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Amazing Saturday spent seeing the Mono in person, meeting Ian and Neill Briggs, and driving the Mono for a few brief paced laps on Spring Mountain Motorsport Ranch in Pahrump NV. Big thanks to the brothers and Shinoo Mapleton owner of Sector111 in Temecula CA, the USA distributor of the BAC Mono and hardworking Mitch the engineer at Sector111 who was tireless in keeping everything fitted and in adjustment.
- The car is far more beautiful, in every way, when seen in person.
- "Aerospace" quality in every component, fit, finish. There is nothing remotely like it for under $1MM.
- Neill and Ian Briggs are wonderful to spend time with.
- The deposit holders who attended are a very interesting group of people and definite car guys!
- While my drive was only three, short, paced, laps I was able to tell the car is great, solid as a rock, planted, predictable and a plush ride!
Enjoy some pics and video, and if you were there, please post your own!
All of the pictures and video in this thread are copyright Trackrat LLC and may not be used on other websites without attribution to "MonoForum.com" and a link back to this forum thread , Thanks!


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Sunday, June 10, 2012
Gaps and the First Sixty
There are days when I watch the Toronto Blue Jays and find it difficult to see where the gaps are. When I watch a game where Brandon Morrow absolutely dominates a division-leading team, while the starting left-fielder with the career .381 slugging percentage ices the win with a two-run home run and the forgotten-prospect first baseman (playing DH) goes 3-for-4, I'm sorely tempted to think: hey, maybe this can work. Maybe we can go with what we got.
I still know that the gaps are there, though; don't get me wrong. I know that what I'm seeing is just a decent day here and there from the guys who are filling in where there doesn't seem to be a "long-term solution" on the roster. But how significant are the gaps, really? Or, to look at it another way, how much different are the gaps on this team from those on the teams with which they must contend in the American League East?
There aren't any perfect teams, anywhere. After today, the Tampa Bay Rays will continue to lead the AL East, and they routinely field a more-or-less underwhelming offensive lineup, including your Sean Rodriguezeses and Will Rhymeseses. The Rays, of course, can pitch like crazy, and it makes them competitive in pretty much every game they play. But the notion that it takes an All-Star at every position to win in the East isn't necessarily borne out by the teams that actually do win in the East.
In don't see much value in dwelling on the easily identifiable spots in which the Jays could stand to improve . There may or may not be off-the-shelf solutions to those woes, either internally (a healthy Travis Snider call-up; a return to some semblance of a power stroke from Brett Lawrie), or externally (a trade for a more established, productive bat at first base; or a middle of the rotation starting pitcher to take the pressure off the young trio of Alvarez, Drabek and Hutchison). If the Jays managed to acquire Matt Garza or Justin Morneau, for instance, I'd be pretty happy. I'd probably over-analyze what they gave up to make those deals and fret for the future, but I'd be fired up for their first games with the team.
Even without those kinds of additions, though, the 2012 Toronto Blue Jays already feel like a better team than we've seen here for several years, and it's made for some seriously compelling baseball even in the early part of the season -- which isn't really so early anymore. We're a full sixty games in, and despite the doom and gloom from Mike Wilner's callers after dropping a game or two, the Jays haven't been under .500 for a second yet. The most they've found themselves out of first place in the division is five games. The broadcast team in today's whalloping of the Atlanta Braves pointed out today that going into Game 60 in 2011, the Jays had the same 30-29 record, and for once I was compelled to agree with Buck Martinez and Pat Tabler as they expressed some degree of surprise at that fact -- that this felt like a much better team.
Yes, I'd like for them to have five more wins right now. I could probably go back in the schedule and find where the team might have found them, but that way lies madness and despair. Can they find those five extra wins and more in the next 60 games? I don't know, but I'm hopeful, because this is -- like every team -- a team with strengths and flaws; but it has more of the former than the latter. I'll remain optimistic that the next 60 games will lead to an extciting final 42.
8 comments:
gap: JP Arencibia is well below average offensively among regular C's. Travis d'Arnaud can't arrive soon enough.
- June 10, 2012 at 6:18 PM
re. the surprise that the Jays have the same record at game 60 this year as they did in 2011: pretty hard to measure without taking into account the "inflationary" factors of other teams. The Jays aren't the only team to upgrade/polish in an offseason.
The Jays may only have "looked" better because there are higher ceiling guys putting in replacement-level performances. There are always variances, and it isn't unexpected that Romero, Bautista and Lawrie have dropped off to some extent; what is a little disturbing is that few - if any - have stepped up with breakout seasons to boost overall performance.
That goes for the manager too.
- June 10, 2012 at 8:09 PM
My large beef with this team is the use of the pen. Which is still atrocious. If we are going to continue to throw the Cordero out there in high leverage situations can we at least have an arm ready for the inevitable of when he goes and blows up? I mean maybe we could ask that we never see Cordero in a high leverage situation ( or better yet ever). But I doubt that Farrell and AA would do that.
Its horrible to think about, but AA was right on with Beltran. If he had signed with us, how many wins would it have meant with Joey Bats-Beltran-EE as the meat of the order?
Then 1-5 would be defined and you could trade a shortstop for a starter.
Right now we are too many prices away to trade any of the youth. What happens if EE does not resign? What goes on when KJ walks? Althougha given his season so far, a one year 12M offer may be just what the doctor ordered.
I say stay the course. We need too much and we have not built up enough sure things on the major league team to make any deals.
If they don't stay the course, then get Morneau. As we will have a gapping whole in the middle of the line up when EE leaves.
- June 10, 2012 at 8:56 PM
It is a better team. There is no filler this year.
- June 10, 2012 at 10:00 PM
Few -if any- breakouts? What do you call Edwin's season then? He's been the best player on the Jays so far, and while we were hoping for a bounce back, he's had a ridiculously good year beyond any expectations.
- June 11, 2012 at 2:38 PM
Brandon Morrow breakout?
- June 11, 2012 at 4:19 PM
- Matt Eichel said...
Definitely identified the needs: middle of the rotation pitcher and a return to form for Lawrie or Snider finally becoming the Jays regular left fielder.
Fact is, the Jays system hasn't been as effective at producing the young players they need (i.e. had to trade for Lawrie, Drabek, Escobar, Morrow) and the players who they have traded for haven't made the immediate impact expected.
Looking at the successful Jay squads of the late 80s and early 90s, the trades they made for (i.e. White, Alomar, Carter) the players made immediate and successful impacts. They were also big time players at that time.
Patience is key, because I think that the Jays are on an upswing that will keep them competitive and a winning team for years to come unlikely the up and down roller coaster of the late 90s, early 00s.
- June 11, 2012 at 10:38 PM
- DWBudd said...
I don't know that I necessarily agree that the team "feels better" this year than last? Look at who is performing at or above the level of last year vs. who is not?
Bautista is off to a poor start, though to be fair, to expect him to perform at last year's level every season is unrealistic. He's had some bad breaks, and expect at the end of the year, his production will wind up looking good.
But also look at Ricky Romero, who has, let's face it, been a shell of last year, and especially recently has decided that the strike zone may be as much theory as practice. Adam Lind was poor last year, but he was *so* bad this year, he earned his demotion to AAA. Escobar has not been particularly impressive, nor has Colby Rasmus (his recent 5-5 notwithstanding). The bullpen has been awful (worst ERA in the AL, and despite getting the first two wins of the season, is last in the AL in wins (5). Since winning those two, the pen is now 3-10.
The team is similarly 3-11 in one-run games.
Personally, what I find maddening about being a Blue Jays' fan is the consistency of their mediocrity. In the past six seasons (2006-2001), at this point (61 games) the team has been:
This season, they are 31-30, now sitting 4.5 games out of first.
They seem to be making -zero- progress in the category that means the most. The faces change, but the results remain defiantly unchanged.
The Jays seem almost pre-destined to wind up every season at 82-80 and 15 games out of the playoffs EVERY season.
- June 12, 2012 at 1:27 PM

