Priciest High
Space, The Afternoon Frontier

Why feed the hungry when you can blow $200,000 on a two-and-a-half-hour instellar vacation? Thanks to Virgin Galactic, the überrich will be turning their noses up higher, as the first commercial test flights launch from the Mojave Spaceport in California during 2008. Don’t expect a full-throttle rocket blast-off.

“The vertical launch was only adopted by the U.S. to reach the moon,” says Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic.

Instead, a jet carrier will piggyback the Jetsons-esque SpaceShip Two 50,000 feet up, then launch it to an altitude of more than 68 miles. Soon thick-walleted adventure seekers such as Superman Returns director Bryan Singer will be taken for a ride.

After reaching sub-orbital altitude, passengers can tumble around in zero gravity—then return to the Spaceport to receive their wings and an incredibly expensive superiority complex.
—Catrinel Bartolomeu

Coolest Passport Stamp
Slovakia!

Going to Europe? Fortunately, there’s one place with castles, brews, and gorgeous women where the dollar is still king. OK, two if you count Medieval Times, but Slovakia is the travel destination of 2008.

Check out the capital, Bratislava, where models-to-be practice their sexily fractured English on you. Why now? On January 1, 2009, Slovakia is going to dump its koruna currency for the Euro. After that, other European Union tourists are going to overrun the country. So go now and go big.
—S.B.

Newest Cold War
The Northwest Passage Battle

Poodle-size mosquitoes and Oklahoma beachfront property aren’t the only benefits of global warming. Even as you read this, Arctic pack ice is melting in the Northwest Passage, making the direct sea shipping route from Europe to Asia a cash cow for the country that controls it. And the formerly inhospitable Passage also contains enormous oil and gas deposits. In other words, prepare for some high-stakes international flag-planting.

Canada has a strong claim, since the Passage runs along the country’s northern coast. But the United States and the European Union will argue that the Passage is actually in international waters, eh? The Russkies are bullish on sub-zero wastelands, having planted a flag on the seabed under the North Pole. Its in-no-way-biased scientists contend that the 1,220-mile underwater Lomonosov Ridge conveniently links Siberia with the North Pole.

Maybe all parties will realize that cooperation has advantages. Or perhaps next season’s episodes of Deadliest Catch will be filmed on battleships. Stay tuned.
—S.B.

Smartest Lane Change
Dale Jr. Revs Up

In the ego-fueled world of NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt Jr. already has the most recognizable name, the hottest groupies, and so many endorsement patches that he may need to start wearing a cape.

The only thing missing? Recent big wins in the No. 8 Budweiser car owned by his stepmother. Though Jr. regularly finishes in the top 10, he hasn’t cruised victory lane since way back in May 2006. That should change come February 2008, when Little E switches teams, sponsors, and numbers to join Hendrick Motorsports. Three of the team’s four drivers zoomed into the championship Chase for the Nextel Cup.

With a Hendrick engine in new No. 88 National Guard and Mountain Dew Chevy, Earnhardt will be primed to deliver wins to Junior Nation. The only thing die-hard fans will lose? A convenient excuse for why they constantly chug Budweiser.
—S.B.

Riskiest Olympics
The Great Weird of China

China hopes the 2008 Beijing Olympics signify its efforts to join the modern world. But if American athletes venture too far past their hermetically sealed compound, they risk encountering more than toxic toys. Alternative events they should prepare for:

Freestyle Grave Robbing
The black market for female corpses is resurgent in China. Recently deceased or “wet” women fetch up to $5,300 from parents who don’t want their dead sons to be bachelors in the afterlife. Earlier this year, a grave robber confessed to murdering six women. Killing, he told police, was much easier than digging bodies out of the ground.

400-Meter Rat Sprint
Flooding along the Yangtze has flushed a few rats out of their holes—two billion to be exact. Farmers are using shovels and poison to fight the crop-eating hordes, a boon for Beijing restaurants that list rat meat on their menus. After all, 2008 is also the Year of the Rat.

Pommel Dog
Rabies killed 2,545 Chinese in 2005—bad news for dogs, frothing at the mouth or not. Officials in Yunnan Province took the fight to the pooches, killing 54,429 pets and strays. Dogs being walked by their owners were clubbed to death by vigilantes. In the town of Xiajiashan, citizens lined up to comply with orders to hang their dogs in public.

Lethal Injection Marathon
While America’s courts wrestle with lethal injection, China has put it on wheels. At least 40 “Death Cars”—vans that bringmobile lethal injection to remote communities—help China build on its 2006 world-record execution tally of 1,010.
—S.B.

Unlikeliest TV Savior
David Simon

David Simon is Hollywood’s most exciting writer because he doesn’t live in Hollywood. He lives in Baltimore, which is like Hollywood except with much poorer drug addicts. Baltimore is where he set HBO’s drama The Wire—TV’s best cop show that isn’t really a cop show.

When The Wire’s final season premieres in January, Simon will wrap up a uniquely realistic study of cops and robbers. What began as a tale of detectives and drug dealers has widened to include politicians, schools, and, in this full-circle finale, reporters. “The show is realistic because we’re not interested in making it television entertainment,” Simon says. “We’re not from the industry. And I think that’s what it feels like: It feels like someone other than Hollywood got their chance to speak to what the world might actually be like.”

Simon gets an even higher-profile chance in the fall of 2008 with Generation Kill, a sure-to-be-controversial adaptation of the bestseller about marines in Iraq. As expected, Simon’s adaptation won’t be the typical Hollywood explosion porn. “It’s a character study of young men at war,” Simon says. “We’re not blowing crap up to blow it up. We’re blowing crap up because those were the events of the day.”
—Adam Winer