Lion Warnings Last week, we warned you that **YOU SHOULD NOT UPGRADE** to Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) at this time. This week, we wanted to emphasize Lion's incompatibility problems with newly updated information for you: - Microsoft Office 2008, Microsoft Office 2004, and Microsoft Office X will never run under Lion. - Microsoft Office 2011 has multiple problems with Lion, and we are waiting for an update from Microsoft. - QuickBooks (any version earlier than version 2011) will never run under Lion. - QuickBooks 2011 has multiple problems with Lion, and we are waiting for an update from Intuit. - Quicken will never run under Lion -- you will need to switch to a completely different finance program. - iCal/BusyCal calendar syncing via MobileMe: We are unsure at this time if this will continue to work under Lion. - FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server (any version earlier than version 11) will never run under Lion. - FileMaker Pro 11 has multiple problems with Lion, and we are waiting for an update from FileMaker. - FileMaker Server 11 will not currently run under Lion, and we are waiting for an update from FileMaker. - Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign (any version earlier than CS5) will never run under Lion. - Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign CS5 have multiple problems with Lion, and we are waiting for an update from Adobe. - Canon ImageRunner printers and photocopiers and scanners will not currently work with Lion, and we are waiting for an update from Canon. - 1Password has some problems with Lion, and we are waiting for an update from the developer. - Other software, hardware, and printers may not work under Lion, until updates are released. If you are thinking about buying a new Mac, please buy one now so you can still get a Mac that runs Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). Apple will soon release Macs that are Lion-only Macs, and you do not want to get one of those Macs at this point in time. Scott Rose (323) 954-1978 President, ScottWorld Mac • iPhone • iPad Consulting, Support, Programming http://www.scottworld.com *** Archaeologists Excavate Biblical Giant Goliath's Hometown July 11, 2011 http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/11/in-israel-archaeologists-unearth-bibles-bad-guys TEL EL-SAFI, Israel – They haven't found the slingshot -- not yet anyway. But as archaeologists continue excavation at Gath -- the Biblical home of Goliath, the giant warrior improbably felled by the young shepherd David and his sling -- they are piecing together the history of the Philistines, a people remembered chiefly as the bad guys of the Hebrew Bible. Close to three millennia ago, the city of Gath was on the frontier between the Philistines, who occupied the Mediterranean coastal plain, and the Israelites, who controlled the inland hills. The city's most famous resident, according to the Book of Samuel, was Goliath, famously felled by a well slung stone. The Philistines "are the ultimate other, almost, in the biblical story," said Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, the archaeologist in charge of the excavation. The latest summer excavation season began this past week, with 100 diggers from Canada, South Korea, the United States and elsewhere, adding to the wealth of relics found at the site since Maier's project began in 1996. In a square hole, several Philistine jugs nearly 3,000 years old were emerging from the soil. One painted shard just unearthed had a rust-red frame and a black spiral: a decoration common in ancient Greek art and a hint to the Philistines' origins in the Aegean. The Philistines arrived by sea from the area of modern-day Greece around 1200 B.C. They went on to rule major ports at Ashkelon and Ashdod, now cities in Israel, and at Gaza, now part of the Palestinian territory known as the Gaza Strip. At Gath, they settled on a site that had been inhabited since prehistoric times. Digs like this one have shown that though they adopted aspects of local culture, they did not forget their roots. Even five centuries after their arrival, for example, they were still worshipping gods with Greek names. Archaeologists have found that the Philistine diet leaned heavily on grass pea lentils, an Aegean staple. Ancient bones discarded at the site show that they also ate pigs and dogs, unlike the neighboring Israelites, who deemed those animals unclean -- restrictions that still exist in Jewish dietary law. Diggers at Gath have also uncovered traces of a destruction of the city in the 9th century B.C., including a ditch and embankment built around the city by a besieging army -- still visible as a dark line running across the surrounding hills. The razing of Gath at that time appears to have been the work of the Aramean king Hazael in 830 B.C., an incident mentioned in the Book of Kings. Gath's importance is that the "wonderful assemblage of material culture" uncovered there sheds light on how the Philistines lived in the 10th and 9th centuries B.C., said Seymour Gitin, director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem and an expert on the Philistines. That would include the era of the kingdom ruled from Jerusalem by David and Solomon, if such a kingdom existed as described in the Bible. Other Philistine sites have provided archaeologists with information about earlier and later times but not much from that key period. "Gath fills a very important gap in our understanding of Philistine history," Gitin said. In 604 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon invaded and put the Philistines' cities to the sword. There is no remnant of them after that. Crusaders arriving from