subset: commoncrawl


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News from the world of Maths
Tennis anyone? Fancy football? Whatever game you are playing (or watching) this weekend, find out the maths behind our two favourite sports behind Door 3.
End of year weariness setting in? Exercise your brain and try some of our favourite puzzles – they're behind Door 2!
What do Caribbean steel drums, the London 2012 Velodrome and the quest for sustainable energy have in common? They all involve the work of engineers. Engineering provides some of the most exciting applications of maths, which impact on all our lives every day. Open Door 1 and discover the mathematics behind engineering.
Most of us take for granted that we can carry our entire music library in our pocket or whip out Google maps on our phones when we get lost. But few of us realise that it's physics and maths we have to thank for these marvellous inventions.
Tomorrow John D. Barrow, cosmologist, best-selling author and director of Plus, will be starting a lecture series on maths and sport at Gresham College in London. The first lecture is entitled How fast can Usain Bolt run? and there'll be five more lectures until the end of March, looking at Olympic sports from rowing to jumping. All lectures are free.
Whenever you smell the lovely smell of fresh coffee or drop a tea bag into hot water you're benefiting from diffusion: the fact that particles moving at random under the influence of thermal energy spread themselves around. It's this process that wafts coffee particles towards your nose and allows the tea to spread around the water. Diffusion underlies a huge number of processes and it has been studied intensively for over 150 years. Yet it wasn't until very recently that one of the most important assumptions of the underlying theory was confirmed in an experiment.


text: Create Your Electronic Products Profile Already registered? Please Login Forgot my password You'll get free access to the ElectronicProducts.com Download Center, with thousands of white papers, reference designs, research articles, application notes, data sheets and more – all covering a wide variety of product categories and end markets. Create Your Profile Required (complete all fields) *First Name: *Display Name: *Company: *Password: *Last Name: *Email: *Country: United States Algeria Andorra Argentina Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Belarus Belgium Belorussia Benelux Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador England Estonia Ethiopia Finland France Germany Ghana Greece Guatemala Holland Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Korea Kuwait Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxemburg Macedonia Malaysia Mauritius Mexico Morocco Myanmar Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Scotland Singapore Slovak Republic Slovakia Slovenia Slovenija (Slovenia) South Africa South America South Korea Spain Sri Lanka Sweden Switzerland Taiwan-ROC Tanzania Thailand Trinidad Trinidad & Tobago Tunisia Turkey Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan Venezuela Vietnam Wales Yemen Arab Republic Yugoslavia *Re-enter Password: *Job Function: Engineering Engineering Management General / Corporate Management Manufacturing / Production Marketing / Sales Purchasing / Procurement Student Others *Industry: Automotive & Other Ground Vehicles Avionics, Marine, Space, Military Brokers, Independent Distributors CAE/CAD/CAM Systems Communications Systems & Equipment Computer Peripherals Computer Systems Integrator Computers & Computer Systems Consumer Electronics and Appliances Electronic Instruments, ATE Sys, Design & Test Electronic Sub-assemblies Energy Generation/Conversion, Storage & Distribution Government & Military Agencies ICs and Semiconductors Independent/Academic R&D Laboratory Industrial Controls, Sys. Eqpt. & Robotics Medical Electronic Equipment Office and Business Machines Other Components, Mtrls, Hardware, Supplies Software Manufacturer / Developer Tech/Engineering Consulting Firm Others *Yes, I would like to receive your free eNewsletters, designed to provide me with the most up-to date information available (I understand I can opt-out at any time) *Yes, I agree to the use of my personal information in accordance with the AspenCore Privacy Policy, and the Terms of Use. Yes, I agree that my information may be shared with relevant third parties, who may email me based on my interest in products or services


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Letterpress Stationery featured on Jill Martin's Steals & Deals on The TODAY SHOW
6 Nov
Did you catch us this morning on the "Today Show"?
For today only, The Stationery Studio is offering "Today Show" viewers a set of 50 Letterpress Note Cards including 50 blank envelopes for $59.95. This deal is 71% off of the $205 retail price. The Letterpress Note Cards are printed on 100% cotton Crane & Co. 110 lb. cover stock. Letterpress printing creates an unmistakable deep rich impression that is the essence of luxury. These note cards measure 6.25' x 4.5" and come beautifully boxed with matching blank, unlined envelopes. This deal is available until noon on November 7, 2013.
"Today Show" viewers have a choice of 7 ink colors, 9 typestyles and 14 optional motifs. Boxed in a classic navy gift box, they make an excellent choice for holiday gift giving, birthdays, weddings and graduations.
Stock up now for the holiday season! And hurry – this is a limited time offer!
Tags: Discount, jill martin, Jill's Steals and Deals, letterpress stationery, Today Show


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Weather Blog: Cool for Mother's Day Weekend; lake level update
Hello and thank you for stopping by the Weather Watch 12 Blog.
Our very wet start to spring has paid big dividends in terms of Lake Michigan/Huron water levels.
After hitting record low lake levels in January, we have added back over 12" of water to the lake level!
Amazingly, we still need to add about 20.5" to Lake Michigan/Huron to get back to average -- some 25 million Olympic size pools!!
A positive to take away from our cool and wet spring (and hot and dry summer last year) is we have hardly had any severe weather.
We are nearing the 2 year mark since our last tornado warning in southeast Wisconsin! Let's hope this continues.
Our cool down into Mother's Day weekend will continue.
Expect strong northerly winds Saturday 15-25 mph, with some higher gusts.
While we will see some sunshine -- it will not help much on the temps.
Here's Saturday's forecast highs from Weather Watch 12's hi-res forecast model:
A light shower or two will be possible Saturday along a cold front.
Saturday night as winds die-down temperatures will fall into the low/mid 30s -- FROST will be possible, especially if you reside a mile or two away from Lake Michigan.
A dry and cool Mother's Day is expected.
Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there -- and have a great weekend!
Meteorologist Luke Sampe


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I knew I was going to freak out when I clicked on this video of a man stuck in The Tube, a long thin passage in the Lost Johns' Cave—a large cave system on Leck Fell, Lancashire, as the water pours in and he panics. Fortunately, he escaped at the end.
Note to self: don't play videos of people stuck in caves having panic attacks when you are claustrophobic.


