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?

I'm Going to Laugh at You on the Twenty-Second

     By this point everyone and their little brother has heard about the "Mayan Prophecy", the idea that the ancient civilization predicted the end of the world on December 21st of this year. That's less than three weeks away now, and people are going just a little loopy about it.

     It is worth noting that the Mayans did not predict that the world would end on 12/21/2012. All they did was choose to end one cycle of their calendar, and begin another. Using that to predict doomsday is like saying that the world would end every December 31st when people swap out their calendars for the new year.

     For whatever reason, this apocalypse prediction has received record amounts of attention, but it's not the only one out there. Cult leaders, New Age pseudo-scientists, and overly panicked sci-fi writers have been predicting the end of the world for over a century, and darned but if the sun don't insist on rising the next day, but they attract followers in swarms regardless. If one was to count all these failed Ragnaroks by way of tally marks, you could probably cover both sides of an 8.5x11 sheet of paper. But the continuation of the world hasn't stopped the continuation of prophecies, nor of people's belief in them.

     American media hasn't been shy about cashing in on all the hullabaloo, either. Nat Geo has no less than three 2012 TV shows, including one that overtly emphasizes that yes, the world will end. (They also have the series Doomsday Preppers.) There's also been a movie and multiple videogames making a quick buck out of the panic (although in terms of chaos, the USA is only the second most 2012ed country; the blue ribbon goes to Russia).

     Why? is the eternal question. What is so appealing about the end of all things? Perhaps it's comforting to have an unsolvable problem because you have an excuse not to solve it. As Lois Bujold wrote, "If nothing can be done, then you're not some kind of s*** for not doing it." Is there something about the way the world is today that makes people want to tear it all down and start from scratch? That makes them sound like anarchists. Do they have some idea that by believing in the day of reckoning they can survive it? Is it just handy to know when everything will come crumbling down, so that they're ready for it? Comment please, and explain these crazy humans to me.