Cannabis Use Produces Persistent Cognitive Impairments

neurosciencenews |  Summary: Cannabis use leads to cognitive impairments that extend beyond the period of intoxication.

Source: Society for the Study of Addiction

A systematic review published today in the scientific journal Addiction has found that cannabis use leads to acute cognitive impairments that may continue beyond the period of intoxication.

This Canadian-led meta-review (review of reviews) merged the findings of 10 meta-analyses representing more than 43,000 participants.

The study found that cannabis intoxication leads to small to moderate cognitive impairments in areas including:

• making decisions,
• suppressing inappropriate responses,
• learning through reading and listening,
• the ability to remember what one reads or hears, and
• the time needed to complete a mental task.

“Our study enabled us to highlight several areas of cognition impaired by cannabis use, including problems concentrating and difficulties remembering and learning, which may have considerable impact on users’ daily lives,” said the study’s co-author Dr. Alexandre Dumais, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Université de Montréal.

“Cannabis use in youth may consequently lead to reduced educational attainment, and, in adults, to poor work performance and dangerous driving. These consequences may be worse in regular and heavy users.”

Cannabis is the third most consumed psychoactive substance in the world (after alcohol and nicotine) and adolescents as well as young adults have the highest rates of cannabis use. 

Recent global changes in the legalization of cannabis suggest that public perceptions of its safety and acceptability are on the rise.

 

Texas Federal Judge Blocks Brandon From Enforcing Federal Vaxnation Mandate

I listened to Fauci, Stephane Bancel (Moderna), Annalies Wilder-Smith, and Richard Hatchett discuss the future of covid at Klaus Schwab's WEF yesterday. Here are my notes. 🧵1/https://t.co/NvyMBrlzfy

— Laura (@_Iaura_) January 18, 2022

courtlistener | The plaintiffs have moved the court to preliminarily enjoin the enforcement of two executive orders by the President. The first, Executive Order 14042, is already the subject of a nationwide injunction. Because that injunction protects the plaintiffs from imminent harm, the court declines to enjoin the first order. The second, Executive Order 14043, amounts to a presidential mandate that all federal employees consent to vaccination against COVID-19 or lose their jobs. Because the President’s authority is not that broad, the court will enjoin the second order’s enforcement.

The court notes at the outset that this case is not about whether folks should get vaccinated against COVID-19—the court believes they should. It is not even about the federal government’s power, exercised properly, to mandate vaccination of its employees. It is instead about whether the President can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment. That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.

You Know You Done Fucked Up When Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel Pens Your Letter Of Support....,

Letter of Support for Anthony Fauci - A statement from the scientific and public health communities to the American public in support of Dr. Anthony Fauci

Dr. Anthony Fauci has served the USA with wisdom and integrity for nearly 40 years. Through HIV, Ebola, and now COVID, he has unswervingly served the United States guiding the country to very successful outcomes.  He has our unreserved respect and trust as a scientist and a national leader.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Fauci has provided the American political leadership and the public with sagacious counsel in these most difficult of times. His advice has been as well informed as data and the rapidly evolving circumstances allowed. And importantly, he has given his advice with humility, being clear about what we know and what is unknown, but requires judgment.  He has consistently emphasized the importance of mask-wearing, social distancing and vaccination. These are standard and necessary public health measures that we all support. 

Scientists can and do express dissenting viewpoints, but a right to an opinion does not mean the opinion is right. We are grateful that Dr. Fauci has consistently stated the science in a way that represents the facts as they emerge, without unwarranted speculation.

Sadly, in these politically polarized times where misinformation contaminates the United States’ response to the pandemic, routine public health measures have become unnecessarily controversial, undermining the effectiveness of our country’s response. 

We deplore the personal attacks on Dr. Fauci. The criticism is inaccurate, unscientific, ill-founded in the facts and, increasingly, motivated by partisan politics. It is a distraction from what should be the national focus – working together to finally overcome a pandemic that is killing about 500,000 people a year. We are grateful for Dr. Fauci’s dedication and tireless efforts to help the country through this pandemic and other health crises.

