The German expression Fisimatenten machen, meaning to make things unnecessarily difficult, is a mingling of the French visiter ma tante (visit my aunt). It originates in the difficulty of imposing a curfew on occupied France during the Second World War. Visiter ma tante was the general excuse used by people arrested on the streets at… Read More
A new webpage has just been uploaded ‘An Overview of the (Military) Staff Officer’ which can be found here. A downloadable PDF version can be found here. What does the article contain? What is a staff officer? Command officer versus staff officer. How to become a staff officer. Staff officer grades. Staff assistants. The role… Read More
Research Paper Title Evaluating the Effectiveness of Game-Based Training: A Controlled Study with Dismounted Infantry Teams. Executive Summary Computer games are increasingly being used by armed forces to supplement traditional methods of military training. While the potential benefits of these games are well documented; there is little objective evidence to support their perceived training benefits,… Read More
I recently read an article by David Amodio (2015), a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, in the New Scientist writing about prejudices which made for fascinating reading. Although the ‘case study’ material is not immediately relevant to the world of recruitment and training (white US police officers shooting black US… Read More
Enlisted soldiers in their first tour of duty are the most likely to attempt suicide, says an analysis of US Army data published in JAMA Psychiatry (Ursano et al., 2015). The risk was particularly high among soldiers with a recent mental health diagnosis, the longitudinal retrospective cohort study found. In recent years the rate of… Read More
I thought these two replies by Rosemary Sharples and Jan Horton, writing in the New Scientist, about diet and weight loss were interesting and quite apt: Rosemary writes: Once again, scientists working on ways to make it easier for people to lose weight are concentrating entirely on appetite (20 June, p.14) as though this and… Read More
Programmes that promote dietary change and physical activity are effective in reducing the likelihood that people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes will do so, say new recommendations from the US Community Preventive Services Task Force (Pronk & Remington, 2015). The task force arrived at its recommendations after a systematic review of 53 studies… Read More
Boot Camp & Military Fitness Institute 