Gulag Earth

As I've mentioned before, teaching a class in Critical Thinking means that I have a perpetual source of weird stories to write about.  Properly trained and motivated, high school students are outstanding at ferreting out bizarre news, crazy websites, and insane YouTube videos -- and (which should be cheering) are quite good at recognizing nonsensical beliefs for what they are.

It was an alert student who found a site two days ago entitled, "Is the Earth a Prison For Your Soul?"  Just from the title, I guessed that it was going to be a Christian website, and the "prison" idea would be a metaphor for our being stuck here because of Adam and Eve believing the talking snake and eating the Evil Apple of Doom and all, and how we can be paroled if we just accept Jesus as our personal savior.  I've seen lots of those sorts of websites before, and if that's all it had been, I wouldn't have thought it merited a post.

It turns out I was wrong.  The originator of this post thinks that the Earth is a prison.  Literally.

Are we condemned to a sentence of solitary confinement within our own cell like body's [sic]?

Condemned, not only to be trapped here on earth, but to never know our true nature,or even our alleged crime. To know nothing from start to finish...

We are all as surprised to be alive as the next person, not knowing death, it is as if we have all found ourselves here and no-one really has any experience of anything other than being alive here on earth. No real knowledge of a 'before' or an 'after'.

It is like a global case of amnesia. If we only know life what do we really know of death?...

It is interesting to think that the Van Allen belt provides an excellent barbed wire enclosure to us on earth, a planetary force field keeping us in... Our moon is a handy guard house.

Perhaps 'aliens' exist as a kind of 'drone maintenance crew' keeping our prison functioning and making sure we can't escape. Perhaps that explains their 'lack of empathy' perceived by many alleged insiders like 'Mad man across the water' and others.

Oooookay.

My first reaction is that if you spent your entire life in Newark, you might be justified in concluding that we live in a penal colony; but if not, you have to admit that there are lots of nice places down here.  Cozumel, for example, has way too high a proportion of bikini-clad women and fruity drinks with umbrellas to qualify for "gulag" status.  And if the Van Allen belt is a "barbed wire fence," it's a pretty flimsy one, given that satellites pass across it on a daily basis, and every space mission that's gone more than 60,000 kilometers from the Earth's surface has successfully gone right through it.  And that includes the ones that landed on the "guard house" moon, and found that there were no security guards, or even night custodians, up there.

So, okay, he got a few details wrong, but let's give him a chance.  Maybe he can tell us why we got sent to prison in the first place.  After all, there has to be a reason that our souls have been exiled here, right?  Well, it turns out that it's because we're kind of... dumb:

If aliens exist then is their 'not contacting' us a kind of cruelty ? After all these alleged sightings and contacts, the fact that we have been treated with such contemptible disdain perhaps points to our guilt in their eyes ?... They don't save us from our hellish ignorance because that is what they think we truly deserve ? Perhaps our lesson is 'cooperation'...

Is communicating with 'off world entities' really communicating with the 'before and after' ? If we truly got to talk with an off world entity wouldn't we then know who we were and what we are doing here... Perhaps we will never communicate off world until we have worked out these things for ourselves ? Perhaps no communication to and from our prison is allowed.

So... the reason that the aliens won't get a hold of us is because they're giving us the silent treatment?  That explains so much!  All the absence of evidence in the woo-woo world is deliberate!  The ghosts are refusing to show up whenever skeptics are around in order to make laughingstocks of true believers; Bigfoot runs away shouting "neener-neener-neener" every time someone brings out a camera that is not set on "blur;" the Loch Ness Monster dons a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak every time the underwater sonar is turned on.  It's all a deliberate campaign to frustrate the absolute hell out of humans, to teach them a lesson!

The writer ends with the following chilling thought:

 Perhaps if we really knew who we are and where we are we'd be more cooperative with each other less inclined to follow the bankers usury system of citizen slavery. Perhaps we are all still just mining gold for the Annunaki.

Ah, those damn Annunaki.  I shoulda known they'd be behind all this.

