How ‘Pacific Rim’ Got Kaiju Wrong by J.F. Sargent Pacific Rim really screwed up the kaiju. I don’t mean that the way you think. The CGI in this film was beautiful — the meticulously crafted combat sequences reignited an excitement for computer generated nonsense that I’d not felt since I first…

We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way that norms and standards change. Credit Illustration by Harry Campbell Why do some innovations spread so swiftly and others so slowly? Consider the very different trajectories of surgical anesthesia and…

I can’t stand it. A few days ago, I wrote in some detail about the National Security Agency’s data-mining program in hopes of calming the hysteria that has been whipped up in the last number of days by incorrect and misleading reports, as well as by plenty of ill-informed commentary based on those…

So when the radiologist found an odd, bicycle-spoke-like pattern on the film — not even a lump — and sent me for a biopsy, I wasn’t worried. After all, who got breast cancer at 35? It turns out I did. Recalling the fear, confusion, anger and grief of that time is still painful. My only solace was…

At this point the economic case for austerity — for slashing government spending even in the face of a weak economy — has collapsed. Claims that spending cuts would actually boost employment by promoting confidence have fallen apart. Claims that there is some kind of red line of debt that countries…

@Jury That video actually bugged my wife (@nrd) a bit. See http://t.co/9Reqc0rLUz

According to a new indictment, a rocket-propelled grenade is a weapon of mass destruction. Time to retire this misleading term. Photo: Flickr /Soldiersmediacenter Any term that conflates nuclear weapons with any other kind of weapon is bound to be a poor descriptor. But the U.S. government has…

Amazing: Understanding the story of the Tsarnaevs. RT @NewYorker: David Remnick on the Chechen brothers: http://t.co/TNfJ5o4kTp

Speech notes Dearly beloved: my text for today is from the Local Government Act 1988 - Section 28: “A local authority shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality, a local authority shall not promote the teaching in any maintained…

Unsurprisingly, @Neil_Irwin has one of the best, clearest pieces on BitCoin. Read and get smarter: http://t.co/Dhg4RC5QL4

MYTH: Rising Number Of Disability Claims Tied To Families Using Children To "Pull" Benefits Planet Money : "What You Want Is A Kid Who Can 'Pull A Check.'" In a segment on the public radio program Planet Money -- which was also featured on Chicago Public Radio's This American Life and NPR's All…

Hey everybody - My tribute to Roger Ebert in the New Yorker http://t.co/ItLzLlZ9Bt

Alfred Anaya took pride in his generous service guarantee. Though his stereo installation business, Valley Custom Audio Fanatics, was just a one-man operation based out of his San Fernando, California, home, he offered all of his clients a lifetime warranty: If there was ever any problem with his…

Medical professionals examining x-rays. Photo by ERproductions Ltd/Gallery Stock Steven Brill’s 24,000-word magnum opus in Time on health care billing practices in the United States is remarkably easy to summarize: American health care costs a lot because the prices Americans pay for health care…

Twitter’s latest private market valuation of $9 billion, as pegged by a large investment from the BlackRock Group , turned heads. Is the valuation fair? And if so, what is the math behind the figure? The Wall Street Journal’s Dennis Berman recently penned a column indicating that, yes, Twitter is in…

Yesterday I asked for an innocent explanation of Jack Lew's deal with Citi, which guaranteed him a bonus if he left the company for a senior position with the federal government. Mark Kleiman, who says Lew is an old friend, suggests that it all has to do with the fact that bonuses are normally…

Robert Ullman These are the places that have Catholic hospital mergers completed or in the works, which means that residents may soon be receiving health care according to the moral dictates of the Catholic Church—whether they agree with it or not. I 'm sitting in a crowded coffee shop and I'm…

Photo: Nicolas Guerin/Contour by Getty This piece was originally published on January 27, 2013. Steven Soderbergh has directed 26 films since his 1989 debut, sex, lies, and videotape — the behind-closed-doors portrait of yuppie Louisiana often credited with kick-starting the indie-film revolution of…

TV And the Award for the Next HBO Goes to... The quirky little start-up that once printed money by mailing you DVDs is hell-bent on morphing into the HBO—and the network, and the any-show, any-time streaming service—of tomorrow. Can Netflix and its pathologically modest founder, Reed Hastings, pull…

This picture taken on Jan. 24, 2013 shows laborers working on wire in Jiashan, east China's Zhejiang province Photograph by STR/AFP/Getty Images. Here's the basic situation. Many people love to watch sports channels on their cable package, and especially in a world where live sports is really the…

As Jaime and I noted yesterday, many Democratic politicians feel the need to preface any discussion of guns with an assurance that they, too, own guns and love to shoot, as though that were the price of admission to a debate on the topic. But what you seldom hear is anyone, politician or otherwise,…

Search Newsletter Magazine Politics Environment Media Crime and Justice Food Guns Dark Money Photos Investigations Podcasts Kevin Drum About Subscribe Donate More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence? America now has 300 million firearms, a barrage of NRA-backed gun laws—and record casualties from…

SAN JUAN TEOTIHUACÁN, Mexico — Wal-Mart longed to build in Elda Pineda’s alfalfa field. It was an ideal location, just off this town’s bustling main entrance and barely a mile from its ancient pyramids, which draw tourists from around the world. With its usual precision, Wal-Mart calculated it would…

Adam Gopnik knows sense. RT this artlcle pls. http://t.co/0E0DyLf2

We are not having a debt crisis. It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit. In fact, its…

Linda Greenhouse on #SCOTUS, gay marriage and Voting Rights Act http://t.co/hqcpZcDX

Paula Broadwell was interviewed on The Daily Show on January 25, 2012. The Daily Show The resignation of Gen. David Petraeus began, we all now know, with Gmail. Petraeus' biographer and reported mistress Paula Broadwell apparently regarded Tampa socialite and Petraeus friend Jill Kelley as a…

Hans von Spakovsky, a Republican lawyer who served in the Bush Administration, has promoted strict voter-I.D. laws. Credit Photograph by Lauren Lancaster Teresa Sharp is fifty-three years old and has lived in a modest single-family house on Millsdale Street, in a suburb of Cincinnati, for nearly…