Review Of The Psychoenergetic Research Conducted At SRI International

cia.gov |  A total of 25,449 trials were conducted under a variety of protocols. Analysis indicates that the odds that our result are not due to simple statistical fluctuations alone are better than 2 X 1020 to 1 (i.e. 2 followed by 20 zeros). Using accepted criteria set forth in the standard behavioral sciences, we conclude that this constitutes convincing, if not conclusive.21

The psychogenetic effort has been divided into various categories within these processes. The various categories within this domain are defined as follows:
(1) Forced-Choice – remote viewing where the targets are drawn from a limited (and known) set of potential symbols (e.g. the integers 0, 1)

(2) RV-Lab – remote viewing where the targets are drawn from a large set of
potential materials (e.g. photographs of natural scenes, natural physical
locations), and the experiments are conducted under strict laboratory conditions.
 

(3) RV-Ops – remote viewing where the targets are drawn from specific targets of
interest
 

(4) Search – remote viewing where the targets are generally known but their location is unknown (e.g. a specific military aircraft is known to have crashed – where is it?)22
 

Their point was clear that the remote viewing was convincing, if not conclusive, for these four categories, which was apparently useful to the military objective. 

The CIA made a critical review on the remote viewing, even before the GRILL FLAME was officially established in the late 1970s. Dr. Ross Adey was asked to review the outcome in 1984, and at the end of the 1980s, the SRI itself was ordered to demonstrate the effectiveness of their researches.

Reality Is Holographic Associative Memory - Perception Is A Simulation

medium |  In the late 1940’s and early 50’s, Karl Pribram, a neuroscientist, performed defining neuro-behavioural experiments that established the underlying structure of the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system.

In essence, the neural architectures of thought and feeling.

Additionally, he discovered that the sensory-specific association cortex of the parietal and temporal lobes, where associations are made between the body’s senses in real-time, “operate to organize the choices we make among sensory stimuli, and not the sensing of the stimuli themselves.”

But what Pribram is best known for is holonomic brain theory, which describes human cognition by modeling the brain as a holographic storage network, with consciousness being shaped by the quantum effects occurring within and between brain cells.

In 1975, Pribram was inspired by the work of Bohm who had noted that the universe would look like a hologram to us if we did not have the use of lenses.

Building on this insight, Pribram concluded that our view of the world would be a hologram — a diffuse scattering of the interference patterns of electromagnetic waves — if not for the lenses of our eyes.

And that the neural processes of perception are formed by several stages of transformation, each stage having its roots in quantum mechanics.

In a famous collaboration with Bohm that followed, Pribram laid the foundation for a quantum theory of consciousness, connecting Bohm’s theory of holomovment with the mathematics of holography and neuroscience.

Pribram hypothesized that memory takes the form of interference patterns similar to those of holograms produced by a laser.

Pribram suggested that cognition involved electrical oscillations in the delicate fibers of the dendritic web, which are different from the more commonly known action potentials of axons and synapses.

In other words, the space between the neurons — and not the neurons themselves —was responsible for consciousness.

Pribram hypothesized that the fluctuations of brainwaves riding on gray matter, glial cells, and the synapto-dendritic web “create interference patterns in which memory is encoded naturally, and the waves may be analyzed by a Fourier transform.”

And remember, with a hologram, any part of it with sufficient size contains the whole of the stored information.

In this theory, a piece of a long-term memory is similarly distributed over a dendritic arbor so that each part of the dendritic network contains all the information stored over the entire network.

This structuring of the brain provides the capability of responding to stimuli without specialized and constrained paths of nerve conduction.

Instead, the brain operates as a general purpose computer with built-in redundancy, each part receiving information about the whole and performing a specific computation on it — at all scales.

Like many structures found in nature, the brain’s architecture is fractal. And perhaps it follows that the algorithm is as well. Consciousness itself.

In this model, consciousness is expressed by a Fourier transform between the frequency and space-time domains of reality. It’s what reveals the available degrees of freedom with respect to the past and the future —in essence, it’s a function to decide what to pay attention to.

But ultimately, consciousness is really the platform for making a choice. A multi-dimensional awareness of and response to the environment. The basis for an informed decision, at any scale.

Perception, then, is the re-construction of the hologram, a momentary collapse of the wave-function into an explicate order. The filtering and focusing of attention predicated on the past and future.

Perception is the simulation.

The electrical signals of the nervous system are the read-write interface to the hologram. And consciousness is what illuminates the choices available now, in the present — focusing our attention — distorted and myopic as it may be.

Holographic Associative Memory

In the typical operation of holograms, we shine a reference beam on a holographic film to re-construct the visual image of the object beam, thereby observing a virtual image in the reflected light.

