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The man who spoke to men who stared at goats
November 18, 2009
Flux, The College View
By Cian Ginty

A secret US Army unit was founded in 1979. It was named the First Earth Battalion and it specialised in paranormal techniques. Its members attempted to walk through walls, and attempted to us a death stare on goats.

The Men Who Stare at Goats – a satirical film now in cinemas – is quite light-hearted compared to Jon Ronson’s 2004 book and Channel Four documentary of the same name. In some ways the documentary felt crazier than the film. The fictional film seems more believable than the documentary.

While Ronson uncovered the US army’s First Earth Battalion, he was, however, never convinced that these paranormal attempts were successful.

He says: “It’s a true story, which is all described in the book, about the crack team of American soldiers who decided to harness the power of the paranormal. So, they decided to try and become invisible and kill things by just looking at them. And all these things you actually can’t do, so the film is very funny about all these people who are trying desperately hard to do something that is impossible.”

The film in any case is only loosely based on the true story of the book or documentary. Quite a few things have changed. Ronson is now a fictional US newspaper reporter, Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor).

“He’s his own man in the film,” Ronson says of Ewan McGregor. “He does not really play me. Some of the actors in the film, like Jeff Bridges, are really harnessing the people that they are playing, the real people. George Clooney’s character too is very much so based on real people”.

It’s another way the film seems kind of toned down. While Bob Wilton is a notable character, he’s not half as memorable as the real life journalist, writer and documentary maker.

“Well my character is a tiny, terrified, owl-like, tiny little Jewish man. I’m like Penfold from Danger Mouse. And, so, Ewan McGregor is definitely more sort of fabulous than I am. But he is still quite sort of nebbish, and neurotic, and sort of diminished in a sort of nice way – so there’s a bit of me in there”.

The Hollywood Reporter called the film one of the “hotter market projects in Cannes,” but at one stage the film looked like it would never get made. The Men Who Stare at Goats screen play was floating around Hollywood for four years. “It was on its way out,” Ronson says. “It was getting to the stage that it might have been going around for too long and never being made and then George Clooney came along.”

“Hollywood being difficult as it can be it was quite possible it was going to be one of the greatest screen plays which was never made, so I’m really grateful… I’m very genuinely, honestly grateful to him.”

He says he is happy with the adaption. “I really like it, it’s very sweet, and it’s warm. And George Clooney is really good in it, and Peter Straughan wrote an absolutely brilliant screen play. I really liked it. I think it is a really likeable, kind of batty, sweet, small, film. It’s different to the book; my book is kind of darker. It goes into torture and so on, which the film only brushes up against really.”

But nerdishly he has searched for reaction on Twitter, telling Flux: “From time to time when I know there has been a big screening, like at a film festival, I’ll go on Twitter and see what people are saying when they are coming out. Not everybody comes out of the film liking it, but a lot of people do, enough to make it a success”.

Asked about his Twitter profile (@jonronson), and how he calls himself a writer on it, Ronson give a very typical answer, as if he was striving for perfection but an interview don’t give him the time to ponder for a few days. He says “I suppose I’m a journalist, I was getting airs and graces when I was saying that, I was getting a bit hoity toity.”

Then within the same breath, nearly backtracking, but more likely striving in his own mind for the right answer, he continues: “Although I am writing screen plays, so I suppose that’s not journalism, and the books are sort of journalism and sort of not. I mean I’m writing a book at the moment which is a little bit different, it’s not straight journalism. But you know journalists can be writers, the two aren’t incompatible by any means.”

He says being a perfectionist led to hating his column in The Guardian magazine on Saturdays. “I’m very, very glad I don’t have to do it anymore. I hated it. I absolutely despised it. It was driving me insane.”

Did he always hate it? “No, I liked it for about the first year. Then the last two years, I really hated it. It was awful. Because I’m a perfectionist and perfectionists shouldn’t write weekly columns. Weekly columns for perfectionists, you know, are killers. Because you just spend the whole time worrying. I worried my life away.”

