Jon Ronson, Investigator of the Unsettling, at Tommy Doyle's [Sunday]
Jon Ronson, on "The Men Who Stare At Goats"
The U.S. military has employed some pretty ridiculous tactics in its
long and expensive War on Terror. The strangest of these tactics,
hands-down, has to be the experimentation with such psychological warfare as music torture -- a form of mindfuckery that can be traced back to a secret military unit established in 1979 that
attempted to kill goats using sheer brain power.
Journalist, documentarian and Brit wit Jon Ronson explored
these pieces of mind-boggling military practice in his 2004 The Men Who Stare At Goats,
which was adapted to the big screen last year (starring George Clooney
and Kevin Spacey, no less). But Ronson's investigatory work doesn't
stop at the kooky behavior of our military; he's made a reputation of
going gonzo on all sorts of bizarre and disturbing stuff, from a failed
school shooting ploy in a Christmas-themed town to a famed advocate of
assisted suicide.
Ronson, who's been a regular contributor to This American Life, the BBC and the Guardian,
among others, will speak at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square on Sunday
night as part of the Boston Skeptics' pub series. Take your mom
for Mother's Day -- I bet she's dying to know how to kill a goat using just her mind! The event starts at 7 p.m. and it's free of charge.
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