Departments

2 When Every Life Is Precious

We value individual human lives more every day. That's (mostly) good news. Matt Welch

6 Contributors

8 Citings NY tenure lawsuit; IRS emails discovered; 3 ways Social Security and Medicare screw young people; drones downed?; stopping police seizures; how to fix our schools…

54 Reason TV: Killer or Artist?

Prosecutors' use of rap lyrics as evidence is chilling artistic speech. Paul Detrick

Columns

14 Torture As an Absolute Wrong If waterboarding works, does that make it morally acceptable? Jacob Sullum

16 Screwed by Seniors The people expected to pay for Social Security and Medicare can't afford it. Veronique de Rugy

18 How Low Can Oil Prices Go?

The tricky geopolitics of tumbling demand and rising supply. Ronald Bailey

78 The Quantified Citizen

Engineering happiness might sound good, but it will leave us all less free. Greg Beato

Features

22 Eternal Youth for All!

Why I want to live forever and you should too. Ronald Bailey

30 Reverse Robin Hoods

Public worker pensions rob the young and poor to pay the old and rich. Steven Greenhut

34 Confessions of a Stockton Slumlord

Steven Greenhut

37 Infographic: Public vs. Private Pensions

Jason Keisling

42 Are We Becoming Morally Smarter?

The connection between increasing IQs, decreasing violence, and economic liberalism. Michael Shermer

48 Checking Putin

Garry Kasparov on chess, communism, and Russia's 'one-man dictatorship.' Interview by Nick Gillespie

Culture & Reviews

56 Dying and in Denial

A new book offers a powerful dissection of contemporary end-of-life care, yet misses the underlying problem. David GoldhillBeing Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande

Briefly Noted

58 Katherine Mangu-Ward on the National Geographic Museum exhibit Food

Briefly Noted (cont.)

60 Elizabeth Nolan-Brown on the documentary Point and Shoot

62 Brian Doherty on Jill Lepore's The Secret History of Wonder Woman

64 Jesse Walker on the documentary Sex and Broadcasting

66 Scott Shackford on the video game Dragon Age

62 National Security State The strange powerlessness of the "most powerful man in the world." Gene Healy

National Security and Double Government, by Michael J. Glennon

67 Private Money in Virtual Worlds

Will wildcat currencies shrink the state? Andrea Castillo

Wildcat Currency: How the Virtual Money Revolution Is Transforming the Economy, by Edward Castronova

71 Cruel, Unusual, and Crowded

Will Brown v. Plata bring mass incarceration to an end? Sara Mayeux

Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America, by Jonathan Simon

76 Do Androids Dream of Changing Bedpans?

Robots to the rescue for Japan's aging population. Peter Suderman

80 Artifact: Texas Truck of Terror

How an American plumber's truck wound up in the hands of Syrian rebels. Katherine Mangu-Ward

Cover Photo: © Dan Prince/cultura/Corbis