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Life & Times Transcript

10/3/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Orange County's housing market has taken a hit, but how far will the effects spread?

Esmael Adibi>> But, of course, the reality now is that there are not going to be as many buyers. But I know that some of the plans are basically shelved for now and they're going to be shelved for at least two or three years.

Val Zavala>> And then, they may have a high "ick" factor, but you'll be amazed by what you didn't know about spiders.

It's all 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>> The real estate slump is putting the brakes on some major projects in Orange County. Some grand high-rises slated to be built in Anaheim are being pushed back a year and a prominent builder has laid off a third of his workforce. But it's not just private projects, homes and offices that are being impacted. As Orange County reporter Roger Cooper tells us, the slowdown could impact a much anticipated park as well.

Roger Cooper>> The housing market is a lot like that big new balloon at the Orange County Great Park. It has gone up to great heights, but it inevitably comes down and that's exactly what's been happening to the housing market especially in California. In August, existing home sales in Orange County plummeted a whopping twenty percent from a year ago.

Esmael Adibi>> And we were warning actually the developers and potential homebuyers to be careful.

Roger Cooper>> Chapman University professor Esmael Adibi is known for his annual economic forecast. He wasn't surprised when the bubble burst.

Esmael Adibi>> What was unusual with this cycle was the rapid appreciation that they experienced over three, four or five years and the percentage increases were huge. Everybody should have known that this was not going to last forever.

Roger Cooper>> Adibi says what people need to understand now is that the fallout from this housing slump will be felt far beyond housing. Take, for example, the Orange County Great Park. That's the massive project in Irvine that is converting the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into a thousand-acre public park.

Money to build the Great Park is to come from a housing development that's being built on part of the land. The homebuilder is Lennar, one of the nation's largest, but Lennar is feeling the housing slump big time. It just reported its third quarterly loss and it's laying off thirty-five percent of its workforce. Some predict that the housing slump will mean a delay in building the Great Park.

Esmael Adibi>> And given the current condition and what's happening not just to Lennar, but all the homebuilders, I think they have to pause and go much slower than what was anticipated and probably the park is not going to become reality based on the timetable that they had two or three years ago.

Roger Cooper>> Not so, says the chairman of the Great Park's board, Irvine City Council member Larry Agran.

Larry Agran>> Well, on point of fact, the Orange County Great Park is being financed and designed separate and apart from the vagaries in the housing market.

Roger Cooper>> Agran says that the Great Park already has two hundred million dollars in the bank and the resources on hand to ride out the housing slump.

Larry Agran>> We have sufficient funds for the next five to seven years to conclude the designing and undertake the early construction of elements of the park as well as the operation of the park. No aspects of the park design, construction or operation are going to be delayed by the temporary vagaries in the housing market.

Christina Shea>> I'm in the real estate business, so personally I understand the effect of this slump in the housing market.

Roger Cooper>> But a fellow member of the Great Park board is not as optimistic. Christina Shea says to expect delays in constructing the Great Park.

Christina Shea>> Oh, definitely, until we see a turnaround in the financial residential market. There was talk by some of the Council members that we're going to see homes in Lennar. There's just no way that will happen. So certainly we're looking at a much longer term to develop it.

Roger Cooper>> Lennar says it is still months away from making a decision about whether conditions are right to proceed with the housing tract. In the meantime, Shea believes funding sources for the Great Park should be more diverse and not tied so tightly to housing.

Christina Shea>> This present Master Plan is very much a very passive park. No public-private partnerships, not much retail. I'm very concerned about the financial viability of the ongoing park finances long-term.

Larry Agran>> There are some who believe that the park ought to be a profit center somehow for our community and for the Orange County community. I don't believe that.

Roger Cooper>> Shea has also voiced concern that Lennar might decide against building houses and sell off the land. Agran doesn't see that happening.

Larry Agran>> I'm not concerned. The value of the property and the value to us is in the land. I have no doubt that Lennar is going to be an enduring partner here.

Roger Cooper>> The Great Park is just one of many projects impacted by the housing slump. In another part of Irvine just off the 405, high-rise condominium towers are going up. They were started in better times, but now the question is will there be enough condo buyers when they're finished?