He says he quit the column before his son was old enough to be aware of it. “I was exhausted and a bit nervous breakdownie, getting sleepless nights. But also I was going a bit Julie Myerson; I was in danger of selling out my family for a deadline.”

“Anything’s easier than writing; being in hospital is easier than writing,” he says on writing in general.

“Incredibly hard, exhausting, I’m amazed at how kind of knackered I get, “he says. “I can do about four hours. I try to start really early, so I try starting at about seven in the morning, but by 11 in the morning I feel like I’ve run a marathon. I’m definitely not one of those people who can knock it out really easily, it’s like fucking ripping out a core, it’s not pleasant. But when you get a sentence of right, there’s no better feeling.”

What kind of writing does he find the hardest? “Well I really do only one sort of writing, well that’s not true since I’ve been writing screen plays as well lately. I think I find all writing equally as hard. I care about it too much, I take it too seriously, I really, really care. I sort of always have done. Yeah… like when I was writing screen plays I was like this is much harder than writing books, but now that I’m writing another book thinking this is much harder than screen plays.”

He asks me about writing and we both come to the conclusion that news writing is easer then feature writing. But how does he find the jump from documentaries to screen writing? “It was definitely harder. It took a lot of relearning. I was lucky one of the screen plays I co-wrote with Peter Straughan, who wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats screen play, and so he kind of taught me a lot how to do it. But it took a long time relearning all the rules… I mean with my first screen play, I reckon, I was just sitting there learning how to do it for six months before I wrote anything that was any good.”

Pessimistically, adding “None of them have been filmed yet, so I could have just wasted a couple years of my life, but I hope not. I think at least one is going to get made, possibly two.”

And, on the adaptation of his other bestselling book, Them: Adventures with Extremists, he says, “Well, Edgar Wright is supposed to be adapting my book, Them, but you know the months and years are passing and he has not done it yet. I fucking hope he does, because I am a great fan of Edgar’s.”

What the five most memorable things you’ve done or seen?

1. “Sneaking into Bohemian Grove and witnessing some world leaders having a weird ritual with a human effigy being thrown into the fiery belly of a 50 foot stone owl.”

2. “With the Men Who Stare at Goats, when I first started to learn about the goat staring programme, about Project Jedi and all these different kind of levels of madness, I really, really loved that”.

3. “David Icke and his giant lizards… Oh, god this is hard, because there’s been so many.”

4. “I was once ousted as a Jew at a Jihad training camp near Gatwick Airport, that was memorable.”

5. “Watching the video in the Men Who Stare at Goats [documentary] where the hamster gets stared to death. Although at the end of the video the hamster gets up and brushes its self down, so, it’s an inconclusive death stare, at best.”

The Men Who Stared at Goats is out now

Point and click
September 29, 2009
Flux, The College View
By Cian Ginty

So, you want to take the perfect photograph so you can be reminded of that great college night for years to come?

On photos from nights out, one of the main things that repeatedly goes wrong is what could be called ‘There’s nobody-taking-the-bloody-photo’ effect – in layman’s terms: the person in the photograph with their arm stretched out with their finger on the button but no clue of where exactly the camera is aiming.

Don’t get me wrong here, some women seem to be turning it into an art form, and there are some great shots produced by this unconventional method. The phenomenon has even created some experts. However cameras are not designed for it – most are designed to be used at a distance of about a metre from the subjects.

However, if you’re disinclined to annoy random passers-by by asking them to take your photos, there are some things you can do to take these shots better:

1. Try to keep everyone in the photo the same distance away from the camera.

2. Aim by pointing the camera lens at the person in the centre of the photograph, or if it’s just two people the middle of the two of you.

3. Try taking the photo on the automatic setting and on portrait setting, depending on your camera, one may be better then the other.

4. Remember it’s better to try to take the photo twice or three times, rather than having one friend blinking or with their eyes closed (because of the flash rather than drink consumption).

Generally, if you’re taking photographs with a compact point-and-click camera, just put it on the automatic or default setting, point and then click. These cameras are designed to take exactly what you see in the display screen. Just remember, everything on the screen will be on the photo, so zoom in or out where needed. But that’s about it for messing with setting.

