Work continues on both my book about libertarian paternalism and nudges for Palgrave and Superman and Philosophy, but there has also been a surge in blogging over the last week, largely in response to controversies big and small:
- In response to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal to place a limit of the size of sugary drinks like soda–and further discussion of it–I wrote the following posts at Economics and Ethics: "Mayor Bloomberg nudges New Yorkers away from the Big Gulp–and towards two Little Gulps instead" (May 31), "New York Times' Room for Debate: Wrong Question, Wrong Answers" (June 2), and "Not so sweet: Crossing the line from science to opinion in the sugar wars" (June 6, also posted to my Psychology Today blog under the title "The Sugar Wars: Can Science Justify Paternalism?"). (Walter Olsen at Overlawyered was kind enough to include the first post in his wrap-up of commentary the day after the plan was announced.)
- With regard to the debate raging in CUNY about Pathways, the administration's proposal for centralizing general education, I had a letter published in The Wall Street Journal, which I blogged about here, to which the chair of the Board of Trustees at CUNY responded (see here).
- Finally, I stepped into the controversy over a depiction of torture in a recent issue of Amazing Spider-Man, offering a post titled "On Spider-Man, torture, and character in comics" (June 3) at The Comics Professor.
I also offered the post "Let's Be More Productive" at Economics and Ethics (May 29), which was reworked slightly for Psychology Today.
In the meantime, I received the flyer for the "Regulating Bodies and Influencing Health" workshop in which I'm participating in Rotterdam near the end of the month–very appropriately, on the concept of health care nudges that lies behind Mayor Bloomberg's soda ban and, more generally, my Palgrave book. (I love it when things come together, don't you?)
Mark D. White 
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