The verdict is in on the question “what happens when you lock six men in a pretend space capsule with a bunch of cameras and sensors and tell them to make believe they’re flying to Mars.”
It appears they become lazy, and cranky, and they can’t sleep.
In other words, it’s the very same result you get if you choose to stay on Earth and simply get old.
In just about any environment, getting people to exercise is a challenge. The intangible piece in this case is the willing suspension of disbelief. They chose scientists to take this mock journey, but scientists are practical and ultimately they know the truth. Why exercise for two hours a day? After all, it’s not like we’ll really have to be on Mars, or that we couldn’t get out of this box if necessary!
A better crew would have been made up of unemployed actors who could really get into their roles.
Believe it or not, we already dealt with this topic – in what was only the second Trail Baboon post on June 4th, 2010.
In that post, I suggested the “Six Men in a Tub”, who were being paid $100,000 each to embark on a scientific version of a 17 month reality show taping, needed a proper theme song. One was offered, modeled after the anthem for the TV show “The Brady Bunch.” But it turns out those tailor-made lyrics were still wrong.
The study results suggest this is a more accurate version:
Here’s the story of six sleepless fellas
Who got lazy while pretending they could fly.
They skipped workouts and moved less than they were told to.
They didn’t even try.It’s not easy to snooze in a trailer.
Though they’re paying you to stay there like a lump.
It’s depressing when you know you’re stationary.
You feel like such a chump.When it started there were cameras and reporters.
Asking how long would the daring mission take?
And the guys were acting so dedicated,
But inside they understood it all was fake.The whole thing’s fake. The whole thing’s fake.
This is all the lousy acting I can take!
The whole thing’s fake. Not much at stake.
I’m embarrassed which is why I’m wide awake.
Name a role you could inhabit, non-stop, for 17 months.
Trail Baboon 
Good morning. I have a role that I am trying to inhabit for, I hope, 17 months and more, my life. I have plenty of trouble with this role. If I could get another role, it might fun if it allowed me to leave my regular role for 17 months. However, I am so preoccupied with the role I have that I am not sure I can leave it. Perhaps 17 months as a wilderness explorer would work. However, sometimes it seem I am currently exploring some kind of wilderness. One that is a little scary.
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Super Mom is one I aspire to (me, and many others) – mostly I manage Adequate Mom or, on my better days, Pretty Darn Good Mom. The hard part with Super Mom is managing to keep my patience for all seven days in the week, serving nutritious home-cooked meals more than 2 nights a week (does frozen pizza count if it’s spinach pizza?), and doing creative, crafty, educational things with Daughter when I am not keeping the house spic and span. Yeah. Not gonna happen. Daughter will have to survive with Adequate Mom (and, on occasion, Pretty Darn Good Mom) who moonlights as She Who Is Learning About Search Technology for Fun and Profit.
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a)yes, frozen pizza counts if it is spinach pizza. It counts even more if it is consumed in a congenial atmosphere as at least a fraction of a family unit.
b)if your daughter is kind and happy, you are a Super Mom. No other metrics need apply.
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c dust keeps
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you say that like it is a good thing. I assure you, it is not.
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Dang it.
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I’m in trouble.
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Perhaps we could dream up an art installation based on cobwebs and dust and have it somehow relate to the disintegration of society or something high-falultin’ like that.
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Of course, it’s already been done:
http://www.shangralafamilyfun.com/dusthouse.html
Is it just me or is that a little bit creepy?
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And there’s this, which is kinda cool. We live on a gravel road, I could do this!
http://dirtycarart.com/
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Those are great, Ben!
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It’s not dirt, it’s art or so it seems from what you found, Ben. If I don’t dust for a few weeks, I might be able to make some drawings myself on various surfaces in our house.
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Marvel Duchamp did
A cool study in layered dust as art
I’ll see if I can find it
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I had another thought about today’s question while waiting to find out if the rest of you are still here and have not went straight to a new role. This weekend there was story about a man who decided to completely switch his role in life and follow the example of Peace Pilgrim. Peace Pilgrim walked across the country for many years to promote peace, walking every day with nothing but the clothes on her back and living on whatever food people would give her. In the story, that was carried on This American Life, a man tried to follow the example of Peace Pilgrim. He quit after about three days. I guess I will not pick the role of Peace Pilgrim as one I could inhabit for 17 months.
