The Damage Done

Conditions: La.

Stuck

The Mars One project is still going ahead. You know, the one where a bunch of idiots are going to be put in a reality TV show where they get to go to Mars and die. Recently the organisers announced they had whittled down their list from 200,000 idiots, to 100. That’s a good concentration of idiocy. They will now spend the next 10 years training ...to die on Mars. But other than dying, what do the potential Marsonauts see themselves doing on the red planet?

“I think it would be really exciting to have a child because it would be the first real Martian. I don’t know what race or nationality it would be because there are no countries on Mars – yet.”

Like everything the participants would experience on Mars, giving birth would be an experiment.

There’s not really been much research into it” says Ms Lieu, “Nobody knows the effects low gravity would have on a foetus. Also, the high levels of radiation would make the guys infertile. So I don’t know if it would work but if you want to start a colony… you have to reproduce.”

- independent.co.uk/news

Heh, so after a hard day spent dying of cancer does she really think that in the dusky evenings she and her fellow travelers can hold down their evening meal of powder and dirty water long enough to do the nasty with each other? Let’s see if we can bring some science into this scenario shall we? Those crazy kids at MIT have been working over their calculators in an effort to see just how long The Real World: Mars, could actually run for. Turns out the main issue is that they simply won’t have enough food to last long enough between flights.

But that's not the only issue. Indoor crops would create a high oxygen atmosphere and the technology needed to filter oxygen while maintaining nitrogen, needed for air pressure, isn't nearly efficient enough, according to the researchers. The group also estimates that for a colony to be successful it will require at least 15 Falcon Heavy launches totaling near $4.5 billion.

Popular Science spoke with Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp about the study and claimed that the students' estimates were incorrect and based on incomplete data. However, he did acknowledge the mission faces one tricky obstacle: replacement parts. MIT used the International Space Station to create estimates for how often parts need replacing, and the study concluded that spare parts would need to be 62 percent of the initial payload if no follow-up mission was planned for the next two years.

gizmodo.com

I still believe that at some point the various Governments will simply step in and say that you can’t actually send people off into space to die. But what I continue to find remarkable is the mindset of people who, for whatever twisted reason, are actually willing to go. Are people really that hard up for entertainment?



Film Review: Sabotage

The latest Schwarzenegger film is a very gritty and violent affair. Arnie leads a team of super badass undercover police soldiers, basically, whose job it is is to raid houses and shoot Mexican drug cartel members to death, and beyond. In their latest raid they’ve found like a billion dollars of drug money, but before blowing it up they (led by Arnie, mind) decide to take ten million of it for themselves first, stuffing it down the sewer so they can get it later. When they come back later that night, surprise: the money’s gone. Surprise number two is that the authorities know the money was missing somehow, from the pile of charred paper left in the crater. Anyway, the team is stood down and interrogated while Arnie is put on desk duty. Time passes and eventually the Feds drop the case, so Arnie goes back to his team. But things have changed. Not only have they got sloppy, but they all hate and suspect each other. And then they start getting murdered, one by one.

The team are made up of a number of half-remembered actors, and they all come across basically as unhinged psychopaths. And while they’re all loyal to Arnold, you wouldn’t trust any of these guys with a potato gun. For his part, Arnold plays it cool, usually with a cigar sticking out of his mouth. He conducts an affair with the lead investigator on the case and is working on figuring out who might be picking them off. His back-story is particularly harsh, apparently a cartel kidnapped his wife and son, tortured them to death, and sent him a video of it along with various body parts. That’s the kind of thing that leaves a mark.

His character is certainly no saint, and he really has no reason to be. As the bodies stack up, inevitably so does the dramatic conflict between the remaining survivors. However I found the final revelation to be a bit weak regarding the reasons behind the whole thing. Anyway, it’s a well made film, and Arnold seems like his old assured self. I think it’s a step in a better direction for his late career. Two and a half dead bodies out of five.



Film Review: Into The Woods

Holy shit what a horrible bloody chore it was to sit through this awful fricking thing. I don’t know what the running time was but it felt like four hours. Four Hours. Four hours being stuck in this horrible mash up of various fairy tales that have been melted and grafted together like some kind of evil experiment by fairy tale scientists in a lab somewhere, probably on top of a castle. And it’s a musical, so everyone has to sing their lines at each other, and the story has to stop all the time so some specific stupid point has to be laboured over again and again while people twirl around trees.

It’s Cinderella and Rapunzel and Jack the Giant killer and Red Riding Hood and another one with a baker and bakers wife needing various objects from the others in order to please a witch and therefore get pregnant. They’re all traveling through the woods on their various quests and bumping into each other and singing and singing and singing. It was horrible. Also, there’s some kind of moral constantly going on about how much life sucks and no one ever gets what they wants. So it’s depressing as well as annoying.

And about half way through I realised that every single male character in this film, bar none, is a hopeless useless stupid selfish greedy son of a bitch. Every one. Sure there’s a couple of bad female characters too but boy, this is the most man-hating film I seen in a long time. More than just being annoying and stupid, it’s uncomfortable. And you have to sit there and take it, for hour after bloody hour. When it was over I needed two things to wash away the pain. Whiskey and Blade Runner. I’m not even kidding. Zero dead cows out of five.



- Peace out