Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let's discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth. [...]

Let's discuss the breathable-air problem. Earth's atmosphere is rich with oxygen due in large part to all of the green plants photosynthesizing here. We got green plants out the ass. Some people have the idea that making Mars's atmosphere breathable is as simple as introducing some green plants to it: They will eat up sunlight and produce oxygen, and then people can breathe it. That is uhhhhh the circle of life (?) or whatever. They call this idea "terraforming."

At this point in our discussion I must acquaint you with two dear friends of mine. Their names are The South Pole, and The Summit Of Mount Everest.

The South Pole is around 2,800 meters above sea level, and like everywhere else on Earth around 44 million miles closer to the sun than any point on Mars. It sits deep down inside the nutritious atmosphere of a planet teeming with native life. Compared to the very most hospitable place on Mars it is an unimaginably fertile Eden. Here is a list of the plant-life that grows there: Nothing. Here is a list of all the animals that reproduce there: None.

Even with all the profound advantages the South Pole enjoys compared to Mars, even on a planet where living things have spent billions and billions of years figuring out how to adapt to and thrive within an incredibly diverse array of biomes -- on a planet where giant tubeworms the size of NBA basket stanchions have colonized lightless ocean depths at which a human would be crushed like a grape under a piano -- the South Pole simply cannot support complex life. It is too cold, and its relationship with sunlight too erratic, for living things to sustain themselves there. On astronomical scales it is for all practical purposes in the exact same spot as some of the most life-rich and biodiverse places in the known universe, and yet no species has established a permanent self-sustaining population there. Ever. [...]

This doofus's birdbrained space-colony takes are important to know; that alone is a very awful and embarrassing true thing to say about the state of things. Capitalist society permits such profound inequalities of wealth and power, and the U.S. has allowed its public sector to lapse into such abysmal decay, that a guy like Musk exerts a terrible gravity on the world around him: What he is interested in seeing done, some number of other people will work on doing, because that work pays better than nearly all others. Whatever pit he wants to throw his money into, some appalling volume of the world's resources and human labors will follow it down. [...]

The fantasy -- and it is a fantasy -- isn't one of space travel and exploration and some bright Star Trek future for humanity, but one of winnowing and eugenics, of cold actuarial lifeboat logic, of ever greater reallocation from the dwindling many to the thriving few. That's the world as Elon Musk and his cohort want it; Mars colonization is just a pretext.

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Let me particularly draw your attention to the Cyberdelia variant of our D20 Challenge Drink Special, wherein you rolls the dice and takes your chances:

Our original plan was to 3D print a pair of elusive sixteen sided dice ("tetrahedrally diminished dodecahedron") as per the back side of the menu, but some play-testing made us realize that nobody was going to be able to find their drink on the list. That gag was perhaps too obscure.

Anyway, that movie screening under our belt, we have two more coming up!

On Wed Sep 25, we have a screening of the Lucio Fulci 1979 classic "Zombie" (AKA "Zombi 2") with a live performance of the score by original composer Fabio Frizzi. (Ticket sales are brisk on this one: it's probably going to sell out.)

Bloody Disgusting has this to say:

Frizzi masterfully juggles keyboard, acoustic guitar, and conductor duties -- sometimes all in the same song. He's joined by guitarists Riccardo Rocchi and Francesco Saguto, bassist Roberto Fasciani, drummer Federico Tacchi, and keyboardist Paolo Castellani.

The music augments Zombie's many crowd-pleasing moments: decaying flesh eaters rising from the dead (and, in the film's most notable scene, fighting a shark), Fulci's signature eye trauma among other gnarly special effects, gratuitous nudity, and a fiery finale that gives way to a bleak conclusion on Brooklyn Bridge.

The live score is worth the price of admission alone, but Frizzi and his bandmates followed the screening with a 25-minute encore consisting of cues from other Fulci favorites, including City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, Cat in the Brain, and The Psychic.

Then on Sun Oct 27, we start off Halloween Week with The Crow 1994:

Have you seen the new remake of The Crow? Do you need to wash that "New Crow" taste out of your mouth? Then this is the night for you! We begin the festivities with a screening of the 1994 Brandon Lee classic, The Crow, then segue into a dance party featuring and inspired by the movie's epic soundtrack.

Costumes encouraged! Remember: "friends don't let friends go as The Crow for Halloween" -- except when it's a Crow Party.

Directed by Alex Proyas and featuring a haunting score by Graeme Revell (formerly of pioneering 70s/80s industrial noise group SPK), the movie is an audio and visual triumph. Revell calls the score his "signature work".

The soundtrack album, too, was groundbreaking, an eclectic mix of gothic, industrial and metal, featuring Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Machines of Loving Grace, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, Helmet and more. Pitchfork listed it at #25 on their list of Greatest Soundtrack Albums of All Time.