There are many things to be thankful in this world. You’ve heard them all a million times: friends, family, Providence (both in the sense of a divine Creator and in the sense of the capital of Rhode Island), and of course the continued willingness of those in power to overlook your little indiscretions.

But what of things not of this world? I mean, sure, people have traditionally been willing to cast a little worship sunward, and I’m sure more than one mariner has been thankful for the North Star, but I think we’re still overlooking one important benefactor: massive chunks of space-borne rock r...

It starts with a black screen and the sound of a cough, humble and ordinary. From the ultimate in mundane health hiccups, Contagion builds relentlessly toward a frighteningly real speculation about what might happen if the next Swine Flu goes wide.

Steven Soderbergh's gripping new doomsday thriller doesn't play like science fiction because the director grounds the escalating action -- or inaction -- in actual epidemiology as practiced by Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Switzerland-based World Health Organization. Public health officials (Kate Winslet, Laurence...