text:
On one level, April's hemispheric summit meeting was an old fashioned butt kicking for Washington's policies in the region. The White House found itself virtually alone—Dudley Do Right Canada its sole ally—on everything from Cuba to the war on drugs. But the differences go deeper than the exclusion of Havana and the growing body count in Washington's failed anti-narcotics strategy. They reflect profound disagreements on how to build economies, confront inequity, and reflect a new balance of power in world affairs.
The backdrop for the summit is anger in Latin America over the failure of the U.S. and Europe to stimulate their economies, all the while pursuing policies that have flooded the region with money—a " monetary tsunami" in the words of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff—driving up the value of southern hemisphere currencies and strangling local industries.
After meeting last month with President Obama, Rousseff said she told him of Brazil's "concern with the expansionary monetary policies of the rich countries…leading to the depreciation of developed countries currencies and compromising growth among emerging economies."
While Latin American economies are in better shape than those in Europe and the U.S., the recession dogging the latter areas—plus the cooling of the Chinese economy—has slowed growth throughout much of Latin America. Brazil's most recent figures indicate a stalled economy, which could have an impact on efforts by the Rousseff government to raise living standards and narrow what was once the world's biggest gap between rich and poor.
According to the Getulio Vargas Foundation Brazil has lifted 33 million out of extreme poverty since 2003 and, out of a population of 190 million, has created a relatively well-paid workforce of some 105.5 million. In contrast to the U.S. and Europe, where the wealth gap is accelerating, income for the poorest 50 percent of Brazilians has risen 68 percent, while for the top 10 percent, it has grown only 10 percent.
This growth has come about because most countries in Latin America reject the economic model pushed by Washington and the European Union: free trade, financial deregulation, and deep austerity.
Argentina is the poster child for the region's rejection of the so-called "Washington consensus." Throughout much of the '90s, a deeply indebted Argentina followed the strictures of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), slashing government spending and instituting a suffocating austerity. The result was a "debt trap": cutbacks increased unemployment, which dampened tax revenues, which required yet more cutbacks, and more unemployment. In the end, debts went up. From 1998 to 2002, Argentina's economy shrank 20 percent. By the time Buenos Aires finally said "enough" and defaulted on its $100 billion sovereign debt, half of its 35 million people were below the poverty line.
Argentina reversed course and primed the economy with government spending on housing, highways and education. It also subsidized 1.9 million low-income families, which cut poverty in half. Since 2002, the economy has grown at an average rate of 6 percent a year, and joblessness has fallen from 20 percent to 8 percent.
Brazil has followed a similar strategy that is now threatened by the fiscal and monetary policies of the U.S. and Europe. Those policies have caused the value of Brazil's currency, the real, to grow, which prices Brazilian manufactured goods out of the international market.
"There is concern in South America about deindustrialization," says Alicia Barcena of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America. "Therefore some countries are taking measures to support their productive sectors." While the Obama Administration calls this support "protectionism," Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega says, "The measures we are using are to defend ourselves."
There are other issues Latin Americans are unhappy about that never made it into U.S. media accounts on the summit, in particular the make-up of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council that Brazil—along with India and South Africa—would like to join.
As former Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva told the African Union summit last July, "It isn't possible that the African continent, with 53 countries, has no permanent representation in the Security Council. It isn't possible that Latin America with its 400 million inhabitants does not have permanent representation. Five countries decide what to do, and how to do it."
The five permanent members of the Security Council are the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China.
While the U.S. has endorsed India's bid—in large part because it is wooing New Delhi to join its anti-China coalition—Washington has been consciously silent on Brazil's bid. Indeed, United Nations U.S. representative Susan Rice has been sharply critical of Brazil, India and South Africa for not supporting intervention in Syria. "We have learned a lot [about these three countries] and frankly, not all of it encouraging." The message is clear: back us and we will think about it.
The summit was particularly critical of the Obama administration around the exclusion of Cuba, causing the President to turn positively peevish. "Sometimes I feel…we're caught in a time warp, going back to the 1950s and gunboat diplomacy and Yankees and the Cold War."
But from Latin America's point of view, by maintaining a half-century-old blockade, it is the U.S. who seems locked into the world of the Cold War. And there are, indeed, some worries about "gun boats," specifically those that make up the newly re-constituted U.S. Fourth Fleet, mothballed in 1950 and revived by the Bush Administration. The U.S. has also recently established military bases in Colombia and Central America.
The Brazilians are particularly nervous about the security of their newly found offshore oil deposits, and the head of the Brazilian Navy, Admiral Luiz Umberto de Mendonca, is pressing Brasilia for surface ships and submarines.
Testifying before the Brazilian House of Representatives, Simon Rosental of the prestigious Escuela Superior de Guerra (ESG) institute warned that "The world has known oil reserves that will only last 25 years and in the United States, only for the next ten years."
It may be a bit of a stretch to imagine the U.S. actually threatening Brazil's offshore oil deposits, but Latin Americans can hardly be blamed if they are a tad paranoid about the Colossus of the North. For the past 100 years the U.S. has overthrown governments from Guatemala to Chile, and supported military juntas throughout the region. Brazil only recently emerged from its own U.S.-backed dictatorship.
"South America," says Moniz Banderia of the ESG, "is really trying to define its own identity, to differentiate itself from the United States, in opposition to its domination, which is evident in the creation of UANSUR [Union of South American Nations] and the South American Defense Council."
UNASUR was established in 2008 and includes all 12 South American nations, plus observers from Panama and Mexico.
The Defense Council's Action Plan 2012 aims to integrate the militaries of the region, establish a "peace zone" on the continent, and create a space agency, an essential step for launching satellites.
Certainly issues like Cuba, the war on drugs, and the tensions over Britain's claim on the Malvinas/Falkland Islands are areas of friction between the U.S., Europe and South America. But it is in the realm of economics, poverty alleviation, and independent foreign policy that the differences are sharp.
South Americans tried the austerity model and found it wanting. They have also seen the U.S. and NATO spark wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and they are deeply suspicious of policy of "humanitarian intervention" in places like Syria because they don't trust the motives behind it. Members of the BRIC countries, made up of Brazil, South Africa, India, Russia, and China, share those suspicions.
"There's almost a third-world sense, a post-colonial sense," says Mark Quarterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "that they were meddled in, in ways that didn't rebound to their benefit, and now the same countries are claiming humanitarian reasons for meddling."
Thus in Libya, the UN enforced an arms boycott and an oil embargo on the Qaddafi regime, while the French supplied arms to the rebels and Qatar handled rebel oil sales. Brazil and other BRIC nations see a similar pattern in Syria. In the meantime, the U.S. and Europe are conspicuously silent on oil-rich Bahrain's suppression of its Shiite majority and the lack of democracy in the monarchy-dominated Persian Gulf states.
So far the Obama Administration has responded to South America's growing independence by increasing the U.S. military footprint in the region and acting churlish. While the leaders of India and South Korea got formal state affairs, the U.S. President gave Rousseff a two-hour meeting. "Obama could have taken her to dinner," one Brazilian official complained to The Guardian (UK) "or to the Kennedy Center."
But Latin Americans no longer pay as much mind to the atmosphere in Washington as they used to. They are too busy confronting poverty and underdevelopment, forging a multi-polar world in which the U.S. is looking increasingly out of touch.
CONN HALLINAN can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.


text:
Special to Crime Magazine
An excerpt from the recently released book Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper by J. Patrick O'Connor, editor of Crime Magazine. Published in January of 2012 by Strategic Media Books, Scapegoat is available at www.strategicmediabooks.com, Amazon.com, barnesandoble.com and other book sellers throughout the United States. Scapegoat won Silver in the 2013 Independent Publishers Book Awards for True Crime. It also won Bronze in ForeWord Reviews' Book of the Year Award competition in the True Crime category.
During the fall of 2008, I was in the San Francisco Bay area on a book tour for The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The tour was arranged by Jeff Mackler, the executive director of the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, and it involved about fifteen speaking engagements at different venues. Jeff told me that supporters of death-row inmate Kevin Cooper – whom I had not heard of -- would be attending a number of these presentations, and that they would be asking me to write a book about Kevin's case. Indeed, two of Cooper's most dedicated supporters, Carole Seligman and Rebecca Doran, did just that.
Cooper had been convicted in 1985 of the brutal murders of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their ten-year-old daughter, Jessica, and eleven-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes, and the attempted murder of the Ryens' eight-year-old son Joshua.
Jeff had gotten to know Cooper over the years, and had visited him about twenty times. Kevin's case was quite different from Mumia's, he said, in the sense that Mumia is essentially a political prisoner and Kevin was anything but.
When I decided to begin researching the Kevin Cooper case in early 2009, I had no pre-conceived notions about his guilt or innocence. Each case is different, radically so. My first step was to read and notate the trial transcripts, documents of over eight-thousand pages. I then read all the police reports, witness interviews and various newspaper accounts. Finally, I read all of the appeals and the judicial rulings. By this time I was ready to begin interviewing various people involved in Cooper's trial and his subsequent appeals.
One problem in researching a crime nearly twenty-five years after it occurred is that a number of key people involved in the investigation and trial have passed away or have retired or have simply forgotten important factual details. Another obstacle is that, because Cooper technically still has appeals open to him, the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office refused to discuss the case.
During the summer of 2009, I made arrangements to interview Kevin Cooper in a visitor's cell on death row at San Quentin. On several issues, particularly those regarding his criminal record previous to the Chino Hills trial, I found him protective and less than forthcoming. That was all behind him, he seemed to suggest.
On the other hand, I was taken by his equanimity and his resolve to prove he was wrongfully convicted of the gruesome Chino Hills murders. I could see that the many years he had spent on death row, instead of diminishing him, had turned him into a person worthy of the high regard that his supporters – and his attorneys at the Orrick law firm – felt for him. On death row, Kevin Cooper had finally grown up.
Contrary to popular belief, most of the nation's more than three-thousand-five-hundred death row inmates do not profess innocence. In fact, unlike Kevin Cooper, very few do. For those who do, the road to exoneration is a long, slow trek that usually fails. But it does succeed occasionally. Since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions, one-hundred-thirty-six death-row inmates have been exonerated. In the majority of those cases, the proof of the inmate's innocence was so convincing that the prosecutor dropped the charges rather than retry the case. In forty-five cases where there was a retrial, the inmate was acquitted.