And in theory, we can also reverse the procedure, using the object beam to illuminate the hologram, re-creating the original reference beam.

The light itself.

In this dual mode of operation, a holographic associative memory —HAM, for short— is a form of data storage where information from the object beam and reference beam can be saved and retrieved by associating them with one another in interference patterns. Each part of the pattern contains them both, and each can be used to retrieve the other.

Experimental setup for a 3D holographic storage network

In other words, a hologram with a read-write interface.

HAM is part of the family of analog, correlation-based, associative, stimulus-response memories, where information is mapped onto the phase orientation of complex numbers operating on a Riemann surface.

It can be considered as a complex valued artificial neural network.

The HAM also exhibits some remarkable characteristics, as it has been shown to be effective for associative memory tasks, generalization, and pattern recognition with changeable attention.

And the ability of dynamic search localization is central to natural memory. For example, in visual perception, humans always tend to focus on some specific objects in a pattern. Humans can effortlessly change the focus from object to object without requiring relearning.

HAM provides a computational model which can mimic this ability by creating a representation for focus

Principles of Operation

Link

1. Stimulus-response associations are both learned and expressed in one non-iterative transformation. No backpropagation of error terms or iterative processing required.
2. The method forms a non-connectionist model in which the ability to superimpose a very large number of stimulus-response patterns or complex associations may be superimposed or “enfolded” on a single neural element.
3. The generated phase angle communicates response information, and magnitude communicates a measure of recognition (or confidence in the result).
4. The process permits a capability with neural system to establish dominance profile of stored information, thus exhibiting a memory profile of any range — from short-term to long-term memory.
5. The process follows the non-disturbance rule, that is prior stimulus-response associations are minimally influenced by subsequent learning.
6. The information is presented in abstract form by a complex vector which may be expressed directly by a waveform possessing frequency and magnitude. This waveform is analogous to electro-chemical impulses believed to transmit information between biological neuron cells.

To the point, the universe is a HAM and the brain is it’s tuner.

Have You Discovered The Beginning So That You Can Look For The End?

dtic.mil |  The natural evolution of Man is finished now, within the lifetime of the average reader. The fifth stage of planetary evolution of life is the final stage of evolution by natural selection. Thus, any "next step" in evolution must be taken technologically by the species itself if it is to be taken at all. Any such step to a sixth stage of evolution must paradoxically involve the reimposition of a sort of positive internal control, somehow without giving up genetic deprogramming.

The fact that rigid and foolproof control must be established to eliminate destructive competition, while at the same time genetic control must remain relinquished if intelligence is to be retained, is the precise, contradictory, solitary human problem. It is this hard nut that all systems, organizations, governments, societies, sciences, theorists, religious leaders, meglomaniacs, dictators, portificators, and well-meaning but ignorant visionaries and humanitarians have failed to chew and swallow since time immemorial. The usual solution advanced is this. "If everyone would just be a perfect citizen, behave ideally, and love and help everyone else always, then the problem would be solved."

Any fool will agree with that; the proposition is incredibly naive and a tautology. The question is, "How, pray tell, can one get all persons to be perfect?" Law, logic, philosophy, creed, religion, practice, love, sacrifice, money, the ballot, and the bullet -- all of these have empirically proven that they cannot solve the human problem for all humanity. Since none of the solutions advanced to date can solve the problem, we must discard them all and search for a new approach. And a Teilhardian solution indeed emerges if one ponders diligently. The solution can be synthesized into two parts: each individual human must possess an internal mechanism for generating appropriate limits to personal behavior, and there must exist a totally reliable external process to implant or induce the internal mechanism. And one would also hope for the "maximum individual freedom within the constraints of minimum essential inter-individual control."

The only viable solution is to link the brains of all men into one giant superbraln. it is the entire species which has been developing, and it is the entire species which now must be linked into one superbeing. Jung's collective unconscious must acquire a single integrated consciousness, instead of the fragmented billions it now possesses. Each mancell must function individually within its own sphere, but in intermancell harmony under the control of a single linked-species nervous system.

This linkage must b6 accomplizhed technologically by creating and installing a system of direct communication links between all men's individual brains. A most curious phenomenon occurs whenever two nervous system brains are directly linked together so that each can perceive no temporal delay between the two; the engs, egos, and personalities o: the two brains integrate and merge into one being, one ego, and one personality. Thus linkage admirably ends the destructive competition between the formerly separated brains.

