Category: Books
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Mark D. White One of the topics that fascinates me, but which I never seem to have time to catch up on, is the moral/political status of health and health care. In most cases (other than particularly infectious or contagious diseases), I consider health and health care to be matters of personal choice and responsibility,…
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Mark D. White In this morning's New York Times, James Atlas discusses recent books about cognitive processes and neuroscience, such as Jonah Lehrer's Imagine: How Creativity Works, Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, and Leonard Mlodinow's Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. Atlas…
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This week's Batman and Robin #8 (written by Peter Tomasi and illustrated by Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray) was a welcome denouement to the Morgan Ducard/Nobody storyline that culminated at the end of #7 when, as Bruce explains to Alfred, "Nobody's dead. Damian killed him." (Imagine parsing that statement if you hadn't been keeping up with the…
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Mark D. White This weekend's Wall Street Journal featured an article by Helen Sword entitled "Yes, Even Professors Can Write Stylishly," in which she criticized the quality of writing by most academics–and praised the exceptions, explaining some features that make good academic writing shine. (More can be found in her book, Stylish Academic Writing.) Having…
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At The Atlantic today, Hans Villarica interviews Dr. Roy Baumeister, one of the psychologists chiefly responsible for the ego-depletion or "muscle" theory of willpower. Under this conception, people have a limited amount of willpower at any given time; as they use it, it is depleted in the short term but strengthened in the long term (just like a muscle…
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Ah, comics. The other day I was chatting about New Avengers #22 with with my friend Christine of the fantastic Daredevil blog The Other Murdock Papers. I mentioned how how out-of-character it seemed that Daredevil would exclaim "Toss her!" when the New Avengers are trying to extract information from Victoria Hand. (Remember that New Avengers scribe Brian…
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Thanks to Mitters' tumblr, I discovered that there are three samples from The Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers available at Wiley's site for the book: the table of contents, the index (in case you're curious who's included in the book–I'm happy to say most everybody!), and best of all, the first chapter, written by yours…
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Mark D. White When economists debate the neutality of money, they are concerned with its effects on real output and growth. But other scholars, such as philosophers and sociologists, consider the social neutrality of money–that is, whether the pervasive use of money in society has a qualitative effect on the way we think about both…
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Mark D. White In today's Wall Street Journal, there is a book review by Burton Malkiel of Models. Behaving. Badly., a critique of excessive reliance of mathematical modeling in finance and economics, written by Emanuel Derman, a key player in developing the very techniques he now criticizes. Judging from Malkiel's review, Derman's book echoes themes which…
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Wiley just released their free Kindle book, Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture, featuring one chapter from each of the superhero-themed books in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, including the forthcoming titles on Superman and the Avengers, as well as two new and exclusive chapters, written by yours truly, on Captain…
Mark D. White 