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In 1912 the British and Foreign Unitarian Association published a four page pamphlet entitled "Tercentenary of the Unitarian Martyrs" which I recently found stuck in another book from around the same period. Who where these Unitarian martyrs? Where people really burned at the stake for Unitarian views? Surely we should mark there 400th anniversary of these deaths.
Last year we celebrated the birth of Servetus, the Unitarian thinker tried and burned in Calvinist Geneva. Servetus is an important figure as the reaction to his death led to the first serious challenge to the belief that the State should combat religious "heresy" by judicial murder.
Sadly, this ideal took some time to spread. In 1612 we find the last burnings for heresy in
England, of Bartholomew
Legate at Smithfield, London
on 18 March and Edward Wightman at Lichfield
on 11 April. Both suffered for denying the Trinitarian doctrine in an appalling
repetition of the days of religious conflict in the previous century with the
Protestant-Roman Catholic wars.
Bartholomew Legate, according to Fuller's Church History of Britain, appears to have been a man of fine personal appearance, of high character, scholarly attainments and a very conversant with the Bible. He was a native of
aged about forty. Fuller states in a vile phrase:
"His conversation, for aught I can learn to the contrary, very unblameable; and the poison of heretical doctrine is never more dangerous than when served up in clean cups and washed dishes"
Legate openly expressed his Unitarian views opposing the Athanasian and Nicene creeds. He was cast into Newgate Prison but later released. He resumed preaching and was summoned to appear before the
Court presided over by the Bishop of London.
Convicted of heresy he was handed over to the secular judges.
King James (I of
and VI of Scotland) apparently had many interviews with him to persuade him to
recant but failed. On one occasion he ended up kicking Legate when he learned
that he did not pray to Jesus Christ. On 18 March 1612 he was fastened to the
stake at England
and burned to death surrounded by a huge number of spectators. He was the last
that died at Smithfield
for religious truth. These events are described in a fictional account of Legate's
life by the author Florence Cregg in 1886 which is in the General Assembly's
online document library. Smithfield
Edward Wightman died less than a month later in Lichfield in the
He appears to have been "a visionary person whose eccentric opinions would be
best met by patience and friendly counsel". He unfortunately petitioned King
James who remitted his case to Bishop Neile of Lichfield.
He was tried and condemned and taken to the stake twice; he recanted on the
first occasion, then refused to do so in Court and was burned on 11 April 1612.
on Easter Saturday.
Fuller interestingly concludes that public execution had the effect of increasing public sympathy for those burned amongst the common people and that King James decided that "heretics thereafter, though condemned, should silently and privately waste away in the prison". Many years later in September 1662 we find John Biddle, the founder of Unitarian worship in
, dying in prison after suffering six
terms of imprisonment. (see the
forthcoming "The Struggle For Religious Freedom 3. blog entry) London
Ironically then, these deaths had the effect of rendering public execution for religious belief unpalatable in
The were the last burnings for heresy in England . England
This article is based on "Tercentenary of the Unitarian Martyrs" (B&FUA 1912) and Robert Spears (ed) "Record of Unitarian Worthies" (1870)


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One of the most important things we can do to tackle stress will be enjoying life to the fullest, taking care of ourself and doing what we like the best.
Its important to note that stress results from your attitude towards life and work. Too much of thinking, worrying and burdening ourself about accomplishing a task can make you nervous and lead to unnecessary stress. This cramps your mind and you have no time to think about yourself, others or enjoy life, this nasty cocktail makes stress unevitable. Thus to overcome this, it is advised to take a break from work, go out to some peaceful place, close to nature, may be a beach or a hill station. Fresh air, green trees and picturesque landscape help in the release of stress. Blue ocean or soft golden sand and beach full of sunlight relaxes your mind and body. This gives you a chance to think about yourself and ignite your creative mind to churn up some innovative ideas.
Student or Learner


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CHICAGO, April 28 (UPI) -- Advanced directives -- documents that spell out the kind of healthcare one wants -- are free and easy to complete, but many put it off, U.S. researchers say.
Dr. Kathy Neely, chairwoman of the Medical Ethics Committee at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said experts at Northwestern Medicine -- a program operated by Northwestern Memorial HealthCare and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine -- are encouraging patients to plan ahead, express their wishes and document their healthcare decisions, so there's a plan in place for families to follow.
There are two main forms of advanced directives, power of attorney for healthcare and living will. Power of attorney for healthcare names a specific individual designated to make medical decisions on behalf of the patient, whereas a living will spells out what kind of medical treatments and life-sustaining measures physicians should carry out, Neely said.
Doctors rely on these documents only when patients are unable to make decisions due to the severity of their medical condition, Neely said.
"Advanced directives have the power to lift the burden of confusion from family and friends during a health crisis, allowing them to focus their energy on supporting the patient and one another," Neely said in a statement.
The idea of creating an advanced directive can be daunting, since most people do not wish to think about situations that warrant the document, but having an advanced directive in place puts one in control and should foster peace of mind, Neely said.


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Jyri had explained in his blog how to use ssldump to debug SSL connections. We can also use tshark. On my Linux server, tshark is installed in /usr/sbin/tshark.
Support team guys need these steps for finding out what is happening. First try to reproduce the problem in a test environment with self-signed certificate and follow the steps given in this blog.
I started Oracle iPlanet Web Server 7.0 instance on IP lets say 220.127.116.11 and port 15000.
In NSS Database, I have a Server Certificate named "Server-Cert" as shown below.
$ cd <WS_install-root>/https-<instance>/config
$ ../../bin/certutil -L -d .
First use pk12util to extract server certificate and its key into a file "server.keycert".
$ ../../bin/pk12util -o server.keycert -n "Server-Cert" -d .
Enter Password or Pin for "NSS Certificate DB": nssdbpassword
then I use openssl to get just the RSA private key
$ openssl pkcs12 -nodes -in server.keycert -out key.pem -nocerts -nodes
$ rm server.keycert
If you look at the file, its contents are like :
$ cat key.pem
Edit the file key.pem manually and remove the first 4 lines.
Now the file starts with line "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----" and end with "-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----"
Note that we should be very careful with this key as its not so safe to leave it unprotected.
You can protect it by another password if you like.
I would prefer if wireshark can take NSS DB or Oracle Wallets as input directly.
Now as root run tshark
$ /usr/sbin/tshark -o "ssl.desegment_ssl_records: TRUE" \
-f "tcp port 15000" \
-R "ssl" \
-V -x
when I had not given IP address in ssl.key_list, it wasn't associating key to some of my connections.
Note that
I used capture filter "tcp port 15000" and display filter "ssl".
I used -V to show more verbose output and
I also used -x to get both hex and ASCII dumps.
You can try your own options.
Now send a request through a browser to https://184.108.40.2061:15000/index.html, close the browser and after a while, press control c on the window where tshark is running and kill it.
Delete the private key file key.pem.
ssldebug.log should have a message that says key was loaded successfully
$ grep -i "private key" ssldebug.log
Private key imported: KeyID ...
Note that ssldebug.log MUST NOT contain any error messages about key not being used etc.
Now look at tshark.log, look for "Secure Socket Layer" sections one such section is shown below :
Secure Socket Layer
Session ID Length: 0
In the end you can see SSL data being decrypted :
Decrypted SSL data (1 bytes):
Decrypted SSL data (225 bytes):
This log shows different stages of SSL
$grep "Handshake Protocol" tshark.log
Handshake Protocol: Client Hello
If your product uses Oracle wallet instead of NSS DB, to extract the key and certificate from the Wallet you can use openssl command as shown below
$openssl pkcs12 -in ewallet.p12 -passin
MAC verified OK
If you look at this file it has "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE
KEY-----" and "-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----".
$cat ewallet.txt
Edit this file and copy only the lines starting with "
I wanted to check if we are getting "close notify" in a connection, I saw in the presentation
useful commands to get a particular field in tshark:
$tshark -G fields | fgrep "ssl." and hence used
$tshark -R "ssl.alert_message"


