Jon Ronson wrote a few years ago about the secret US military research uni established in the late 70s, where troops tried to kill goats by staring at them.
British readers probably felt pretty smug about this. Those crazy Americans! Trying to walk through walls - and become invisible - as if!
Yesterday, though, brought sobering news when the UK's Ministry of Defence admitted it had spent £18,000 on trying to discover if psychic powers existed and could be exploited, militarily.
In a trial, subjects were blindfolded and attempted to "see" the contents of brown envelopes in an experiment to try and use something the MoD described as "remote viewing".
The conclusion, essentially, was that it does not work, which readers may feel they would have been happy to tell the MoD for a far more competitive fee.