Europe in 1099 built a fortress on the remains of Gath, and later the site became home to an Arab village, Tel el-Safi, which emptied during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948. Today Gath is in a national park. An Israeli town founded in 1955 several miles to the south, Kiryat Gat, was named after Gath based on a misidentification of a different ruin as the Philistine city. The memory of the Philistines -- or a somewhat one-sided version -- was preserved in the Hebrew Bible. The hero Samson, who married a Philistine woman, skirmished with them repeatedly before being betrayed and taken, blinded and bound, to their temple at Gaza. There, the story goes, he broke free and shattered two support pillars, bringing the temple down and killing everyone inside, including himself. One intriguing find at Gath is the remains of a large structure, possibly a temple, with two pillars. Maeir has suggested that this might have been a known design element in Philistine temple architecture when it was written into the Samson story. Diggers at Gath have also found shards preserving names similar to Goliath -- an Indo-European name, not a Semitic one of the kind that would have been used by the local Canaanites or Israelites. These finds show the Philistines indeed used such names and suggest that this detail, too, might be drawn from an accurate picture of their society. The findings at the site support the idea that the Goliath story faithfully reflects something of the geopolitical reality of the period, Maeir said -- the often violent interaction of the powerful Philistines of Gath with the kings of Jerusalem in the frontier zone between them. "It doesn't mean that we're one day going to find a skull with a hole in its head from the stone that David slung at him, but it nevertheless tells that this reflects a cultural milieu that was actually there at the time," Maeir said. *** Montauk Project New Film Takes On Allegations Of Mind Control, Time Travel And Alien Encounters At Military Base Lee Speigel lee.speigel@huffingtonpost.com 06/21/11 http://weirdnews.aol.com/2011/06/21/montauk-project_n_873959.html In a year when a respected investigative journalist suggested that the Roswell UFO scare may have been the handiwork of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele and Joseph Stalin, along comes another story involving space aliens and outrageous experimentation on a U.S. military base. Montauk, N.Y. -- like Area 51, written about in Annie Jacobsen's new book -- has been the center of an otherworldly conspiracy theory for decades. Believers say that people were kidnapped at a U.S. Air Force base and subjected to mind control and time travel experiments. And extraterrestrials somehow had a hand in it all. It's been dubbed "The Montauk Project," and is the subject of an upcoming docu-drama, "Montauk Chronicles," executive produced, directed and written by independent filmmaker Christopher Garetano. But nobody has been able to actually prove these allegations. And all that's left of the Montauk facility -- currently a state park -- are the above-ground remnants of the original Air Force base. According to a document issued by the Air Force Historical Studies office, the Montauk base, known as Camp Hero, was decommissioned in the early 1980s. Montauk is a small seaside resort town on the tip of Long Island that draws vacationers to its shores every year. Camp Hero, located a short distance outside of Montauk, has roots as far back as the Revolutionary War, during which it was used to test military cannons. Later, during World War II, Camp Hero served as a coastal defense installation against any possible Nazi intrusions into America. "Montauk Chronicles" follows the story of three men, Alfred Bielek, Stewart Swerdlow and Preston Nichols, who claim that Camp Hero ended up as an underground site for scientific atrocities. Bielek, a retired electrical engineer, maintains he was part of the mysterious Philadelphia Experiment, where in 1943, the U.S. Navy allegedly tried to make a small destroyer undetectable to radar. The test ended in disastrous results, including the ship disappearing from the Philadelphia Navy yard and -- purportedly -- traveling through time. According to Bielek's story, he was transported ahead in time from Philadelphia, and extraterrestrials were responsible for the technology used in the Philadelphia Experiment. He also maintains he was recruited in 1970 to work on mind control and time travel projects at the Montauk facility. Swerdlow's story involves being kidnapped as a teenager from his Long Island, N.Y., home, taken to the Montauk base, and subjected to a variety of experiments. "Beatings, a lot of torture, electrical shock, burials, near-drownings," Swerdlow said. "They'd bring you to the point of death, and then they would save you, and the person doing this would be your rescuer or god, and would say, 'I'm the one that saved you and remember that.' And that became your handler -- your programmer." Swerdlow recalls being part of some horrific experiments while at the Montauk facility. "The walls were very damp, oozing water, so it appeared to be deep underground or even underwater. I was always on this cold, hard table. Sometimes there'd be other people around, either my age or older, and electrodes were put into me and injections." All three men claim to have seen extraterrestrials while at the underground Camp Hero facility. "Well, there were quite a number of aliens at Montauk," said Bielek. "Some were there on a semi-permanent basis. A lot of them were just visitors that came in and looked at what they wanted to see and went back home. "There were little grays there, which I suspected were degenerated