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The Big Bang Theory S06E13: "The Bakersfield Expedition"
So the women-in-the-comic-shop storyline didn't go as poorly as I assumed it would. Cool. Don't get me wrong, it started out pretty bad. For a show that loves to present itself as "for the nerd, by the nerd," The Big Bang Theory tends to fall back on stereotypes often enough that I can't help but wonder if the writers have ever actually been to a comic book shop. The assumption that comics are for boys and not girls isn't new, both inside and outside of geekdom, but the situation is more nuanced than the lazy reinforcement of the gender divide that "The Bakersfield Expedition" presented. It's hard to be a female geek, but they exist, and OMG they even go to comic book stores. No, really, I've seen it. I've DONE it. Carrying around ladyparts ...Read more
Space. The reimagined frontier.
Star Trek, the 1960s TV series that literally launched a thousand ships, will return for a new syndicated run with a computer-assisted face-lift. When the show airs in syndication beginning September 16, it will feature computer-generated effects and a new version of the theme song.
In celebration of the show's 40th Anniversary, all 79 episodes from the original series are being digitally remastered, and key special effects are being redone. The Enterprise spaceship is being enhanced, planets in the background will now appear more realistic, and the floating Starbases the Enterpise docks with will teem with CG inhabitants.
"The exterior of the ship now has depth and detail, and it will fly more dynamically," Michael Okuda, a longtime Trek scenic-art supervisor, told TV Guide. "We're taking great pains to respect the integrity and style of the original. Our goal is to always ask ourselves ...Read more
Appearing as a guest voice on The Simpsons is a sure sign that one has made it in Hollywood. But lagging not too far behind is dropping by Fox's other animated hit, Family Guy. And with that, we say, "Congratulations cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation…you've made it!"
No television program has influenced the world as much as Star Trek has or has established as strong of a fan base. Between the original series, The Next Generation, and the other spin-offs, Star Trek has created a complete universe in which fans have immersed themselves for decades.
We know all about the Federation, the Klingons, the Vulcans, the captains, and the nastiness of phaser deaths. So here we are, 40 long years after Star Trek's debut, still watching the reruns and DVD releases, keeping up on what the next feature film will be about, and waiting eagerly to see what the newly CGI-enhanced original series is going to look like. William Shatner is as active as ever, not only starring in Boston Legal, but also being roasted on Comedy Central, appearing in commercials ...
Patrick Stewart, the British thespian who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard on the long-running series Star Trek: The Next Generation, was taken to the emergency room at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. Upon conducting an electrocardiogram, doctors assessed he was not having a heart attack.
Stewart was in the middle of filming a new British sci-fi television series. Three hours after being admitted to the emergency room, he returned to the set and continued filming. The schedule of the show is tight, and the director reportedly insisted Patrick get checked.
Stewart also plays the role of professor Charles Xavier in the sci-fi film franchise X-Men.
All you space geeks out there have been given a few more months to get your Starfleet Academy uniforms pressed, Vulcan ears reshaped, and tribbles fluffed.
Paramount Studios has delayed the release date of the feature film Star Trek from Christmas of this year to May 8, 2009, according to Variety. If the studio is to be believed, the move was purely financial. Paramount believes the flick will perform better as a summer blockbuster rather than a holiday diversion.
The movie is being entrusted to producer extraordinaire J.J. Abrams (Cloverfield, Lost, Alias), who will direct. An adaptation of the original series of the venerable science-fiction franchise, Star Trek follows Captain Kirk through his younger days as a Starfleet Academy greenhorn.
The cast includes Chris Pine as Kirk, Heroes' Zachary Quinto as Spock, Simon Pegg as Scotty, and John Cho as Sulu. For more on the movie, including the recently ...Read more
Star Trek is being revved up for another big-screen treatment, slated to appear in 2008. According to Variety, the new film will be directed by Lost creator and Mission: Impossible III director J.J. Abrams.
The new film will focus on the origins of the characters James T. Kirk and Spock, made famous in the original series and films by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, respectively. The script will be written by Abrams and MI3 writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.
The film will feature the first meeting between the two characters, when they are cadets at Starfleet Academy, as a futuristic version of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" plays on the soundtrack. The cadets embark on their first adventure together, a space mission wherein Kirk does his first sideways jump-kick. Presumably, younger actors will be cast in the ...Read more
James Doohan, who played the crusty engineer Montgomery "Scotty"
Scott on the original Star Trek series, died Wednesday at his
Redmond, Washington, home. He was 85.
Doohan, a Canadian, affected a Scottish brogue for his character, the stalwart ship's engineer who often pulled the U.S.S. Enterprise out of danger at the last possible second after complaining, "I've given her all she's got!" Doohan became a fixture on the touring "Star Trek" circuit, where he appeared at countless conventions and speaking engagements. Eventually, he contracted Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and had to give up touring in 2004.
Star Trek premiered in 1966 and ran for two and a half seasons. After the show was canceled, its fan base grew, and the series eventually spawned two movie series and four TV spin-offs, including Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek ...Read more
Bidders, at least one of them costumed, paid top dollar for Star Trek items on Thursday at the start of Christie's auction of memorabilia from the seminal television and movie franchise.
A model of the Starship Enterprise E was bought by an online bidder for $132,000, including commission, more than 10 times its $8,000 to $12,000 presale estimate.
Another item, a 30-square-inch (193-square-centimetre) Borg cube model used in Star Trek: First Contact, sold for $96,000 to a telephone bidder. Its estimated value was between $1,000 and $1,500.
"The energy was definitely beyond what I expected," said Cathy Elkies, Christie's director of special collections.
With 1,000 lots of CBS Paramount Television material on offer over three days, Christie's--better known for Picassos and Monets than Starfleet banners and costumes--had anticipated a ...Read more
"Space... The final frontier... These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: To explore strange new worlds... To seek out new life; new civilisations... To boldly go where no one has gone before!" Monologue of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the opening credits Star Trek: The Next Generation is a science fiction show with some action and drama, that presents the watcher with a series of adventures from the crew of the USS Enterprise. The Enterprise is an explorer spaceship composed of a mix of different characters, from various races and cultures, whose crew is on a quest to discover the galaxy secrets and specially their inner secrets.moreless


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About the NetBSD Project
The NetBSD Project is an international collaborative effort of a large group of people, to produce a freely available and redistributable UNIX-like operating system, NetBSD. In addition to our own work, NetBSD contains a variety of other free software, including 4.4BSD Lite2 from the University of California, Berkeley.
One of the primary focuses of the NetBSD project has been to make the base OS highly portable. This has resulted in NetBSD being ported to a large number of hardware platforms. NetBSD is also interoperable, implementing many standard APIs and network protocols, and emulating many other systems' ABIs.
NetBSD is distributed in three forms: formal releases, maintenance branches, and NetBSD-current. Formal releases are done periodically and include well-tested binaries, source code, and installation tools. Maintenance branches usually provide bug and security fixes and minor enhancements. NetBSD-current is a nightly distribution of the latest development sources, meant for people who want the absolute latest software, and don't mind an occasional bug.
NetBSD is largely supported by users, via online chat and forums, mailing lists, and direct contributions. If you're having a problem, it's likely that someone will have seen it before and will be able to help you.
The NetBSD Foundation is incorporated in the United States as a tax-exempt corporation (under Section 501(c)(3) of the US Internal Revenue Code) that devotes itself to the traditional goals and spirit of the NetBSD Project and owns the trademark of the word "NetBSD".
Read more about the history of NetBSD.
A project has no point if it doesn't have goals. Thankfully, the NetBSD Project has enough goals to keep it busy for quite some time. Generally speaking, the NetBSD Project:
In summary: The NetBSD Project provides a freely available and redistributable system that professionals, hobbyists, and researchers can use in whatever manner they wish.
People often ask for a list of differences between NetBSD and other freely available unix systems. It would not be appropriate to try to explain the goals and philosophy behind other projects here - we suggest you check each site for their goals, and make your own decision.
The "BSD" in our name is an obvious recognition of our heritage as a derivative of 4.4BSD and 386BSD.
Our contributors communicate primarily via email and Internet-based chat systems; many of us have never met each other in person. We also use a remote source code management system called CVS which enables a large number of developers to do independent work on the same source tree easily. We believe that the Internet was an enabling technology that made NetBSD possible. The "Net" in our name was thus chosen as a tribute to the Internet.
A large number of people have put a lot of time and effort into making the NetBSD operating system what it is today, either by developing the system itself, supporting its development, or simply using it. Those people can be broken down into the following groups:
Additionally, without the University of California, Berkeley's Computer Systems Research Group and the many contributors to the Berkeley Software Distributions, the NetBSD Project surely would not exist. We thank them for their efforts.