There are two things that do link the Mumia Abu-Jamal and Kevin Cooper cases: Each was prosecuted by a district attorney's office hell bent on winning a death-penalty conviction; and neither defendant received a proper defense. What separates the two cases is that, while Mumia's trial was a mockery of the justice system's standards for a fair trial, Cooper's trial had the trappings of fairness – but was lost long before the trial opened. Two pre-trial developments caused this outcome: The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department destroyed evidence that could have exonerated Cooper; and his public defender insisted on going it alone. Not many Davids actually slay Goliaths.
This then is a book about a gruesome murder case, painfully recounted; all quotes are from either documents or interviews I conducted doing my research. It is also a book about how justice can go astray. It is the true story of the Chino Hills murders, and the prosecution of Kevin Cooper, a prisoner who escaped once too often and found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since 1985, he has been on death row at San Quentin asserting his innocence in failed-after-failed appeal while awaiting his execution.
Chapter One. Chino Hills
Five years after Mexico ceded California to the United States in 1848, the County of San Bernardino was formed out of the vast expanses of deserts and mountains of Los Angeles County.
In most ways it is the exact opposite of its glitzy neighbor to the west. While Los Angeles County is home to the City of Angels, Hollywood, Pasadena, Brentwood, Malibu, Bel Air and Westwood, a majority of Americans could not name any city in San Bernardino County other than the county seat itself. This is as it has always been, since the town of San Bernardino was so named on May 20, 1810 by Father Francisco Dumetz, a Franciscan missionary, to honor the feast day of Saint Bernardino of Siena.
What San Bernardino County lacks in national lore, it makes up for in size alone. It is the largest county in the continental United States, encompassing over twenty-thousand square miles that sprawl from the Riverside-San Bernardino area to the Nevada border and the Colorado River. It is larger than nine U.S. states and is larger in area than Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts combined. It is the only county in California to border both Arizona and Nevada.
The San Bernardino Valley is at the eastern end of the San Gabriel Valley, and, along with Riverside County, is part of the Inland Empire, so named to distinguish the region from the coastal areas of Los Angeles County. The San Bernardino Valley includes the cities of Chino, Chino Hills, Colton, Fontana, Grand Terrace, Hesperia, Highland, Loma Linda, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, Rialto, San Bernardino, Upland, and Yucaipa.
Chino Hills is nestled in the southwest corner of San Bernardino County. Its forty-five square miles of rolling hills border Los Angeles County on its northwest side, Orange County to the south, and Riverside County to the southeast. In 1771 the Spanish founded Mission San Gabriel and began using the area to graze the mission's cattle.
Developer Richard Gird bought the land in 1910, the same year he founded the nearby city of Chino. During Prohibition the Carbon Canyon Mineral Springs opened for business and the Los Serranos County Club soon followed, drawing both day visitors from Los Angeles and bootleggers to the isolated area.
By the mid-1970s, Chino Hills was still unincorporated with less than twenty-thousand residents. About half of Chino Hills consisted of undeveloped grazing land for equestrian ranchers and dairy farmers. Over the next twenty years the area experienced rapid development. When Chino Hills was incorporated in 1991, its population had more than doubled to forty-two thousand residents.
A somewhat worrisome aspect of life in Chino Hills is the presence of a major state prison located just three miles away with over four-thousand convicted felons. Over the preceding ten years, escapes had occurred with unsettling frequency, ranging from eight to thirty per year.
The California Institute for Men sits in a barren southwest corner of San Bernardino County, sandwiched between two state highways, in the town of Chino. When it opened in 1941 it was known as "The Prison Without Walls." Its first warden, Kenyon Scudder, believed in education and rehabilitation. He took the title of superintendant and the guards – all unarmed – were referred to as "supervisors." The only fence Scudder allowed on the two-thousand-six-hundred acre property was a low barbed-wire one erected to keep dairy cows from wandering through the prison complex. In 1952 Doubleday published Warden Scudder's seminal work on penology, Prisoners Are People. The 1955 movie, Unchained, was based on his book. Chester Morris of Boston Blackie fame played the role of the groundbreaking superintendent.
As California's prison population exploded in the 1970s – thanks in part to the crackdown on drugs and the overcrowding that produced throughout the state's prison system – CIM devolved to the traditional mode of simply incarcerating prisoners in maximum, medium, and minimum-security facilities.
The minimum-security area, the only holdover from the Scudder days in terms of appearance, sits in an open, grassy area with dorms, surrounded by a waist-high, chain-linked fence. Guards do not patrol its perimeter.
Chapter Two. The Ryens of Chino Hills
The secluded area of Chino Hills that Doug and Peggy Ryen and their two-year-old daughter, Jessica, and infant son, Joshua, moved into in 1975 fulfilled a long-held dream for Peggy Ryen, joining a small, close-knit community of Arabian horse breeders who operated adjoining or close-by ranches. Their neighbors referred to their ranches along Old English Road as the "Arabian Horse Center of Southern California."
From their hilltop house, the Ryens looked out over a maze of white fences that hemmed in their and their neighbors' ranches. In the Ryens' stables were more than a dozen white Arabian show horses, including their champion stallion, Tutal.
Peggy had owned her own horses since she was twelve years old, gifts from her twice divorced mother, Dr. Mary Howell. Peggy loved to train horses and enter them in competitions near her mother's chiropractic practice in Lititz, Pennsylvania, not far from Lancaster. As a teen she aspired to be become a veterinarian, but her mother persuaded her to follow in her footsteps. Like her mother, Peggy attended the Palmer School of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, graduating in 1963 and then joined her mother's chiropractic clinic in Santa Ana. Three-and-half years later, Peggy opted to venture out on her own, opening her own clinic in Santa Ana. At an alumni reunion at Palmer in 1970, Peggy Ann Howell met Franklin Douglas Ryen, an ex-Marine who was in the final year of the school's four-year program and who by now was separated from the woman he had married in 1964. Doug, who descended from Norwegian ancestry, grew up on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa.
At a Lutheran Church in Corona Del Mar, California, two months after Doug's divorce was finalized, Doug and Peggy were married on December 20, 1970. For eighteen months, Doug joined Peggy at her clinic, but when Peggy became pregnant they decided to sell the practice. They used the $10,000 proceeds to open their own clinic in Olympia, Washington. Peggy bought her first two Arabian horses and threw herself into training them. Jessica Kate Ryen was born in Olympia on November 9, 1972.
In Olympia, as they would be to an even greater degree in Southern California, the horses were an economic burden. The cost to maintain them strapped the couple for cash. At one point, Peggy was forced to tap her mother for money to buy hay. With Peggy's new responsibilities as a mother and her dedication to her horses, establishing the new chiropractic clinic fell mostly to Doug. With the practice failing to take hold, the Ryens reluctantly opted to close their Olympia clinic and accept Mary Howell's offer to join her successful and lucrative chiropractic clinic in Santa Ana in mid-1973.
The Ryens, thanks to a $5,000 down payment provided by Dr. Howell, bought a home in Santa Ana with a backyard big enough to hold the Arabians. By December Peggy had three Arabians in her backyard, one still in Olympia, and one in training about thirty-five miles away. Her mare was pregnant. In a post-Christmas letter to her half-sister Lillian Shaffer, she wrote, "We can't wait for our 'big mama' to have her baby…We're hoping for a filly (girl) – they sell for more."
The hand-written letter was on newly printed stationery inscribed "Ryen Arabian Ranch" that Doug had given her for Christmas. "Where we are now we should call it 'Backyard Arabians!' Look out a window and see a horse looking back at you – but we love it," Peggy wrote.
When the Ryens' neighbors in Santa Ana began to complain persistently about Peggy keeping her horses in her backyard, Dr. Howell bought a four-bedroom house in Chino Hills with six acres so the horses could be kept there.
In another letter to Lillian, this one written in May of 1974, Peggy brimmed with enthusiasm about her plans to breed and train Arabian horses. "Right now we are horse poor, but give us five years of our planned breeding program and we'll have only the best. It's so exciting! Finally, after all of these years of wanting I've got what I've always wanted."
She wrote about Doug and her watching their mare foal at 2:30 a.m and described the newborn as "a real pistol." They named him Barna-B, but "of course we call him Barny." She said because Barny was a full brother to their dark stallion, he would be for sale later on. "It's so much fun having a little one to train since our other youngests are two years old already. Jessa loves having one her size around."
In other news, Peggy mentioned buying a five-year-old Arabian stallion she named Scruffy, and arranging to impregnate one of her mares with the highly regarded stud, Sahara Prince, whose photo was on the back cover of the current Arabian horse magazine. "We'll have the foal next year. Can't wait to see his babies – we should make a mint when we sell that one."
Her other two mares were going to be bred to two top stallions also featured in that issue of the magazine. "These stallions are pure polish and really gorgeous animals," she wrote. "The dark stud's fee is $1,500, a real bargain. The blood line of our one mare is a very valuable cross and the foals are going for $20,000 or so. Untrained! But we won't sell that one – I'll show it next year."
Her other mare would be bred to the white stud shown in the magazine "and what a movin' machine we'll have from that cross."
With three foals on the way next year and one already born, the Ryens began ranch hunting. By now, Peggy was pregnant again. Several months after Dr. Howell moved to Chino Hills, a five-acre, a hilltop ranch directly above Dr. Howell's house came on the market. Doug and Peggy Ryen sold their home in Santa Ana and bought it. Peggy said that the property came with "a gorgeous barn and huge riding ring but rotten house! Oh well, we can always change that." The three-bedroom, two-bath house featured a sunken living room, a family room, and a Jacuzzi in the patio off the master bedroom. The Ryens would never get around to fixing up the well-worn house.
Chapter Three. June 4, 1983
On Saturday, June 4, 1983, the Ryens and eleven-year-old Chris Hughes attended a potluck barbeque dinner with about a hundred other Arabian horse people and their families at the Chino home of George and Valerie Blade. George Blade made his living as a horse shoer, a service he had provided the Ryens for the past eight years. It was a BYOL affair. Doug and Peggy brought a bottle of pink Chablis. Earlier that afternoon, Chris called home to get permission to spend the night with his friend Josh. That night, the Blades' young son, Jason, pleaded with his parents to allow him to spend the night at the Ryens' as well, but he was not allowed to because his grandmother was visiting and it was already 9 p.m., an hour after his normal bedtime.
