ant to find out what's really happening on Mars? Not the NASA-hyped, official Pathfinder and Global Surveyor information that's released to the public, but the real stuff, as reported by the Martians themselves? Then visit Little Green Martians, the best source for Martian news and information on the Web.
LGM is broken up into three main sections: News, Web Board and Links. The news section is the heart of the page, with the latest bulletins from the Red Planet, ranging from riots caused by the Pathfinder landing to the dirt on NASA's failed attempt to send Sojourner into a Martian nightclub. And, believe it or not, apparently NASA knows all about it. NASA looks like it's been in direct contact with our little green friends for some time, to the point that NASA officials have even been quoted by Martian reporters on LGM! But with the behavior of Pathfinder and Sojourner on the Red Planet, it's no wonder NASA hasn't let on. After all, how much funding would they receive for their projects if the world at large knew about the brief but tawdry affair between Pathfinder and Darzakon?
Among the amazing discoveries NASA has kept to itself is that the rock Earth scientists have been calling "The Couch" near the Pathfinder landing site is indeed a couch after all. And a fairly cheap one at that, by all accounts. LGM quotes NASA officials as calling the couch "gauche" and "tacky."
Aside from reading these tabloid reports, visitors to LGM can participate in the ongoing Mars-related discussion in Web Board, or browse the comprehensive Links section, which catalogs the best Martian sites on the Web. There is also a Java applet that will allow Earthlings to kiss a Martian, and another to translate Earth languages into Martian.
Life, love and boxing on the Red Planet
As an alternative news outlet for Martian affairs, Little Green Martians makes for some interesting but shallow reading. NASA may be covering up major discoveries, but at least it does so with some in-depth reporting. Not so LGM. The whole news page, including archived articles, only takes a few minutes to go through, and the Web Board postings are equally sparse (but amusing). Of course, LGM doesn't claim to be the Daily Martian or The New Olympus Times.
As a fun site to visit and a page that offers a brief glimpse of Martian culture and gossip, LGM succeeds wonderfully. Where else can lowly Earthlings hope to kiss a lonely sgm (single green Martian) without having to leave the comfort of their own computer terminals? Not at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, that's for sure. And is NASA going to tell the public that there's a rocking Martian nightclub not 50 meters from the Pathfinder landing site? Hardly.
There are also a few moral lessons tucked into the Martian reports. For instance, the Martian prize fight between Marzark Tysar and Evander Horfarnak--which featured a vicious antenna bite by Tysar--was dubbed "unearthly" by Sojourner due to its savagery and violence. Hmmm.
Overall Little Green Martians is a fun place to visit, and it probably deserves a bookmark for those once-a-month Web crawls when work or school just gets too boring to deal with. And since the site is continually updated (and accepting suggestions), there are new things to see and read all the time. But once visitors have kissed the Martian and had their e-mail messages to friends translated into Red Planet lingo, it's probably best to put this one aside for a while and head to the Links section to see what else is out there.