So, anyhow, there you are.  You are actually an alien convict, in a world where everything is set up to be as frustrating as possible in order to teach you a lesson.  I guess this does explain a few earthly phenomena, such as the IRS, tailgaters, slow internet connections, the DMV, spam email, Justin Bieber, annoying commercial jingles, and people who read over your shoulder.  There are some holes in the theory, which include pleasant things like chocolate, red wine,  mid-afternoon naps, and sex, and why if this is a prison colony no one ever gets time off for good behavior.  But I guess that not even the best model ever explains everything.

And now, for an inspirational message from the Church of Satan...

New from the "Be Careful What You Wish For" department, Florida governor Rick Scott is currently trying to figure out what to do about a rally in favor of his policies scheduled for Friday, January 25...

... by Satanists.  [Source]

Now, don't misunderstand.  Scott isn't a Satanist himself; far from it.  He's a staunch conservative Republican and an evangelical Christian.  In fact, it's pretty certain that sneaking Christianity back into public schools was his motivation for signing into Florida state law a bill that would give local school boards the power to authorize "inspirational messages" during school functions -- even if those messages were explicitly religious in nature.  Supporters crowed that this was the first step toward their ultimate goal: reintroducing daily prayer into public school classrooms.

Well, the Christians, as it turned out, weren't the only ones who were happy about this.

Neil Bricke, spokesperson for the Florida-based Satanic Temple of America, thinks that the bill (SB98) is an awesome idea.  In a statement released yesterday, Bricke said of Scott's policies, "The Satanic Temple embraces the free expression of religion, and Satanists are happy to show their support of Rick Scott who -- particularly with SB 98 -- has reaffirmed our American freedom to practice our faith openly, allowing our Satanic children the freedom to pray in school."

Bricke also announced that he and his fellow Satanists are planning a rally in favor of Scott on the 25th.

Well, to quote the Church Lady, isn't that special.

I'm not entirely sure how to think about this.  I mean, I'm not a theist, but I don't believe in Satan, either.  If you go to the Satanic Temple's website, you will find the following statement of belief:

The Satanic Temple believes that God is supernatural and thus outside of the sphere of the physical. God’s perfection means that he cannot interact with the imperfect corporeal realm. Because God cannot intervene in the material world, He created Satan to preside over the universe as His proxy. Satan has the compassion and wisdom of an angel. Although Satan is subordinate to God, he is mankind’s only conduit to the dominion beyond the physical. In addition, only Satan can hear our prayers and only Satan can respond. While God is beyond human comprehension, Satan desires to be known and knowable. Only in this way can there be justice and can life have meaning.
Hail Satan!

So it's not like I can exactly say, "Right!  Exactly!  You go give Governor Scott what-for!" to them, either.  In fact, when I look at websites like this one, and also the home page of the "Church of Satan," mainly what I think is, "You people are just as loony as the evangelical Christians."

I guess, in the long run, though, it's a good thing that Bricke et al. are doing this.  Because it might remind conservative Christians in Florida and elsewhere why we have separation of church and state in the first place. 

The whole point is that there is no place in public schools for people to ramrod religious belief down students' throats, and that doesn't just apply to religious beliefs you happen to disagree with.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how political and religious leaders in Florida respond to the whole thing.  Rick Scott has spoken cautiously in public -- although I'll bet he has had a few choice words to say in private.  "This is a great country," Scott's press secretary wrote in a press release.  "Everyone has a voice."

Yup.  I'm sure that Governor Scott is just thrilled that this happened.  Being an evangelical Christian himself, he must be tickled pink to find himself garnering the support of members of the Church of Satan.

So keep your eye on Florida next week.  Maybe other groups will turn up.  Maybe we'll have believers in the Norse myths, out there invoking Thor and Loki and all.  Maybe some Mayans will show up and call for the Second Coming of Quetzalcoatl.  They might even get a few Pastafarians.

It'll be a party!

Aqua metal jewelry, and the lure of vague claims

One of the most common ploys by companies advertising sham health products is making claims that seem on the surface to be scientific, but upon scrutiny turn out to be (1) vague, and (2) present no plausible mechanism by which they could work.