Around 9:30 p.m. the Ryens and Chris returned to the Ryens' rambling, split-level, pentagon-shaped home. After awhile, the children went to sleep, the boys in sleeping bags on the floor in Josh's room and Jessica in her room. Doug Ryen watched some television before joining his wife in bed, probably after 11 p.m. As was their custom, the couple slept in the nude in their king-size waterbed.
When Chris did not come home at 9 a.m. to join his family for church the next morning, his mother, Mary Ann Hughes, began calling the Ryens' house only to get repeated busy signals. At 11 a.m. she drove the short distance to the Ryens' house, went to the front door and knocked. When no one answered, she tried to open the door but found it locked. She walked around to the west side of the house and looked into the children's bedrooms but could not see or hear anyone. She called out several names but got no response. She noticed that the Ryens' station wagon was gone and then drove home to ask her husband to go take a look.
Bill Hughes, an agriculture professor at Cal Poly Pomona, got in his Audi and drove up to the Ryens' house. He went to the front door, but no one answered and the door was locked. Hughes went around to peer through a sliding glass door into the Ryens' master bedroom. He could not at first believe what he was seeing. "It was a very bloody scene and my first recollection was that this can't be blood, this is paint, makeup…I thought what kind of crazy game is this?"
Peggy Ryen was lying on her back naked in the middle of the room and Doug Ryen, also nude, was kneeling over by the edge of the bed. Both were covered in blood. Not far from Mrs. Ryen, Chris Hughes was lying on his stomach and Josh, drenched in blood and curled up in a fetal position, was near him. Josh was moving, but his eyes were glazed and the left side of his head was "gashed up." Josh had been left for dead with his throat slit from ear to ear, a hatchet blow to his head that fractured his skull, several stab wounds to his back that broke three of his ribs and collapsed one lung, broke his collarbone, and nearly severed his left ear. He had survived by keeping his fingers pressed to his throat to staunch the bleeding, and then going into shock for eleven hours until help arrived.
Hughes tried to enter through the glass door, but couldn't budge it. The door was unlocked, but in his panic, he was tugging it the wrong way. He yelled to Josh to open it. Josh tried to move but could not. Hughes ran around to another side of the house and kicked in the kitchen door. In the kitchen were the Ryens' Irish setter, their golden retriever, and three kittens playing on the floor. "I thought that was strange, that they were playing," Hughes recalled. As he approached the master bedroom he saw the bloodied, incredibly lacerated body of Jessica Ryen, sprawled across the doorway. He reached down and touched her and by her stiffness knew she was dead. He entered the master bedroom and called out to Josh. When Josh looked at him, Hughes asked him what had happened, but Josh could only mumble. He told Josh to just lie there.
Hughes checked his son and the Ryens for signs of life and found instead massive face and head wounds. Rigor mortis had set in. Hughes tried to call 911 from the Ryens, but both phones were out of order. He raced to a neighbor's house and asked Bob Howey to call the police and request an ambulance for Josh. Hughes, recalling that he was "somewhat in a state of shock," went home to tell his wife what he had seen while Howey went up to the Ryens to wait with Josh until help could arrive.
A crew of six from the Chino Fire Department – three paramedics and three firefighters – arrived and soon began treating Josh in the master bedroom about 12:30 p.m. Josh was lying on his left side, with his head turned toward the end of the water bed. Ruben Guerrero, a fire department medic, put some Vaseline on Josh's neck wound, then gauzed and bandaged it. He then rolled Josh over on his back and attempted to start an IV but could not locate a vein in his arm. Josh was manifesting numerous signs of being in shock: no bleeding from an open wound, no blood pressure and no pulse. His system had literally shut down, but he was able to raise eight fingers when Guerrero asked him how old he was. The medic tore Josh's pajama top off and cut his clothes away and washed away some of the blood and fecal matter on him with a white towel another medic removed from the master bedroom bathroom. The towel ended up on Peggy Ryen's leg.
As the medics were treating Josh, a firefighter was coming in and out of the master bedroom, providing treatment advice being relayed from the emergency room of Loma Linda University Hospital. In response, Guerrero placed anti-shock trousers – called a MAST suit – on Josh. Anti-shock pants are used to get any blood that is pulled to the lower extremities back up to the vital organs.
A little after 1 p.m., a helicopter arrived and air-lifted Josh to the nearby hospital, arriving there at 1:36 p.m. En route, an IV was started and an oxygen mask attached. Josh was given ten liters of oxygen a minute, a substantial amount.
At 1:50 p.m. Dr. Imad Shahhal, a neurosurgeon, began operating on Josh's head wounds as another team of surgeons began treating the wounds to his neck. Dr. Shahhal found Josh surprisingly responsive. As he shaved the boy's head he could see the fracture in Josh's skull. He cleaned and sutured the wound. Another surgeon, Dr. Larry Habenicht, inserted an endotracheal tube in Josh's windpipe to aid his breathing.
Chapter Four. A Massacre
San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Deputy Paul Beltz was the first officer at the crime scene, arriving six minutes ahead of the paramedics. Dispatch had told him to go to 2943 Old English Road, a homicide scene with one survivor. Beltz, with his gun drawn, entered through the kitchen door. He soon saw Jessica sprawled in the bedroom doorway and checked her for vital signs. He stepped over her to enter the master bedroom. "I thought, my God, what in the hell have I come across. The walls were all white, but smeared with blood – I mean everywhere," he told a newspaper reporter from the Daily Bulletin. "It was like something you see in a Helter Skelter movie. That must have been one holy battlefield. I felt inadequate holding a handgun."
The murders had an uncommon viciousness to them, as if the killers meant not only to kill, but to send a message of payback or retribution. There would be no open caskets at these funerals. Each of the murder victims sustained numerous deep chopping wounds to the face and head and stabbing wounds to the body inflicted by a long knife. An ice pick was also used. Many of the wounds to Jessica Ryen were meted out post-mortem. The autopsy reports stated that more than one-hundred-forty wounds, twenty-eight fractures, and two amputations were inflicted on the four murder victims.
Forty-one-year-old Doug Ryen was found slumped kneeling against his bed, the victim of thirty-seven hatchet and knife wounds. Two of the hatchet blows fractured his skull. One of the knife wounds to his chest penetrated five inches through the right pleura cavity and then through the right lung. Another transected the left carotid artery causing extensive hemorrhage and arterial blood spraying on the wall behind the water bed. He sustained that injury on the opposite side of the bed from where his body was found, indicating he was mobile during part of the onslaught. Oddly, all four fingertips of his left hand were lightly touching the edge of the waterbed on his side of the bed. Another indication that the solidly built six-foot-two chiropractor had at least a few moments to attempt to ward off the attack was a severed finger on his right hand. The blow that amputated the finger was delivered with such force that the finger was propelled into a bedroom closet. Also suggesting that Doug actively resisted the attack were a number of defensive-type wounds slashed into both of his arms, one of them fracturing the ulna of his right forearm above his wrist.
Peggy Ryen, also forty-one years old, was positioned in the middle of the bedroom with her arms straight out, her left leg straight out and her right knee slightly bent inward, much as though she had been nailed to a cross. The blood drain pattern running from her right thigh to her right foot indicated to the medical examiner, Dr. Irving Root, that she was standing when she incurred that wound. He said the bruising near her nose indicated that she was alive for one to three minutes after being hacked in the left cheek. A smudge pattern on her left knee meant "she had to be elsewhere for a period of time" from where her body was found. During the attack, and while still alive, she suffered hatchet wounds to both her face and the back of her head and a stab wound to her left breast.
Her body was covered with smeared dried blood and what the deputy coroner, David Hammock, described in his crime scene report "as a number of loose hairs about the subject body, including some very long brown hair, both on the left thigh and, in particular, about the auxiliary areas and arms. These hairs are longer than the subject's own head hair."
Peggy sustained seventeen hatchet wounds to the forehead, face and chest and four separate knife wounds to her chest. She, too, showed signs of resisting the attack, with stab wounds on fingers of both hands and left forearm. The hatchet wounds exposed her skull to the bone and caused multiple skull fractures. The medical examiner listed thirty-three separate wounds, most of them delivered with great force and destruction.
Although San Bernardino County Sheriff Floyd Tidwell told the media that the killings were in no way "ritualistic," a good deal of staging could be inferred from the placement of both Doug and Peggy Ryen's bodies. It was as equally unlikely that Doug Ryen would have died kneeling with his fingertips barely touching the front side of the bed as it was for his wife to have died with her body splayed straight out in a T.
Jessica, who died with a clump of blond or light brown hair clutched in her fingers, sustained the most wounds, forty-six, and had the most defensive type wounds to her hands and arms. Her autopsy reported eight separate stabbing wounds to her right forearm and four to her right hand and wrist. The little finger of her left hand was cut to the bone. At four-feet-nine-inches and eighty pounds, she apparently sustained all those wounds before succumbing to having her forehead and face hacked in and her throat deeply slit. One hatchet blow to the right side of her mouth was delivered with so much force that it caused three of her teeth to dislodge from her gums.
A knife was dragged across her back and then inserted. Dr. Root said the bruising around the entry wound indicated it occurred early on in the assault.
In another display of staging, Jessica's chest was dotted with twenty puncture wounds most likely inflicted post-mortem with an ice pick in what the medical examiner described as showing "some type of pattern." Her head was twisted up so that her heavily mutilated face was visible.
Some of Jessica's hair was found on her mother's body. This led Dr. Root "to believe the mother was cradling her daughter at one point during the attack."
Chris Hughes endured twenty-six separate wounds, including a deep hatchet gash that ran from his eyebrows to the tip of his nose. He sustained numerous skull fractures. He was stabbed clear through his sternum. His hands, wrist and arms also revealed numerous defensive wounds: his left arm was nearly severed and the second finger on his right hand was attached by a flap of skin.
