Another day, another bit of great news, folks. Everyones favorite agency, DARPA, is promising to develop a "travel adapter" for the human body. The travel adapter, intended for "warfighters," is supposed to play a magical trick on biology and program the soldiers sleep cycles at will, as well as disinfect food and water in the soldiers belly in real time. The miracle is going to be a transient and non-genetic "implantable or ingestible bioelectronic carrier."

Certainly, nothing can go wrong, and the proof is this very professionally done image on their website that shows us how one can "program" physiology by adjusting a slider in an app. This image alone is a masterpiece of seduction, selling the appealing-but-totally-fictional concept of getting "something for nothing," as if pulling it out of a magicians hat.

Betraying the Soldiers

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty of DARPAs ADAPTER program yes, the name of the program is acronym but they also call the device an "adapter," DARPA word weavers are crafty like that! I want to express my indignation at the entire vampire-like model of sacrificing human beings to senseless wars.

These wars are fought primarily to make a small crew of shameless people obscenely rich, and the biggest "beneficiaries" of the cruelty dont fight in those wars themselves, just organize the dark business of shedding other peoples blood.

Such betrayal! A lot of people on the ground join the military for noble reasons. Yes, some join out of desperation, to lift themselves out of poverty but many join for very sacred reasons, out of courage, to protect their own.

And then those brave young people get dragged into treacherous carnage, maimed in body and spirit, and sometimes experimented on (here is one pre-2020 example of the U.S. military experimenting on its soldiers, here is another, and we know what happened with COVID "vaccines").

Bioweapon Experimentation on Soldiers

Here is a phenomenally frank 2015 paper titled, "Science wars How much risk should soldiers be exposed to in military experimentation?"

The paper argues that because the warfare is shifting toward the use of bioweapons, it is appropriate to experiment on soldiers as they have already agreed to risk their lives for the benefit of the state:

"With the threat of biological war becoming a more and more dis...

In 2004 I was interviewed by Craig Newnes for The Psychologist, a journal published by the British Psychological Society. The occasion was the publication of my first book, The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology Under the Microscope. Upon publishing my fourth book, Schizophrenia and Genetics: The End of An Illusion (2023), psychologist/author Mary Boyle invited me for a new interview to discuss the book and the changes that have occurred in behavioral science genetic research since 2004. Marys questions, and my answers, are found below. Jay Joseph

Mary Boyle: Jay, you were interviewed in 2004 about your book The Gene Illusion. It was a detailed critique of genetic research on schizophrenia, IQ and criminality and you concluded that there was little if any scientifically valid evidence in support of genetic influences on human behavioral differences. Your latest book, Schizophrenia and Genetics: The End of An Illusion has just been published. It, and your many other publications, show that a lot has happened in psychiatric and behavioral genetics research over the last 20 years. Well be talking about what has and hasnt changed and whether your earlier conclusion still stands. But first, tell us how you became interested in this area and what keeps you engaged with it.

Jay Joseph: I became interested in the genetics of schizophrenia topic as a U.S. clinical psychology graduate student in the mid-1990s. The arguments fascinated me, and because I saw the genetic argument as weak, it was stunning to hear that the debate had been largely closed in favor of genetics by the 1980s. My desire to learn more about genetic research led me...

Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published December 8, 2018.

Researchers from Londons University of Roehampton suggest people who walk backward perform better on memory tests than those who stand still or walk forward. If you are looking to inject new energy into your exercise routine, you might want to try walking or running backward. Beyond the physical benefits to your body, exercising backward may boost your brain power, balance and more.

Walking Backward Shown to Boost Your Memory

In a study published in the journal Cognition,¹ researchers from the University of Roehampton (UR) in London have found walking backward can boost your memory. After inviting 114 volunteers to watch a video featuring a woman having her handbag stolen, participants were asked questions about what they saw. Upon completion of the video:

• One subset of the group was asked to walk forward 30 feet (9.1 meters)
• A second subset was told to walk the same distance backward
• People assigned to the control group were told to stand still

Based on their responses to 20 questions about the events in the video, the group that walked backward answered, on average, 10% more of the questions correctly than the control group and those who walked forward. All five variations of the experiment, including one in which the forward or backward movement was simulated, yielded similar effects.

In each scenario, the participants walking backward consistently got the most answers right. These outcomes resulted in the team of researchers, led by Aleksandar Aksentijevic, Ph.D., senior lecturer in psychology at UR, suggesting the experiment is an indication that a link between the concepts of 'time' and 'space' are essential to the way our minds form memories.²

It's a partial vindication of this idea that time is really expressed via space, Aksentijevic told the Daily Mail.³ That said, he suggests more studies are needed to unravel the mysteries of why motion, real or imagined, has the potential to improve our memory.

'I am sure that some of this work could be useful in helping people remember things, but how [that will be possible] is a question [needing] more research, he noted.⁴

Walking Backward Shown to Improve Cognitive Control, Balance

A 2009 b...

PMID:  Brain Behav. 2023 Jun 21:e3108. Epub 2023 Jun 21. PMID: 37340873 Abstract Title:  The impact of humor therapy on people suffering from depression or anxiety: An integrative literature review. Abstract:  OBJECTIVES: To identify and synthesize existing research on the effectiveness and feasibility of multiform humor therapy on people suffering from depression or anxiety, with the hope of benefiting future research.METHODS: An integrative literature review of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed studies was performed. The PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Embase, and CINAHL databases were searched up to March 2022. Two independent reviewers conducted each stage of the review process, by assessing eligibility using preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analyses (PRISMA) and quality appraisal using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool, and data extraction.RESULTS: In this integrative review, 29 papers were included, containing 2964 participants across a diverse range of studies, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. The articles were from the United States, Australia, Italy, Turkey, South Korea, Iran, Israel, China, and Germany. The findings indicated that most of the subjects thought humor therapy was effective in improving depression and anxiety while a few participants considered the effect insignificant. However, more high-quality studies will be needed to confirm these conclusions.DISCUSSION: This review collated and summarized findings from studies examining the impact of humor therapy (medical clowns, laughter therapy/yoga) on people with depression or anxiety, including children undergoing surgery or anesthesia, older people in nursing homes, patients with Parkinson's disease, cancer, mental illness, and undergoing dialysis, retired women, and college students. The results from this review may help inform future research, policy, and practice in humor therapy to improve people's symptoms of depression and anxiety.IMPACT: This systematic review objectively evaluated the effect of humor therapy on depression and anxiety. As a simple and feasible complementary alternative therapy, humor therapy may provide a favorable alternative for clinicians, nurses, and patients in the future.

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