Common Law

In legal theory, common law and statutory law are the two primary forms of rulemaking in a given legal framework: statutory law being the explicitly written laws of legislatures, executives, and bureaucrats, and common law being laws derived from judicial precedent and from the implications of the shared moralistic and political environment.

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras Review

An unusual two star rating might be another example of the importance of managing readers' expectations, because this text was definitely not what I was expecting, and my appreciation of it was consequently diminished. That being said, even if I had known what I was getting into, I'm not certain that I would have found very much to appreciate about Pyhtagoras' and his fellow cultists' "golden" verses, sentences, sentimets, statements, and so forth.

Society’s Origins

When I unearth an article that I can make applicable to writing and storytelling, I have no compulsions against sharing it with you.  This week, that’s a paper from Science Advances on how societies initially arose: “Disentangling the Evolutionary Drivers of Social Complexity: A Comprehensive Test of Hypotheses.”

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Review

Don’t expect a text that exists primarily to inform or tell a coherent story, because that’s not what Franklin was setting out to do with his autobiography.  It was instead intended originally for his son, and eventually for a wider audience of the burgeoning America, as a moral guide, an example and explication of how it might be possible to live a moral, productive, and well-regarded life, such as Franklin himself led.