Esmael Adibi>> But, of course, the reality now is that there are not going to be as many buyers. So those programs that are in completion phase are going to be completed, but I know that some of the plans are basically shelved for now and they're going to be shelved for at least two or three years.

Roger Cooper>> In fact, almost forty condo towers were in the planning stages in Orange County, some as tall as thirty stories, but now many are on hold. It's the same situation in Anaheim where Lennar has demolished buildings on fifty acres and was prepared to start building the community dubbed "A-Town".

A-Town is supposed to have eleven residential towers on one site reaching as high as thirty-five stories. It is touted as the centerpiece of Anaheim's Platinum Triangle redevelopment area. But as Mayor Curt Pringle will tell you, the housing slump has put a crimp in those grand plans.

Curt Pringle>> Now there probably will be an additional year or two delay in some of those development plans, but that doesn't mean the concept is off the table. It just may mean it's going to follow the market demands.

Roger Cooper>> In the long run, Pringle says that Orange County's shortage of available land will make high-rises a necessity. But for the time being, he admits that towers are having troubles.

Curt Pringle>> The challenge with tall buildings or condominium projects is that you can't sell a few floors at a time. You've got to finish the whole job.

Roger Cooper>> Professor Adibi has another concern. As an adviser to the State Controller, he's warned him that the slump will make a dent in government coffers.

Esmael Adibi>> My prediction is to better watch out. You know, those tax revenues that are all coming because of the housing market are not going to come in as strong as they did.

Roger Cooper>> Mayor Pringle says that planners from Sacramento to small towns have gotten used to rising property tax revenues.

Curt Pringle>> Now that increase has slowed a bit. That's not devastating, but it's something we need to be aware of.

Esmael Adibi>> But in the long run again, as I say, is a word of assurance. We come out of this. We need the housing units. We need affordable housing units and those towers or Triangle center and Great Park are going to be built, but maybe they're not going to make as much money and, I hate to say it, but maybe not with the same companies that started the whole notion.

Roger Cooper>> But just like a batter in a hitting slump, everyone wants to know when will we pull out of this?

Esmael Adibi>> I believe this is going to probably go well into 2009 partly because we have lots of inventories of new homes and, add to that, the inventory of resale homes is huge.

Roger Cooper>> 2009 may seem like a long time to wait, especially to southern Californians accustomed to a housing market that was flying high. In Orange County, I'm Roger Cooper 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".

Val Zavala>> It was in 1962 that he won the Nobel Prize in physiology. James Watson, along with Francis Crick, had discovered the structure of DNA and he wrote a book about it called "The Double Helix".

Well, now James Watson has written a very different book. It's called "Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science". In it, he offers up more than a hundred lessons, things like "Don't take up golf" or "Find a hero".

Watson was born and raised in Chicago. His father was an avid birdwatcher, but he was stuck in a boring job as a bill collector. His mother was a popular daughter of Irish immigrants. Their son, James, would become an avid ornithologist himself, but more importantly, a preeminent molecular biologist, Nobel Prize winner and, more recently, he agreed to be the first person to have his own gene sequenced and made public.

I had a chance to sit down with James Watson and it was clear that he doesn't hesitate to speak his mind. So you've written a book called "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science". Why did you think there was a need to write this book?

James Watson>> I didn't like to write books like other people wrote. I think it's the first self-help book for scientists.

Val Zavala>> Another one of your pieces of advice is "Seek out bright as opposed to popular friends."

James Watson>> Yeah, it was never hard for me because, you know, popular people often said things which made me uncomfortable. You know, Animal House behavior, anti-Semitic remarks.

Val Zavala>> I see. Basically, the snobby --

James Watson>> -- what you call what it was like in the 1030s, yeah.

Val Zavala>> Bigoted.

James Watson>> Yeah. You know, you hear bigots on the Fox network. You know, I can't stand it. I don't think then that people were better or worse than they are today. Human nature, I think, comes from our genes and our genes stay pretty much the same.

