I'm kind of surprised it hasn't been brought up here yet but is everyone watching the Discovery Channel's "Gold Rush"? For those unfamiliar with it, it is about a group of unemployed Oregonians that go up to Alaska in hopes of striking it rich on a gold claim. I'm completely hooked on the show and my girlfriend can't understand why I even bother watching.

From my perspective, I'm both slightly impressed and completely horrified at the same time. It feels like watching a slow-motion train wreck. I'm impressed at the fact they've actually been able to get a bunch of real equipment all the way to the site. I'm horrified by the complete wrecklessness which they operate, particulary since there are nearly always children around. They dropped multi-ton items, broken cables/chains that could have cut people in half, and have only barely managed to avoid ruining extremely expensive equipment. When one of the guys mentioned that "someone could have been killed", the response by the lead guy was "don't talk like that around me" rather than to take steps to avoid someone actually dying. They (inappropriately IMO) shot a black bear, diverted streamwater in wreckless, lawless fashion, and have trashed more than one of their vehicles by running their other equipment into them.

As a social experiment, I think the show is very insightful. You essentially have a bunch of uneducated red-necks that even admit they are "risking it all" with no fall-back plan. They are clearly "anti-government" types that would appear to fall into the Tea Party movement. While I don't know it, based on their general attitudes and way of life, it seems unlikely they would have health insurance. Yet, they rushed their daughter off to the hospital when she had a seizure, probably costing tax payers tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. I found that particular storyline particularly interesting because I think it puts a real-life perspective on the larger health-care debate and social safety nets that they would probably disagree with yet readily use.

-AP