objective being the fire itself. those work out for us here and we can go ahead and use those skills forward as well. thank you very much, we appreciate the opportunity. >> thank you, i'd like to thank our panelists and open it up to our group for any questions of our panelists today. yes, sir, secretary. >> there are a lot of things you can do in a forest that tend to make it easier it fight a fire like most importantly burning off the fuel during the wet season so there's less for the fire to feed on. to what extent in cal fire and all your other things do you encourage people to do things in their forest when you don't have a fire that make it easier and more effective in fighting the fire? >> it's an excellent question, sir. we spend a large time in cal fire on public education

and prevention and also with respect to you were talking about fuel, the fuels program, or vegetation management program in cal fire, we have a robust program throughout the state where we are conducting burning operations and vegetation management with prieflt ranch owners and private land owners as well as on state and cooperating with our federal agencies with the u.s. forest service. so two-fold program, vegetation management, we aggressively pursue that, but also from a public education stand point. what we find in these large scale incidents, the public is going to have to be self-sustaining and self-supporting. they need to be prepared. we try to educate them in respect that we say we'll provide the offense, you provide the defense. we talk to them about hardening their structures in a defensive measure against wild land fires. a lot of it is public

education, survivability, building standards, but predominately our focus is putting the onus on the land owner, putting the onus on the private property owner, we will attempt to protect your home but the days of staying and defending your home and killing our fire fighters are done. we will not stand and defend a house that has not been prepared by a land owner and die for it. we don't do that any more. that's one of our doctrinal changes and we set forth some new guidelines with that. >> thank you. >> question, mr. secretary. >> in a large scale disaster relief, where the military is called in to assist the civilian components there is an obvious issue of how you get the command and control and in particular what telecommunications is used to support that command and control. your exercising together is very critical, i think, to working out command and control but you still have

an equipment problem because the equipment, telecommunication equipment designed for the military was different from that used. how are you working out to get the coordination of telecommunications, particularly in disaster relief where the cellular infrastructure may be broken down and not available to support? could you comment somehow are you going to work out this telecommunications problem. >> so from a perspective of fema, we not only have a defense officer appointed by dod embedded with us during a disaster but we actually practice and have communications interoperatability over our systems to be sure we can communicate with each other on similar platforms and also support state and local platforms, whether it was katrina or other events we've actually been able to bring in national guard platforms to provide 911 systems for cities that have lost those systems.

we recently in the joplin tornados and also tuscaloosa tornados we brought in dod equipment to replace what was destroyed. from the fire side i know there's a lot of things you are doing to work around the interoperatability issues with regard to communications between fire and dod and maybe if ray or anybody else wants to speak to that. >> our communications challenges still exist. we have excellent telecom communications, we have a layered effect of our radio systems. we have mobile command posts that we can exercise. so we're prepared for power outages, reduction of telecoms, we have a layered effect for our communications. but as everybody here said, we need help. if somebody here can help me get a navy or marine corps aircraft to talk

to my guys on the ground tactically, i need that and i don't have that today. i use a command control helicopter, a civilian helicopter, to handle that and transfer that to an air to air victor frequency. but from a command control perspective, we're fairly robust. are we perfect, no, but we do have layered defenses against that. >> miss yeager, i don't know if you want to say anything from a national guard perspective. >> we have some mobile explorable platforms we can send out to incidents to help provide additional infrastructure in the event everything breaks down then our units have organic communications capability so i can move that out and i can help reinforce cal fire on their incident with what i have in the aviation brigade and units through the state of california have that same communication but the iceu,

which is a mobile communications platform, is ideal in events like this to push out to help. >> any other questions? >> i have one. back in 1992 when it was a big fire season and there was a lot of grass, they came to us and i was down at camp pendleton and they asked us it train marines on shovel work. what happened about 6 months later, they ended up sending two battalions to yellowstone. i haven't heard any discussion at all, do you expect the military, the guard or the active forces to be training people to do shovel-like work? all you have talked about so far is aviation. >> one of the challenges with a ground-based attack and training a soldier to be a ground-based fire fighter is the training takes time. and it takes approximately 3 to 5

days of solid training to make sure that they are going to be working in a safe environment to learn what's going on. and most of the time that, the incidents in california will become mitigated. now, not to say that we certainly have that as an option. we have a fairly robust what we call fire crew program using cdcr inmate fire fighters. it is on our radar and it's something that we have as a contingency if we needed to do it. >> lieutenant colonel. >> yes, general, in the mou it does address the ground portion but the focus of effort is mainly on the aviation side but it is built in there for the ground side if necessary. >> i just want to say in 2008 we did activate hand crews to fight fires and we've

identified soldiers throughout the state to respond if needed. they've got the tools that they need, the boots and all that cached and available. it's really just a matter of getting the call and being ready to go. >> i was going to end with general myat. i know we've trained soldiers to do that kind of thing. after the colorado fires just recently they did put a lot of soldiers that trained, so we do still have that program who can do that if the need warrants. any other questions from out there before i turn it over to general myat? let me thank our panel here. >> thank you. (applause).