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More Books Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with John H Byk and Marta Merajver on BlogTalkRadio
Blessed are the peacemakers...
a white cop, a black kid
Arnold Penxa is a white cop from black Detroit, Michigan determined to save the lives of children no matter the cost, no matter the color. He is an ex war veteran and retired Detroit policeman, now working for a private school security firm,and he sniffs out a conspiracy for a multiple school shooting. The problem is that nobody wants to believe him except for a few close friends, so he's forced to act mostly alone to bust up the plot. Forget the usual suspects. This is the Mad Motor City where the line between common sense and criminal behavior is never clear.
Get the book HERE at SMASHWORDS
Click and PURCHASE NOW at Amazon


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physical education and training
physical education and training, organized instruction in motor activities that contribute to the physical growth, health, and body image of the individual. The historical roots of physical education go back as far as the ancient Chinese (c.2500 BC), who had a well-developed system of exercise and physical training. In ancient Greece the Athenians were concerned with both physical and mental development and consequently they accorded gymnastics, sports, and rhythms an important educational role. During the period of the Roman Empire, and later during the Middle Ages, physical education was primarily used as a form of military training.
Interest in physical education as a part of the total individual's development was revived during the Renaissance. It was not until the 19th cent., however, that systems of gymnastics were developed in several European countries, notably Germany, Sweden, and England. In the same century gymnastics spread to the United States. Interest in the new system led to a movement to have compulsory physical training in American public schools and to establish physical education in colleges and universities. The first department of physical education at an American college was established at Amherst (1860).
Today, physical education is a required part of most school curricula, and a number of colleges and universities offer degrees in the field. Physical education classes generally include formal exercises, sports, and contests, although an increasing emphasis has been given to such Asian techniques as yoga, karate, and judo. The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (founded 1885) is concerned with improving its fields of education and with increasing the public's knowledge and appreciation of physical education.
See publications of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation; J. F. Williams, Principles of Physical Education (8th ed. 1964); D. Van Dalen, A World History of Physical Education (2d ed. 1971).


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Thursday, 19 February 2009
Homemade Pork Scratchings - Part One
Let's establish some basic facts here: pork scratchings are not a health food. They are a calorie laden, artery furring, belt loosening, hypertension-inducing snack.
You know that rumour about celery being of negative calorific value? Well, these are the opposite. They are like some weird black hole, somehow managing to pack in more calories than you ever thought possible in something so small.
But holy Moses, are they tasty. They are 'get down on your knees and pray to the God of Pork' tasty. They are 'Leap around the room doing the happy dance' tasty. They are 'get me another bowlful of those right now before I throttle you' tasty. They are…oh, you get the idea.
And we're going to make some. You and me. And the best part is, it is really, really easy.
Step one, are you ready for this? Step one is to procure yourself some pork skin. Your butcher will happily dish this stuff out to you for nothing. Ask nicely, smile sweetly and flutter your pretty eyes at him.
Even if you are a dude. It works. Honest.
Step two is to cut it into manageable sized pieces. Anything smaller than three inches square is fine, but don't go too small.
Step three is to lay them on a tray and salt them. Be generous with this. Bear in mind you are making pork scratchings. Alfalfa sprouts, this ain't. You're already packing a hefty whack of your daily calorific allowance, a little less salt isn't suddenly going to turn them into a mung bean and goji berry salad.
Step four is to put the tray in the fridge and, in the words of Al Pacino, 'fugged-aboutit.' Fugged-aboutit for about 48-72 hours.
And that's it. This is easy cooking.
OK, if I've scared you a little then I'm sorry. Let me try and redeem myself a little. Perhaps this isn't something for the health freaks amongst you but this isn't everyday food. This is a rare treat to enjoy with a few bottles of beer.
Plus, most of the fat will render out during the cooking process. PLUS this is natural fat – this isn't something dreamt up in a lab. It's better for you than that microwave meal you ate last week/last night/eight seconds ago.
We'll come back to this, promise.
UPDATE - 20th February. It appears there has been some confusion. This isn't the entire recipe. This, as the title suggests, is only part one. There is more, like the cooking stage, to come. Patience is a virtue.
11 comments:
- dp said...
Um, are they deep fried? Because that's how I like my pork skin. Really.
- 19 February 2009 at 20:56
Are you telling me all you have to do is salt and refrigerate this traditionally deep-fried snack? How is this possible? This recipe could use a little less "witty" commentary and more substance. Also, after googling other scratchings recipes, I discovered this weak recipe posted on 8 other blogs. Very underinforming.
- 19 February 2009 at 22:47
- Cheesewench said...
Have you ever done duck cracklins? Same concept, but done with duck skin, and instead of frying it you slowly poach it in your leftover duck confit oil. I'm so craving duck right now.
- 19 February 2009 at 23:20
- Cheesewench said...
Have you ever done duck cracklins? Same concept, but done with duck skin, and instead of frying it you slowly poach it in your leftover duck confit oil. I'm so craving duck right now.
- 19 February 2009 at 23:21
- Just Cook It said...
dp - no, not deep fried. They get baked but you'll have to wait for that...
Martin - Sorry, I think there has been some confusion. If you'll notice the title of the blog, this is only part one of the recipe. It isn't finished yet.
Cheesewench - No I haven't but I will be!
- 20 February 2009 at 08:19
- Hopie said...
A culinary cliffhanger! That's what you get when you put a writer in charge of a cooking blog. Ok, ok trying to be patient...
- 22 February 2009 at 18:42
- Just Cook It said...
Hopie - lol, it's true. I try and make this little project as much of a page-turner as possible!
- 23 February 2009 at 08:45
- Danny said...
Brilliant article and approach, Alex. Only just found it in the past few minutes.
I am Irish and when I landed here in England a dozen years ago, one of my objectives was to savour England's national cuisine. Things like roast swan (still waiting), toad-in-ze-hole (enjoyable when done really well, but an excellent dish), steak & kidney pud (one of the best when done well) and the famous, nefarious pork scratching.
I quickly discovered that the scratchings that are sold in pubs vary enormously in quality. Some had to be spat out immediately. Good-ish versions were hard to find.
But now, thanks to your directions, I can consider hari-kiri in the happy knowledge that it will be as a result of sampling best of breed scratchings. Thank you for your contribution to the betterment of humankind :-)
- 31 October 2009 at 22:32
or..in other words...
• Obtain pork skin/rind
• cut it into manageable sized pieces. Anything smaller than three inches square is fine, but don't go too small
• lay them on a tray and salt them. Be generous with this
• put the tray in the fridge for about 48-72 hours.
• Turn it on to about 180 degrees C. Remove the tray from the fridge and dry the pork skin.
• Grind a little more salt over both sides of the skin and put it all in the oven. Then wait.
• After ten minutes or so turn the oven down to about 140C
• Roughly every twenty minutes, you'll need to drain off the fat
• they should take about ninety minutes in total. The colour will be deep and rich, they will have curled up into neat little shapes and the skin will be starting to bubble.
• Leave them to cool. Season with black pepper (and more salt, if you wish)
- 20 July 2010 at 19:26
- Pork crunch said...
You really have a wonderful blog! I hope I get to read more posts & get some more information about Pork crunch all this great information and advice about meat & pork scratching .........
- 24 December 2010 at 11:14
- Unknown said...
Chilled Salty Pigskin
Just Cook It (or Chill It)?
- 20 January 2011 at 16:47


