This book actually got better the further I read. After half the book it got better – as the writing became more intense and revealed more about the maniacs running paranormal schemes.

Terrifyingly insane. Jon manages to seak out the extremes that do hide in amongst the ordinary. Maybe most of them are just mad but in this book the very fac that these people were connected to the military and that the hippie, peaceful dreams that were the product of one mans post vietnam depression have become tools of torture and violence.

Finished April 25, 2005.

In “Blink”, Malcolm Gladwell says that the secret to improv comedy is never to say no. Just play along and see what happens. That’s more or less the strategy adopted by Jon Ronson here as he explores the crazy world of psychics employed by the CIA, subliminal messages hidden under rock-and-roll songs blasted at Iraqi inmates, and the eponymous men who stare at goats. He never says, wait, this is impossible, or no, that doesn’t sound possible. He just plays along, accepts what his informants say – or, to be more accurate, simply reports what his informants say instead of trying to judge whether they’re right or not. The result is this rather confusing, but entertaining, book.

By the end of it, I couldn’t really figure out whether the U.S. military really is using weird pseudoscience to fight their war on terror. But certainly there are people out there who believe they do.