as we leave here today, we need to keep the ball moving forward. we can't -- i think most of us all here would agree, we really can't prevent the next disaster from happening. but by building the partnerships that we are here today and will continue to build in the future, we can certainly limit the number of deaths and long-term destruction. we can surge a lot of things: resources, people. but we cannot surge trust. so venues such as this is what helps us build that trust so that when the bell does go off we know -- a comment i made yesterday and i'd like to use it again in closing today, the most important thing for me to come out of this two-day seminar and

sbat -- into the future is the ability for us to physically face to face look each other in the eye, shake hands and say to each other, we are in this together. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. . (applause). >> thank you, admiral beeman. you have helped me carry out one of the instructions secretary schultz gave to me 3 years ago, bring the fleet back to fleet week. we couldn't do it without you. i thank secretary and mrs. perry for coming, just -- i know it's, you've got some other things, people are waiting on you right now but i really appreciate you coming here. of course secretary and

mrs. schultz for the entire program. vice admiral nathan, i don't know if he's here, he may have gone already, but he gave a great talk yesterday on the medical side. and vice admiral z, coast guard, our senior rep here, i can never pronounce his name but he's made things great. general speese, thank you for making this happen. rear admiral hubner, he was here, he's been terrific working with us. rear admiral rivera coming up from the chilean navy, thank you so much. i learned a lot. we need the kind of input that we got from you, really, and we thank you so much. i would be remiss not to mention the two people that really are responsible for all this. first was lewis loeven.

lewis loeven works hours and hours to do this. thank you so much. but the other is because she's committed to make it happen and it's her focus that always to learn from everything that happens, ann koninberg at dem, thank you so much, ann, for everything you do. you had to have a pass to get on the ship. i've asked captain pringle, to get off the ship, i wonder if you can secure the hatch until they fill out their participant form. if you could do that, i would appreciate that. fleet week, we are a neutral convener of the process to improve the relation ships between this global force for good and the local civilian

officials. and one of our goals is next time you put up your slide with all those logos on it, general, you are going to have the san francisco fleet week logo on it, too. i look at what we accomplished in 2010, we had a meeting to understand dsca, in 2011 we had the table top exercise, we debriefed that, we had a great speaker then we had an education seminar. this time, this year we had a functional exercise in august which was terrific, you saw the panel, a medical exercise as part of fleet week and you saw the enthusiasm of the participants, then we had the back brief. now we've had a strategic operational and tactical discussions about going forward and the things that we can accomplish. so what are you going to do in 2013? well, fill out the form and tell us what you think we ought to do but we're going to

be working hard to move this forward. i think ray cheney said it from cal fire best today: we are all better off because we're in here for the last day and a half and i'm sitting here wondering, all my contemporaries, what have they been doing for the last 36 hours? they haven't been doing anything near as important as what we've been doing. i thank all of you so much for participating and stay in touch. if we've got your email address you will never be lonely because we're going to get you back here next year. thank you all so much. (applause).

[applause] >> good evening. welcome to the meeting of the commonwealth club and forum, connect your intellect. you can find us online. you can follow the best of our conversations on twitter.

i am the author of the "this is your brain on music. " i am a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience. i am delighted to introduce you to my friend, one of my famous -- favorite guitarists and musicians. he discovered the guitar at a young age. he has played at notable vilnius such as the -- notable venues such as montrose and carnegie hall. >> i would like to start by saying that in the last 15 or 20 years of my research, one thing i found most surprising as a musician myself in exploring music and the brain is how -- discovering where it is that music is. i always imagined as a player

that the music was in my fingers. now i know is in the brain. it is a neuro-representation of the figures. music is in every part of the brain that we have mapped. there is no part of the brain that does not have something to do with music. i found that very surprising. i wondered if you find that surprising as a player and what your own intuitions were coming into it. >> i think my intuition is that music is something that gets received in some sense or another, like radio, like something you pick up. it is a vibration. when i have written my own music for the guitar, a lot of times it is the result of having experienced something and having to absorb it like you might absorb a vibration or

light our experience something rhythmic like walking down the street. >> a lot of composers say they feel like they are not really creating the music. they're channeling it. roseanne cash talks about holding up her catcher's mitt and catching one as it goes by. someone else talks about how the music is everywhere for anyone to take, that you just have to tune into it. >> driving down here today, there was a rough patch of road because there was construction. you are feeling the road. it makes you aware that no matter where you are or what you are doing, you could be some ki, and you hear something may be rise out of that rhythm. for me, personally, a lot of times the idea for writing a piece of music or making

arrangement comes from some sort of rhythm. a lot of people would say, do you get the melody first or the rhythm? i always say i get the rhythm first and the melody comes out of it. >> could you play us an example of may be something where the rhythm came first? and maybe just play the rhythm. >> i will try. this is a piece called "cumulus rising." this is from a piece that i did in 1998, on the theme of water. this is sort of the theme of water rising through a team less clout. it does not have to be, but that is the sensation that gave me the idea. -- cumulus cloud. >> if you could play the rhythm

first. >> i will tap it. [tapping] pretty simple. then i will play a little bit of it. ♪

