is they want to be and have that entrepreneurial spirit that makes America so great.

Michael Sanborn>> So many people come to California with little or nothing and they have a dream. They want to make it happen and here is a success story from, you know, a hundred fifty years ago.

Val Zavala>> For information on the Banning Museum, you can go to their website at banningmuseum.org. 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 © 2007 COMMUNITY TELEVISION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA