Critics Call New Reality Show Out of This World!

     Call me crazy, but a one-way trip to Mars just isn't my idea of a good time. Being one of only four people  within 50 to 400 million kilometers and eking out a techno-subsistence farm on a freezing ball of rock without an atmosphere? Pass. But maybe you agree. Maybe instead of calling me crazy, you would prefer to direct your incredulity to Bas Lansdorp, a Dutch entrepreneur, who expects to begin collecting applications in the next few months.

     But for all that, if he can find four people as crazy as he is, this nutball plan could (bah-dum-bum) fly. His secret? Two words: American television. Mr. Lansdorp plans to film and televise the process from training, to launch, to landing, and through the foundation and development of the Mars colony. The full NY Times article on the project, called Mars One, can be found here.

Look, Ma! I can see my house from here!

     Can you really fund an interplanetary expedition through something as banal as reality TV? Sorry, silly question, of course you can. Even without our modern addiction to the stuff, Mars One would draw an audience: three times the population of the US at the time tuned in for grainy pictures of the first man on the Moon; adjusted for population growth, that's nearly a million viewers. Plus, these days we have way cooler cameras - now you can watch the new season, so to speak, of Boldly Going Where No Man Has Gone Before, in high definition! With a soundtrack! And surround sound! (And exclamation points!) So it should be much more appealing to those who grew up with tech toys (read: kids these days). Not to mention, the whole thing will be reviewed by an editing team before it airs, so you won't have to watch the boring parts : P

Will kids on Mars get robots for pets? Here, Rover!

     Of course, the real question is, what will the racial makeup of the crew be? Will the writers (sorry, I mean mission planners) succumb to TV Tokenism? Or is that just an American trait, and Lansdorp the Flying Dutchman is exempt?

Show Me Stalin's Grave, And I'll Show You A Communist Plot

     If those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it, then I guess we should watch out for the rebirth of the Soviet Union, because Russians seem to have forgotten a lot about Stalin. I know people don't like holding on to bad memories, but there should be limits, people. For the 60th anniversary of his death, a crowd gathered to place flowers, pictures, and religious icons on his grave (that last item despite the fact that communism professed a disbelief in a god, God, or gods). Almost half the population of Georgia (the country Stalin was from, not the state) still admires him. And three-quarters of a million Russian citizens voted for a political party devoted to continuing "Stalin's attempt to battle the ancient Egyptian priesthood of Ra, which supposedly runs the world from its base in Switzerland". (You can't make this stuff up.) This isn't to say that all Russians are pro-Stalin (most of them still hold that he was an oppressive monster), but vocal minorities often have more power than quiet majorities. A full article on Stalin and the Russians (drat it, that sounds like a bad rock band) can be found here.

Picture from the Associated Press

     For me, and possibly most AS readers, the most striking thing is not that an evil dictator is enjoying a nostalgia-fest, but rather the connection to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (Yeah, I know you saw that one coming. Let me finish.) You may remember that parts of the DR were convinced that El Jefe had "superpowers" - well, a lot of Russians still believe Stalin had mystic abilities (see above, regarding war with ancient Egyptian deity), more than half a century later. You may also recall that even after the Fall of Trujillo, there were still plenty of Trujillistas trying to keep his government alive - well, Stalin's hometown of Gori wants to put his statue back up, and the current Russian government has created history textbooks that praise Stalin's industrialization attempts in the '30s. Everything ties together into the whole circle-of-history theme that characterized the last chapters of Oscar Wao.

     So here's my question to you: are all dictators the same? Do they all find the same methods useful in their tyrannical goals? Are these just parts of the characteristics that make someone a dictator? Do they have to pass some kind of Evil Villains Review Board to get their diploma in Totalitarian Regimes? I admit, the last one is unlikely. So comment! I want to hear what you think.