If you’re taking photos with a SLR and don’t know how to use it fully, lessons can be well worth it.

As for your subjects, get everybody to look at the camera lens. Saying ‘cheese’ seems to have gone out of fashion, something more active sometimes works to get smiles out of people, but not too shocking or you’ll just get strange looks.

If you’re experiencing problems with everybody’s faces being too bright, it likely is related to the flash. You could be just holding the camera too close to the subjects, try moving back if you can. Or if you’re able to mess around with the settings, try lowering the brightness of the flash, just a slight bit.

When you see what looks like light specks on a photo it could mean there’s dirt or small bit of dust on your lens.

For a large lens you should go to a camera shop and buy lens cleaning, it’s inexpensive. But for most compact cameras you’ll have a small lens – lightly cleaning it with a cotton bud swab can work. You risk scraping your lens by using your jumper.

One thing you should always remember is some of your best photos won’t be technically great, but will be great because what they remind you of.

Have fun snapping.

Estates investigate bike damage claims
December 13, 2009
The College View
By Cian Ginty

DCU Estates Office has launched an internal investigation into allegations that one of its staff members was found tampering with students’ bicycles, the College View can reveal.

The incident was reported last month to the Estates Office, as well as to the Students’ Union, when this newspaper witnessed a staff member letting the air out of both tyres of a student’s bicycle.

The bicycle was locked to a pole outside the Henry Grattan Building but was not blocking the entrance.

When approached by the College View, the employee in question said his name was “not relevant” and that he was carrying out the action because “there are blind people on campus”.

In an email to the College View, director of the Estates Office, Mike Kelly stated: “Whilst we discourage locking of bicycles to lamp posts, handrails and the like because they can cause hazards to people with disabilities, letting air out of people’s tyres is not something that we do or encourage”.

“I have investigated the matter and it will be dealt with internally in the Estates Office. I apologise for any inconvenience that this has caused.”

The SU said it would bring the matter up with university authorities.

“I think it is a bit ridiculous that a staff member interferes with anything that students own. I have come across others who have had the same problem and it just doesn’t make sense,” according to SU president Alan Keegan.

Keegan added: “The SU will be treating this as an important issue, because if a student did this to a staff member’s bicycle they would be thrown straight in front of the disciplinary committee and be reported to the Gardai.

“Double standards shouldn’t exist in this university and we will work to make sure this isn’t the case.”

Meanwhile, the Dublin Cycling Campaign said letting air out of tires as a form of punishment is “highly inappropriate behaviour” and that putting a notice on the bike or a similar action would be much more appropriate.

“All universities should have very clear bike-parking policies and well designed and sited facilities for same. Areas not for bike parking should be marked out for good reason, not just the perceived tidiness of the landscaping, and clearly signposted as such.

“On the other hand, the visually impaired certainly have a strong right to have their pathways clear,” according to Will Andrews of the Dublin Cycling Campaign.

“To my mind, deflating tyres causing complete loss of use of the bike is serious damage,” he added

Campaign against city centre bus gate ranges from dishonest to ill-informed
October 28, 2009
The College View
By Cian Ginty

It’s just after 6pm on Grafton Street on Thursday night and the silence is deafening,” one Sunday Independent journalist wrote recently. He must have gotten lost because the silence is never “deafening” on Grafton Street at 6pm on a weekday. It’s not within the realm of truth and accuracy.

Recently, RTE reported that “13 businesses including Brown Thomas, Weirs, Louis Copeland as well as shopping centre and car park owners, will go to the High Court” to challenge the bus gate. Brown Thomas have a car park of the same name, and shopping centres own or have a stake in car parks. The main opposition to the bus gate does not seem to be retailers, but car park owners.

There are other businesses against the bus gate, but car parks are at the forefront. They are hardly going to agree with any restrictions on cars. In any cases, business associations involved have from the start talked up car restrictions up so much that they may have damaged them their own business. There was a lot exaggerated talk of a “city centre car ban.”

The reality is all car parks in the city centre remain open and accessible. The bus gate only covers a small area streets and is only in force in the morning and evening rush hours. Traffic is not banned from the city, and that was never the plan.