Consider Phiten jewelry, the newest thing in useless sports enhancers (now that PowerBalance bracelets have lost some of their luster given that they don't work).  This company, brought to my attention by an alert student of mine, sells "aqua titanium-infused" necklaces, bracelets, joint braces, and sports tape.  Also "aqua gold-infused."  Because, you know, titanium is strong, and gold is handsome, and, um, we'd all like to be handsome and strong, right?  Of course right.  So there you are.

Once again we have the endorsement of various sports figures, including Carmelo Anthony, Justin Verlander, C. J. Wilson, Kara Goucher, and Curtis Granderson, all of whom have photographs on the website wearing these various pieces of useless costume jewelry, but looking tough and athletic.  The implication being that the costume jewelry is why they're tough and athletic.  There's a lot of exciting-sounding hype, too:

The core of Phiten technology is in our Aqua Metals – metals that are broken down into microscopic particles dispersed in water. Every product features Phiten technology: from our signature necklaces, performance apparel, to our sports care items like body supports, tape and lotion. We tailor our products for everyone, from hardcore athletes to weekend warriors, to get them through the daily grind and to support a healthy and active lifestyle.

We are then told how "Aqua Titanium" is made -- apparently by taking pure water and titanium (correctly identified as an "insoluble metal") and dissolving said insoluble metal in the water via the "Aqua Titanium manufacturing process."

Ah.  It all becomes clear now.

As far as Aqua Gold, we're given a bit more information:

Gold tends to be the most effective metal in a variety of practical applications. For example, gold makes up the more sensitive components in computers because of its non-corrosive properties and excellent conductivity. Sound systems use gold in their connective wiring to insure the most faithful sound reproduction in the timeliest manner. Even in medicine, gold is used in its colloidal state as a vehicle for absorbing and transporting proteins and antibodies respectively in a nanoparticle form. 

Righty-o.  Because gold is used in stereo components, it obviously will help you to pitch a baseball faster.  I get it.

The overall characteristic of this website, and others like it, is a pervasive vagueness.  Nowhere are you told how on earth this is supposed to work.  I went to their FAQ page, thinking, "Well, the most FAQ I would have is, 'how the hell does wearing a necklace make you better at baseball?'"  But of course, that Q must not be A'd quite as F as I expected, because nothing nearly that specific shows up on the page.  Instead, we're told how to order, what forms of payment they accept, how to care for your Aqua Titanium Necklace once you've been suckered into buying one, and what their returns and exchanges policy is.  They do have a link with a list of some published papers, but an exposé in Wired found that only one of the papers listed was peer-reviewed, and that one showed completely equivocal results -- and the rest were sponsored by the "Society of Aqua Metal Research," a group that is employed and sponsored...

... by Phiten, Inc.

So, the whole thing is, once again, a great big scam, just like Power Balance bracelets, and copper jewelry for relieving arthritis, and magnet therapy, and so on and so forth.  None of it has the least basis in actual science.  So my advice: buy one of their necklaces if you think it looks nice.  But don't count on it boosting your performance, athletic or otherwise.

The Gaia Hypothesis, and the danger of models

Scientists use models -- partial representations of reality, often expressed mathematically -- to explain the universe.  Both working scientists and science teachers often explain those models using analogies. 

This has a good result and a bad result.  The good result is that the use of model, analogy, and metaphor makes science accessible for non-scientists.  You don't have to understand piles of abstruse mathematics in order to get a glimpse at the weirdness of quantum theory; the story of Schrödinger's Cat makes it abundantly clear.  In my own teaching, I use analogy all the time: antibodies are like trash tags; transpiration in plants is like a very long chain attached to the underside of a trampoline; the Krebs Cycle is like a merry-go-round in which two kids get on and two kids get off at every turn.

