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Life & Times Transcript

03/06/06

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's disgusting to think of raw sewage fouling our beaches, so why do we continue to trash them?

Melinda Barrett>> Something as simple as hosing off your driveway, just hosing the leaves off your driveway. That water runs through the gutters in the street and picks up anything in its way.

Val Zavala>> And then, he doesn't pull a rabbit out of his hat, but what he does do is just as amazing. Meet the man they call the Math-a-Magician.

These stories and more next 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>> It was one of the biggest sewage spills in Manhattan Beach history and it took days for officials to stop it. But believe it or not, that slimy sewage is not the biggest threat to our beaches. What is? Hena Cuevas has the story.

Hena Cuevas>> Looking at Manhattan Beach today, you would never guess that, on January 15, more than two million gallons of raw sewage spilled onto the beach.

Jim Stahl>> Not only did the primary control system fail, but the backup control system failed.

Hena Cuevas>> Jim Stahl is the chief engineer at Los Angeles County's Sanitation District. Recently he gave a tour to government officials to show them what caused the problem at the sewage pumping station, as well as how it was controlled. But just how common are accidents like this one? According to Stahl, extremely rare.

Jim Stahl>> Have we ever had a failure like this? Is this something that we could have planned for? We have never had this sequence of events and that kind of a failure.

Hena Cuevas>> Working day and night, city and county workers built barriers to keep the sludge from flowing into the ocean.

Jim Stahl>> We were able to contain about ninety-five percent of the spill. Somewhere around close to, you know, five or six percent of the spill got into the ocean.

Hena Cuevas>> And inevitably it also soaked into the sand. Phil Friess, who heads the Sewage Department, says the contaminated water seeped to between five to ten feet deep.

Phil Friess>> We treated all the areas that were still moist with dry chlorine. We allowed that contaminated sand to remain in contact with the chlorine and the sun for several days.

Hena Cuevas>> The chlorine-soaked areas were then covered with fresh sand. The beach and surrounding areas were closed for about a week until health officials determined the bacteria levels were safe enough to let people back into the water. But as terrible as this spill was, to the public this became just another beach closure like the ones southern Californians are far too used to. Friess says that, in most cases, what causes these closures is sewage.

Phil Friess>> Much more frequently, though, we have rainfall which carries pollutants into the ocean through the storm water system.

Mitzy Taggart>> Everyone is grappling with this problem.

Hena Cuevas>> Mitzy Taggart is a scientist with the nonprofit group, "Heal The Bay". She says the level of beach contamination is highest right after a rain storm. Water rushes from the streets into the storm drains, gets dumped into the Los Angeles River and then into the ocean. It carries with it anything and everything in its path. One of the things that we noticed is there is a plastic lid. What are some of the most unusual things that you've seen that flow into the ocean?

Mitzy Taggart>> It is astonishing what can end up coming down these urban runoff channels. Bicycles, lots of different kinds of balls, volley balls, beach balls, tennis balls. Parts of shopping carts are really common, mattresses, pillows. You name it. It's basically served as a conveyance system for all of our trash and debris and leftovers that we just don't use anymore.

Hena Cuevas>> Do you think a lot of people are aware that whatever goes in there eventually ends up in the ocean?

Mitzy Taggart>> Unfortunately, I think a lot of people aren't aware. I think they haven't thought about where storm water goes. They haven't thought about those catch basin holes that they see in the streets. And a lot of people think that the water gets treated before it's discharged to our waterways and to our beaches, but that's not the case at all. Most of the water is not treated. It's directly discharged to the beach.

Hena Cuevas>> Melinda Barrett works for the Department of Public Works, the agency responsible for the Los Angeles River.

Melinda Barrett>> Unfortunately, the efficiency of the system means that everything goes along with the water.

Hena Cuevas>> She says this concrete channel was designed to make sure water is discharged as quickly as possible to prevent flooding.

Melinda Barrett>> As you can see over here, we've got these steep, steep mountains coming down into the river channel and everything is paved and none of the water gets to percolate through, so it all rushes down into the river and out to the ocean as quickly as possible.

Hena Cuevas>> Trash nets help to keep some of the bigger items from getting through, but during a rain storm when most of the debris and garbage is trapped, the speed and force of the water are just too much and the nets break. But the problem is more than just trash. There are other pollutants which affect water safety even more. Basically, it's what you can't see that's most dangerous.

Mike Grimmer>> It's Los Angeles County. You can see that there's a fair share of poor beaches here.

Hena Cuevas>> As the data analyst for "Heal The Bay", Mike Grimmer is responsible for their beach report card. Each week, he receives the raw numbers from Los Angeles County's Health Department, the group that measures bacteria levels in the surf. It's Grimmer's job to turn those numbers into something the public can understand.