Theft did not appear to be a motive for the killings. In reviewing the crime scene the day the murders were discovered, Detective John Clifford saw no signs of ransacking. On a counter between the kitchen and the dining room, he saw coins and some bills in plain view next to Peggy Ryen's purse. Her purse contained over $40 in cash and numerous credit cards. There was also a small amount of cash in Doug's pants. Clifford also located a coin collection in a safety deposit box on the upper shelf of a master bedroom closet. Also visible in the bedroom was a jewelry box with jewels in it, as well as a video camera, stereo system, and a TV with a VCR. In a nightstand drawer less than five feet from where Peggy Ryen's body was laying, he found a loaded .22 Ruger pistol. In Doug Ryen's closet, about two feet from where his body was found, was a loaded .22 caliber Winchester Magnum rifle with scope attached. An unloaded Smith & Wesson pellet gun was on the bottom shelf of that closest. Doug Ryen's wallet was missing, but it would be found under the front seat of his pickup truck in late July. Only the Ryens' station wagon had been stolen. Their pickup truck, a 1976 Chevy Silverado with "Ryen Arabians Chino California" printed on the side, was still in the driveway with the keys in it.
This book is available for purchase through Amazon.com.
1 comment on "Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper"
A recent book makes a compelling case.
From the Campaign to End the Death Penalty March 2013
By: Dan Sharber
This is a review of Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper by J. Patrick O'Connor, published in 2012 by Strategic Media Books.
Kevin Cooper is an innocent man on death row in California. And if you have been around the anti-death penalty movement for any amount of time, you most likely know this or have at least heard of Kevin Cooper. Now, thanks to the spellbinding new book, Scapegoat, by J. Patrick O'Connor, many, many more people will hopefully know his story too.
This book is fantastic for a few different reasons. The first is that O'Connor is simply a talented writer. He uses the facts of the story to reconstruct it in such a way as to build a tension-filled legal thriller in the vein of John Grisham. But unlike a Grisham novel or other true crime books of this ilk, O'Connor doesn't just relay the story, he also spends a lot of time critiquing events and pointing out where things went wrong. This elevates the book above the level of a garden-variety true crime story and situates it firmly in the realm of political critique of the criminal justice system.
O'Connor's strength is his unwillingness to simply let the facts of the mishandling of Cooper's case speak for themselves and rather to hammer home the police misconduct, the prosecutorial shenanigans and Cooper's own defense attorney's screw ups.
Mainly, this is a simple story of racist scapegoating at its worst.
On the morning of June 5, 1983, Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and Christopher Hughes were found dead in the Ryen home. They had been chopped with a hatchet, sliced with a knife, and stabbed with an ice-pick. Josh Ryen, the 8-year-old son of Douglas and Peggy, had survived though his throat had been cut. It is important to note right away two things about this uncontested account. First, one person could not possibly have wielded that many weapons and subdue that many people. It is not humanly possible. And secondly, the only living witness Josh Ryen, initially said that Cooper was not the killer even telling a social worker in the emergency room that the murders were committed by 3 or 4 white men.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputies who responded to the call decided almost immediately that Kevin Cooper was the likely killer because he had admittedly hidden out in the vacant Lease house next door to the crime scene for two days (leaving on June 4th) and because he was a convenient black man in largely white San Bernardino.
As anyone reading this will already know, the criminal justice system and specifically the application of the death penalty is full of racial bias. This bias extends not only to the race of the defendants singled out for death sentences but also to the race of the victim.
African Americans are 12 percent of the U.S. population, but 42 percent of prisoners on death row. In Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Maryland, and in the U.S. military and federal system, more than 60 percent of those on death row are Black; Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio all have death rows where more than 50 percent are African American. Although Blacks constitute approximately 50 percent of murder victims each year, 80 percent of the victims in death penalty cases were white, and only 14 percent were Black.
The cards were stacked against Cooper before his name was even known. Likewise, the misconduct in this case also began even before Cooper was pegged as the perpetrator.
In a shocking example of prosecutorial overreach, the District Attorney, Dennis Kottmeier had the crime scene torn down after only a couple of days of investigation. This prevented any experts from reconstructing or reenacting what happened that night in the Ryen's home. Further, even the little bit of forensic work that was done was totally botched and contaminated at every stage of the process.
O'Connor does an especially good job of pointing out the shocking level of incompetence of both the police force and the District Attorney's office, even prior to the racist scapegoating that occurs once they discover Cooper was in the area.
It is then that things really heat up. Evidence is now pretty conclusively planted in the nearby house Cooper hid in.
A blood-stained khaki green button identical to buttons on field jackets issued at the state prison from which Cooper escaped was found on the rug at the Lease house; a hatchet covered with dried blood and human hair that was found near the Ryens' home was missing from the Lease house, and the sheath for the hatchet was found in the bedroom where Cooper had stayed.
These two pieces of evidence appeared a day after the house had been searched and no such evidence had been found. Both the button and the sheath were clearly planted in the Lease house. It was established at trial that the prison jacket Cooper was wearing was tan, not green. And it was never established that the sheath matched the hatchet that was used in the crime
The tragedy though is not simply that Kevin Cooper could be executed for a crime he didn't commit but also that the Ryen family murders have not be solved and the perpetrators are still at large. The local police had access to evidence and multiple accounts from witnesses at various times pointing to a group of (3 – 4 white) men who were most likely the killers. Because this didn't conform to their hardened view that Cooper was the murder, they disregarded all of it.
What's more, the police even went so far as to destroy evidence. While destroying exculpating evidence by crooked cops is probably not all that uncommon, the disregard they show for finding the real killer is shocking. Shortly after the murders, a woman came forward saying she thought her (white) boyfriend was involved, as he had left a pair of bloody overalls at her house. It took many efforts on her part to merely get the police interested enough to come and pick up the overalls and interview the witness. However instead of using this new lead to expand the search away from Cooper, the police destroyed the overalls - what was likely the largest single piece of exculpatory evidence in their possession. This witness also claimed that a hatchet was missing from her garage.
In a recent interview with Prison Radio, O'Connor pointed out that "while Cooper's trial was in progress, an inmate in a California prison told prison authorities and a San Bernardino County Sheriff's detective that his cellmate had confessed to the Chino Hills murders, stating it was an Aryan Brotherhood hit but the three killers had gone to the wrong house."
At this point the case just gets totally absurd. The defense attorney, David Negus, clearly did not know what he was doing and made mistake after mistake both procedurally and argumentatively. Even with a large amount of tainted evidence and clear misconduct on the part of the police and the DA's office, Negus still did not put together a coherent defense. Cooper was unsurprisingly convicted and sentence to death row.
But the misconduct isn't over. Clearly Cooper had some solid grounds for appeals but those too were thwarted at every turn - from the incompetent police lab techs willfully destroying evidence (only to find it again when it served their case) to the appellate judge maliciously denying Cooper all sorts of legal maneuvers for no other reason than spite.
Overall, I, even as a seasoned anti-death penalty, anti-police activist, was shocked at the level of unfairness, corruption and general incompetence that riddled this case.
There is so much more to discuss on this case that I do not have the space to get into here. Suffice it to say, this book is well worth reading. It gives an inside view of not just how one man was railroaded and could be murdered by the state for a crime he didn't commit, but it's also a glimpse into the very real way that this racist scapegoating happened and continues to happen throughout the criminal 'justice' system. Get mad and then get involved!
What you can do:
Sign the petition and get the latest news on the case by visiting savekevincooper.org
Download and share this fact sheet about Kevin's case.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, during the Holocaust, the Jews of Europe were subjected to persecution and, ultimately, targeted for total genocide–not only by foreign occupiers, but also at the hands of erstwhile friends and even their own governments. In the face of this atrocity, Bulgaria stands out for protecting its indigenous Jewish population from the evil machinery of the Holocaust. Despite official allied status with Nazi Germany, Bulgarian leaders, religious figures, intellectuals and average citizens resisted pressure from the Nazis to deport Bulgarian Jews to certain death in the concentration camps of Eastern Europe. Thanks to the compassion and courage of broad sectors of Bulgarian society, approximately 50,000 Jews survived the Holocaust.
Once an ally of Nazi Germany in March 1941, the Bulgarian Government and Parliament came under pressure from the Nazi regime and enacted legislation severely curtailing the rights of the Jewish population. In February 1943, a secret meeting between, Hitler's envoy to Bulgaria, and Bulgaria's Commissar on Jewish Affairs, established a timetable for exporting to Germany the Jews in Aegean Thrace and Macedonia, territories then under Bulgarian administration, and deportation of Jews from Bulgarian cities. The deportations were to begin on March 9, 1943.
Trains and boats to be used in the deportations were in place, and assembly points in Poland had already been selected when word of the plans was leaked. Almost immediately, 43 members of the Bulgarian Parliament led by Deputy Speaker Dimiter Peshev signed a petition to condemn this action. This, coupled with widespread public outcry from active citizens, political and professional organizations, intellectuals, and prominent leaders of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, led the Minster of the Interior to stay the deportation orders. Later that month, Peshev again took a bold step in drafting a letter, signed by members of the ruling coalition, which condemned the possible deportation of Jews, calling this an "inadmissible act" with "grave moral consequences."
In May 1943, the plan for deportation of the Bulgarian Jews was finally aborted. King Boris III resisted Nazi pressure to advance the plan, arguing that the Jews were an essential component of the workforce. While some 20,000 Jews from Sofia were then sent to work camps in the countryside for the remainder of the war and subjected to squalid conditions, they nevertheless survived.
Tragically, there was no such reversal of fate for the estimated 11,000 Jews from Aegean Thrace and Macedonia, who did not have the protection afforded by Bulgarian citizenship. Already driven from their homes in March 1943, these individuals were transported through Bulgarian territory to the Nazi death camps. Madam Speaker, this month marks the 60th anniversary of Bulgarian resistance to the Holocaust. The people deserve our commendation for their selfless efforts to preserve such a threatened religious community, and in fact, the number of Jews living in Bulgaria actually increased during the Holocaust.
Bulgaria's record of tolerance was distorted by 40 years of communist misrule which culminated in the 1984-89 forcible assimilation campaign against its largest minority, the Turks. One of the first initiatives of the government following the fall of communism in November 1989 was the reversal of this brutal campaign. A return to the wholesale suppression of minority groups as exemplified by the forcible assimilation campaign is inconceivable today, and Bulgaria is a democracy that promotes respect for fundamental rights.