Val Zavala>> Now, of course, the title of the book is "Avoid Boring People". Elaborate on that. Why is that important to you?

James Watson>> You know, don't be bored by a lecture. Just walk out. You know, if you think you're going to be bored, sit in the last row so it's not so completely insulting. Walking out from the front row is a statement.

Val Zavala>> But what if we had no choice? A lot of people will say, "But many times, I'm stuck with boring people. I have to be nice to boring people or I have to be in boring situations."

James Watson>> Yeah, my father's life was condemned to that and I've been plucky, but I've always liked to learn from people and reinvent myself. There are people who really change you and that's what I've always sought. Now when you get older, it means you're going to just stay with the young people. But I think there should be strong incentives to make everyone work until eighty because of the life expectancy.

So I would really only give you good pensions, you know, unless there are disability cases, when you reach eighty (laughter), which would mean you can't just not do anything. You can say, oh, well, you can play all over the world. Most people can't afford golf all over the world.

Val Zavala>> Well, that's another one of your lessons. "Don't play golf."

James Watson>> Statistics are that, when people stop working, their health deteriorates. We can't afford all these people starting not to work when they're sixty-five and living to be ninety. To let people not work when they're old is to neglect the young.

Val Zavala>> Here's an interesting piece of advice. It's almost actually more of an adage. "Exaggerations do not void basic truths."

James Watson>> When we describe politicians. You know, it's easy to say of George Bush that we've never had a worse president. Well, I don't know how bad a couple of our presidents were, but it gets the point across that you just can't imagine anything worse than this incompetent boy in Washington.

Val Zavala>> Here's a different kind of advice. You tell people to "Channel rage through intermediaries." In other words, don't be direct.

James Watson>> Yeah. So if you're really mad at your boss, don't say you're mad. Just let someone else know that you're upset because it diffuses. Then the other person can look at it more objectively.

Val Zavala>> But the people say, "Why didn't you just come to me and ask me?" Why do you have to be so indirect?

James Watson>> Sometimes you can, but my rule as a boss is to show displeasure immediately. It's not fair to people who are doing what you think is a bad job not to let them know.

Val Zavala>> So when you're a boss, show displeasure immediately.

James Watson>> Yes.

Val Zavala>> You have a piece of advice that seems kind of odd. You say, "Avoid being photographed." Why is that?

James Watson>> Yeah, if you're a president of an institution, it's so easy for you to be photographed next to this person and that person. But you should have the people who actually run the universe to be photographed, particularly younger ones because then their mothers can see their photographs (laughter). By this stage, your mother is dead and gets no pleasure from seeing your photograph (laughter). On the other hand, if you're next to Muhammad Ali, your institution is thought better of (laughter).

Val Zavala>> At age seventy-nine, Watson is impatient. He likes fast food. He doesn't like to walk with fat people because they walk too slowly, and he has advice for bosses about making quick decisions. "Make necessary decisions before you have to."

James Watson>> Yeah, if you know you're going to hire someone, don't wait two weeks. Just hire them. If you don't do it, someone else might hire them. Also, if you don't make them, everyone is waiting for you to make them, so you're slowing down something. As soon as you can make a decision, make it.

Val Zavala>> But that seems to go contrary to academia, which loves process and committees.

James Watson>> Oh, committees. I deplore committees. So I see academia now as filled with Arnold Schwarzenegger's "girly men".

Val Zavala>> (Laughter) People who just want to please?

James Watson>> They want to please and don't make a decision because it might offend someone even though it should be made. Because they don't want to offend someone, they don't see that a highway has to be built. You know, if a highway has to built, just because someone doesn't want it built doesn't mean you should delay it.

Val Zavala>> Boy, a lot of the world must irritate you because this happens everywhere. People are, you know, filing lawsuits, they want to talk about this, they want to get that approval. There are processes and bureaucracies everywhere, so the world must drive you crazy.

James Watson>> Yeah. That's why the only good position is to be the boss (laughter). You can determine the pace at which things happen.

Val Zavala>> James Watson, thank you so much for all your scientific work and some practical advice as well.