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I was hoping to embark, starting today, in my role as an organized person. I loaded up my bag, made my list of tasks to do at the coffee shop office this morning, plugged my cell phone into the car to charge up, and then efficiently locked my keys in said car.
Coffee shop is not that far from home, so I will at least be accomplishing the goal of getting in a daily walk today. I shake my head at myself.
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My level of organization has only reached as far as “a canvas bag for every project.” It has not yet reached the level of cleaning out those bags when the project is done…Perhaps if I locked my phone in my car and worked for a day at the coffee shop I could advance to real organization. 🙂
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not sure about the organization piece, but it most certainly keeps you up on your exercise program 🙂 and if you find yourself as a by-product to be schlepping those project bags, it just might give you the push to lighten those bags at every opportunity.
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“It appears they become lazy, and cranky, and they can’t sleep. In other words, it’s the very same result you get if you choose to stay on Earth and simply get old.” Nicely said, unlike what I write lately, Dale. AND, there’s my role without any tub or five other men.
To ask a question that my students used to wonder about “Lord of the Flies”: what if you added one woman?
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Of course, Dale is only repeating the common misconception of what getting old is like. I don’t think Dale believes this is really the truth, right? I have not been good at getting enough sleep for many years going back to well before I could be thought of as an older person. Also, I’m afraid I have always been a little cranky and lazy. Actually, I think I am less cranky now.
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Oh, shut up 🙂
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Oh, yah! You shut up! Ha,ha,ha!
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I could have easily inhabited the role of lightkeeper at Split Rock lighthouse long before Highway 61 was a major expressway and the area became a park. Seventeen months alone in a lighthouse, watching the lake – oh, that’s the life for me! I’m pretty sure I’d be happy and energetic in a role like that.
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The s&h and I often sigh over the fact that the Outer Island lighthouse keeper is no longer a job possibility.
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Whenever I contemplate these kinds of things one of the first problems I encounter is that I couldn’t be that far from a library!
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There are libraries on the North Shore.
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Yes, but a block and a half from the lighthouse? That’s how far I am from my local library!
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sounds like a sure cure for sleep deprivation to me
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Morning all. 17 months, 24-7? I’m not sure I’m up to anything 24-7 for that long. I do inhabit the “Single Mom” persona most of the time, but I do get to escape it occasionally, unlike the space capsule folks who don’t have anywhere to escape to. I read one of the Biodome books a couple of years ago and it sounded like a nightmare.
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thats funny sherrilee i was just thiniking heck i could do anything for 17 months, if there is an end in sight anything is doable. even things i wouldnt want for a life i could find intersting for 17 months and i could tolerate with rude lazy irritable roommates for a a trip to mars or a fake one. i could do the dad or even bobby in the brady bunch for 17 months. what would i enjoy…. singing in coffee shops, doing a creative think tank kind of ditty to make the world a better place, captain kangaroo, mister rodgers, john denver, bob dylan, garrison keilor, heck i could even do dale connelly for 17 months. getting up at 4 to be to work in time for the 6am launch and done supposedly at 8 with the show then be the news guy for the rest of the morning back to the home office with a tweak here and a tweak there to the blog, relax and check the astroid news. then to bed a 530 to get my 8 hours. tough gig but i could do it for 17 months,
mother theresa helping people to die wiht dignaity would be wonderful
jacque and renee helping people get the stuff together for an hour a week forever … i could do it for 17 months then i’d shift to pulling out my toenails for a little stress relief.
maybe id be better at being the older brady, bobbie had such a mindless character maybe greg,a little more meat to the role for my 17 month.
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tim, I think you’re right, most of us could endure 17 months of just about anything if we had to. It’s having a choice that makes it tricky.
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I think I could inhabit the role of the stereotypical ‘hard-bitten noir detective.’ I certainly have the hat for it. And when I’m deep into writing that kind of dialogue, I find myself talking like it.