E.g., suppose you and I have linked our brains. If I am you and you are me, then "we" shall find it impossible to disadvantage "each other" since "we" and "each other" no longer exist. I.e., only one "I" remains in the two linked brains, integrated in both of them. So the "one" cannot kill the "other" because no "other" any longer separately exists.

In fact, absolute proof of the "single-being" identity of two linked brains unequivocally exists. The human brain (cerebrum) is composed of left and right hemispheres, completely separated except for a thick connecting cable of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. Essentially the left cerebral hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right cerebral hemisphere controls the left side of the body. With two brains in charge, one half (usually the left) almost always dominates, and each of the two halves specializes. However, signals from one half are immediately transmitted to the second half, preventing the second half from detecting any difference or time delay between itself and the primary half. I.e., the second half gets an immediate "wiggle" and perceives that it, the second half, originated the wiggle,

When consciousness can perceive no difference, identity results, just as separate movie frames appear continuous (each two appear one) when flashed at 22 framres per second. Thus in one's own body, two brains are integrated into one functional brain and one perceptual personaliLy. There is no conscious separation of the two brain hemispherical perceptions, and one consciously is aware of only one being or continuity, himself. In humans whose corpus callosums have been severed, the two brains exhibit separate consciousnesses and separate "personalities."

Solution Of The Fundamental Problem Of Quantum Mechanics

The photon interaction, however, constitutes a time-differentiating operation imposed upon 4-dimensional Minkowskian reality (which is unperceived reality), producing three-dimensional, objective, determined, past reality. 

Photon absorption constitutes dimensional differentiation of reality, while photon emission constitutes dimensional integration. Objective concepts have been developed in correspondence to the photon interaction.

In the two-slit experiment, the electron is 4-dimensional, not 3-dimensional. When shielded against the photon interaction, it remains four-dimensional,  possessing its time dimension, and capable of interacting in a time-like manner. By wavelength one refers inversely to a time interval. 

Synchronization of time intervals between slit dimensions and electron wavelength results in time interaction between the electron’s time dimension and the time dimension of the two slits . Thus the electron interacts with both slits if shielded against the photon interaction, and time waves are propagated forward from both slits. If the slits are made much larger, time synchronization is destroyed and the classical effect reappears . If the photon interaction is imposed upon the electron, it is time-differentiated and becomes a classical object , having lost its time dimension.

When the electron encounters the screen, it meets a region of randomly varying time oscillations of the orbital electrons around the individual atoms comprising the screen . Thus the exact location of the orbital electron in the screen which will first precisely time-synchronize with the electron wavelength reciprocally is a random choice , and the “place” where the electron hits the screen is randomly selected along the screen, when the electron is four dimensional. The time pattern of the 4-d electron , however, had a distribution induced by its previous time interaction with the two slits . The pattern of this time distribution is wavelike, and is recovered when the distribution of the number of electron hits per screen length (which involves cumulation over time) is plotted .

Thus the two-slit experiment can be explained once the fourth law of logic is comprehended , and once the dimensionality of the electron and other parts of the experimental apparatus are taken into account.

The author points out that ordinary instruments and devices can be made to process entities in the unseparated state (multi-ocular state) , as demonstrated by the two-slit apparatus itself . Some consequences of this fact are mentioned, and the author refers to a basic mechanism he has proposed for the deliberate and controlled violation of objective reality .

What You Call "Your Conscious Mind" Is Fitted To The Photon Interaction

The Conscious Mind is Fitted to the Photon Interaction

What is normally referred to as the "conscious, thinking mind" is simply a functioning temporal (rigorously, chronotopological) mechanism that is painfully built up in the individual's awareness (his mind in the greater sense of both thought and awareness, whether monocular or multiocular) by training, conditioning and experience. Its functioning is largely conditioned by one's 90% or so attention to visual stimuli (to the partial reality remaining after photon interaction has been invoked, and to the memory-collated ordering of vast numbers of such photon interactions) and by one's cultural conditioning - which itself has been almost exclusively conditioned and shaped by the monocular photon interaction at base root.

Thus, since the beginning of man, (Bearden radically overstates the case here. It would be more accurate to say that since a time definite in the western epoch) his conscious, rational mind has been trained and constructed to function almost exclusively in basic correspondence with the photon interaction, and his experiential reality consists of the partial reality stripped from fundamental reality by photon interaction.