The downside, however, is twofold.  The first problem is that it's easy at times to think that the model is the reality.  The goofier the metaphor, the easier it is to avoid this pitfall; I've never had a student yet who thought that the Krebs Cycle really was a merry-go-round (although I did have a student of mine start her essay on antibodies on the AP exam, "So, antibodies are trash tags...").  But with sophisticated, complex models, it's tempting to think that the model is, down to the level of details, what is happening in the real world.

The second downside is that some people will grab the model and run right off the cliff with it.

All of this comes up because a friend of mine asked me what I thought about the Gaia Hypothesis.  I know that this friend is a sharp, smart, and solid thinker, so I didn't wince, which is what I usually do when someone brings this subject up.  Because I can't think of an idea in science that has fallen so prey to the model vs. reality blur as this one has.

Gaia was dreamed up by two scientists of high repute -- James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis -- way back in the 1970s.  The central idea of Gaia is that the Earth's biosphere acts as an interlocking set of self-regulatory systems, and they work together to maintain the homeostasis of the whole in much the same way as organ systems do in an organism.  Lovelock and Margulis identified a number of features of the biosphere, including the carbon dioxide levels, nitrogen levels, oxygen levels, oceanic salinity, and average temperature, that all seem to work through a complex pattern of negative feedback to keep the Earth's systems within a range that is comfortable for living things.  Using computer simulations, Lovelock and Margulis showed that even with a simple model, they could create a "world" that remained stable, and for which the living things played a role in regulation.

All of this is well and good, and Lovelock and Margulis were completely clear about what their model did (and didn't) mean.  (If you're curious, here's the Gaia homepage, run by Lovelock and other scientists working in this field; Lynn Margulis, tragically, died in November of 2011.)

The problem is, lots of people think that the scientists who developed the Gaia Hypothesis meant way more than they actually did.  Part of it was Lovelock's rather inadvisable choice of a Greek goddess' name for christening his model, which brings up lots of images of personified deities, Mother Earth, and New Age Earth spirits.  This particular twist really irritates fundamentalist Christians; take a look at this site, where we find that the Gaia model encourages "radical environmentalism and ecofeminism," because it runs counter to the biblical passage about god giving man "dominion" over the Earth.

Even ignoring the objections of the wacko biblical literalists, I suppose it's natural enough that people could misinterpret Gaia.  The whole thing is just so... suggestive.  And misinterpret it they did, first thinking that because Lovelock and Margulis said that the Earth was like an organism, that they were saying that it was one; and then grabbing the analogy and leaping into the void with it.  As an example of where this can lead, take a look at this page, wherein we find passages like the following:

The GaiaMind Project is dedicated to exploring the idea that we, humanity, are the Earth becoming aware of itself. From this perspective, the next step in the evolution of consciousness would seem to be our collective recognition that through our technological and spiritual interconnectedness we represent the Earth growing an organ of self-reflexive consciousness. While we believe that the Earth is alive, and we are part of it, we also affirm the Great Spirit of Oneness found at the heart of all the worlds great spiritual traditions. What is most important may not be what we believe, but what we find we all share when we put our thoughts aside to go into meditation and prayer together.

I think I can say with some authority that this is light years away from what Lovelock and Margulis had in mind.  Consider the chain of... I can't call it "logic," what is it? -- to get from Lovelock and Margulis to this stuff:

1) The Earth has interlocking systems that self-regulate, keeping conditions in homeostasis.
2) Organisms do, too.
3) So the Earth is like an organism.
4) Many organisms have organs that allow them to sense, and respond to, their environment.
5) This is called "awareness."
6) Some organisms have a second feature, rather poorly understood, of self-awareness, of the ability to see themselves, their interactions, and their internal mental states.
7) This is called "consciousness."
8) Consciousness is a feature of intelligence, a fairly recently-developed innovation amongst living things on Earth.

Ergo: The Earth is becoming conscious.  It'd really help if you prayed about it, because that'd help the process right along.

It's all a matter of keeping your head screwed on when you read this stuff; where does the science end and the woo-woo start?  It's always best to go back to see what the scientists themselves said on the topic.  While being a scientist isn't always a guarantee against fuzzy thinking, I'd put more reliance on the ability of your typical scientist to tell fact from fiction than that of someone whose main contribution is rambling on in some random blog on the topic.  (Irony intended.)