Slurs have come from groups against the bus gate. First, Conor Keoghan of Brown Thomas Car Park made out that the bus gate was some type of Green Party conspiracy, with Eamon Ryan and John Gormley putting pressure on Dublin Bus and the Department of Transport who then in turn put pressure on the city council. This is the stuff of conspiracy theories.

Then, the Dublin City Centre Business Association chief executive Tom Coffey was reported to have said the bus gate is an “irresponsible political action by loony Greens and loony Labour.” This is strange as there’s no Green Party presence on the council. Is he trying to use the Greens to slur Labour councillors? Just to be clear on this, the bus gate was voted on by the city councillors, any Green Party part in this is – again – conspiracy theory.

Business groups have also being talking on radio shows about numbers that back their claims. The first figures they started to talk about were transport usage numbers. These numbers showed just how important cars are to retailers. The problem? These Dublin city centre businesses were quoting national transport usage figures! While car usage in Dublin is high compared to other European capitals, quoting national figures is a distortion.

Labour councillor Andrew Montague says council counts show a 34% increase in cyclists passing by the area since the interdiction of the bus gate. Business may try to claim that cyclists don’t have the spending power of car users, but studies contradict this. Another figure given is drop in car park use. But the council claims usage of their multi-storey car park near Grafton Street returned to normal just one week after the bus gate was introduced.

Traders says business is down on Grafton Street, but it was retailers who originally objected to Grafton Street being pedestrianised, which has been a massive success. Keoghan of Brown Thomas Car Park told the Sunday Independent that the bus gate “has killed late night shopping and restaurants and pubs.” Maybe Brown Thomas have still not heard of the economic downturn? People going up North or online to buy more likely pose more of a risk to shops like Brown Thomas.

Meanwhile, both Dublin City Council and Dublin Bus say the bus gate has been a success. It has done exactly what it set out to do – improve bus times in the area that had been identified repeatedly as a critically congested area.

But, yet, besides car parks, there are comments against the bus gate from strange quarters. “I cannot help wondering what exactly is the purpose of the new traffic management system on College Green,” DCU president Ferdinand von Prondzynski wrote on his blog. Adding “I don’t recall College Green itself being a public transport trouble spot.”

There’s quite simple answers to his questions: The area around College Green had been identified in independent reports as a heavy area of congestion. The purpose is quite clear – it is to give public transport priority over private cars (even a bus with hardly anybody on it is more productive than two cars which take up the same space on the road).

Von Prondzynski also points to increased traffic elsewhere in the city centre. This is bound to happen. There’s not enough space for large amounts of people to be driving in the city.

Dublin is full and it makes for an unproductive workforce, a city too full to do productive business in, a poor quality of life for residents, and a poor experience for visitors. The question is do you want to give priority to public transport and let the city breathe. The council has answered yes.

Obsession with property ownership which got us into this mess continues

October 14, 2009
The College View
By Cian Ginty

Nic Retsinas, a director at the Centre for Housing Studies at Harvard University, said recently that the Irish have a home-owning obsession which we need to lose. Comments along with a poll at IrishTimes.com prove Retsinas correct – we are still obsessed by property, or at least a large enough proportion of us are as to matter.

The poll asked, “Do Irish people have a home-owning ‘obsession’?” and while the majority agreed we had, 30% were in denial. Comments along with the poll were even more alarming.

“Renting is money down the drain with nothing to show for it at the end,” said one, adding: “Renting is only good if you want to live somewhere temporarily.”

Retsinas was quoted earlier that week by the same newspaper as saying: “Society almost demonised renting. You weren’t smart if you rented. But, as it turns out, those who rented could be said to be the smart ones now as property prices crash.”

While renters in general are now clearly better off than most who have bought property in recent years, it is probably unwise to think mindsets have changed so dramatically.

Another commenter said home-owning is not an obsession but comes from the “fundamental need for shelter.”

This commenter also described renting as “an insecure way to live,” with renters being at the “mercy of landlords.”

The bulk of comments left seemed to be against renting.