James Watson>> 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.

Toni Guinyard>> And now for this Life and Times story update. Last December, we brought you a report on racism in the Los Angeles Fire Department. The issue surfaced after firefighter Tennie Pierce was fed dog food in a fire station prank. He said the incident was racially motivated.

Two other complaints by women triggered an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and now the Commission has concluded that there is good reason to believe that "a pattern and practice of harassment and retaliation exists" against women and blacks in the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The EEOC says that, if reforms aren't made, the cases would be sent to the United States Justice Department. The new fire chief, Captain Douglas Barry, says he is working to instill reforms and professional standards.

Last month, a final settlement with Tennie Pierce was reached. Instead of the original $2.7 million, the city will pay Pierce $1.5 million dollars.

Val Zavala>> We're about to take you into an exhibit that some of you may want to steer clear of. It's at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and this is the Spider Pavilion. Arachnaphobiacs need not enter. But one man who loves to walk through these doors is Brent Karner, also known as the Bug Man.

He's an expert on spiders. In fact, he created this Spider Pavilion. He personally planted about four hundred spiders in the trees and shrubs inside this scary structure. How did he get the idea for it? Well, it started with the Natural History Museum's popular Butterfly Pavilion.

Brent Karner>> A spider got in and this spider was starting to eat some of those butterflies. I was amazed at how people that were visiting the exhibit were horrified that a butterfly should be caught by a spider and how we would let that happen. No matter how much I told them that it was a natural occurrence, they just wanted to hear none of it. What started to get me thinking was why is one animal viewed so highly and the other one viewed so poorly when they both have a role to play?

Val Zavala>> So he decided to let the public experience spiders close-up, to get to know them, to undo some of the bad PR spiders have gotten.

Brent Karner>> Now it wasn't easy because this is pretty much a world-first. Even the first year I opened it, I never really opened it at all. I prototyped it for a fall just to see what they'd do, if I could actually deal with it properly. It was not until a year later that we actually opened it to the public.

Val Zavala>> The exhibit begins with the big guys, tarantulas. Actually, these are all gals.

Brent Karner>> We have a very large bird-eating type spider here from South America. They don't actually go around eating birds, but they do have it within their name. We even have some old-world representatives, the sort of less hairy types. But I have a type of tarantula that is often kept in the pet trade and easily handled called the Mexican Red-Kneed tarantula.

It's a very easy spider to deal with. It's easily handled, as you can see. It's easy to pick up. She's not doing too much of a struggle. This is one of the spiders we even let people give a touch to. If you want to touch it right there, you can see how soft they actually are.

Val Zavala>> Oh, yeah.

Brent Karner>> And, of course, holding her this way as opposed to just putting her in your hand as so many people do, number one, this is a far safer way to hold the tarantula. Even a fall of even this distance here could potentially kill the spider.

Val Zavala>> Really?

Brent Karner>> The abdomens of the tarantulas are very soft and they're very expanded and easily ruptured. So if they are dropped, that that can be the death of a spider like this. It's a tragedy anyway, but even more so given that even this spider here is already about eight or nine years old and can live to be about thirty-five.

Val Zavala>> No kidding?

Brent Karner>> No kidding, so it's not one I want to lose now.

Val Zavala>> There are spiders that look more like a fungus than an insect, like this Giant Crab Spider from Malaysia.

Brent Karner>> They get their name of Crab Spider from the fact that, when they move, they can often take off sideways like a crab and they can really dart.

Val Zavala>> And contrary to popular belief, only a tiny fraction of all spiders are poisonous. Out of thirty-eight thousand species, only twenty-eight have been known to severely hurt humans. In fact, spiders are much more likely to be hurt by humans than the other way around. Most of them are content to stay hidden and weave their webs.

Brent Karner>> There are about four major groups of web-makers, those that make very nice flat sheet webs, those that have a funnel which are called funnel webs, those that make sort of haphazard webs which are called cob webs, and then the recognizable round spiral, orb webs.

Val Zavala>> The biggest job that Brent has in the Spider Pavilion is keeping the hundreds of spiders fed.