Last year, Bulgaria's Ambassador to the United States, Elena Poptodorova, testified before the Helsinki Commission regarding the ongoing efforts of her government to promote tolerance, consistent with Bulgaria's historical traditions.
I have been particularly encouraged by Bulgaria's initiatives, in cooperation with leading non-governmental organizations, to promote the integration of Roma and non-Roma in schools. This work deserves the full support of the Bulgarian Government.
I am disappointed, however, that the Bulgarian Government has not yet adopted and implemented comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, even though it pledged to do so in early 1999 in a platform of action on Roma issues, and committed to do so in the 1999 OSCE Istanbul Summit document. Four years have come and gone since Bulgaria made those pledges, and it is past time for those pledges to be honored.
I am hopeful the Bulgarian Government will do more to combat violence motivated by racial or religious intolerance. Two cases of such violence, against Romani Pentecostals in Pazardjik, appear to have received only superficial attention from the authorities.
Madam Speaker, I also was disappointed to learn of the recent passage of a new religion law in Bulgaria. Several drafts of a religion law had laid relatively dormant until the last months of 2002, when the process was expedited. As a result, it is my understanding that minority faith communities were excluded from the drafting process and assurances to have the Council of Europe review the text again were ignored. The law is prejudiced against certain religious groups and falls well short of Bulgaria's OSCE commitments. The law also jeopardizes the legal status of the Orthodox synod not favored by the Government and its property holdings, as well as threatens fines for using the name of an existing religious organization without permission. New religious communities seeking to gain legal personality are now required to go through intrusive doctrinal reviews and cumbersome registration procedures, and co-religionists from abroad have been denied visas based on poorly written provisions.
Bulgaria's leadership on these various issues would be welcomed, especially in light of their plans to serve as Chair-in-Office of the OSCE in 2004. The United States is particularly appreciative of Bulgaria's firm stand against terrorism at this time, and we look forward to continued strong relations between our countries. The proud heritage stemming from the days of the Holocaust serves as a good reminder of the importance of taking stands which are right and true. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that this Congress is able to recognize that heritage and historical fact.


text:
Scroll down Gallup's report on its latest poll results about the most admired men and women living today and you come to this:
"The Rev. Billy Graham has never finished first, but has been in the top 10 more than any other man — 55 times since 1955." This year, Gallup puts Graham at No. 4. He was mentioned by 2 percent of those surveyed.
The year's most-admired man: President Obama, who has been atop the list four straight years. The most-admired woman: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been No. 1 for 10 years. Both were mentioned by 17 percent of those surveyed.
But it's the lists of "most top 10 finishes" that caught our eye. Among men, former President Reagan comes in at No. 2 with 31 top 10 finishes. Pope John Paul II and former President Carter are just behind him with 27 each.
Among women, Queen Elizabeth II has 44 top 10 finishes — ahead of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (with 33) and former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (with 28).
Thatcher and the queen are both on this year's list (which, as we said above, is about the most admired men and women "living today"). They each were mentioned by 2 percent of those polled. Carter is not on the list of most admired men living today.
As Gallup says, "both Graham, 93, and Queen Elizabeth II, 85, owe their long stretches of top 10 finishes to rising to prominence at fairly young ages and maintaining a loyal following during their long lives."
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text:
Notice: This Wiki is now read only and edits are no longer possible. Please see: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Wiki-shutdown-plan for the plan.
Eclipse DemoCamps November 2011
All the Eclipse 10th Birthday DemoCamps have been scheduled. The next round of DemoCamps is planned for June, 2012.
Eclipse 10th Birthday Parties
From November 1-30, we are inviting individuals to organize and attend Eclipse 10th Birthday Parties around the world.
The birthday parties will feature both birthday cake and Eclipse demos! The parties provide a way to meet members of the Eclipse community in your area, and the demos are an opportunity to showcase all of the cool technology being built by your local community.
The demos can be of research projects, Eclipse open source projects, applications based on Eclipse, commercial products using Eclipse or whatever you think might be of interest to the attendees. The only stipulation is that it must be Eclipse related.
To encourage organizers to get in the birthday mood, the Eclipse Foundation will provide an extra $100 in sponsorship money (for a total maximum of $400 per party) to organizers who include a birthday cake with their event. (We'll need a receipt for the purchase of the cake, along with photos of it at your party.) Here's an example of a cake served at one of the Eclipse 5th birthday parties:
Click on a city below to find out details and to let the organizers know you plan on attending. Some cities have not finalized a date or location but we still encourage you to let the organizer know you would like to attend.
When signing up to organize a DemoCamp, please be sure to give us your contact information. Either include your individual email address on your event page, or send an email to democamps at eclipse dot org to provide your contact information.
To help you create the page for your event, we have a template. To use the template, open it for editing and copy the contents of the edit window to your clipboard, and then select "Cancel" at the bottom of the page to cancel the editing session. Open up your new event page for editing, copy the contents of your clipboard into the editing window, and make your updates. Please do not edit the template.
Information on organizing a DemoCamp
Scheduled Birthday Parties / DemoCamps
November 1
- Regional Communities Brazil/São Paulo, Brazil, Tuesday, November 1; São Paulo
November 7 - November 12
- Raleigh, USA, 7 November
- Bonn, Germany, Monday, 7 November at Collegium Leoninum Bonn
- Dresden, Germany , 8 November, at TU Dresden
- Warszawa, Poland, 8 November, at MIM UW
- Trondheim, Norway - 10. November at Munkholmlosjen, Lerkendal Stadion
- javaBahia/Salvador - Brazil, Saturday, November 12; Location: Unirb-Salvador, Bahia
November 13 - November 19
- London, UK 15 November; Location: Slug & Lettuce Public House, Waterloo
- Munich, Germany 15 November; EclipseSource Munich
- Vancouver, Canada - Join us for a Hackathon! November 15; Tides Canada, Hollyhock room; 400 – 163 West Hastings St
- Braunschweig, Germany - 15th November; Location, BREDEX GmbH
- Toronto, Canada - 16 November; Location: Red Hat, Yonge & Eglinton
- Budapest, Hungary - 17 November; Location: Miniatűr, 1024 Budapest, II.district, Rózsahegy street 1/A
- CEJUG/Fortaleza, Faculdade 7 de Setembro, Fortaleza, Brazil - November 17
- Boston, MA USA - November 17; Location: Constant Contact, Reservoir Place, 1601 Trapelo Road,Waltham, MA
- Lome, Togo Date: 19 November; Location: Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie
- Jakarta, Indonesia - 19 November 2011; Location Microsoft Indonesia
November 20 - November 26
- Krakow, Poland - November 22; Location: Finka Club, the corner of ul. Warszauera and pl. Nowy
- Skopje, Macedonia - 23 November; Location and info [1]
- Stockholm, Sweden - 23 November; Location Ongame Future AB
- Hamburg, Germany - 23 November; Location Betahaus Hamburg
- Kaiserslautern, Germany, 24 November (Thursday), IT-Campus, Europaallee 10, 67657 Kaiserslautern, Germany about TPTP, SMILA, UOMo and more
- Poznan, Poland 24 November 2011
- Ottawa, Ontario Thursday, 24 November 2011
- Pune, India - 26 November; Location: Saba Software India Pvt. Ltd. Pune
- Bogotá, Colombia - Saturday November 26; Location: Hacker Space Bogotá (Preliminary)
- Cúcuta, Colombia - Saturday November 26; Location: Clover Pub
- Seoul, Korea - Saturday November 26; Location: Sinchon 24/7
- Guntur, India - November 26; Location: Green Fields
- Porto, Portugal - November 26; Location and more information: http://eclipse10ypt.eventbrite.com/
November 27 - December
- Michoacan, Lazaro Cardenas - Date November 27th; Location ITLAC
- Los Angeles (Pasadena), USA - November 28; Location: idealab
- Berlin, Germany - Monday, 28 November at Fraunhofer FOKUS
- Kassel, Germany - Tuesday, November 29; Hotel Schweizer Hof Kassel
- Karlsruhe, Germany Tuesday, November 29; Location FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik, Haid-und-Neu-Straße 10-14
- Gent, Belgium - November 29th at Sigasi HQ
- San Francisco, USA - Date 11/29; Thirsty Bear Brewing Company - Sillon Room
- Montréal, Québec, Canada - Tuesday November 29; Phillips Lounge
- Ariana, Tunisia - Wednesday 30 November.
- Nieuwegein, The Netherlands - Wednesday 30 November at Industrial TSI HQ
- Mountain View, USA- Date: November 30; Location: Googleplex in Mountain View, CA
- Pécs, Hungary - 1 December; Location Bella Italia
- Vienna, Austria - Friday 2nd December; Location: Mooslackengasse 17, 1190 Wien (U4 Heiligenstadt)
- Washington, DC, Tysons Corner, Virginia - Date December 2; Booz Allen Hamilton's Newman Auditorium as part of the DevIgnition conference.
- San Jose, USA - December 13; Location: eBay
- Bangalore, India - Date December 12; Location Little Italy Restaurant, Hosur Road, Behind Forum Mall, Koramangala
- Mumbai, India - December 21; Location: Mastek LTD,Millennium Business Park, Mahape, Navi Mumbai,Maharashtra
To be Scheduled
- GoJava/Goiânia, Brazil - Date TBD; Location TBD
Past DemoCamps
- Paris, France, 20 October at Nuxeo World
- Eclipse_DemoCamps_Indigo_2011
- Eclipse_DemoCamps_November_2010
- Eclipse_DemoCamps_Helios_2010
- Eclipse_DemoCamps_November_2009
- Eclipse_DemoCamps_Galileo_2009
- Eclipse_DemoCamps_November_2008
- Eclipse_DemoCamps_2008_-_Ganymede_Edition
- Eclipse DemoCamp 2007


text:
I'm Suspending Disbelief Until Further Notice - Women's Racerback Tank
I'm Suspending Disbelief Until Further Notice - Women's Racerback Tank
DESIGN-SKU: a2065
Orders are typically shipped within 3-7 business days after they are placed. Sometimes, due to supply chain issues, peak season or demand, it may take slightly longer. Shipping is sent out via standard mail, and once shipped it typically takes 2-4 days to arrive.