Still, the use of models is, on the whole, a good thing.  It gives us something to picture, a way to frame our understanding of what is going on in the real world.  You just have to know how far to push the model, and when to quit.  It is, in other words, a starting point.  And if along the way it can piss off some creationists, it's all good.

Don't read the comments

I've said it before; whenever I look at a news story, especially one on a controversial topic like climate change, prayer in schools, or evolution, I always regret reading the comments section.  The comments mostly seem to be written by screaming extremists.  If I had a nickel for every time I saw the words "idiot," "moron," and "dumbass" in reader comments, I'd be a rich man.  Instead, I always come away feeling like there's no hope for the human race.

Turns out that I'm not alone.  A recent study at the University of Wisconsin (described here, in an outstanding article written by Chris Mooney; but if you want to read the original paper, the link has been taken down, for some reason) looked at how people react to reading comments from other readers.  Each of the 1,183 volunteers read a blog post on the dangers of nanotechnology; the control group's version had a comments section that was neutral/civil, but the other half read one where the comments were steeped in fire and vitriol.

The results, if unsurprising, should be worrying to anyone who has an interest in seeing the public respond rationally to media.  The researchers found that across the board, the people who read the nasty comments responded by becoming more extreme in their own viewpoints.  If you already (prior to reading the post) thought that the risks of nanotechnology were minimal, you became even more sure of your position.  If you were already worried about the risks, you became more sure of that.  The audience, in other words, polarized, but not because of the facts -- the information presented was the same in both cases -- but because of watching how others responded.

This is entirely explainable based on the way our brain works.  Given emotional activation, the rational centers of our brain get out-shouted.  We react with a sort of mob mentality if we basically agreed with the comment; "Yeah!  You tell him!  Go get him!  Wish I'd thought to say that first!"  If we disagreed with the comment, our fear/anxiety centers are activated; we feel that our stance is besieged, and we double down on our beliefs because we feel they've been threatened.

Notice that in neither case do we respond logically.

This is a troubling result.  For one thing, in issues of public policy that involve science -- such as what to do about climate change, and whether intelligent design deserves equal time in public schools -- we should be striving to discuss things more rationally, not less.  The tendency of the human brain's logic centers to shut down when presented with emotionally-charged responses to media makes it even harder to keep these discussions in the realm of fact.

It's one of the inevitable downsides of the internet.  Back when I was a kid, if you didn't like a news story, you had the option to write a letter to the editor, which was tedious and time-consuming, and there was no guarantee your letter would be printed even if you sent it.  Now, anyone can respond to a news story... and does.  Regardless of whether they know anything factual about it.  They have the right to free speech, dammit, and they're gonna exercise it.  And the University of Wisconsin study shows that this is, on the whole, not a good thing for anyone.  As study co-author Dietram Scheufele said, reading the comments section of an article is like "reading the news article in the middle of the town square, with people screaming in my ear what I should believe about it."

The whole thing reminds me of a quote from the late great writer and thinker Isaac Asimov:  "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'."

The argument from design

I received a response to a recent post in the form of an (actually quite friendly) email that posed a question I've been asked before, and that I thought might deserve a post of its own.  Here is an excerpt of the email:

Many atheist/skeptics base their disbelief on a lack of evidence for a deity.  If God exists, there should be evidence in the world around us.  A universe created by an omnipotent power should be different than one that was created by random processes.  If you're being honest, you have to admit that the universe we live in seems pretty fine-tuned for life, isn't it?  Scientists have identified dozens of fundamental numbers whose values are just right for the existence of matter, space, planets, stars, and life.  If any of those numbers were any different, life couldn't exist.  Doesn't it look very much like some intelligence set the values of the dials just right so as to produce a universe that we could live in?

