For some time now, a year, two years? the word “narrative” is more or less being continuously used by almost every journalist, reporter, commentator, politician, and critic with access to a microphone or pen.

And now another word is being similarly co-opted for its figurative punch: “brand.” So far I only hear it used by politicos; we’ll see how far it penetrates.

“The Republican brand. The Democratic brand. Obama’s brand. McCain’s brand.

Just sayin’.

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C

ould there be a more important or timely question than that of how, in 2008, to interpret the Second Amendment? Today in a 5 to 4 decision the Supreme Court ruled that Americans do indeed have the right to own and bear arms for self-defense and hunting.

Mark Sherman in the Associated Press reports:

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

What most interests me here, apart from the future effects of this ruling for public safety, is Antonin Scalia’s use of the phrase “historical narrative” to support the majority decision. I’m not sure that “historical narrative”–what has been, no matter whether right or wrong, false or true, ugly or beautiful, cruel or kind–is a good enough, sufficient reason to be for something.

Questionable if not immoral, even horrific, practices and behaviors can be “supported” by “historical narratives” of one sort or another. History purports to tell us why or how events and things came to be; the law should be more concerned with “oughts” that are founded in compassion and reason, not an “historical narrative.”

I am not saying I disagree with the decision. But I do want to point out that “historical narrative” is vague in a way that legal terms like stare Decisis are not.

I will have to read the entire decision with the majority and minority views laid out in full before I decide whether to agree or disagree with the majority.

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for stare decisis:

In other words, stare decisis applies to the holding of a case, rather than to obiter dicta. As the United States Supreme Court has put it: “dicta may be followed if sufficiently persuasive but are not binding.”

The doctrine that holdings have binding precedential value is not valid within most civil law jurisdictions as it is argued that this principle interferes with the right of judges to interpret law and the right of the legislature to make law. Most such systems, however, recognize the concept of jurisprudence constante, which argues that even though judges are independent, they should rule in a predictable and non-chaotic manner. Therefore, judges’ right to interpret law does not preclude the adoption of a small number of selected binding case laws.

Meanwhile, let’s all be safe out there!

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from intro to a Guardian America - Observer article on Darwin and Wallace, “How Darwin Won the Evolution Race,” by Robin McKie

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from intro to set of Wired articles on info-glut:

Sensors everywhere. Infinite storage. Clouds of processors. Our ability to capture, warehouse, and understand massive amounts of data is changing science, medicine, business, and technology. As our collection of facts and figures grows, so will the opportunity to find answers to fundamental questions. Because in the era of big data, more isn’t just more. More is different

Article by Chris Anderson:

“All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

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o proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmological equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now. Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant data, don’t have to settle for wrong models. Indeed, they don’t have to settle for models at all. > > >

Click here to read the rest of Anderson’s article.

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From a recent Seed Magazine article by Joshua Roebke

A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it?

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o enter the somewhat formidable Neo-Renaissance building at Boltzmanngasse 3 in Vienna, you must pass through a small door sawed from the original cathedral like entrance. When I first visited this past March, it was chilly and overcast in the late afternoon. Atop several tall stories of scaffolding there were two men who would hardly have been visible from the street were it not for their sunrise-orange jumpsuits. As I was about to pass through the nested entrance, I heard a sudden rush of wind and felt a mist of winter drizzle. I glanced up. The veiled workers were power-washing away the building’s façade, down to the century-old brick underneath.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

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im Russert to our dismay and shock passed away this June 13, 2008, 2 days before father’s day, about which, fatherhood, he had so much to say—of his dad, big Russ, and his son, Luke. Farewell truth’s friend.

Tim Russert 1950 - 2008

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from a review of Susan Neiman’s Moral Clarity on Slate.Com:

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f you’re a philosopher, the easiest way to introduce yourself is not by elaborating a doctrine, but by telling a story. That’s because philosophical views are always arguments with previous views, and so they arise within a historical narrative. Susan Neiman is a masterly storyteller; her new book Moral Clarity offers retellings of the Odyssey and the Book of Job that are themselves worth the price of admission. But she also has stories about the origins of her own position that place her in both larger intellectual narratives and more local political ones.

Neiman, an American philosopher who runs the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany, worries that American progressives have drifted away from the values and intellectual traditions of the West, stretching from classical antiquity to the Enlightenment (this is the larger narrative).

Click here to read the entire review.

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