“Yes. It comes from memories of the mass-evictions and rack-rents during the Famine,” said another, with many others saying things in the same vein.

For an event – even on the scale of the Famine – to still have such a grip on our national mindset is telling.

Many others bizarrely asked what’s wrong with it if we do have an obsession. But an obsession by its nature is unhealthy. In the recent past, our obsession grew so out of control people were buying houses they could hardly afford.

This can’t really be disputed – the fact that banks were giving loans out to people far above what they could afford is now well established.

Obsession led to the irrational behaviour of buying property over an hour’s commute away from people’s workplaces, damaging family life and general quality of life for decades to come. This inflated property prices.

Because people were so obsessed with owning property we made things worse for ourselves and everybody else. This directly led to the mess we are currently in. But the renters are apparently still fools.

Of course, things are changing. Record levels of people who moved into Dublin city centre and the area between the canals confirms this shift.

The trend of renting accommodation, whether houses or apartments, in cities and close by suburbs is firmly established in other European countries, and Ireland is slowly coming to terms with it too. But the amount of anger expressed over the issue of home ownership obsession is akin to asking a alcoholic if they have an obsession with drink.

If it is not an obsession clouded with emotion then the reaction would not be so volatile.

It looks as if many have not learned any lessons from the property bust.

Even if the idea of renting is off-putting, it is far superior to getting a loan you can’t afford or living so far away that you’re commuting over an hour each way every day. Guidelines around building apartments have started to be strenghtened, while laws surrounding renting have been increased.

If more protection for renters is needed it should be put in place rather then dismissing renting or talking about demon landlords.

As Retsinas said: “People should not be obsessed with owning a property. Maybe the issue should not be about home ownership but about something such as making sure people live in decent homes.”

Parking at DCU: Why are so many students driving in the first place?

December 2009
The College View
By Cian Ginty

The vast majority of third level students in Dublin travel by public transport. Car users are a minority. But even with the downturn, large amounts of students are still driving and in the process many are annoying local residents by filling roads around DCU with parked cars.

Anecdotal stories about students driving short distances to DCU, even as close as across the Ballymun Road behind the Slipper, are confirmed by Census data. The stats show that 20 students over 19 years old in Ireland drive less than a kilometre to college. More strikingly 1,415 students in the same group travel by car up to 1km and 6,285 travel 2-4km. If you’ve ever walked up and down Grafton Street, that’s 1km.

Over 1,400 students in Ireland said they drive or get driven this distance daily. Corresponding to this, 100,000 people are driving less than 4km to work in Dublin alone. And people wonder why the roads are clogged up?

Many people live too far away or too far from good bus routes to make other means viable, so driving in those cases is fair enough. But these people alone cannot account for the high numbers using cars.

You’d think with all the hype about climate change that people would drive less. But a recent Eurobarometer survey on attitudes towards climate change showed that 56% respondents in Ireland viewed climate change as a “very serious problem”. While the vast majority of other EU countries view the problem more seriously.

So, if Irish people think climate change isn’t that serious, it’s easy to think we, collectively, are doing enough. With this kind of attitude, driving when there’s no need to is no harm at all.

A large percentage of Irish people say they have taken action to help fight climate change. But just a dismal 24% (EU average 28%, dismal itself) say they have taken an environmentally friendly form of transport. And only 15% say they have reduced their car usage (EU average 24%).

So, back to DCU. Why would the university provide extra parking spaces when it’s Government and Dublin City Council policy to promote greener transport? It would also be a massive waste of money spent on a minority of students when funding is short. Also, promoting car usage in the run up to Metro North construction is the last thing that’s needed. By promoting more sustainable transport modes traffic will suffer less, leaving roads free for those that actually need to use them.

Not providing extra parking at DCU will likely continue to annoy residents, but there’s an easy solution here. Residents can request the city council to mark the area as residential and paid parking only. If there are areas unsuitable for parking they should be marked as such.

There’s also a clear case for cars parked illegally or dangerously to be reported to the clampers or the Gardai. Otherwise everybody has the same right to park on streets, and residents will have to get used to this.