All "perceived differences," e.g., are created by this deep mind-set. As has been previously pointed out, ⁶ the solitary human problem responsible for all man's inhumanity to his fellow man is directly dependent upon man's almost exclusive detection, observation, perception, and conception of "difference" between humans, these "differences" being due exclusively and totally to the fitting of men's conscious minds to the photon interaction's monocular separation of spatial reality from nonspatial reality, i.e., to

∂/∂T (L³T) => L³

Such well-nigh total devotion to, and enslavement by, photon interaction also is responsible for the scientist's well-nigh total devotion to, and enslavement by, the present imperfect and incomplete three laws of logic, as presented by Aristotle. The depth of that devotion and enslavement is evidenced by the fact that the resolution of such paradoxes as Heraclitus's problem of change have eluded the best minds of humanity for several thousands of years. Indeed, these paradoxes cannot be resolved by the conscious, rational mind in its present state, for it has been most firmly constructed and fitted to function in accordance with the photon interaction.⁷ One cannot hope to resolve any logical paradox by using only those same logical methods that found the situation to be paradoxical in the first place!

There Can Be No "Theory Of Everything" Absent Specific Psychological Evolution...,

wikipedia |  The interdimensional hypothesis (IDH or IH) is a hypothesis advanced by ufologists such as Jacques Vallée,^[1] which states that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and related events involve visitations from other "realities" or "dimensions" that coexist separately alongside our own. It is not necessarily an alternative to the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), since the two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive so both could be true simultaneously. IDH also holds that UFOs are a modern manifestation of a phenomenon that has occurred throughout recorded human history, which in prior ages were ascribed to mythological or supernatural creatures.^[2]

Although ETH has remained the predominant explanation for UFOs by UFOlogists,^[3] some ufologists have abandoned it in favor of IDH. Paranormal researcher Brad Steiger wrote that "we are dealing with a multidimensional paraphysical phenomenon that is largely indigenous to planet Earth".^[4] Other UFOlogists, such as John Ankerberg and John Weldon, advocate IDH because it fits the explanation of UFOs as a spiritual phenomenon. Commenting on the disparity between the ETH and the accounts that people have made of UFO encounters, Ankerberg and Weldon wrote "the UFO phenomenon simply does not behave like extraterrestrial visitors."^[5] In the book UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse published in 1970, John Keel linked UFOs to folkloric or supernatural concepts such as ghosts and demons.

The development of IDH as an alternative to ETH increased in the 1970s and 1980s with the publication of books by Vallée and J. Allen Hynek. In 1975, Vallée and Hynek advocated the hypothesis in The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects and further, in Vallée's 1979 book Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults.^[6]

Some UFO proponents accepted IDH because the distance between stars makes interstellar travel impractical using conventional means and nobody had demonstrated an antigravity or faster-than-light travel hypothesis that could explain extraterrestrial machines. With IDH, it is unnecessary to explain any propulsion method because the IDH holds that UFOs are not spacecraft, but rather devices that travel between different realities.^[7]

One advantage of IDH proffered by Hilary Evans is its ability to explain the apparent ability of UFOs to appear and disappear from sight and radar; this is explained as the UFO entering and leaving our dimension ("materializing" and "dematerializing"). Moreover, Evans argues that if the other dimension is slightly more advanced than ours, or is our own future, this would explain the UFOs' tendency to represent near future technologies (airships in the 1890s, rockets and supersonic travel in the 1940s, etc.).^[8]

 

Jacques Vallee: From PSI To UAP...,

wikipedia  |  In May 1955, Vallée first sighted an unidentified flying object over his Pontoise home. Six years later in 1961, while working on the staff of the French Space Committee, Vallée claims to have witnessed the destruction of the tracking tapes of an unknown object orbiting the earth. The particular object was a retrograde satellite – that is, a satellite orbiting the earth in the opposite direction to the earth's rotation. At the time he observed this, there were no rockets powerful enough to launch such a satellite, so the team was quite excited as they assumed that the Earth's gravity had captured a natural satellite (asteroid). He claims that an unnamed superior came and erased the tape. These events contributed to Vallée's lifelong interest in the UFO phenomenon. Vallée began to correspond with Aimé Michel (who would become a key mentor and research collaborator) in 1958.

In the mid-1960s, like many other UFO researchers, Vallée initially attempted to validate the popular Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (or ETH).

