February 2012

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Editor's Note

• Goodnight Moonshot

  Matt Welch

  Turning the lights out on a government-aggrandizing metaphor

Contributors

• Contributors

Letters

• Letters

• (Still) Getting Off the Ground

  Seth McKelvey

Citings

• Phone Frisking

  Jacob Sullum

  Warrantless searches

• Deportation Nation

  Lucy Steigerwald

  Not going home

• POTUS Pot Poll

  Mike Riggs

  Obama vs. the Internet

• Cheese, Danish

  Tim Cavanaugh

  Fat tax in Denmark

• Bone of Contention

  Katherine Mangu-Ward

  Marrow match money

• Cyber Peace

  Tate Watkins

  The online war that isn’t

• A Farm and a Leg

  Peter Suderman

  Ag subsidies forever

• Ewww Politics

  Ronald Bailey

  Disgust and ideology

• Loud and Proud

  Damon W. Root

  Pump up the volume, legally?

• Loko Notion

  Jacob Sullum

  Five drinks in one

• Dessert in the Desert

  Katherine Mangu-Ward

  Food policy myth

Soundbites

• Drug Warrior Defends Dispensary Crackdown

  Jacob Sullum

Years Ago

• 25 years ago in reason

Brickbats

• Brickbats

  Charles Oliver

Quotes

• Quotes

Lists

• Sex Markets

Columns

• Does Mars Have Rights?

  Ronald Bailey

  An ethical case for terraforming the Red Planet

• Skyscrapers As Spaceships

  Greg Beato

  The “rampant individualism” and surprising environmentalism of really tall buildings

• A Policy of Lying

  Jacob Sullum

  Why does the most open and transparent administration in history lie about government records?

• For Richer and for Poorer

  Veronique de Rugy

  Millionaires get poorer while the poor get richer. So what’s all this talk about the income gap?

• Asset forfeiture follies

  Damon W. Root

  Motel Hell

Features

• How Much Is an Astronaut’s Life Worth?

  Robert Zubrin

  NASA’s irrational approach to risk undermines its mission and costs thousands of lives.

• A Twinkle of Hope

  Rand Simberg

  Obama has moved space policy in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.

• Rocket Men

  Katherine Mangu-Ward

  Meet the 21st-century pioneers who want to take you into space

Interviews

• The Decline of Violence

  Ronald Bailey

  Neuroscientist Steven Pinker on the triumph of peace and prosperity over death and destruction

Culture & Reviews

• A Partial Space Science Fiction Reading List

  Gregory Benford

  From Robert Heinlein to Joan Slonczewski

• Human Martians

  Tim Cavanaugh

  The people who settle the Red Planet may not look like us.

• Science Fiction Faces Facts

  Gregory Benford

  NASA has fizzled, but Wernher von Braun’s exuberant vision lives on.

• Space on Earth

  Brian Doherty

  A visit to a wooden hangar where the future is being born

• Steve Jobs, the Inhumane Humanist

  Mike Godwin

  The founder of Apple may have been a narcissistic jerk, but his humanity was revealed by the liberating objects he made.

Briefly Noted

• Neal Stephenson’s Action

  Katherine Mangu-Ward

• Behind the Music

  Mike Riggs

• Cancer Cure Crimes

  Jacob Sullum

• The Invisible Economy

  Tate Watkins

• Terrible Nova

  Seth McKelvey

Artifact

• To Boldly Go Where No Wives or Kids Can Follow

  Nick Gillespie

  The final frontier isn't just for misfits and loners.