Mike Grimmer>> The grades indicate the amount of bacteria in the water that week. There are three different indicator bacteria that are tested for and A through F is basically a layman's way to understand the safety of the water for that week.

Hena Cuevas>> Yes, just like school. Every Friday, "Heal The Bay" posts the grade each beach has received. The grades go back to 2001 showing the fluctuations and dangerous bacteria levels over time.

Mike Grimmer>> Blue is an A or B grade. Orange, which I don't know if you can see, is mediocre, and red shows up D or F.

Hena Cuevas>> But what about treating that storm water before it reaches the ocean? One solution for controlling the level of pollutants in the beaches is through diversion, which basically means treating the storm water just like sewage before it gets dumped into the ocean. But some cities have taken some drastic measures to control the level of contaminants in that water. In Santa Monica, for example, you can get fined for over-watering your lawn and even for hosing down your driveway.

Melinda Barrett>> Something as simple as hosing off your driveway, just hosing the leaves off your driveway. That water runs through the gutter in the street and picks up anything in its way, motor oil, trash, whatever there might be, and carries it out to the ocean.

Hena Cuevas>> Even something as seemingly harmless as dog waste.

Melinda Barrett>> A lot of people say, "I don't need to pick up after my dog. It's biodegradable." The problem is, it biodegrades into bacteria and other things that you wouldn't want to be swimming in.

Hena Cuevas>> In November 2004, voters approved Proposition O. It provides a five hundred million dollar bond to clean the toxic substances and bacteria from storm water. This, to make sure the city's waterways are in compliance with the Federal Clean Water Act. Five hundred million may sound like a lot, but according to Barrett, the trouble is figuring out how to treat the sheer volume of water.

Melinda Barrett>> We can't necessarily engineer our way out of it. The engineering challenges of being able to treat the storm flows are huge.

Hena Cuevas>> Both Barrett and Taggart agree that the best and most inexpensive solution for now is educating the public.

Melinda Barrett>> What we really need to do is reduce the amount of pollutants that get into the water. Instead of treating it once it's there and sort of taking it out at the end of the process, the ideal thing is to prevent it from getting in in the first place.

Mitzy Taggart>> Actually, all of us are sources to beach pollution and we all need to be cognizant of the fact that, when you put something into the street or you throw something on the ground, there's this really good chance that it's going to end up at the beach.

Hena Cuevas>> I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.

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

Toni Guinyard>> Stop for a moment and just listen. We're all exposed to a lot of different noises during the day, but when do those noises become too loud and at what point does it start damaging our hearing? It's such a concern that the House Ear Institute here in Los Angeles has come up with a campaign aimed at the MP3 generation. You know, those of us who listen to the digital portable music players. They simply want us to be aware of how loud things are around us and they want us to turn the volume down.

Sigfrid Soli>> MP3 players and iPods and devices like that that can deliver loud sounds directly into the ear for long periods of time expose people who use those devices to sounds at a level that could damage their hearing over a number of years.

Toni Guinyard>> Sigfrid Soli heads the Department of Human Communication Sciences and Devices at the House Ear Institute.

Sigfrid Soli>> There's nothing wrong with the devices. It's just the risk of using them the wrong way. The volume settings on these devices are not calibrated or adjusted to the kinds of noise levels that you can be exposed to. So as a rule of thumb, what I recommend is, if the level is turned up so loud that you have difficulty communicating with people around you when they're face to face with you and they're speaking at normal or slightly raised voice levels, if it's so loud that you have difficulty doing that kind of communication, it might be so loud that over a period of time you could damage your hearing.

The number to keep in mind is eighty-five decibels. Eighty-five decibels is a sound level that is about as loud as shouted speech. So if you have to shout for me to hear you, that means that the sound in my MP3 player is probably at least at eighty-five decibels.

[Film Clip]

Sigfrid Soli>> The kinds of sounds that can potentially damage your hearing are sounds whose level is above eighty-five decibels. Now every time the level goes up by three decibels, the amount of time you can be safely exposed to that sound cuts in half. So you can hear eighty-five decibels eight hours a day, five days a week over your lifetime and it's okay. But if it goes up three decibels to eighty-eight, you can only hear that safely for four hours a day. So you keep going up like that.

Once you get up above a hundred decibels, the time that you can be safely exposed to that kind of sound is just a few minutes. That's where the real risks are. So those types of high-level sounds are the sounds that you would experience, say, on a construction site --

[Film Clip]

Sigfrid Soli>> Near aircraft when they're taking off and landing --

[Film Clip]

Sigfrid Soli>> Possibly with very loud power tools, snowmobiles, power lawnmowers, things of that sort. What we try to do in our public information campaign at House Ear Institute and whenever we have a chance is explain to young people and adults the risks associated with noise exposure.

Toni Guinyard>> Marilee Potthoff is Director of Marketing and Outreach for the House Ear Institute. I understand that you came up with this campaign. What is it called?