We have a 30-day return policy, which means you have 30 days after receiving your item to request a return for any reason. The customer is responsible for their return postage unless it is a result of our error. If your shirt arrived damaged, defective, or incorrect, we will either ship you out a replacement and have you donate the one you received, or we may send you a pre-paid label to return the item to us. In this case, we cover return shipping.


text:
BMW recalls 1.6M 3-Series cars for air bag problem
(AP)—BMW is expanding a recall of its most popular models to fix an air bag problem that is hitting much of the global auto industry.
The German automaker says it will recall 1.6 million 3-Series cars from model years 2000 to 2006 across the world, including 574,000 in the U.S.
The company said Wednesday that it's a precaution because other automakers using similar systems have reported problems.
Air bag inflators in systems made by Takata Corp. can rupture. If that happens, the bags might not work properly, and shards could fly out and cause injury.
The problem is responsible for millions of recalled vehicles during the past few years made by manufacturers such as Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Nissan and Toyota. The recalls have mostly been of vehicles in states with hot and humid weather.
BMW said it has no reports of problems in its vehicles. Dealers will replace the passenger-side front air bags. The new recall excludes 42,000 BMWs recalled in May 2013 for the same problem. The company says it is recalling all vehicles equipped with potentially faulty air bag systems regardless of where they were sold.
In June, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating air bags made by Takata, a Tokyo-based supplier of seat belts, air bags, steering wheels and other auto parts.
The agency said it received six reports of air bags rupturing in Florida and Puerto Rico. Three people were injured in those cases. It had estimated 1.1 million vehicles in the U.S. could be affected, but the total is likely to climb.
The government says it wanted to act quickly in warm states while it continues to investigate the issue.
"Based on the limited data available at this time, NHTSA supports efforts by automakers to address the immediate risk in areas that have consistently hot, humid conditions over extended periods of time," the agency said in a statement.
Takata said in a statement Wednesday that it is supporting the NHTSA investigation and its customers with technical analysis and replacement parts. "Our objective is to do all that is possible to ensure the safety and well-being of the public," the statement said.
© 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


text:
Harvard Scholar: Jesus Talks Of Wife In Ancient Script
A Harvard University professor on Tuesday unveiled a fourth-century fragment of papyrus she said is the only existing ancient text quoting Jesus explicitly referring to having a wife.
Karen King, an expert in the history of Christianity, said the text contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to "my wife," whom he identifies as Mary. King says the fragment of Coptic script is a copy of a gospel, probably written in Greek in the second century.
King helped translate and unveiled the tiny fragment at a conference of Coptic experts in Rome. She said it doesn't prove Jesus was married but speaks to issues of family and marriage that faced Christians.
Four words in the 1.5-by-3-inch fragment provide the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had been married, King said. Those words, written in a language of ancient Egyptian Christians, translate to "Jesus said to them, my wife," King said in a statement.
King said that in the dialogue the disciples discuss whether Mary is worthy and Jesus says "she can be my disciple."
Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried even though there was no reliable historical evidence to support that, King said. The new gospel, she said, "tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage."
"From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry," she said, "but it was over a century after Jesus's death before they began appealing to Jesus's marital status to support their positions."
King presented the document at a six-day conference being held at Rome's La Sapienza University and at the Augustinianum institute of the Pontifical Lateran University. While the Vatican newspaper and Vatican Radio frequently cover such academic conferences, there was no mention of King's discovery in any Vatican media on Tuesday. That said, her paper was one of nearly 60 delivered Tuesday at the vast conference, which drew 300 academics from around the globe.
The fragment belongs to an anonymous private collector who contacted King to help translate and analyze it. Nothing is known about the circumstances of its discovery, but it had to have come from Egypt, where the dry climate allows ancient writings to survive and because it was written in a script used in ancient times there, King said.
The unclear origins of the document should encourage people to be cautious, said Bible scholar Ben Witherington III, a professor and author who teaches at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. He said the document follows the pattern of Gnostic texts of the second, third and fourth centuries, using "the language of intimacy to talk about spiritual relationships."
"What we hear from the Gnostic is this practice called the sister-wife texts, where they carried around a female believer with them who cooks for them and cleans for them and does the usual domestic chores, but they have no sexual relationship whatsoever" during the strong monastic periods of the third and fourth centuries, Witherington said. "In other words, this is no confirmation of the Da Vinci Code or even of the idea that the Gnostics thought Jesus was married in the normal sense of the word."
These kinds of doubts, King said, should not stop scholars from continuing to examine the document.
Those who conducted initial examination of the fragment include Roger Bagnall, a papyrologist who's the director of the New York-based Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, and AnneMarie Luijendijk, a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity from Princeton University. They said their study of the papyrus, the handwriting and how the ink was chemically absorbed shows it is highly probable it's an ancient text, King said.
Another scholar, Ariel Shisha-Halevy, professor of linguistics at Hebrew University and a leading expert on Coptic language, reviewed the text's language and concluded it offered no evidence of forgery.
King and Luijendijk said they believe the fragment is part of a newly discovered gospel they named "Gospel of Jesus's Wife" for reference purposes. King said she dated the time it was written to the second half of the second century because it shows close connections to other newly discovered gospels written at that time, especially the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Philip.
This program aired on September 18, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.


text:
Flour – an ingredient always present in my pantry, essential for someone who loves baking like I do. But sometimes we can go on perfectly well without it and it's not necessary at all – like Renée Zellweger in "Cold Mountain". :)
My peanut butter cookie recipe hunt started with this amazing book, but I was really after a flourless version, which I found on Epicurious.
The cookies turned out delicious and tender and were a hit with my little sister, who apparently did not like peanut butter. :) Just be careful when transporting the cookies, because the lack of flour makes them a bit fragile.
Flourless peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies
from Epicurious
1 cup chunky peanut butter
1 cup (175g) light brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (170g/6oz) semisweet chocolate chips – I used 70% cocoa solids
Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F; line two baking sheets with baking paper.
Mix first 5 ingredients in medium bowl. Mix in chocolate chips. Using moistened hands, form generous 1 tablespoon dough for each cookie into ball. Place onto prepared sheets, 5cm (2in) apart.
Bake cookies until puffed, golden on bottom and still soft to touch in center, about 12 minutes. Cool on sheets over a wire rack for 5 minutes. Transfer to racks; cool completely.
Makes about 24 cookies – I made the exact recipe above, used 1 leveled tablespoon of dough per cookie and got 38


text:
Fitting Interface For Rectangular Hyperbola A Plus Line 2D
y = ax/(b+x)
y = y + (c * x) + d
Pulldown Menu
Text Data Editor
Fitting Target
Data Labels For Graphs
Graph Scaling And Lin/Log Control
Graph Size
Scientific Notation For Graphs
Estimated Initial Coefficients
Hold Coefficients Constant
Enter Coefficient Bounds
Please select an option from the pull-down menu above.
Text data editor
Cut-and-paste text or edit data here
Convert commas to spaces (1,2,0,3 yields 1 2 0 3)
Use comma as decimal separator (1,203 = 1.203)
Remove commas from text (1,2,0,3 yields 1203)
Standard Unweighted Fitting: no weights required
Weighted Fitting: each data point requires a weight
This data is provided as an example, cut and paste as needed to model your data. All lines of text that do not begin with a number are ignored. Weighted fitting requires an additional number to be used as a weight when fitting. The site does not calculate any weights, which are used as: error = weight * (predicted - actual) You must provide any weights you wish to use. X Y 5.357 0.376 5.457 0.489 5.797 0.874 5.936 1.049 6.161 1.327 6.697 2.054 6.731 2.077 6.775 2.138 8.442 4.744 9.769 7.068 9.861 7.104
Fitting Target
Here you can select the desired fitting target.
Lowest sum of squared absolute error
Lowest sum of squared orthogonal distance
Lowest sum of squared relative error
Lowest sum of absolute value of absolute error
Lowest sum of squared log[predicted/actual]
Lowest sum of absolute value of relative error
Lowest peak absolute value of absolute error
Lowest peak absolute value of relative error
Lowest Akaike Information Criterion
Lowest Bayesian Information Criterion
Data labels for graphs
Here you can enter the X and Y data labels to be printed on the report graphs.
Label for first independent data (X)
Label for dependent data (Y)
Graph scaling and lin/log control
Here you can choose the scaling of the data plots.
Log plots require data values greater than zero.
X Scale (2D Only)
Y Scale (2D Only)
Autoscale +/- 1%
Autoscale +/- 2.5%
Autoscale +/- 5%
Autoscale +/- 10%
Autoscale +/- 25%
Autoscale +/- 50%
Autoscale +/- 100%
Autoscale +/- 150%
Autoscale +/- 200%
Manual Scale
Max X:
Min X:
Linear Scaling
Logarithmic Scaling
Autoscale +/- 1%
Autoscale +/- 2.5%
Autoscale +/- 5%
Autoscale +/- 10%
Autoscale +/- 25%
Autoscale +/- 50%
Autoscale +/- 100%
Autoscale +/- 150%
Autoscale +/- 200%
Manual Scale
Max Y:
Min Y:
Linear Scaling
Logarithmic Scaling
Graph size
Here you can choose the size of the graphs. Smaller size files load quickly,
with less resolution while large files show more resolution but load more slowly.
320 x 240 (fastest)
500 x 400
640 x 480
700 x 500
800 x 600
900 x 700
1024 x 768
1280 x 1024
1600 x 1200 (slowest)
wide ratio 2400 x 400
Graph Size
Scientific Notation
Here you can control scientific notation on the data plots.
X Control
Y Control
Hold Coefficients Constant
Here you can enter values to hold coefficients constant during fitting.
Leave the entry field blank to let the coefficient fit normally.
Note that coefficient bounds are overridden by holding a coefficient constant.
y = ax/(b+x)
y = y + (c * x) + d
Estimated Initial Coefficients
Here you can enter values for initial parameter estimates.
Few users will need this section, as the site estimates initial
parameters using the Differential Evolution genetic algorithm
for both non-linear equations and non-Gaussian fitting targets.
y = ax/(b+x)
y = y + (c * x) + d
Coefficients Bounds
Here you can enter coefficient upper and lower bounds. Leave the
entry fields blank to let the coefficients fit without bounds.
