It seems reasonable enough to assume that superheroes are heroes. First, heroes act to safeguard others. Second, heroes safeguard those around them, near or far, in a manner that's moral. Third, heroes safeguard those around them in an altruistic manner; they selflessly help others. Fourth, heroes safeguard those around them in a manner that is atypical, in ways that the unheroic are unwilling to act. Wonder Woman performs her daring feats, that is, with the agility of Mercury and the steel (...) sinews of a Hercules. Wonder Woman was always intended to be inspirational, to be an ideal toward which we could aspire. Her roots in feminism are testimony to this. This chapter considers the feminism that Marston reflects in Wonder Woman, freed and strengthened by supporting one another, women develop enormous physical and mental power, for using it to save the world from the hatreds and wars of men, and help humanity to find maturity. (shrink)

In the immediate aftermath of 9‐11, Michael Walzer, notable theorist of warfare, reminded us that while terrorism is complex, it's not inscrutable. Implicit in the characterization is the idea that terrorism involves a wider variety of parties than the two conventionally cited, the terrorist and their victims. Terrorists don't harm their victims because they hate them, though in fact they may. The terrorist could, as Walzer counters, choose nonviolent movement‐building instead. The development of The Expanse's terrorism storyline gives us hope (...) that our future may be less sordid than our past. Marco provides a welcome clarification of the terrorist's dilemma. (shrink)

Human beings have our negative side, Spock speculates, consisting in our hostility, lust, violence, as embodied now in Captain Kirk's duplicate; and we have our positive side, which Earth people express as compassion, love, tenderness, as embodied by original Kirk who emerged first from the transporter. There are three competing approaches to resolve personal identity problem. First is the suggestion that both Kirks survive as the same person who was beamed off Alfa. Second is the idea that neither of them (...) does, in the sense that the Kirks who emerge from the malfunctioning transporter aboard the Enterprise are not only distinct from one another, but also distinct from the person beamed off the planet. Finally, there's the possibility that just one of them does, the other being an “imposter” of some sort, as the duplicate is initially described before the nature and effect of the transporter malfunction become apparent. (shrink)