>> i will leave it there. [applause] >> one of the things that people often ask is what is happening in our brains when we hear a piece of music. it is extraordinarily complicated. a sound enters the years and there is a cascade of their rick complicated processes that turn the changes in air pressure to an electrical signal which gets transmitted from the year to the brain. once it hits the brain, it gets even more complicated. it turns out there are distinct regions of the brain that

process different aspects of the sound. one part of the brain, you can think of it as a special purpose circuit, attending to and processing their read them. then there is a separate part processing the pitch, a separate part combining the pitches and duration into melodies, a part separate from that attending to how loud or soft it is, and it all comes together later and get this seamless impression of this beautiful melody and harmony, yet, it is processed piecemeal. one of the sources of information of this is we have patients who are damaged in one focal portion of the brain and they lose one of those elements while retaining the others. they may lose rhythm or they will have to pitch and harmony. >> is it processed in real time? simultaneously?

>> yes, but quickly. when i say later, later in brain time means maybe 1/30 of a second later. any second, it can be disrupted , and you to organic brain injury or trauma, it can be disrupted. it is remarkable. the player, at some level, perhaps unconsciously, are having to think about the elements unconsciously. >> i teach a lot of workshops and a lot of people come to play our master classes, they come with their own performance, arrangement. they are looking for feedback. one of the things that i always say, because, as a musician, we try to get everything at once. all of the elements. we tried to simultaneously get

the rhythm, melody, the subtleties, dynamics, accent, all those things that make music interesting. but a lot of times, it is good practice to tear them apart. solo guitar playing, for example, polyphonic music, you have a melody and a baseline, maybe an accompaniment, 3rd voice or harmonic accompaniment. i always suggest people to tear them apart, work on the melody, just work on the base, rhythm, accompaniment. that provides an important process to understanding how these elements have to happen simultaneously. >> when you are writing, as a fan of yours, for decades now -- i think your first record came out in the 1970's.

>> 1978. >> that is right. as a fan, one of the things that struck me is you did not sound like anyone else i had heard, and you still do not. when i listen to any other guitarist,, composer, you can hear their influence, who they took this idea or technique from. your music just sounds fresh and novel. i wonder if you might be willing to disclose to us some of your influences and how they gave rise to your compositional playing style, and maybe demonstrate them. >> i like to joke, i did not learn how to play anything else really well, so i had to come up with my own. it is true, i found this out later when i was teaching. can you show me that solo to

that song? do you know how it goes? i am useless at that. i am not very good at cataloging other people's music. i certainly had my influence is growing up. i started playing the guitar when i was 12th. i was a big fan of the pope, blue, british isles scene, mississippi john hurt me, sonny terry brown mcgee, i played some blues harmonica. >> did you learn that open tuning style, slide style? >> i have not picked up a slide in a long time, so i do not want to embarrass myself, but yes. it was a lot of folk music, blues and early on. i fell in love with the sound of

the steel string guitar. there are a lot of idiomatic thing that it does well. i studied classic guitar a bit, but the steel string, for example, we do something called a hammer on and pull off, which is -- >> you get three note for the price of one. >> you plug the string but you get four notes. i always think of that town at the the prototypical steel string guitar sound. british isles, a caltech music. i learned all the paul simon songs. as i got older -- >> he is a hell of a guitarist. people do not realize. he is not flashy, but if you try to learn his tunes, they are really hard. >> he is a brilliant guitar

player. i eventually got interested in jazz, world music, everything. maybe that is one of the reasons. i enjoyed so many kinds of music, i did not have a preference. i did not want to be anything in particular. i just wanted to play guitar and get that sound that i was hearing in my head. >> is there a particular song of yours that you can trace back to and influence, sound that you were trying to get that you heard somebody else use and you wanted to use it? >> i will play you a few bars from a piece that i wrote in the 1970's, very much influenced by the british isles style. this one is called "inverness."

♪ >> i am cutting it short, but, to me, that is the quintessential british isles style. >> although, in your hand, it is more harmonically complex. >> it could be. >> one of the things i was trying to do -- i became a big fan of keith jarrett when i was young. i thought, wow, if i can do something like that with a guitar -- and i remember, i was a student at uc-berkeley, considering going to graduate school in economic geography and working as an intern coming here a