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Engineers, also known as "Ossians", "Space Jockeys", "Pilots" or "Mala'kaks"' (Latin: Mundus gubernavi, meaning "Universal Pilot"), are an elusive race of large, sapient, extraterrestrial lifeforms, most notable for experimenting on Xenomorph species. Individual Space Jockeys throughout the franchise come is various appearances and abilities.
Nostromo crew members Dallas, Lambert and Kane encounter its body and realized that it was responsible for broadcasting the signal that led them to the derelict ship. They also noticed that its chest appeared to have been burst open from the inside. Presumably the creature was infected by a Facehugger which resulted in an Alien bursting through its chest. Before dying, the creature broadcast the signal to warn anyone who passed of the danger. There is a theory that it may have been hived in the chair when it was "growing" out of it, though this has since been proven to be false.
Alien director Ridley Scott also referred to the creature as the "Big Dental Patient". These large pilot-like creatures are actually bio-engineers. Their discovery was made in the first Alien movie, when the commercial starship Nostromo set down on the unsurveyed moon LV-426 in response to a signal interpreted as a distress call. The crew found a wrecked derelict spacecraft with a dead lifeform inside, apparently its "pilot". No other remains were found, and they are not referred to in the other films of the series except for the movies Prometheus and Covenant.
The Alien production team, without having a proper technical term to go by, nicknamed the creature found aboard the derelict ship "The Space Jockey." H.R. Giger, who was designer of the derelict and of the 'Space Jockey,' as well as the Xenomorph, originally had named it "The Pilot." The greatest amount of said information can be found in the game Aliens versus Predator 2, in which the species is collectively referred to as Pilot (in contrast to Human, Alien, or Predator). In Steve Perry's book Earth Hive the Space Jockey's race are referred to as collectors as they collect Xenomorph eggs. One is seen later on in the book and is referred to by several different names (spacer, elephant man, elephant-like creature, alien creature).
In the novel Aliens: Original Sin by Michael Friedman, the Pilot race is referred to as the Mala'kak. It is also still referred sometimes to though as the Pilot, or the Pilot's people. They were finally reintroduced into the Alien universe in the movie Prometheus, where they play a very significant role.
Appearances in film and media
The only two movies that the Space Jockey pilot itself has featured in is the original 1979 Alien and the prequel Prometheus. A CGI skull of another member of the (possibly) same race made its appearance the 2007 film Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger was hired on the movie Alien to design the title's creature and the environment of the alien planet. The Space Jockey was one of many things he created for the film. The scene inside the derelict's interior with the Jockey pilot was, according to the writers, an essential scene, although the Fox production company wanted to pull it from the movie for cost reasons. Eventually the filmmakers won and the scene was filmed, the Space Jockey and interior being built full-scale by Giger. The Space Jockey prop was 26 feet (7.9 m) tall. A smaller version of the prop was also built, but was destroyed by arsonists while on display at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. A second casting of the prop was destroyed for unknown reasons while still in the original mold. Pieces of this cast are owned by an anonymous collector in Moorpark, California. A third, partial casting, still exists intact. It is also owned by the same anonymous collector. However, the third cast was not an original production cast, but it is the last known authentic casting from the original mold. The mold itself is owned by an anonymous collector in the San Fernando Valley, in Southern California.
The Space Jockey's race have not appeared or been referred to in any of the subsequent films, but have been featured prominently in many of the video games, Alien books, Predator books, and comics series. They have made appearances in various Aliens comics by Dark Horse Comics, and some readers speculate that they had some connection to the Predators. In the bonus materials of the special edition Alien DVD, director Ridley Scott has expressed the opinion that a film exploring the backstory of the Space Jockey would be an interesting new direction for the series to take. To follow his opinion he has directed the prequel to Alien, Prometheus.
In Mark Verheiden's comic book series Aliens, a Space Jockey-like creature is encountered, and is able to communicate telepathically with humans. It is shown with pink skin, a tail and an elephantine trunk, and yellow, cross-shaped eyes. In the novels the Space Jockey's race are shown to be malevolent, only refraining from attacking humans due to their immense hatred of the Xenomorphs; a common enemy. They intend to wipe out and/or enslave humanity once their war with the Xenomorphs is over. Later books never expand on the idea.
In the more recent book, Aliens: Original Sin, the Space Jockeys are mentioned and discussed throughout the book. Towards the end the reader learns that they are trying to breed a group of Aliens.
The game Aliens versus Predator 2 deals with an experimental lab built to study a Xenomorph hive that itself is built on the ruins of an ancient civilization—although the Pilots are not seen throughout the game, the technology is referred to as Pilot technology, and the architecture of the ruins is similar to that of the derelict spacecraft.
At the end of the marine campaign in the game Aliens versus Predator 2 the player fights a Queen Alien in a large room with a Space Jockey in the center.
When it was announced that Alien director Ridley Scott was making a prequel, it was widely believed that the origins of the space jockey would be shown. There was even an allegedly "leaked" script (whether it was genuine, a hoax, or even a fake script deliberately leaked by the production to throw fans off of the real story is unknown) which had two interconnected stories, one of which had two men working on what was implied to be the home planet of the space jockeys, the other centered around a group of astronauts pursuing what is implied to be the derelict ship. However, these rumors were brought to an end when it was announced that Ridley was making a movie called "Prometheus". While it has been stated that there is a connection between Prometheus and Alien, Scott himself said that the connection was simply in one man working for the same company, but some have speculated that this is another attempt to throw people off the truth. However, the trailers for Prometheus do show quick shots of a room resembling the one found in Alien, suggesting that the space jockey, or at least another individual of the same species does in fact play a role, if only a very small part overall. With the movie's actual release it was revealed that there were in fact many more connections to the original franchise.
In Prometheus (Spoilers)
It is revealed that their trunk-like heads are actually helmets. While the research team explored one of their temples on LV-223, they find one decapitated by a stone door. The artificial human, David, opens the door revealing a giant stone head resembling that of a human. Metal containers holding a black gooey substance surrounds the head. Dr. Shaw and Ford recover the head of the engineer and take it back to the Prometheus. David secretly takes one of the canisters back to the ship. Using 3D imaging resembling a CT scan, it is revealed that the helmet still contained a well preserved head. They are shocked to see how human it is after the helmet is subsequently opened.
It is later shown that the black goo is some form of biological weapon that requires living hosts, first using native worms (shown in the film to be mealworms although this is most likely not officially the species they are intended to be) to gestate a superficially snake-like creatures that kills one of the crew members. The black goo also infects two members of the crew, although the end result is never witnessed. It is also sexually transmitted, infecting Elizabeth Shaw and gestating into a Trilobite.
David heads back to the ship and discovers that one of the engineers is alive in hyper sleep. Weyland is revealed to be alive still (having used a hologram earlier to suggest to the crew he had been dead for years already) and is taken to the ship to communicate with it. After waking, the engineer rips David's head off and knocks the others away. Weyland dies slowly from the impact next to David's head.
The hostile being then reactivates the ship and prepares to finish his 2,000 year old mission by destroying Earth with the black biological substance. The ship is brought down and crashes into the planet's surface after the captain of the Prometheus sets the humans' ship on a suicidal collision course. The engineer is revealed to be still alive and determined to kill the main female character, Elizabeth Shaw. Before succeeding, she opens the maid's room revealing a now monster-sized Trilobite, matured into something similar to a large facehugger.
In the end, a Proto-Xenomorph rips out of the engineer and takes its first breath, extending its primitive second jaw.
Biological and historical information