This argument has been widely trumpeted by Christians who are not biblical literalists -- who may, in fact, accept such empirically supported models as the Big Bang and organic evolution, and who buy that the Earth is not six thousand years old, as the biblical chronology would have you believe, but six-some-odd billion years old.  But despite these non-fundamentalists' buying the whole scientific process (which is all to the good), they still can't quite let go of the idea that a higher power must be behind the whole thing.  And the "fine-tuning of the universe" is one of their main arguments.

It's called the strong anthropic principle.  The universe is such a hospitable place, they say, that god has to have set it up just for us.  But there's just one flaw in the whole thing; the central contention, that the universe is hospitable... just isn't true.

I mean, it all sounds very nice, doesn't it?  God created the universe with us in mind, and this produced awesome places like Maui and the Florida Keys.  The problem is, even here on our home planet, things aren't all that... friendly.  Much of the Earth's land surface has a climate or topography that makes it pretty unsuitable for human life.  (Being that it's midwinter in upstate New York, I'd throw my own home town into that category.)  Even some of the more congenial places, places that are warm enough and have enough water and fertile soil to keep us alive, are prone to natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and mudslides.  And if you leave the Earth, things only get worse; most of the universe is damn near a vacuum, and what's not is filled with black holes, quasars, asteroid belts, supernovae, neutron stars, and Wolf-Rayet gamma ray bursters -- the last-mentioned being capable of emitting an outburst of radiation so powerful that it could blast an entire solar system into oblivion.

Yes, well, what about the fact that all of the fundamental constants are set just right to produce matter?  This was the subject of Sir Martin Rees' book Just Six Numbers, in which he describes what the universe would be like if fundamental constants such as the curvature of space, the fine-structure constant, Planck's constant, the speed of light, and so on, were different -- and all of these alterations produce a universe that would be inhospitable to the formation of stars and planets, much less life.  And because we can't at the moment see any other reason why the constants are what they are -- i.e., there is no fundamental principle from which they can be derived, they seem arbitrary -- Rees and others argue that this is evidence of fine tuning.

I see two problems with this.  The first is that it is an argument from ignorance; because we have not yet come up with a unified theory that shows why the speed of light is three hundred million meters per second, and not (for example) 25 miles per hour, doesn't mean that we won't eventually do so.  You can't prove anything from a lack of knowledge.

Second, it seems to me that the strong anthropic principle is a backwards argument; it's taking what did happen, and arguing that there's a reason that it must have happened that way, that if it weren't designed, it wouldn't have happened that way.  It's as if I were dealt a straight flush in poker (an exceedingly unlikely occurrence) and I argued that because it's unlikely, someone must have rigged the deck.

All we know, honestly, is that it did happen, for the very good reason that if it hadn't happened that way, we wouldn't be here to talk about it.  This is called the weak anthropic principle -- even if the fundamental physical constants are arbitrary, there's no design implied, because in a universe with different physical constants, we wouldn't exist to discuss the matter.  The only place such arguments are possible are universes where life can occur.  Physicist Bob Park summarizes this viewpoint with the Yogi Berra-like statement, "If things were different, then things would not be like things are."  Put that way, it's hard to see how it's an argument for a deity, much less an omnipotent one with our best interests in mind.

Anyhow, that's my response to the Argument from Design.  Like I said, the person who wrote to me was really quite friendly about the whole thing, which (although we disagree about some fundamental ideas) is certainly an improvement from the spittle-flecked responses I sometimes get that suggest Satan is, as we speak, sharpening up his torture equipment with me in mind.  So, for that, I'll just say, "Thanks for writing."  Civilized discussion is, as always, the goal around here.

Wanted: Mars colonists. Must be willing to travel.

Interested in exploring strange new worlds?  Eager to go where no one has gone before?

Mars One, a non-profit group based in the Netherlands, wants to establish a permanent colony on Mars by the year 2023 -- and is looking for astronauts.

They're serious about this.  Astronaut selection will begin this year, they say, and requires no previous experience.  They are looking for candidates that have "a deep sense of purpose, willingness to build and maintain healthy relationships, the capacity for self-reflection and ability to trust.  They must be resilient, adaptable, curious, creative and resourceful."  Six teams of four will eventually be selected and trained, and the first launch, scheduled for 2023, will take one of those teams -- "decided democratically" -- to the Red Planet.