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TGITH, can I be your assistant who seems to blunder along behind you as you solve the crimes or would you be one of those lone wolf types of noir detectives?
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I’d probably be a lone wolf, but there’s always a spot for a comic relief sidekick.
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I am feeling old and much too slow for the pace of the world for a variety of reasons hitting me simultaneously. One is I am trying to decide what we are going to do about cell phones and TV/Internet service. I just talked to four places and am thoroughly confused.
For solace I am going to watch some other useless old farts on Last of the Summer Wine and then read Simon’s Night, which is one of the best books I know about the advanced aging process. I feel like the old man in Hattie’s boarding house who kept trying to find slivers in his hands and always stopped to watch men working. I do not yet talk about bad weather in the past.
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Clyde, other issues aside, cell phone and TV/Internet confusion has nothing to do with old age. The communications industry makes confusing on purpose. Last time I had to mess with this, I ended having to make a spreadsheet to keep track of all the variant pricing!
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We were recently sold a plan by Frontier that promised to reduce our payment. It didn’t, but it added a $200 service charge and sent us a modem that is identical to a new one we just had installed for free. We were able to get them to take away the service charge and they don’t seem to know that they sent us an extra modem. Then they called us again trying to offer us the same bogus deal a second time.
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I am about to plunge into the strange world of Hickory Tech. If you do not hear from me in three days send in the phone police.
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The role I’m invested in occupying seems to be continuing my minimalist lifestyle without the intrusion of mental chatter that I “should” be doing more. I counter this self-criticism with words about having earned the right to simplicity and living in the present. Accepting that I’m relatively borderline agoraphobic and pretty much staying within a 10-mile radius of the cottage is an ongoing struggle for me because I recognize this as unusual and lacking in adventure. Some folks would envy such a simple, quiet life; others would be mortified at the thought of having so little going on from day to day. All I know is that I have everything necessary to venture out into this big world – money, time, physical health, self-confidence, etc. – yet my set point is right here on this loveseat in my small den in my lakeside cottage. I’m really not sure what it would take to dislodge me from this safe, cozy spot, but whatever that is probably won’t show up as an epiphany at this later stage of life.
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I would like to spend 17 months as Nora Charles or Amanda Campion, spouses of either Nick Charles or Albert Campion. In the first scenario I would live elegently with a witty and debonair husband and also have fox terrier. In the second scenario, I would live in 1930’s England with a witty and debonair husband and rub elbows with a host of interesting and peculiar people.
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Greetings! I would like to inhabit the character of a billionaire philanthropist for 17 months — either that or lighthouse keeper with plenty of books, movies and internet. I could do either. Indulge fantastic whims of helping whoever I meet, stage elaborate, glorious and artistic fundraisers and pay off people’s mortgages who are in danger of foreclosure. I could do that character really well. Being a lighthouse keeper with an endless supply of stuff to indulge my curiosity and entertainment would be pretty darn good as well.
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I would like to take on the role of RV-er — and 17 months would probably be enough to satisfy me. And it wouldn’t have to be a huge RV, small to medium, with just enough space for a tiny bathroom, some shelving for the books, and a bare bones kitchenette. I’d want to camp in warmer climes, of course, during the winter… settle in near friends or relatives for a few weeks, then move on when the time feels right. (This would require a shedding of all earthly obligations, so not sure when, but I still have fantasies about this lifestyle.)
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check a scamp trialer
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We have a scamp….
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Would a Prius be able to pull it?
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We had one for a few years. A Prius should not pull it.
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ask scamp what it could handle
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An old friend of ours, Bert Tayler, has recently developed a very cool little camping trailer called the Vistabule. He’s based in Minneapolis and I’m sure would love to show it to you. Google Bistabule to see photos, it’s really a cool little camper.
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That is some suit!
I do have to say blue has always been my favorite color. And it sure is sparkly…
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I think you’d look great in a suit like that, Ben.
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Thanks! It would be fun to at least try it once. 🙂
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And playing that guitar. The electric one with all the glitter.
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