Patt Morrison

Every day, Patt posts her thoughts on day's broadcast of Patt Morrison. You can post questions or comments about any of the day's topics. We may quote selected comments on the air.

<<November 2009 
SuMoTuWeThFrSa
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     
Latest Entries
Meg Whitman In, Gavin Newsom Out -- and Our Halloween Monster Mash-Up

Oct. 30, 2009|Patt Morrison|0 comments

About two hours after you heard Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman talking with me [in what I gather is a rare radio interview for her], there came the news that Democratic gov candidate Gavin Newsom is dropping out of the race, pretty much leaving that side of the field to former governor and current attorney general Jerry Brown.

I'm trying to imagine what Antonio Villaraigosa is thinking right now -- he decided not to run for gov in part because of the Newsom challenge, which is now ... pffft.

Anyway, Meg Whitman talked a great deal about applying her CEO skills to the governor's job, much as Arnold Schwarzenegger touted his own approach to the position. She talked about cutting another 20% of state jobs, and about her very spotty voting record, as well as positions like pro-abortion rights that run in line with general election voters but are not likely to endear her to hard-core Republican primary voters.

Carla Marinucci, the swell San Francisco Chronicle writer, pointed out that the Republicans haven't yet nominated a woman for governor or Senate. the one GOP woman's name who came to Carla's mind is Ivy Baker Priest, who was state treasurer in the 1960s and '70s, after she served as U.S. treasurer under Eisenhower [the U.S. treasurer signs the paper money, although I expect those with her signature have pretty much worn out or been taken out of circulation by now.]

She was also the mother of Pat Priest, who played Marilyn Munster on ''The Munsters,'' which is a perfect transition to tell you about the ''monster hour.'' In the second hour of the program we heard from the woman at the National Academy of Sciences whose job is to help TV and film creators get it right when Hollywood puts science on screen, from robots to DNA.

Dr. Robert Smith? [his name is indeed spelled with a question mark] gave us the skinny on zombies and epidemiology. Instead of tracking how disease spreads by using a real disorder, like the H1N1 virus, he and his co-author jazzed it up a bit by using zombies -- how they spread zombieism [and it ain't by sneezing] and how that model is useful to those studying how actual diseases behave. B-R-A-A-A-I-N-S!

And just for the heck of it, we invited in three investigators of the paranormal; one was inspired to this pursuit after he was working at an amusement park and said he saw an apparition, a little girl who had died because of one of the park rides. Another paranormalist detailed her work at Alcatraz, and at an empty house in Nevada, where pebbles dropped out of nowhere as she asked questions of whatever might have been there.

Pasadena Paranormal's therapist and case manager, Jason Carrasco, says he is careful to sort out people who may have some mental disorder or psychiatric problem from among those who report paranormal phenomena, the better to discern what may be happening. James Underdown of the Center for Inquiry-West and the Independent Investigators Group brought his scientific take to bear -- and had never turned up anything to substantiate paranormal activity. Still, 68% of Americans told Pew pollsters they believe in angels and demons, and perhaps other things that go bump in the night.

Next time, Vietnam veteran and former senator Max Cleland, who lost his reelection after opponents characterized the triple amputee as unpatriotic, and Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio, who makes inmates wear pink and charges women prisoners as much as $600 for transportation to get abortions; he's not running, as he has said, a taxicab service.

-- Patt Morrison

Matthew Shepard's Mother, and Enviro-Futurist Stewart Brand

Oct. 26, 2009|Patt Morrison|0 comments

With President Obama set to sign a hate crimes law on Wednesday, the mother of one of the two men whose names are on that legislation came in to talk about the law, and her son's life and death.

The bill bears two names: one is James Byrd, the black man who, in 1998, was chained to the back of a pickup truck in Texas and dragged to his death by being driven for three miles. The other is Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming college student who was beaten and left to die three months after James Byrd was murdered. He was found near death, his hands lashed to a fencepost, outside of Laramie. His mother's book puts real life to her son's name -- not an easy life, but one that's always been important to his family long before it became a watchword for the toll of homophobia. If you missed the interview with his mother, Judy, I would really suggest that you take a chance to listen to it here on the website.

Stewart Brand, is a ''founding green,'' and one of the minds behind the seminal Whole Earth Catalog. His new support for nuclear energy as a cleaner alternative to coal, and his endorsement of genetically modified foods, has put him at odds with some environmentalists, but he's okay with that. At 70, he's trying to think in terms of centuries, not decades.

My interview with him followed a slightly puzzling segment about how Americans' belief in global warming has slipped dramatically even in the course of 18 months. The Pew Center pollster made the point that people's political priorities often shift -- the economy versus the war in Iraq or Afghanistan versus the environment -- but what that doesn't explain in why fewer people should put credence in global warming, period. There's been a lot of playing around with numbers and dates by those wanting to undercut the campaign to slow global warming, and maybe that's having an impact. And if people are merely judging by the weather outside their front doors, they may dispute the findings of scientists whose business it is to track the temperature of the entire planet.

Hot enough for you?

Next time, President Obama's senior adviser and longtime friend Valerie Jarrett, and the decline of the deli.