Marilee Potthoff>> It's called "It's How You Listen That Counts" and it's a campaign that reaches teens and young adults who enjoy listening to loud music and video. We worked in partnership with a market research firm and an ad agency and a production studio to produce something that really taps into the interests and concerns of that age group.

[Film Clip]

Marilee Potthoff>> A boy is busy playing basketball on a court and he has an MP3 player on and the volume is turned up way too loud. Basically, in the background, is his friend, the Ear Bud.

[Film Clip]

Marilee Potthoff>> As they leave the court, the ear hits him with a basketball to get his attention and finally he pulls off his ear buds and realizes the opportunity he missed. The commercial has driven people to the website and, so far, the traffic has been phenomenal. We've had over twenty-two thousand page visits in just four days.

Sigfrid Soli>> The important thing about noise exposure and hearing loss from noise exposure is that it's entirely preventable. It's the only kind of hearing loss that's entirely preventable. Over a period of time, the effects of noise exposure accumulate and, later on in your adulthood, you may have noise-induced hearing loss. That means there is damage in your inner ear, to the hair cells in your inner ear, and there's no way to fix that or reverse it at present.

Toni Guinyard>> Is there any way to tell now that you're setting yourself up for long-term problems later?

Sigfrid Soli>> The best way to know now that you are preventing those risks is to listen at levels that aren't too loud that we talked about before. It's too loud if you have to shout to hear the person. Also, if you do listen at high levels or you go to rock concerts or noisy environments like that, give your ears a rest afterwards. Your ears have to work harder when there's noise present, but most of the time, if you give them a rest afterwards, they recover. It's repeated exposure over and over again at high levels where they ultimately can't recover and that's when noise-induced hearing loss occurs.

We talked a lot about MP3 players and headsets and things like that, but we haven't talked about how to prevent noise exposure from environmental noises, you know, rock concerts and loud equipment and things like that. There's a very simple, easy way to do that and that's to use some type of hearing protection device, ear plugs.

Toni Guinyard>> Simple ear plugs that you can buy.

Sigfrid Soli>> Yeah. You can buy them in the drugstore for a few bucks. They're made out of foam. You roll them in your hand, flatten them out, stick them in your ear and you do that in both ears, and that will protect you from the high-level noise exposure. What I tell people is that you can't use ear plugs if you don't have them with you. So buy a couple pair of them. Put them in your pocket or purse or whatever and, when you get into a situation where it's hard to communicate because the noise is so loud, if you have to shout to communicate, then you're probably in a noise environment that could potentially produce damage to your hearing over a period of time. Put in the ear plugs.

Toni Guinyard>> Dr. Soli, thank you for the good common sense information and thanks for spending a little time with Life and Times.

Sigfrid Soli>> 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>> For any of us who have ever struggled with algebra or even geometry, you won't believe the person you're about to see. He's a human calculator and he can do in a few minutes what you or I couldn't do after a semester.

Art Benjamin>> "In fact, I'm going to add two to the fifth for all of these."

Val Zavala>> His name is Art Benjamin. His full-time job is teaching at Harvey Mudd's award-winning math department.

Art Benjamin>> "And therefore, the total number of one. . ."

Val Zavala>> But this professor has a double life as a magician, a math-a-magician.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Tonight he's performing. He's getting ready to astound people with a dazzling talent for tabulating. The Benjamins are headed to a school a few miles away in Laverne. It's math night at Oak Mesa Elementary School. The room is packed with parents and their kids, bright but restless kids, just the kind of audience Professor Benjamin likes.

Art Benjamin>> "I am a math-a-magician." Tonight at this program, it won't be just a show. It will be a show-and-tell. I don't want them to come away thinking how smart I am. I want them to come away realizing how smart they are.

Val Zavala>> One of his first tricks is easy. He gives young volunteers calculators and he starts squaring numbers, racing the calculators to the answers.

Art Benjamin>> "Another three-digit number, please. 653 squared is 426,609. 4-2-6, 6-0-9. Good. Another three-digit number, please? 408 is 166,464. 1-6-6, 4-6-4."

As a child, I was attention starved. I would do anything to get attention. I was hyperactive. Let me say that up front. I was ADHD. I would still describe myself as an ADHD adult.

"One more three-digit number, please? 999 is 998,001. Thank you very much."

My father was an accountant by day and an actor-director by night in a community theater in Cleveland, Ohio. My mother was behind the scenes. She was taking care of us backstage and never got up on the stage herself, but she was always our best audience.

Val Zavala>> His audiences have grown since then. When Professor Benjamin took a sabbatical in Australia, he ended up on Australia's morning show.

>> "Good morning, welcome."

Art Benjamin>> "Nice to be with you."

Val Zavala>> Among his mental gymnastics, taking any date of the year and naming the day of the week it fell on.

>> "What day of the week was 1847, July 7?"