The remaining teams will go on subsequent flights at two-year intervals, with the twenty-four astronauts ultimately being the founders of a permanent Mars colony.

Supplies will be sent on unmanned craft ahead of time, and (if all goes well) the materials will be there for use once the colonists arrive.

The training sounds rigorous, and will include "simulated missions, practice in a restricted mobility environment, and lessons in electronics, equipment repair, basic and critical medical care."  But after all, they'd better be ready for a year-long flight in cramped quarters, not to mention being prepared for dealing with all of the ills and accidents that human beings are subject to.  If one of them gets the flu, it's not like they'll be all that close to a pharmacy.

The whole thing sounds pretty thrilling, but there's one significant downside -- it's a one-way trip.  One launched, there's no coming back.  As you see Earth recede in the spaceship's windows, you'd better wave goodbye -- because you'll never stand on Terran soil again.  For that reason alone, I wouldn't sign up -- even if I were young enough, which I'm not.  (There's no explicit maximum age for volunteers, but practically speaking, I'd be 63 by the time the first launch took place, which seems a bit geriatric to begin a career in space exploration.)  The fact is, I'm a little too fond of my home planet to commit to leaving it forever.

There's also the inevitable problem of there being no knowledge of how living on Mars would affect human physiology.  Mars' gravity is about 38% of Earth's, for example.  I can see how this might make some problems better (e.g. lower back pain), but you have to wonder how to get around issues like the muscle atrophy and bone decalcification that plagued the men and women on the International Space Station. 

Another problem is the lower sunlight intensity.  Neuroscientists are only beginning to understand the effects that sunlight exposure have on neurotransmitter levels, circadian rhythms, and the immune system, and Mars would have at best 50% less sunlight, because of its greater distance from the Sun.  It's to be hoped that the colonists would have access to such things as broad-spectrum artificial light, which could ameliorate any problems, but it's something to consider.

There's also the problem of resources.  You may have heard about the Biosphere 2 Project, in which volunteer scientists were shut into a self-contained ecosystem in the Arizona desert.  Ecologists and physical chemists had worked for years to come up with an optimum balance, because the idea was that nothing but sunlight was supposed to come from outside -- the plants were to act as air purifiers and food producers, every drop of water was recycled, all electricity was produced by solar cells, and so on.  The 12,700 square meter facility had separate biomes (a rain forest, a miniature ocean, a coral reef, a savannah grassland), and was so big it generated its own weather (condensed moisture on the glass ceiling at night fell as "rain").  But even with all of that planning, the project had to be modified during its two-year (1991-1993) run -- oxygen levels fell, probably because of uptake by soil microbes, resulting in the necessity to artificially inject oxygen into the air; rapidly-reproducing pest species such as cockroaches, ants, and morning glory vines exploded in population; some of the "biomes" (especially the grassland) didn't do well.  Clearly, there were unaccounted-for variables.  And while the Biosphere 2 volunteers could just ask for help if things went too wrong, our Mars colonists won't have that option -- they will be entirely on their own to produce what they need, and deal with any problems that occur, in a far more hostile environment.

Last, I worry about the psychological effects.  Humans are social primates; we are happiest in free-flowing large groups.  What would it be like to spend two years, and never see anyone but the same three people, every day?  What happens when frictions occur?  You've got nowhere to go; the first colony's living quarters would almost certainly be smaller than Biosphere 2 was.  And outside the walls, all you have is the endless, lifeless Martian deserts.  The idea makes me shudder a little.

But anyway, if you're interested in volunteering, click the link at the beginning of this post, and check it out.  And while I won't be there with you in line, I do think it's a fascinating opportunity.  The idea that humans may, for the first time, leave this little blue and green planet where we were born, and establish an outpost elsewhere in space -- well, for someone who was raised on Star Trek, it just seems like the first step toward greater things.  And who knows, maybe there will turn out to be life on Mars?