-- Patt Morrison

A Historian Puts His Money Where His Mouth Is, and the Dog Whisperer Speaks Up

Oct. 22, 2009|Patt Morrison|1 comment

Can you beat that moment? A few moments after I wrapped up my interview with historian Taylor Branch about his book ''The Clinton Tapes,'' Molly Peterson and David Lazarus were making their pitch to listeners to pitch in to contribute to KPCC, and the award-winning writer opened his wallet right there in the studio and slapped down a double sawbuck -- twenty bucks, and the newest KPCC member!

On top of that, he was one terrific interview, so I can imagine what kind of interviewer he must have been, in those 79 sessions with Bill Clinton throughout the Clinton presidency. The switcheroo is that Clinton kept those tapes -- in his sock drawer, as it turned out -- and Branch, who had first met Clinton during the 1972 McGovern presidential campaign, recorded his own impressions on his way home from the interviews. I thought Branch's storytelling about those sessions made for a more engaging book than just reprinting big hunks of Clintonian transcript would have been.

The first hour was the province of that top dog, Cesar Millan, the ''dog whisperer,'' answering your calls about dog misbehavior, most of which he traces to people giving dogs all the wrong cues and letting the dogs become the leaders of the family pack. We could have spent the rest of the day taking your calls and concerns and hearing his answers about your nervous Jack Russells, too-submissive border collies and leaping German shepherds. Maybe we can persuade him to come back again -- if we behave ourselves.

Next time, health care for illegal immigrants was a matter of controversy long before the latest round of health care reform legislation. Let's hear how both sides can make their cases for and against delivering any health care to anyone in this country illegally.

Know anyone who got the H1N1 flu? Did doctors test for it? Or are they overdiagnosing the H1N1 virus? Not every case of flu gets tested – so are the medical honchos assuming wrongly that most flu is H1N1? We’ll test that premise.

-- Patt Morrison

The Middle Class in the Middle East, and Your Inner Fearful Demons

Oct. 21, 2009|Patt Morrison|0 comments

Vali Nasr's portfolio as senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke -- Holbrooke is the White House's special envoy to Afghanistand and Pakistan -- prevented Nasr from saying too much about developing international matters like a pact for overseeing Iran's handling of its nuclear material. But there was no stopping him on the subject of his new book, ''Forces of Fortune.''

He believes that a thriving market economy can bring much of the Middle East, including his own native Iran, into the world of commerce, and of nations, by creating a stabilizing middle class. His strongest example is Turkey, which is Euro-looking in its economic gaze, but he has hopes for Iran, where a well-educated and techno-literate middle class is frustrated by structural theo-politics and the repressive arm of a regime where citizens have a vote but an appointed cleric sits for life at the top of the political heap.

It's inner turmoil that Harold Kushner's talking about in his book, ''Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World.'' It's the rabbi's twelfth book, and his name may be familiar to you from his seminal ''When Bad Things Happen to Good People." He makes the distinction between fear, which can be a useful survival trait in small doses but can become paralyzing, and the more reasonable concern.

He knows whereof he speaks -- not only as a spiritual adviser, but because he happened to be at Logan Airport in Boston the morning the 9/11 flights took off from there -- and in San Francisco for the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. He jokes to his friends, ''Don't follow me around!'' But many of you called about following his advice about how to dial back the fear and feeling of rejection that accompanies loss -- from jobs to family members -- and change.

Next time, renowned historian Taylor Branch is here lugging his massive tapes tome, ''The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President,'' the account of his 79 sessions with President Bill Clinton over the course of that eight-year presidency, and dog behaviorist Cesar Millan.

Gone Fishing Today, Harold Kushner and Vali Nasr Next Time

Oct. 20, 2009|Patt Morrison|0 comments

Since 1950, the world's appetite for seafood has gone up eight-fold, and the sad state of the oceans shows it. Fish and marine mammal and bird species are going down for the third time as they near extinction, grotesque fishing practices called ''bycatch'' -- the fishing version of ''collateral damage'' -- mean killing and throwing out five, ten, twenty pounds of sea creatures for every pound of ''target'' catch they take in.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium's new Seafood Watch picks and chooses among the seafood and fishing practices that are safe -- safe for humans and sea life -- and those that aren't. It's not just worth a listen, it could be a matter of survival -- as the oceans go, so goes our species. www.seafoodwatch.org is one way to check, and, funny I should ask our guest: the aquarium now also has an iPhone app so you can sit right there with the restaurant menu in one hand and the aquarium recommendations and don't-eat list in the other.

I was surprised at how many of you are fans of the music website Pandora, which was founded by a frustrated musician who wants to broaden the world's musical tastes beyond the top-of-the-pops, using algorithms that take the music you listen to and extrapolate your tastes to recommend other works. www.pandora.com might even, as we heard from caller Chris, open up a world of unexpected music to die-hard fans of another genre -- say, hip-hop to Rachmaninoff, or vice versa!

Next time, Rabbi Harold Kushner takes on our terrors in his new book, ''Conquering Fear,'' and Middle East sage Vali Nasr brings us ''Forces of Fortune,'' about the significance for the world of a growing Muslim middle class.

[The other meaning of ''gone fishing'' is that, by rising to the morning challenge for fund-raising, you've all guaranteed yourselves a tuesday afternoon and evening of regular programming, in which the fundraising has ''gone fishing''! Well done, you!]

-- Patt Morrison