humans from out of the future. Large gray aliens (which are a different species) were also at Montauk, and they were highly intelligent." Nichols, like Bielek, was an electrical engineer, who says he worked with Bielek in the mind control and psychic aspects of the Montauk Project. "There were definitely alien beings at Montauk," Nichols said. "We had the little grays and the larger grays as well as a variety of reptilian beings. The large grays didn't want anything to do with me because they couldn't reach me telepathically. When I entered a room they would leave. "They were the strangest thing that I ever saw. At that point, I was beginning to doubt my own sanity." And Swerdlow also saw an alien presence at Montauk. "Most of the time my interaction was with human beings, but I did come into close contact with alien beings. "I did see, occasionally, intelligent reptilian humanoid beings as well as gray aliens who were once human beings but were physically altered as a result of degeneration and radiation toxins in their system. Most of them communicated with mental telepathy." Garetano shot much of his upcoming film at the actual site of Camp Hero. "When you walk through the area now, you see this giant, imposing radar tower that still stands," Garetano told AOL Weird News. "The park currently has strange regulations: You're not supposed to use any radio equipment there and you are cautioned about unexploded ordnance. "While filming my movie here, I couldn't understand why people are allowed to walk around a park where there are still unexploded devices or why radio equipment isn't allowed if the radar tower is now defunct and the entire base is completely non-operational." That question may be answered by a brochure issued in 2001 for visitors to Camp Hero which includes a section called "Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) Warnings": Please follow the following steps if you think you have come across Unexploded Ordnance: Never transmit radio frequencies (walkie talkies, citizen's band radio) near UXO. Never attempt to touch, move or disturb UXO. Avoid any area where UXO is located. Garetano thinks it's "strange that they don't want you to use radio devices that may set off unexploded bombs, yet they allow the public to walk around a potentially high danger area!" In addition to the giant abandoned radar tower at the Camp Hero site, there are also huge doors, or bunkers, cemented and sealed into the side of several hills in the forest area. Also, strewn throughout the wooded park are numerous things that appear to be above-ground manhole covers. "These are entrances that obviously go down into something," Garetano said. "There are claims from people that these are entrances to underground tunnel systems that ran beneath the military base that allegedly would take you to the true entrance of the facility." Among the bizarre things claimed by the individuals who say they took part in the Montauk events was a device they called the Montauk Chair. Allegedly, a powerful psychic sat in the chair and was able to materialize objects out of thin air -- manifesting them into physical reality. After spending countless hours with the men who are the subjects of his film, Garetano says he didn't always believe their stories. "At first I didn't. These men have not benefited financially -- they didn't gain anything from this. And they've endured ridicule as they maintain their story," Garetano said. To be sure, this story is filled with allegations, suppositions, unsupported claims and far-out "Stargate 1"-type movie and television science fiction. It certainly describes any typical urban legend. The Montauk Project shows no signs of going away anytime soon. *** The Latest on Caffeine as an Ergogenic Aid Charles Poliquin http://www.charlespoliquin.com/ArticlesMultimedia/Articles/Article/26/The_Latest_on_Caffeine_as_an_Ergogenic_Aid.aspx Caffeine is probably the most widely used ergogenic aid of all times. It has made many fortunes. Imagine the World without caffeine? A U.S. based prohibition on caffeine like they did on alcohol in the thirties? Organized crime would even get stronger, for sure! Here is what you should know about the latest findings on caffeine: 1. Its positive effects on sports performance mainly come from enhanced mood, reduced perception of pain, and adenosine antagonism. 2. For best results, capsules work better than tablets, and the optimal time is 45 to 60 minutes before exercise. Using a mixture of 2 ounces of club soda with two ounces of grapefruit juice to swallow them will increase the speed and the magnitude of coffee concentration in the blood stream. 3. For endurance improvement, only 1.3 to 2 mg/kg seems to be enough to increase performance, probably due to increased fatty acid metabolism and glycogen sparing. 4. For strength training, best results are seen once the 7 mg/kg threshold is reached, with 10 mg/kg being the upper limit where no further additional gains are seen. Elite athletes tend to respond better to caffeine than weekend warriors. Using coffee as your sole source of caffeine pre-workout would require an enormous amount of coffee. As in 6-9 cups for a 90 kg lifter. Capsules remain the best option. 5. Caffeine eliciting dehydration is a myth. Research studies show no greater change in urine loss or fluid when compared to a placebo. 6. Even though caffeine raises blood pressure short term, caffeine and hypertension are not related in long term studies. 