Art Benjamin>> "That was a Wednesday."

>> "That is amazing."

>> "That's good, that's very good."

>> "So we can all do this, right? Randy, what's your birthday?"

Art Benjamin>> "What year?"

Randy>> "1958, third of July."

Art Benjamin>> "Okay, that was a Thursday."

>> "1958, third of July is a Thursday. Come on, please, how do you do that?"

Val Zavala>> He also performs for adult audiences at the Magic Castle or before groups like this one at a conference of high-level professionals.

Art Benjamin>> "Let me try to take this one step further. I'm going to try to square a four-digit number this time. Now you can all take your time on this. I will not beat you to the answer on this one. If each of you would call out a single digit between zero and nine, that will be the four-digit number that I'll square. Nine - seven - five - eight. This will take me a little bit of time, so bear with me. 95,218,564? Thank you very much."

Val Zavala>> But tonight is kids night and here's one of his favorite tricks. It's called The Magic Cube. He asks the volunteer to choose any two-digit number.

Art Benjamin>> "Krystal, what number would you like? 48, she says, right. The other thing, Krystal, I'll ask you to do is to take the back of this marker and point to the squares one at a time in any order you like. As you do, I will as quickly as I can write a number inside of it, okay? So go ahead and point, then move your hand out of the way because I'm going to attack it -- attack the board, not your hand, nothing to worry about. Good.

Now the first few squares, you'll notice the number that I write looks fairly random. But right about here, I have to start thinking, so it takes a couple of seconds longer, you'll notice. Right about here, the numbers start becoming a little bit forced, but you'll see what I mean by that in just a moment. Have you ever done this before, Krystal? You're very good. Let's all give Krystal a nice round of applause.

Would you choose any row? Would you like row number one, two, three or four? Three, okay. Class, together, 6 plus 21 is 27, plus 12 is 39, plus 9 is 48. The rows are 11, 25, 44, 48, 8 and 23, 33, 48 and 13, 21, 28, 48.

Would you choose a column, one, two, three or four? One, okay. Class, 11 plus 18 is 29 plus 6 is 35 plus 13 is 48. Those are 14, 19, 40, 48 and 19, 29, 41, 48 and 4, 19, 20, 48. How about that?"

Mathematics is often used in school as exercises in disciplined thinking, organized thinking. You know, put down the two, carry the one, don't ask questions. Whereas, in fact, mathematics can also be used as a laboratory for creative thinking. Not just do the problem, but do the problem many different ways.

"I didn't stop there either. I decided that, since this was Krystal's magic square -- Krystal with a "K" -- wouldn't it be great if we could get these four in the corners to add up as well. Check it out here. 11 plus 4 is 15 plus 20 is 35 plus 13 is 48. But did I stop there? No. Krystal, you may have noticed that I put a little extra attention in that corner. I did that so I could get these four squares. 11 plus 14 is 25 plus 5 is 30 plus 18 is 48 to add up.

I figured, heck, as long as we got that group of four, we may as well get this group of four. 9, 23, 38, 48 and 6, 27, 35, 48 and 12, 21, 41, 48. But did I stop there? No, I said Krystal wouldn't be happy unless we got this group of four. Now I have to apologize, Krystal. I was not able to get this group of four nor that group of four to add up, but I had to do it that way if I was going to get these four in the middle. I knew that would be important to you. 5, 15, 27, 48. But don't take my word for any of these calculations. Please keep this as a souvenir from me and let's all give Krystal a nice round of applause. Thank you, Krystal, very much."

There are usually three or four different ways that you can come up with the answer and I think that that's a valuable life lesson that we could teach the students in addition to the fact that it can actually make the numbers fun.

>> I thought it was really, really fun and he was like amazing. I don't know how he did it.

>> I think it was cool because he added the numbers up like really fast.

Val Zavala>> It's time for this math-a-magician's grand finale. He has squared two, three and four-digit numbers, but can he square a five-digit number? He admits that, about half the time, he gets it wrong.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> So what did you think of that when you were watching what he was doing?

>> "It was amazing. That's just unbelievable. I don't see how that's humanly possible and it's really good."

Art Benjamin>> "And here, by the way, is the real magic in my life."

Val Zavala>> And you can be sure that Benjamin's daughters will never shy away from math.

Art Benjamin>> Somehow, somewhere, the message gets sent to girls that it's just not a cool thing to do. I will do everything in my power to block those negative messages from getting to my children.

Val Zavala>> Do you think girls can be as smart at math or as good in math as boys?

>> "Yes."

>> "Of course."

Art Benjamin>> Anyone can improve their ability with numbers and get close to what I'm doing and have fun at the same time.

Val Zavala>> I'm just happy to be able to figure out the tip. Professor Art Benjamin is writing a book where he will reveal and explain a lot of his math tricks for the rest of us. 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:


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