The Book of Alien notes that the actors and crew felt instinctively that the Space Jockey was a benign creature, though they could not say why. In the novelization of Alien by Alan Dean Foster, Ash describes the Space Jockey's race as a noble people and hopes that mankind will encounter them under more pleasant circumstances. It also states that they were larger, stronger and possibly more intelligent than humans. The first Space Jockey was seen in the original Alien movie as a giant humanoid corpse sitting in front of a telescope-like device aboard the derelict craft. It had been there for an extremely long time, long enough for the corpse to become fossilized. The Jockey that the starship Nostromo's crew found aboard the derelict seemed to be growing out of the chair of the telescope, as if it had fused itself into it. Its rib cage was bent outward; it is evident that a Xenomorph escaped from the creature, though no adult Xenomorphs were encountered on the derelict. It is most likely that any adult xenomorph would have been dead by the time the derelict was discovered due to the lack of food sources. Though, the Xenomorph eggs, we learned, can survive for at least hundreds of years without food or water.
In the comics, the Jockey is shown to have an elephantine trunk. This is inconsistent with the original concept. An inspection of the concept art done by H.R. Giger, shows that the "trunk" is supposed to be an air hose and there is a helmet surrounding the Jockey's head. This is also supported by the fact that soft tissue such as elephant trunks do not fossilize. This does not leave out the possibility of a different kind of trunk, but the one depicted in the comics is very much like an elephant's. None of the works depicting the Jockey with a "trunk" are considered canon - the only canon appearance of the Space Jockey is in Alien and its novelization and directly related works.
In an early script visualized but never written, the Pilot ship had crashed or landed on LV-426 some 10 million years prior to discovery by the Nostromo. It was depicted as having been dragged in some unknown manner to the top of a pyramidal structure, which was the top of an enormous subterranean temple containing the Xenomorph eggs. This is evident in the first Alien film, when Kane notices the hole torn in the bottom of the Pilot ship. It should also be noted that despite later rewrites and storylines, Giger and O'Bannon designed the Pilot so that it appeared to be a sympathetic and friendly lifeform.
Relation to the Xenomorphs, Predators and other races (Spoilers)
Little is known of this race, though it is now known that they possibly created the Xenomorphs—or more specifically, a mutagenic substance that could have led to the creation of the Xenomorphs—and have the same DNA as mankind, proving that they had a hand in their creation, as well. It is also possible that rather than one creating the other, they lived alongside the Xenomorphs. Structures on the walls of the Engineer ship suggest they already know of and somewhat respect or worship the Xenomorphs. The mutagenic substance, the design of their suits and ships, could have all been derived by experiments on the Xenomorphs. Originally, the only real principal theory of their connection to the Xenomorphs was mentioned briefly by Ridley Scott in his director's commentary for the first Alien DVD, is that the Jockey's ship was a "bomber" and that they used them as biogenic weapons to fight an ancient war. There is some evidence to support this, such as the Xenomorph's biomechanical nature. Alien eggs would be used as "bombs" on an enemy planet and then the Xenomorphs would proceed to kill the entire population as they spawned—however, again it has turned out that this is also untrue, as they actually would bomb with metal canisters that would then presumably mutate local life into a devastating form. It seems that the human race was intended as guinea pigs to test the bombing procedures for their enemies yet this never came to pass.
This contrasts with Dan O'Bannon's original intention that the derelict ship stumbled upon a cache of Xenomorph eggs that already lay dormant on LV-426. For budgetary and story-telling reasons, the pyramid that would have housed these eggs, and its exploration by the crew of the Nostromo, was scrapped from the film. Thus in the final analysis both Alien and Aliens seem to support the former theory over Cobb's. (Viz. Ripley's quote during the inquest in Aliens: "Ma'am, I already said it was not indigenous. It was a derelict spacecraft. An alien ship. It was not from there. Do you get it?"). Regardless, the Pilot was impregnated with a Xenomorph and killed, though it managed to send out a warning to any passing ships to stay away from the moon. The unexplained purpose of the "blue mist" that covers the eggs in the cargo hold does not offer direct support for this conclusion, but appears to indicate the possibility that the eggs were intentionally put in stasis, as if stored for later, possibly military use.
The Yautjas use Xenomorphs for hunting in most Alien vs Predator stories. We know that the Predators have had direct and violent contact with the Space Jockey race, either fighting or hunting them, because of the Space Jockey skull in the trophy room that appears on the scout ship in the opening sequence of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Whether the Predators found the Aliens on their own (unlikely on LV-426.or they would have taken care of the Alien eggs and Alien would never take place), received them from the Jockeys, or discovered them in some other way, is still a matter of speculation. Odds are that they discovered them on their own, because they would have eliminated the entire species if the Jockeys had control over the Xenomporphs.
It used to be considered possible, as well, that the crashed ship found in Alien could have just been the result of a brief encounter between the Space Jockey and the Xenomorphs, much the same as what happens to the human protagonists of the film. Some analyses of the first film claim that the egg chamber into which Kane descends is far too deep to be part of the derelict structure as we see it from the outside. It could thus be an underground cavern; however, it more likely represents a part of the derelict that was buried under the ground upon impact. This theory has been proven false with the storyline in Prometheus.
Alan Dean Foster's novelization states that the Jockey was trying to warn humans away from the aliens while Mark Verheiden's graphic novel indicates that they planned on invading Earth after the Xenomorphs wiped out all the humans. It should be noted, in respect to that, that according to the comic book The Destroying Angels that the biomechanoids have been around from long before mankind even came to exist (their civilization having fallen 1.6 billion years ago due to the Aliens), and that the warning beacon may have been to warn their own kind.
A lesser-known history of the Space Jockey's race comes from an older source than the DVDs. According to "The Alien Portfolio" by John Mollo and Ron Cobb, Cobb tells of Alien creator Dan O'Bannon's backstory where the Jockey's race had simply landed on the planet on a course of exploration and had encountered the eggs there. Since the planet was dying, and they didn't realize how dangerous the eggs were, they loaded their cargo hold with the eggs and prepared to lift off. Before they were to take off, one of the crew was parasitized and "gave birth" to an alien. The crew eventually killed the alien, but at the cost of hulling their ship. As they were dying out, one of them had set up a transmission warning other ships not to land there and suffer the same fate.
This is mentioned in the novelization of Alien by Alan Dean Foster, during the scene where Ash was telling Ripley, Lambert and Parker about their chances against the alien. Out of all sources, the Portfolio is the only one connected to the film that gives a complete series of events describing the derelict's encounter with the aliens.
Lastly, it should be noted that the Jockey, human, and predator race share similar basic morphology. Despite their many differences, all are upright, bipedal humanoids. We know from circumstantial evidence that the Predators and the Space Jockeys have existed for millions of years. The Predators in AvP: Requiem have skulls of dinosaurs adorning their trophy walls. The Space Jockey in Alien had already begun to fossilize, and the presence of the Jockey skull in the same trophy room, while not proving it, does support the theory that they are of ancient age.
When a Jockey is impregnated by a xenomorph a giant xenomorph emerge known as a Jock-Xenomorph. It seems to have no clear alliance with anything, including other xenomorphs. It is brown in color, the tail has what appeared to be holes in it, and it has short dorsal spines compared to other aliens and to the spines in ratio to their body.
TechnologyThe Space Jockeys are clearly a technologically powerful, space-faring race of advanced age. How the Yautjas, the other known interstellar race, developed their capacity for space travel is still not known, but the ending of Requiem clearly implies that the advanced human technology seen in Alien and beyond, including FTL travel and Atmosphere Processing, is a direct result of our studying Yautja technology.
The cargo hold of the Space Jockey's ship was filled with eggs of Xenomorphs (the first stage in the Xenomorph life cycle), which were held in stasis beneath a blue electrical mist. It was speculated by fans that the Space Jockey's race are the creators of the Xenomorphs because of the similarities in design between the spacecraft and the biomechanical Xenomorphs, but as revealed in Alien: Covenant, David was the "creator" of the Xenomorphs.
The novelization by Alan Dean Foster, on the other hand, states that Space Jockey's race found them on LV-426. However, the Space Jockey's race have advanced technology, leaving open the possibility that they had a hand in the Xenomorph's creation.
External links
- Alien (1979) (First appearance)
- Prometheus (2012)
- Covenant (2017)