Note that holding a coefficient constant overrides these bounds.
y = ax/(b+x)
y = y + (c * x) + d
3D Data Point Size Options
Here you can select the data point size for 3D surface plots and 3D scatter plots.
3D Point Size


text:
Shop Now
About Us
Contact Me
Becoming a Dealer
Welcome to our web site. Isn't Technology Great? No more paper catalogs for us! I have added a bunch of new products this year and have freshened up a bunch more. I would like to invite you to take a good look at our product line and stock your shelves with some of the most unusual selection of aviation and space related gift products that will sell well in your shop.
Our products have sold very well over the past 30 years (WOW, has it been that long?) in
FBO's, Museums, Airport Gift Shops, NASA Facilities, and other retail stores across the country
. Take a real close look at our new line of Aviation and Space Ties, Ornaments, Custom Model airplanes, Greeting cards, Pudgy Planes and more.
Also, as a manufacturer of most of our products,
we invite you to look at having us make custom made products, like Ornaments, T-shirts, Aviation Neck Wear, Mugs, Kites, etc, with your theme and logos.
Our discounts to dealers ranges up to 40% off the regular retail pricing. While we do have a minimum order, it is very reasonable and you know what, we are fun to work with. So, to obtain a password to view Dealer Pricing (may only be viewed in Internet Explorer), or for more information, please e-mail me at
or give me a call at
Have fun and keep flying! Yeah, Yeah, I'm a pilot and I love to fly!


text:
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Daring Bakers Challenge...Pizza!!!
When I first found out that the challenge this month was to make pizza I was so excited. I emailed my friend, Jenn who is also a daring baker and said I couldn't wait!!! Well once again I waited and waited all the way until yesterday!
You see we eat pizza every single week. I have a whole wheat dough recipe that I whip up in my bread machine and it works great for a late night. I make everything and T. pops it in the oven. So what happened? Why didn't I make this one of those 4 weeks that I had? Who knows why I do the things I do. So this is what I did: I made the dough yesterday morning and then put the pizza together today! Better late then never!
This months event was co hosted by Rosa at Rosa's Yummy Yums and Glenna at A Fridge Full of Food. Thanks ladies for a great recipe. One that I will definitely use again. This recipe could also be made Gluten Free.
We were allowed to use any toppings we wished. It could be sweet or savory. I choose to top mine with:
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
minced garlic
fresh basil
fresh oregano
mozzarella cheese
dried wild mushrooms rehydrated, (morels, porcini, Brazilian caps, Ivory portabellas, shitake and oyster)
coarse sea salt for the outer crust
Would I use this recipe again? Most definitely. I was a little daunted by the 2 day thing and how the dough felt when I took it out of the fridge in the morning but it was easy to toss...yes I did try tossing and it makes for a nice thin crust in the middle and a nice thick crust on the edge! The flavor was nice and the chewiness of it was great. I also cooked mine on a pizza pan and it turned out great. Really LOVED IT!!!
Original recipe taken from "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" by Peter Reinhart.
Makes 6 pizza crusts (about 9-12 inches/23-30 cm in diameter).
4 1/2 Cups (20 1/4 ounces/607.5 g) Unbleached high-gluten (%14) bread flour or all purpose flour, chilled - FOR GF: 4 ½ cups GF Flour Blend with xanthan gum or 1 cup brown rice flour, 1 cup corn flour, 1 cup oat flour, 1 ½ cup arrowroot, potato or tapioca starch + 2 tsp xanthan or guar gum
1 3/4 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Instant yeast - FOR GF use 2 tsp
1/4 Cup (2 ounces/60g) Olive oil or vegetable oil (both optional, but it's better with)
1 3/4 Cups (14 ounces/420g or 420ml) Water, ice cold (40° F/4.5° C)
1 Tb sugar - FOR GF use agave syrup
Semolina/durum flour or cornmeal for dusting
1. Mix together the flour, salt and instant yeast in a big bowl (or in the bowl of your stand mixer).
2. Add the oil, sugar and cold water and mix well (with the help of a large wooden spoon or with the paddle attachment, on low speed) in order to form a sticky ball of dough. On a clean surface, knead for about 5-7 minutes, until the dough is smooth and the ingredients are homogeneously distributed. If it is too wet, add a little flour (not too much, though) and if it is too dry add 1 or 2 teaspoons extra water.
NOTE: If you are using an electric mixer, switch to the dough hook and mix on medium speed for the same amount of time.The dough should clear the sides of the bowl but stick to the bottom of the bowl. If the dough is too wet, sprinkle in a little more flour, so that it clears the sides. If, on the contrary, it clears the bottom of the bowl, dribble in a teaspoon or two of cold water.
The finished dough should be springy, elastic, and sticky, not just tacky, and register 50°-55° F/10°-13° C.
2. FOR GF: Add the oil, sugar or agave syrup and cold water, then mix well (with the help of a large wooden spoon or with the paddle attachment, on low speed) in order to form a sticky ball of dough.
3. Flour a work surface or counter. Line a jelly pan with baking paper/parchment. Lightly oil the paper.
4. With the help of a metal or plastic dough scraper, cut the dough into 6 equal pieces (or larger if you want to make larger pizzas).
NOTE: To avoid the dough from sticking to the scraper, dip the scraper into water between cuts.
5. Sprinkle some flour over the dough. Make sure your hands are dry and then flour them. Gently round each piece into a ball.
NOTE: If the dough sticks to your hands, then dip your hands into the flour again.
6. Transfer the dough balls to the lined jelly pan and mist them generously with spray oil. Slip the pan into plastic bag or enclose in plastic food wrap.
7. Put the pan into the refrigerator and let the dough rest overnight or for up to thee days.
NOTE: You can store the dough balls in a zippered freezer bag if you want to save some of the dough for any future baking. In that case, pour some oil(a few tablespooons only) in a medium bowl and dip each dough ball into the oil, so that it is completely covered in oil. Then put each ball into a separate bag. Store the bags in the freezer for no longer than 3 months. The day before you plan to make pizza, remember to transfer the dough balls from the freezer to the refrigerator.
8. On the day you plan to eat pizza, exactly 2 hours before you make it, remove the desired number of dough balls from the refrigerator. Dust the counter with flour and spray lightly with oil. Place the dough balls on a floured surface and sprinkle them with flour. Dust your hands with flour and delicately press the dough into disks about 1/2 inch/1.3 cm thick and 5 inches/12.7 cm in diameter. Sprinkle with flour and mist with oil. Loosely cover the dough rounds with plastic wrap and then allow to rest for 2 hours.
8. FOR GF: On the day you plan to eat pizza, exactly 2 hours before you make it, remove the number of desired dough balls from the refrigerator. Place on a sheet of parchment paper and sprinkle with a gluten free flour. Delicately press the dough into disks about ½ inch/1.3 cm thick and 5 inches/12.7 cm in diameter. Sprinkle the dough with flour, mist it again with spray oil. Lightly cover the dough round with a sheet of parchment paper and allow to rest for 2 hours.
9. At least 45 minutes before making the pizza, place a baking stone on the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven as hot as possible (500° F/260° C).
NOTE: If you do not have a baking stone, then use the back of a jelly pan. Do not preheat the pan.
10. Generously sprinkle the back of a jelly pan with semolina/durum flour or cornmeal. Flour your hands (palms, backs and knuckles). Take 1 piece of dough by lifting it with a pastry scraper. Lay the dough across your fists in a very delicate way and carefully stretch it by bouncing it in a circular motion on your hands, and by giving it a little stretch with each bounce. Once the dough has expanded outward, move to a full toss.
10. FOR GF: Press the dough into the shape you want (about 9-12 inches/23-30 cm in diameter - for a 6 ounces/180g piece of dough).
NOTE: Make only one pizza at a time.
During the tossing process, if the dough tends to stick to your hands, lay it down on the floured counter and reflour your hands, then continue the tossing and shaping.
In case you would be having trouble tossing the dough or if the dough never wants to expand and always springs back, let it rest for approximately 5-20 minutes in order for the gluten to relax fully,then try again.
You can also resort to using a rolling pin, although it isn't as effective as the toss method.
11. When the dough has the shape you want (about 9-12 inches/23-30 cm in diameter - for a 6 ounces/180g piece of dough), place it on the back of the jelly pan, making sure there is enough semolina/durum flour or cornmeal to allow it to slide and not stick to the pan.
11. FOR GF: Lightly top it with sweet or savory toppings of your choice.
12. Lightly top it with sweet or savory toppings of your choice.
12. FOR GF: Place the garnished pizza on the parchment paper onto the stone in the oven or bake directly on the jelly pan. Close the door and bake for about 5-8 minutes.
NOTE: Remember that the best pizzas are topped not too generously. No more than 3 or 4 toppings (including sauce and cheese) are sufficient.
13. Slide the garnished pizza onto the stone in the oven or bake directly on the jelly pan. Close the door and bake for abour 5-8 minutes.
13. FOR GF: Follow the notes for this step.
NOTE: After 2 minutes baking, take a peek. For an even baking, rotate 180°.
If the top gets done before the bottom, you will need to move the stone or jelly pane to a lower shelf before the next round. On the contrary, if the bottom crisps before the cheese caramelizes, then you will need to raise the stone or jelly.
14. Take the pizza out of the oven and transfer it to a cutting board or your plate. In order to allow the cheese to set a little, wait 3-5 minutes before slicing or serving.
As Always...
Happy Entertaining!!!
29 comments:
I love the ingredients you chose for your pizza -- outstanding photos, too. Wild mushrooms send me swooning. And at least you actually got yours completely done and posted. Still making mine...Hahahaha!
- October 29, 2008 at 11:42 AM
- glamah16 said...
It looks great Judy. I bet the girls will love it. Time does fly!
- October 29, 2008 at 11:44 AM
It looks great, Judy, and don´t get me started on being late, my dough is in the fridge and I´m making the pizzas for friends tonight, so I´m gonna have to do a "work in progress" kind of post.
- October 29, 2008 at 11:53 AM
- April said...
Better late than never! Looks great!