Brent Karner>> This one here is feasting, I should say, on a cricket that I fed it a little earlier today. We do have to feed these spiders in here. The spiders we have, like all spiders, are predatory and I don't have a lot of free-flying things in here now. So I have to sort of bring them in and get them to eat.

Val Zavala>> You actually have to feed all these spiders in here? There's like a dozen or twenty-some spiders.

Brent Karner>> There's a few hundred in here.

Val Zavala>> Few hundred? You have to feed them?

Brent Karner>> Yeah. As we start to walk around, you'll see. It's amazing how people don't see how many there are here right away because a lot of them are in some of the nooks and crannies. But, yeah, twice a week, we have to get to them.

Val Zavala>> Okay, time for a little demonstration. This cricket will do nicely as a reluctant volunteer about to encounter a native of California, the Golden Orb Weaver. It took a couple of attempts to get the cricket to stick to the web.

Brent Karner>> She doesn't know where it is. It's right there, honey. There she goes. Now she's got it. She's using her silk instantly to wrap it up. You can see it coming out of her rear.

Val Zavala>> Oh, is that fast. That's amazing.

Brent Karner>> Now she knows where it is. Then she's going to bite it when she's ready --

Val Zavala>> -- oh, I think she's biting it now.

Brent Karner>> And then it's lunch. Well, they use their fangs to pierce it and inject their venom and a host of other digestive enzymes. They pretty much have to turn this cricket into a liquid slurry and then use their fangs to kind of squish it all out. They have a tiny mouth at the base of their fangs that actually sucks the stuff out. So it actually takes them a while to eat. They'll eat for a few hours, especially if it's a big meal.

Because this one actually ate more recently, I think this one I even fed this morning, she didn't necessarily need another cricket. She may not even eat this one now, so her wrap-up job becomes a little bit of a doggie bag and she'll let it hang. She may just go back to the middle without it, but she'll remember it's there.

Val Zavala>> How do you know you're feeding all of them?

Brent Karner>> We never really do know we're feeding all of them, at least not on any one trip. However, because we're coming in routinely, there's always a different spider that's made a web and we're always going to feed every web we see. As is typical, if a spider is not eating right, it's going to make a very conspicuous and probably larger web. We know the hungrier spiders.

There are some that, if we feed them routinely and we're getting them almost every time, will probably give up on making a web for about a week and they'll just sit there because they don't need any more food, so those ones aren't getting fed.

Val Zavala>> In a way, they get to be lazy, don't they?

Brent Karner>> Oh, yeah, they do. Some of our spiders get pretty fat.

Val Zavala>> So the cricket is wrapped up in the equivalent of spider saran-wrap, ready for the next time she gets the munchies.

Brent Karner>> She'll turn herself back into the position she likes which is upside down, and there you go. She will eat that cricket. That won't be wasted.

Val Zavala>> Oh, I have no doubt. And what you've heard about spider silk is true. It's the strongest biological fiber in nature.

Brent Karner>> If we had a way of commercially manufacturing spider silk in large quantities, we could do all sorts of crazy things. You could build another version of the Golden Gate Bridge with about one-fifth the material. Instead of main cables, it would hold the same amount of cars.

Val Zavala>> But we can't make something this strong?

Brent Karner>> We can't milk spiders as good. We have no way of getting enough of it. Another great use for it because of its strength and its flexibility, things that have been promoted such as bulletproof vests that you could wear like sweaters. You'd wear them, they'd go on and they'd stop a bullet and you could be completely movable. It is that strong.

Val Zavala>> No kidding?

Brent Karner>> Yeah. As you pile this up layer on layer, it's incredibly strong.

Val Zavala>> The Bug Man is hoping the Spider Pavilion will help humans realize that spiders are gentle, timid and more afraid of you than you are of them. Think E.B. White's "Charlotte", and you'll be on the right track.

By the way, the dreaded Brown Recluse Spider that's so poisonous is not found in southern California, but you can see one here at the Spider Pavilion which is open through November 4. For details, go to the website of the Natural History Museum at nhm.org. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. 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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