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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has updated his status to "married."
Zuckerberg and 27-year-old Priscilla Chan tied the knot at a small ceremony at his Palo Alto, Calif., home Saturday, capping a busy week for the couple.
Zuckerberg took his company public in one of the most anticipated moves in Wall Street history Friday. And Chan graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, on Monday, the same day Zuckerberg turned 28.
A company spokeswoman said Zuckerberg designed the ring featuring "a very simple ruby" that he designed himself.
The ceremony took place in Zuckerberg's backyard before fewer than 100 guests, who all thought they were there to celebrate Chan's graduation.
NBC Bay Area's Monte Francis saw Billie Joe Armstrong, lead singer of the rock band Green Day, leaving Zuckerberg's house around 8:30 p.m. with his guitar in hand.
Guests danced to a variety of songs, including Ciara's "One, Two Step," Michael Jackson's "Rock with You" and "Billie Jean," Katy Perry's "California Gurls" and Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer."
Neighbors didn't seem to mind the noise.
"Nah it's cool," neighbor Keith Kleiner said. "Everybody likes to party, why shouldn't Zuckerberg party?"
The couple met at Harvard and have been together for more than nine years. No word yet on where the couple will be spending their honeymoon.


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I'll miss watching Tim Russert. But perhaps his absence will be a reminder – and a motivator – that I could, and should, be in better shape. I'm thinking so.
I thought of this quite a bit during the days after it happened, but I was out of town and not plugged in and couldn't write about it then. I had elected not to take my laptop for what was intended as a single night's stay-over. I did write in my notebook, but anything I wrote in my notebook would have to be transcribed. And I couldn't e-mail it anyway.
The single night stay-over became an impromptu four-day weekend. At first I regretted not having my laptop with me, but then not being able to do certain work became an agreeable consequence of my circumstance. I balanced the diluting battery power of my cell phone, with which I judiciously navigated through the pound or two of daily e-mail and sent occasional messages to the newsroom. I didn't have my charger (the phone was well charged for a one-night stay with the fam), and I was a few miles from my car charger – from a contemporary communication point of view, I was out to lunch (a not unpleasant place to be).
I heard about Tim Russert's passing as I was wrapping publication of the Weekend Old Colony Memorial, filling in for editor Tamson Burgess, who was actually taking a day off. The newsroom was mostly empty when reporter Casey Meserve poked her head into my office and asked, "Did you hear…?" I hadn't. Like the rest of the world, I was stunned. But deadline loomed, and I had to focus. I'd think about it later.
When I got home that night I tuned into MSNBC to hear Russert friends and associates tell viewers about his passing, apparently from a heart attack, while working. One after another television journalist talked about his dedication to his craft, his propensity for preparation, his marvelous character, his affection for friends and family. I didn't have to hear it to believe it. I'd listened to Russert for years, and he was simply believable – the phrase "what you see is what you get" applied to Russert. Not that I knew it to be true, but it was very easy to believe. Some people we just know are genuine.
That Sunday I watched Meet the Press, curious to see how Russert would be remembered on his show. Tom Brokaw hosted the program (he will moderate it through the election season), and he was joined by a cast of Russert regulars. They talked in loving and respectful terms about this bear of a journalist and teddy bear of a man. He was the sort of guy we'd all like to know – you just knew that.
I add my name to the long list of Russert admirers. Always well prepared, he queried his guests mightily, often as they grimaced, groaned and groped for a way out of the corner he often pinned them in. From the years I watched him I believed he was an equal opportunity interviewer – he didn't care what political party his guest was from; he'd nail anybody. And do so politely. One of his classic moves was to pierce his guest with such penetrating questions – which the guest simply could not answer publicly – as to put the person clearly on the spot with no way out, and then Russert would let him off the proverbial hook. You could practically hear the guest beg, "No mas…"
Russert tutored politically under the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan before going into journalism. On his interview program, which I recall watching several years ago, while, I believe, Moynihan was still a senator (he left the Senate in 2001), Russert asked him a leading question, and Moynihan responded after a pause with a reworking of a quote he offered after John Kennedy was killed. I believe these quotes to be accurate, but if they are not precisely so, they are close.Russert asked: "What does being Irish mean today?"
Moynihan replied: "Being Irish today means knowing the world will break your heart someday."
It was as if Moynihan was asserting (reasserting?) the blue-collar, somewhat victimized base of our Irish brethren, the foundation from which his people would continue to rise. Russert, of proud Irish decent (and, of course, highly accomplished and successful), appeared to feel the words in his heart. It lends deeper understanding of his endearment to his Buffalo, N.Y., background and the support of his blue-collar Buffalo sports teams, who didn't always win, but who were always in the game.
I realized after watching the conversations about Russert on TV that he and I had three things in common. We were both born in May of 1950 (he was a couple of weeks older than I), we both had careers in journalism, and we both gained weight on the job (I haven't been to the gym in a couple of years, and it shows). The similarities stop there, but the message doesn't. His colleagues suggested that Russert put off attention to his health because of his work. I wonder if perhaps I do, too. I don't get proper exercise, I could certainly eat better, and I sleep little. Except for pushing the waistline, I feel OK. But, I'm guessing, so did Russert before he toppled.
I'll miss watching Tim Russert as part of my Sunday morning routine – coffee, chores and Meet the Press. But perhaps his absence will be a reminder – and a motivator – that I could, and should, be in better shape. I'm thinking so. It takes a lot more than just thinking about it. But it begins there.
Scott C. Smith is a senior managing editor with GateHouse Media New England, based in Plymouth. Anyone else tired of the weight-challenged club? E-mail email@example.com.