7. The polyphenols in coffee improve insulin sensitivity, but caffeine in large amounts may negatively alter insulin sensitivity, but the jury is not out yet on whether caffeine use in athletes increases diabetes risk. *** Here be monsters Sceptics love to poke fun at cryptozoologists, but there are strange creatures out there whose existence has yet to be confirmed by science Carole Jahme Friday 15 July 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/jul/15/here-be-monsters-cryptozoology I'm not sure who or what is more monstrous: the smug sceptics or the scant cryptids. Let me explain. Having interviewed Debbie Martyr (research conservationist with Flora and Fauna International) 12 years ago about her apparent sighting of the primate cryptid the orang pendek in Sumatra and more recently interviewing ape expert Ian Redmond on his research into sasquatch/big foot (supported by David Attenborough and Jane Goodall), over the years I have acquired a fascination for primate cryptids. So I was eager to attend a recent lecture at the Zoological Society London (ZSL) entitled "Cryptozoology: science or pseudoscience?". Henry Gee, a senior editor at Nature looking and behaving like a jovial, off-duty roadie dressed in grubby T shirt and ruby crocs, chaired the event in which Drs Michael Woodley, Charles Paxton and Darren Naish presented their crypto data. Paxton reminded us that atmospheric electrical disturbances such as sprites, blue jets and elves were only identified in the 1980s and 1990s when they were photographed. Until then, anecdotal reports of flashes of light above the clouds were frequently ignored. Scientists used to dismiss accounts of meteorites as paranormal fantasy and poured scorn on eyewitness descriptions from lucky survivors of rogue waves – until satellite images in the 1990s confirmed their existence. The mountain gorilla wasn't believed to exist by Western science until two were shot dead in 1902, and the bonobo was not credited with being a unique species until 1930. In the past 20 years, 70 species of primate have been newly described, including a Vietnamese gibbon and the Bili ape: a large, sub-species of chimp from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2009, a Papua New Guinean crater yielded up a cat-sized species of woolly rat, among other previously undiscovered creatures. In an age of satellites and robotic submersibles, it's easy to assume, with a "been there done that" attitude, that we know all there is to know about Earth. Clearly nature is far from being fully understood by science, and yet some sceptics persist in contemptuously sneering at almost everything outside of their immediate knowledge. With their high-systemised inability to tolerate newness, they stymie open scientific debate, bully original thinkers and drive away those with fascinating new data on unknown species. I was sad to witness this and their non-reflective guffawing at ZSL. Paxton and Naish seemed particularly conscious of this spiked criticism and made a point of distancing themselves from misleading and bad science. Nothing wrong with that, but they were so ardent in this respect that the friend I was with mistakenly thought the panel were themselves anti-cryptozoology. The three speakers focused their statistical analysis on sea monsters, Paxton saying that he prefers the term monster to cryptid. He also wanted to assure the audience that, "taxpayers have no fear, your money is not spent on crypto research, scientists do this in their spare time." Paxton's talk underscored the fact that anomalies should be actively pursued and science should be about wonderment. But how should science deal with low-frequency phenomena that might well be real? One approach is to break witness reports down and analyse interesting properties. To illustrate, Paxon used his data of "initial reported distance" from sea monsters given by witnesses aboard boats. Significantly, initial sighting are usually reported close to the boat. Paxton wasn't sure why this might be. I would suggest that it is because witnesses do not know what they do not know – they have to see it close-up to be confident they are witnessing something unexpected. An unknown creature seen at a distance could be dismissed as a dolphin or a piece of wood. Initial sightings of terrestrial cryptids also tend to be at close proximity, and again the same factor may well apply. Naish addressed the "prehistoric survivor paradigm". Some 65m years ago, during the late cretaceous, the coelacanth, the plesiosaur and many other species disappeared from the fossil record during a mass extinction. But in 1938 and again in 1999 two species of coelacanth were discovered. This Lazarus-like survival of the coelacanth gives confidence to those who suggest a long-necked surviving plesiosaur swims in our lochs and oceans. As a palaeontologist Naish was able to explain how the vertebrae of plesiosaurs could not move in the flexible, swan-like motion often described in reported sightings. But he believes this is a case of wrong classification rather than an indication that sea monsters do not exist. We were reminded of the new Indonesian species of ray and shark and the two recently identified (1991/2002) species of beaked whale, inhabiting a deep-sea niche: the deep sea and its inhabitants are barely understood. During the Q&A an elderly sceptic quipped: "Some people say they've seen aliens and have even talked to them!" The panel trod an uneasy path as they attempted to accommodate these sorts of jibes while keeping on track. The three speakers confirmed that their modelling indicates there are between 10 and 50 large species of marine animals yet to be described. They were also in agreement that marine sampling methods for cryptids must be established and remain constant. For those readers left wanting more, the Weird Weekend is the biggest gathering of cryptozoologists in the world, held in Devon in August. Naish will again be speaking.