However, by 1969, Vallée's conclusions had changed, and he publicly stated that the ETH was too narrow and ignored too much data. Vallée began exploring the commonalities between UFOs, cults, religious movements, demons, angels, ghosts, cryptid sightings, and psychic phenomena. His speculation about these potential links was first detailed in his third UFO book, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers.

As an alternative to the extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis, Vallée has suggested a multidimensional visitation hypothesis. This hypothesis represents an extension of the ETH where the alleged extraterrestrials could be potentially from anywhere. The entities could be multidimensional beyond space-time; thus they could coexist with humans, yet remain undetected.

Vallée's opposition to the popular ETH was not well received by prominent U.S. ufologists, hence he was viewed as something of an outcast. Indeed, Vallée refers to himself as a "heretic among heretics".

Vallée's opposition to the ETH theory is summarised in his paper, "Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects", Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1990:

Scientific opinion has generally followed public opinion in the belief that unidentified flying objects either do not exist (the "natural phenomena hypothesis") or, if they do, must represent evidence of a visitation by some advanced race of space travellers (the extraterrestrial hypothesis or "ETH"). It is the view of the author that research on UFOs need not be restricted to these two alternatives. On the contrary, the accumulated data base exhibits several patterns tending to indicate that UFOs are real, represent a previously unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common concept of "space visitors". Five specific arguments articulated here contradict the ETH:

1. unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth;
2. the humanoid body structure of the alleged "aliens" is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel;
3. the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race;
4. the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and
5. the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives.

Vallée's ideas about Miracle at Fatima and Marian apparitions are that they are a class of UFO encounters. Vallée is one of the first people to speculate publicly about the possibility that the "solar dance" at Fatima was a UFO. Vallée has also speculated about the possibility that other religious apparitions may have been the result of UFO activity including Our Lady of Lourdes and the revelations to Joseph Smith. Vallée believes that religious experiences such as that this should be studied outside of their religious contexts.^[3][4][5]

Via professional association with SRI and independent friendships with Harold E. Puthoff and Central Intelligence Agency analyst Kit Green (who obtained a temporary security clearance for him in 1974), Vallée was intermittently consulted on classified remote viewing research (including the Stargate Project) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. During the early SRI experiments (led by Puthoff and Russell Targ in conjunction with Green as CIA contract monitor), he became acquainted with Uri Geller, Edgar Mitchell, Charles Musès, Andrija Puharich, Jack Sarfatti, Arthur M. Young, Edwin C. May, Pat Price and Ingo Swann. In 1973, Doubleday editor Bill Whitehead introduced Vallée to Ira Einhorn, a close confederate of Puharich; their association would span Vallée's business and paranormal networks until Einhorn was charged with murdering his ex-girlfriend in 1979. More recently, he has been associated with Robert Bigelow as a consultant to the National Institute for Discovery Science and a member of the scientific advisory board of Bigelow Aerospace.

Been A Minute Since I Thought About Jacques Vallee...., (REDUX)

 

Video - Jacques Vallee discusses anomalous data and how and why one might go about studying it. From a 2007 article on OurStrangePlanet, Vallee writes:

Then there is a third level, the mythological or sociological level. At that level, the physical reality of the actual UFO is totally irrelevant. Proving that Jesus Christ never existed would have little effect on our society in terms of belief systems; at this point, the influence of Jesus would remain even without a historical Jesus.

Important Element: An interesting focus on Jesus Christ throughout his writings, including his earliest books in the 1970s. Originally posted December 19, 2011.

Dr. Hal Puthoff: From PSI To UAP's?

wikipedia |   In 1967, Puthoff earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.^[1][2][3] He then worked with, and invented, tunable lasers and electron beam devices, concerning which he holds patents, and he is co-author (with R. Pantell) of Fundamentals of Quantum Electronics (Wiley, 1969), published in English, French, Russian and Chinese. Puthoff published papers on polarizable vacuum (PV) and stochastic electrodynamics topics, which are examples of alternative approaches to general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Puthoff took an interest in the Church of Scientology in the late 1960s and reached what was then the top OT VII level by 1971.^[3] Puthoff wrote up his "wins" for a Scientology publication, claiming to have achieved "remote viewing" abilities.^[4] In 1974, Puthoff also wrote a piece for Scientology's Celebrity magazine, stating that Scientology had given him "a feeling of absolute fearlessness".^[5] Puthoff severed all connection with Scientology in the late 1970s.^[6]

