-
869Book review of: D. Flynn, Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid IdeasLiberty (September): 47-49. 2006.
-
834Movie review of: The Man Who Knew InfinityLiberty 6. 2016.This is a review of the biopic of the great mathematician Ramanujan, 'The Man Who Knew Infinity'(2016).
-
659Book review of: R. Marlin, Propaganda and the Ethics of PersuasionDialogue 55 (3): 545-547. 2016.This essay is my review of Randal Marlin’s fine book, Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion (2nd Ed.). Marlin’s book examines the concept of propaganda, rightly noting that the term has a neutral meaning of just promulgating a point of view and a pejorative meaning of using deceit to push a point of view. Marlin gives a concise history of propaganda techniques, and propaganda theory—from ancient Greece through WWII—and has a good discussion of the ethical issues involved in propaganda.
-
747Movie review of: (TV Series) "Route 66"Liberty (July 2010): 50-52. 2010.This essay is my review of the classic TV series, Route 66. It was a classic “buddy movie,” with two young men who tour the country in a gorgeous 1956 Chevy Corvette, staying in various towns and working at various blue-collar jobs. The acting was generally superb, and the scripts were mainly written by the fine script writer Stirling Silliphant, and produced by the famous producer Herbert Leonard. I suggest that this 50-year-old series tells us a lot about cultural change in America during th…Read more
-
759Conflicts of Loyalty in War MoviesLiberty (September): 1-8. 2011.In this essay, I use four war movies to explore conflicts of loyalty and how they are resolved, all to illustrate W.D. Ross’ multiple rule deontologism. The films are all fine WWII movies: The Enemy Below; Decision Before Dawn; John Rabe; and The Bridge on the River Kwai. In my analysis of each, I show how the protagonists face conflicts of their loyalty to themselves, their countrymen, their friends, and humanity in general, and resolve them in the face of changing factual backgrounds.
-
1700Whence Did German Propaganda Films Derive Their Power?Reason Papers 38 (1). 2016.In this essay, I review in great detail Ian Garden’s outstanding book, The Third Reich’s Celluloid War. Garden begins by discussing propaganda theory and then discusses not just Nazi feature films and documentaries, but television as well. (The Nazis had the earliest TV network). All in all, the regime produced over 1,300 feature films during its time in power. Garden also compares Nazi propaganda films to British and American ones.
-
715Book Review of: G. Brock and M. Blake, Debating Brain Drain: May Governments Restrict Emigration?Dialogue (June 2016): 1-2. 2016.
-
24The Logic of Scientific DiscoveryPeter Lang Academic Publishing. 1992.While there has been considerable discussion regarding scientific discovery, we are still in the dark about what a "logic" of discovery should look like. In this work, the author argues that formal dialogue theory is the best candidate for a logic of discovery. Formal dialogue logic is explored in detail. More broadly, a view of knowledge is put forward which encourages exploring the epistemological aspects of discovery.
-
999Book review of: P. Booth, ...and the Pursuit of Happiness: Wellbeing and the Role of GovernmentReason Papers 37 (1). 2015.This essay is my review of Philip Booth’s ...and the Pursuit of Happiness: Wellbeing and the Role of Government. The book is an anthology of original articles by eminent researchers in modern happiness economics, such as: Booth himself; Paul Omerod; David Sacks, Betsey Stephenson, and Justin Wolfers; Christopher Snowden; J. R. Shackleton; Christian Bjornskov; Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne; and Pedro Schwartz. I conclude by offering several criticisms of the work.
-
432Erotetic Logic as a Specification Language for Database QueriesDissertation, Kansas State University. 1987.
-
599Is there a case for ad hominem arguments?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (2). 1984.This Article does not have an abstract