- October 29, 2008 at 12:04 PM
- Patsyk said...
I love the toppings you used! Your pizza looks perfect!
- October 29, 2008 at 12:23 PM
- Ruth said...
Your pizza looks delicious and the toppings I want a slice!
- October 29, 2008 at 12:47 PM
- Thistlemoon said...
I love your toppings Judy! I am so sad I didn't make it this month...:( But I will drool over yours! :)
- October 29, 2008 at 1:03 PM
- CookiePie said...
Your pizza sounds delicious, and looks fabulous!
- October 29, 2008 at 2:01 PM
- Ivy said...
All of this pizza is making me hungry! Yours looks fabulous!
- October 29, 2008 at 2:58 PM
- RecipeGirl said...
Nice job... great photos! I have a WW pizza dough recipe that I like too. This 2 day thing was a bit too much planning for me!
- October 29, 2008 at 3:24 PM
- Aggie said...
That is one good looking pizza!! YUM!
- October 29, 2008 at 3:33 PM
- Brittany said...
Oh that looks so good!!!!!!!!!!!!
- October 29, 2008 at 5:04 PM
- maybelle's mom said...
supper fancy. and I totally agree that it was daunting to add the extra day but this was so great, would do it again.
- October 29, 2008 at 5:08 PM
- Peter M said...
Good array of 'shroom toppings and I dig the course salt on the crust...gotta remember that one.
- October 29, 2008 at 5:35 PM
- Deborah said...
Your pizza looks wonderful!
- October 29, 2008 at 5:58 PM
- Dragon said...
You can never go wrong with mushrooms and herbs. Great job!
- October 29, 2008 at 6:43 PM
- erin said...
oh my! my mouth is watering! This looks amazingly wonderful. Wild mushrooms are my favorite.
- October 29, 2008 at 6:54 PM
Lookin reeeally goood!!
- October 29, 2008 at 8:34 PM
- Darius T. Williams said...
Classic flavors - I bet this was fantastic!
www.everydaycookin.blogspot.com - October 29, 2008 at 10:12 PM
Those are some great flavors! Love the wild mushrooms.
- October 29, 2008 at 11:31 PM
- Danni said...
Oh, i am SO making this...Mmmmm...
- October 30, 2008 at 12:36 AM
Your pizzas look delicious! Wonderful work!
- October 30, 2008 at 1:33 AM
- Jen said...
Judy, I am a mushroom/cheese fanatic, and this looks scrumptious. Wow. Exactly what I'd want here.
- October 30, 2008 at 6:43 AM
- Valerie Harrison (bellini) said...
You tossed your way to pizza perfection Judy:D
- October 30, 2008 at 8:26 AM
- Marija said...
Wow, great pizza! Where did you get wild mushrooms?
- October 30, 2008 at 9:42 AM
I made a mushroom pizza, too. But, I can tell you right now, it didn't look nearly as good as yours. I am impressed. Well done.
- October 30, 2008 at 2:56 PM
- Glenna said...
Your pizza is wonderful! Yum. And I love all the suggestions for toppings.
- October 30, 2008 at 5:21 PM
- Rosa's Yummy Yums said...
A scrumptious looking pizza! Very well done!
Rosa - October 30, 2008 at 6:54 PM
- natalie said...
Your pizza looked delicious! Good job!
- October 31, 2008 at 12:19 AM


text:
Reposted with permission from the original author, Safeco Insurance®.
If you're like most people, you start up the car every morning and get ready to fight traffic on your way to work. But wouldn't it be nice to read a book on your commute instead? Or check your email? Even send a few texts?
Today, that's not possible for drivers. (Actually, it is possible, but it's dangerous. And way too many people do those things and worse behind the wheel.)
Tomorrow, however, self-driving cars might give us all the ability to do those things safely. And two amazing concept cars at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas provided a glimpse of an exciting future.
Each January, thousands of people from across the world attend CES to see the latest innovations in technology. Sam Affolter, senior director of research and innovation at Safeco, was there this year — and he's intrigued by where the auto industry is headed.
"One of the coolest displays at CES was Toyota's Concept-i car," Affolter said. "It has a digital assistant called 'Yui,' an artificial-intelligence personality that customizes itself based on the different people in the car."
With inward-facing cameras, Yui (pronounced "U-E") identifies who's in the car and where they're sitting, and will recommend switching to autonomous mode when its facial-recognition technology senses the driver is distracted or sleepy.
It also learns your habits and preferences, Affolter said. "I prefer to be moving rather than stuck in traffic — and Yui will pick up on that and recommend routes that may be longer but with less congestion."
Honda also made a big splash at CES with its NeuV, which stands for "New Electric Urban Vehicle." Private vehicles are not in use 95% of the time, and Honda says the NeuV (pronounced "New-V") could make good use of that extra capacity. It can function as an automated ride-sharing vehicle, picking up and dropping off customers at local destinations when the owner is not using the car. And when it's idle, the NeuV even can sell energy back to the electric grid.
"It's important to note that neither of these cars is rolling off the assembly line," Affolter said. "They're just examples of the possibilities."
That may be a good thing, because it's going to take time for people to get used to the idea of giving up control.
Both Yui and NeuV help break this barrier by acclimating drivers to the AI system in ways that can build trust, according to Affolter. Providing accurate, helpful information and recommendations over time increases the chances you'll say "OK" when Yui or NeuV offer to take the wheel when you look tired or appear distracted.
"These innovations are paving the way to a more driverless future," Affolter said. "It's going to be really interesting to see where it leads us."
Bundle & Save! Package insurance for your cars, home, business and more together for insurance savings. Contact Jeff Munns Agency today!
Top image by Flickr user Marco Verch used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Image cropped and modified from original.


text:
Creating a Garden Sanctuary for Local Wildlife
Wildlife need our help. Human activity has changed and eliminated habitat, locally, and on the global scale, and birds, butterflies, and other wildlife are pushed into ever-shrinking wilderness areas.
You can make a difference. You can invite wildlife back to your own yard and neighborhood by planting a simple garden that provides habitat. Imagine your garden teeming with singing songbirds, colorful butterflies, flitting hummingbirds, and other small wildlife.
Providing a sustainable habitat for wildlife begins with your plants. That's why we call it a wildlife habitat "garden." When you plant the native plant species that wildlife depend on, you create habitat and begin to restore your local environment. Adding water sources, nesting boxes, and other habitat features enhances the habitat value of your garden to wildlife. By choosing natural gardening practices, you make your yard a safe place for wildlife.
Creating a wildlife garden reverses some of the human-caused habitat destruction that is hurting wildlife. It's easier than you might think. Here is what your wildlife garden should include:
Food: Native plants provide nectar, seeds, nuts, fruits, berries, foliage, pollen, and insects eaten by an exciting variety of wildlife. Feeders can supplement natural food sources.
Water: All animals need water to survive and some need it for bathing or breeding as well.
Cover: Wildlife need places to find shelter from bad weather and places to hide from predators or stalk prey.
Places to Raise Young: Wildlife need resources to reproduce and keep their species going. Some species have totally different habitat needs in their juvenile phase than they do as adults.
Sustainable Practices: How you manage your garden can have an effect on the health of the soil, air, water, and habitat for native wildlife as well as the human community
Share on Social Media:


text:
Summer is a difficult time. I am obsessed with the season.
Every weekend I want to go to the beach, to the park -- the one with the sprinklers, to a carnival, to the beach again.
My family thinks I have too much energy for un-worthy things, that two beach visits with a bawling toddler who hates car seats should have been enough to put my desires in order, that the nearby park is fun enough for the kids and that watching football is as much an outdoor activity as running around kids in a strawberry field.
I clearly think otherwise. But it is not easy to put my thoughts to reality. Weekends are times for birthday parties, get-togethers, groceries and chores. Weekdays are time for work, piano(not mine), swimming(not mine), next days lunch. Work is crazy and I don't even get time to visit my blog friends.How do I fit in summer outdoor stuff in this busy schedule ?
In the recent years I have learned to delegate. I have outsourced my house cleaning, occasional help to dust and vaccum. It is hard to get help here in the US but look around and you will find affordable cleaning, someone who might be of service. There might be an Auntie few blocks down who will make you Rotis for the week, a kindly neighbor who will sell home made idli batter, a young Spanish girl who will chop your vegetables for those extra bucks. Once in a while take their help, you not only need it, a busy Mom like you deserves it.
Last month I took a day off. I wanted to take the kids strawberry picking. Since weekends just weren't working, it had to be a weekday. I felt it was really important for the kiddos to know where their favorite fruit was coming from, to know that strawberries are not produced at the neighborhood grocers.
The farm is thankfully not that far and we spent a nice hour or so grazing the strawberry fields. Rows of deep green against the blue sky and the little red fruits hidden in all that green.Being close to Nature is so enchanting that I wouldn't have cared if we were picking bitter gourd and not strawberries.
The kids had loads of fun, they ate some, picked some and I just let them be, at least for this once.
Since they hadn't picked the choicest of fruits, after eating some, I froze the rest. And then one fine day, I wanted to make a strawberry ice cream. Ok not ice cream, but at least a frozen yogurt.
Of course I don't have an ice cream machine. I don't have a whole lot of things. Actually the list of things I DO NOT have is way longer than the things I DO have.
But I won't fret on that, because if your upper arms are as sagzy as mine and you want to do this, you better make ice cream by hand. You will like the process so much that you will do it maybe once and buy Hagen Dasz by the pints. Ok, it is not all that hard, I kid.
Read more...
Follow David Leibowitz's hand made ice cream making process. This Strawberry Frozen Yogurt recipe is adapted from here.
Strawberry Frozen Yogurt
I have used strained whole milk yogurt but Greek yogurt which is creamier will give better result
Put 2 cups of roughly chopped strawberries in a bowl. Sprinkle 2 tbsp of sugar and let them sit for an hour.
In a blender add the
strawberries along with their juice,
1/2 cup of Evaporated Milk,
1/2 cup of Thick Greek Yogurt,
2 tbsp sugar.
Note: Replace Evaporated Milk with
Condensed Milk if you want a creamier, sweeter taste.
Blend till smooth. I also strained the mix through a strainer.
Freeze and follow the hand made ice cream making process. Or use your ice cream maker.