Is there life on other planets? With the universe so vast and our knowledge of it so infinitesimal, it would be foolish person who bluntly offered an answer one way or another, which is why it does not fill me with any amount of pleasure to have to tell you that no, there is not, give me a break, if there were living beings on other planets we would already be working in their salt mines or they ours, depending on who had the better technology. I've heard all the arguments about how it's remarkably shortsighted and even Earthling-essentialist to assume that we are so fortunate and unique to be on the only habitable space in all of creation, but quite frankly I am not totally sure that there is even life here. You know that religion whose main tenet is the belief that the idea of human consciousness is actually a shared delusion born out of the troubled sleep of a giant sea turtle living on top of the world? (It's called the "Reform" movement of Judaism.) That is actually probably true. We're all living in a tortoise's nightmare and none of this matters. (Or at least that's what I tell myself when the crippling burdens of existence—the shame and sorrow that make something as simple as running downstairs to check the mail seem like an epic ordeal with no hope of survival so why would you even bother when you can just keep sitting there on your couch with your shirt off and your chest hair matted with tears and pita chips—seem too much to bear.) But so long as we are all part of the same bad dream, we might as well pull together, go to this new habitable planet they found, and start strip-mining it. I mean, at least it's something we're good at, according to the turtle.

Photo by Dariush M., via Shutterstock