In the 1970s and '80s Puthoff directed a CIA/DIA-funded program at SRI International to investigate paranormal abilities, collaborating with Russell Targ in a study of the purported psychic abilities of Uri Geller, Ingo Swann, Pat Price, Joseph McMoneagle and others, as part of the Stargate Project. Both Puthoff and Targ became convinced Geller and Swann had genuine psychic powers.^[7] However, Geller employed sleight of hand tricks.^[8]

In 1985, Puthoff founded a for-profit company, EarthTech International in Austin, Texas. At about the same time, he founded an organization, Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (IASA), also in Austin, Texas, where he is Director.^[9] Independent of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, IASA pursues ideas that Puthoff finds interesting specifically related to energy generation and space propulsion, with funding from anonymous donors.

Puthoff and EarthTech were granted a US Patent 5,845,220^[10] in 1998 after five years delay. The claims were disputed that information could be transmitted through a distance using a modulated potential with no electric or magnetic field components. The case is used for educational purposes in patent law^[11] as an example of a valid patent where "The lesson of the Puthoff patent is that in a world where both types of patents are more and more common, even a competent examiner may fail to distinguish innovation from pseudoscience."

Project Stargate

wikipedia | 1970s - In 1970 United States intelligence sources believed that the Soviet Union was spending 60 million rubles annually on "psychotronic" research. In response to claims that the Soviet program had produced results, the CIA initiated funding for a new program known as SCANATE ("scan by coordinate") in the same year.^[11] Remote viewing research began in 1972 at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California.^[11] Proponents (Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff) of the research said that a minimum accuracy rate of 65% required by the clients was often exceeded in the later experiments.^[11]

Physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff began testing psychics for SRI in 1972, including one who would later become an international celebrity, Israeli Uri Geller. Their apparently successful results garnered interest within the U.S. Department of Defense. Ray Hyman, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, was asked by Air Force psychologist Lt. Col. Austin W. Kibler (1930–2008)—then Director of Behavioral Research for ARPA—to go to SRI and investigate. He was to specifically evaluate Geller. Hyman's report to the government was that Geller was a "complete fraud" and as a consequence Targ and Puthoff lost their government contract to do further work with him. The result was a publicity tour for Geller, Targ and Puthoff, to seek private funding for further research work on Geller.^[12]

One of the project's successes was the location of a lost Soviet spy plane in 1976 by Rosemary Smith, a young administrative assistant recruited by project director Dale Graff.^[13]

In 1977 the Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) Systems Exploitation Detachment (SED) started the GONDOLA WISH program to "evaluate potential adversary applications of remote viewing."^[11] Army Intelligence then formalized this in mid-1978 as an operational program GRILL FLAME, based in buildings 2560 and 2561 at Fort Meade, in Maryland (INSCOM "Detachment G").^[11]

1980s

In early 1979 the research at SRI was integrated into GRILL FLAME, which was redesignated INSCOM CENTER LANE Project (ICLP) in 1983. In 1984 the existence of the program was reported by Jack Anderson, and in that year it was unfavorably received by the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council. In late 1985 the Army funding was terminated, but the program was redesignated SUN STREAK and funded by the DIA's Scientific and Technical Intelligence Directorate (office code DT-S).^[11]

1990s

In 1991 most of the contracting for the program was transferred from SRI to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), with Edwin May controlling 70% of the contractor funds and 85% of the data. Its security was altered from Special Access Program (SAP) to Limited Dissemination (LIMDIS), and it was given its final name, STAR GATE.^[11]

Closure (1995)

In 1995 the defense appropriations bill directed that the program be transferred from DIA to CIA oversight. The CIA commissioned a report by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) that found that remote viewing had not been proved to work by a psychic mechanism, and said it had not been used operationally.^[4]: 5–4 The CIA subsequently cancelled and declassified the program.^[11]

In 1995 the project was transferred to the CIA and a retrospective evaluation of the results was done. The appointed panel consisted primarily of Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman. Hyman had produced an unflattering report on Uri Geller and SRI for the government two decades earlier, but the psychologist David Marks found Utts' appointment to the review panel "puzzling" given that she had published papers with Edwin May, considering this joint research likely to make her "less than [im]partial".^[1] A report by Utts claimed the results were evidence of psychic functioning; however, Hyman in his report argued Utts' conclusion that ESP had been proven to exist, especially precognition, was premature and the findings had not been independently replicated.^[14] Hyman came to the conclusion: