Round 1

“Why Do We Really Celebrate New Years Day” David Ropeik

At one second past midnight on January 1, the day will changed from Wednesday to Thursday, usually an unremarkable transition of no special significance. But somehow we've decided that this change, which will end one year and begin the next, is different. This unique tick of the clock has always prompted us both to celebrate and to step outside the day-to-day activity we’re always so busy with—to reflect, to look back, take stock, assess how we did, and resolve to do better going forward. Save perhaps for our birthdays, no other moment in the year gets this sort of attention.Why does the start of the new year carry such special symbolism? And why is its celebration so common around the world, as it has been for at least as long as there have been calendars? Behavior this ubiquitous must surely be tied to something intrinsic in the human animal, something profoundly meaningful and important, given all the energy and resources we invest not just in the celebration but also our efforts to make good on a fresh set of resolutions (even though we mostly fail to keep them). It may be that the symbolism we attach to this one moment is rooted in one of the most powerful motivations of all—our motivation to survive.

The celebration part is obvious: As our birthdays do, New Year’s day provides us the chance to celebrate having made it through another 365 days, the unit of time by which we keep chronological score of our lives. Phew! Another year over, and here we still are! Time to our raise our glasses and toast our survival! (The flip side of this is represented by the year-end obituary summaries of those who didn’t make it, reassuring those of us who did.)

But what about those resolutions? Aren’t they about survival, too—living healthier, better, longer? New Year’s resolutions are examples of the universal human desire to have some control over what lies ahead, because the future is unsettlingly unknowable. Not knowing what’s to come means we don’t know what we need to know to keep ourselves safe. To counter that worrisome powerlessness, we do things to take control. We resolve to diet and exercise, to quit smoking, and to start saving. It doesn’t even matter whether we hold our resolve and make good on these promises. Committing to them, at least for a moment, gives us a feeling of more control over the uncertain days to come.

A 2007 study by British psychologist Richard Wiseman found that for many of us, what U2 sang is true: "Nothing changes on New Years Day.” Of 3,000 people followed for a year, 88% failed to achieve the goals of their resolutions, although 52% had been confident they would when they made

them. Here’s a summary of that research, which includes some suggestions for how to make good on yours.

Interestingly, New Years resolutions also commonly include things like treating people better, making new friends, and paying off debts. It's been so throughout history. The Babylonians would return borrowed objects. Jews seek, and offer, forgiveness. The Scots go "first footing," visiting neighbors to wish them well. How does all this social "resolving" connect to survival? Simple. We are social animals. We have evolved to depend on others, literally, for our health and safety. Treating people well is a good way to be treated well. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," it turns out, is a great survival strategy.

And many people resolve to pray more. That makes sense in terms of survival, too. Pray more and an omnipotent force is more likely to keep you safe. Jews pray at the start of their new year to be inscribed in "the Book of Life" for one more year. And though death is inescapable, throughout history humans have dealt with the fear of death by affiliating with religions that promise happy endings. Pray more, and death is less scary.

There are hundreds of good luck rituals woven among New Year celebrations, also practiced in the name of exercising a little control over fate. The Dutch, for whom the circle is a symbol of success, eat donuts. Greeks bake special Vassilopitta cake with a coin inside, bestowing good luck in the coming year on whoever finds it in his or her slice. Fireworks on New Year's Eve started in China millennia ago as a way to chase off evil spirits. The Japanese hold New Year’s Bonenkai, or "forget-the-year parties," to bid farewell to the problems and concerns of the past year and prepare for a better new one. Disagreements and misunderstandings between people are supposed to be resolved, and grudges set aside. In a New Year’s ritual for many cultures, houses are scrubbed to sweep out the bad vibes and make room for better ones.

It’s fascinating, really, to see how common so much of this is: Fireworks. Good luck rituals. Resolutions to give us the pretense of control over the future. Everywhere, New Year's is a moment to consider our weaknesses and how we might reduce the vulnerabilities they pose—and to do something about the scary powerlessness that comes from thinking about the unsettling unknown of what lies ahead. As common as these shared behaviors are across both history and culture, it’s fascinating to realize that the special ways that people note this unique passage of one day into the next are probably all manifestations of the human animal’s fundamental imperative for survival.

So, how do you reassure yourself against the scariest thing the future holds, the only sure thing that lies ahead, the inescapable reality that you will

someday die? Pass the donuts, the Vassilopitta and the grapes, light the fireworks, and raise a glass to toast: "To survival!"

Round 2

The Horses - Poem by Edwin Muir

Barely a twelvemonth afterThe seven days war that put the world to sleep,Late in the evening the strange horses came.By then we had made our covenant with silence,But in the first few days it was so stillWe listened to our breathing and were afraid.On the second dayThe radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth dayA plane plunged over us into the sea. ThereafterNothing. The radios dumb; And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million roomsAll over the world. But now if they should speak,If on a sudden they should speak again,If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,We would not listen, we would not let it bringThat old bad world that swallowed its children quickAt one great gulp. We would not have it again.Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.The tractors lie about our fields; at eveningThey look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.We leave them where they are and let them rust:'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,Long laid aside. We have gone backFar past our fathers' land.And then, that eveningLate in the summer the strange horses came.We heard a distant tapping on the road,A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on againAnd at the corner changed to hollow thunder.We saw the headsLike a wild wave charging and were afraid.We had sold our horses in our fathers' timeTo buy new tractors. Now they were strange to usAs fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.Or illustrations in a book of knights.

We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sentBy an old command to find our whereaboutsAnd that long-lost archaic companionship.In the first moment we had never a thoughtThat they were creatures to be owned and used.Among them were some half a dozen coltsDropped in some wilderness of the broken world,Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loadsBut that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

Round 3

Semi-Final

“Mars Beckons” NY Times Editorial Staff

The science and technology behind NASA’s latest space explorer to land on Mars are so awe-inducing that it’s hardly surprising when scientists commenting on the triumph drop their usual jargon to speak like excited schoolchildren.

“It’s nice and dirty; I like that,” was how Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator behind the InSight mission, reacted when, shortly after setting down Monday on the flat and featureless Martian plain known as the Elysium Planitia, the lander beamed back an image speckled with red dust. “This image is actually a really good argument for why you put a dust cover on a camera. Good choice, right?”

Or there was Tom Hoffman, the InSight project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, declaring himself “very, very happy” with the boring landing site. “They promised me sandy with no rocks,” he said. Then, looking at that first image, he added, “But there’s one rock, so I might have to talk with them about that.”

Anyone who’d mistake that tone for world-weariness need only watch the video of the reaction at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., when, after tracking a harrowing seven-minute descent, the announcer proclaimed, “Touchdown confirmed.” The hall full of women and men who had dedicated years to getting InSight onto the red planet went bonkers. “My inner 4-year-old came out,” Mr. Hoffman confessed.

InSight is not a first. It’s the eighth successful landing on Mars since 1976, when Viking 1 became the first spacecraft to land and work on the planet, and the 45th exploratory mission of any kind since 1960. Currently, the NASA rover Curiosity is on Mars rolling around on its six aluminum wheels searching for evidence of once-upon-a-time life; another, Opportunity, went into hibernation during a dust storm in June and may never awaken.

But each mission is different, facing different dangers and different challenges. InSight’s landing alone was an extraordinary feat, as the craft had to slow down from 12,300 miles per hour to about 5 m.p.h. at a precise 12 degree angle, all within what scientists and engineers have dubbed “seven minutes of terror,” to land on the Elysium Planitia. The landing was monitored by two mini-spacecraft, each about the size of a briefcase, whose flight was a cosmic first of its own.

Unlike the mobile landers, InSight — Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — is meant to stay in one spot

and deploy instruments to measure marsquakes (yes, on Earth they’re “earthquakes”) in order to learn about what’s going on in the innards of the planet. One gizmo will take Mars’s temperature by hammering itself 16 feet below the surface. Deploying the instruments alone is expected to take two months, and the entire mission is meant to last a Martian year, roughly two Earth years.

What for? A random sampling of comments from the public suggests not everyone is convinced that digging on Mars is money well spent. But the basic answer is that whether it’s practical or not, humans will continue to explore the heavens so long as the moon, Mars and the myriad celestial bodies beyond fire our imagination and curiosity. What happened in the earliest days of the universe? How were Earth and its fellow planets formed? And the question of questions: Is there life out there?

Mars may not have all the answers, but for now it’s the most accessible other planet for detailed studies. And unlike on Earth, on Mars surface evidence of how our solar system was formed has not been totally eroded away. And life! Earlier rovers found evidence of water; NASA’s coming Mars 2020 mission will have even finer tools to search for ancient biology. And after that, an earthling may actually put a footprint into the red dust.

Elon Musk, for one, says there’s a 70 percent chance that footprint will be his. “I’m talking about moving there,” the founder of SpaceX said in an interview with Axios published on Sunday. Why? For the same reason people risk death to climb the highest mountains. “People die on Mount Everest all the time,” he said. “They like doing it for the challenge.”

Finals