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Old Favourites | Self-Indulgent Nonsense
Arguments
Grasping in the dark: Self-taught Chinese.
January 26, 2021
Yielding results.
October 2, 2020
Dumb Yanks and witty Brits.
September 26, 2020
The first draft of history is often the last.
June 24, 2020
Jokesters and Wokesters.
June 21, 2020
The rectification of names: Wakash Island.
May 27, 2020
The Saskatchewan Evacuation Party belatedly endorses Andrew Scheer.
May 15, 2020
Nation-to-nation.
May 8, 2020
The rectification of names.
April 25, 2020
Is it getting crazier out there?
March 3, 2020
Right, and right again.
December 26, 2019
Epshtine, Bernsteen, Volfervitz.
December 13, 2019
Astigmatisn’t.
November 7, 2019
Pretty / fair assessment.
October 25, 2019
Election 2019: This crank says nay.
October 22, 2019
The media vs. the populists.
August 19, 2019
Opinions for dummies.
June 2, 2019
Provocation, martyrdom, and Muhammad.
January 6, 2019
Managing diversity.
January 2, 2019
Phase transitions.
December 30, 2018
The Nogoodnik Rule.
December 29, 2018
Selective indignation.
December 28, 2018
The immigration heresies.
December 27, 2018
A little tokenism.
December 26, 2018
Decennial fridge-cleaning.
December 24, 2018
Music for pigeons: A taxonomy of noise pollution.
December 1, 2018
Proportional Representation and the hard work of coalition-building.
November 2, 2018
Dwarf descending.
October 22, 2018
Shame wizards.
October 16, 2018
A powerful heap of room.
September 30, 2018
’Cide by ’cide.
September 19, 2018
Tukhta.
May 23, 2018
Faulty ventriloquism.
May 9, 2018
Terror and nerd appeal.
April 26, 2018
Muddle and melancholy.
April 21, 2018
Rude, how?
April 4, 2018
The Proportional Representation weenies get their shot.
March 12, 2018
I take a stand!
March 6, 2018
A shameful habit exposed.
February 7, 2018
The Gell-Mann Amnesiac’s guide to Canadian penal statistics.
July 11, 2017
Anti-demons.
March 10, 2017
Realism vs. fatalism, diligence vs. delusion.
February 1, 2017
Owning (some) blame.
November 15, 2016
Inevitable Trump hangover reflections.
November 10, 2016
Mid-election afterthoughts.
November 8, 2016
Last-minute Trump risk calculations.
November 8, 2016
Andrew Coyne and the lump of labour.
October 10, 2016
Equality and homogeneity.
October 8, 2016
True and original…or, why we write (or don’t).
September 25, 2016
Brexit: Diff’rent yokes for diff’rent folks.
June 25, 2016
The Know-Nothing.
June 24, 2016
Over-noticing minorities.
April 15, 2016
Tipping isn’t going anywhere soon.
April 12, 2016
Nevil Shute’s multiple vote: Would it do any good?
May 15, 2014
Defending metric.
November 11, 2013
Robert Heinlein and the basic theorem of population mechanics.
December 7, 2012
Um, has anyone noticed this Muhammad video is hilarious?
September 15, 2012
Noise pollution and negative externalities.
September 18, 2011
Licensing music for your online ad – how much will it cost?
November 2, 2010
Ads that pretend to be art.
July 30, 2010
So did the Red Army really singlehandedly defeat the Third Reich?
June 24, 2010
Flemings and Quebeckers, united in resentment.
June 15, 2010
In defense of the beauty bias.
June 12, 2010
Edmund Burke, Agile thinker.
June 9, 2010
The MetaFilter sex slavery story: Can anyone actually verify this?
May 31, 2010
Those fast-breeding religious conservatives again.
April 2, 2010
Please remain calm, we’re trying to entertain you: Why do people hate funny ads?
July 21, 2009
Ryan Meili, guy I know, finishes a strong second.
June 6, 2009
Selling sunrise: An exercise in branding.
March 31, 2009
Ryan Meili, guy I know, running for NDP leader.
February 5, 2009
Motel Indians, Hollywood Jews.
January 18, 2009
The ill-advised Liberal-NDP coalition.
December 6, 2008
Stickman Jack: Boy cartoons and girl cartoons.
November 27, 2008
Right-wing blowhards and the ’08 election.
February 12, 2008
Pandora and Malcolm Gladwell.
November 6, 2006
On being, deep down, a Liberal.
December 2, 2006
Right deviationism: Evolving on Iraq.
September 24, 2006
Heading for the exit in Afghanistan.
September 12, 2006
Something funny in Nezahuacoyotl: Mexico’s “stolen” election.
September 8, 2006
Mike Judge’s Idiocracy and my Revised Low Birthrate Theory.
September 5, 2006
Jon Stewart and that hilarious Kurdistan.
August 22, 2006
More about low birthrates and the impending death of liberalism.
March 16, 2006
Bring on the jellyfish babies.
February 28, 2006
Voting day, 2006.
January 23, 2006
Conservative forecasts: Mark Steyn and the decline of the West.
January 13, 2006
Plague vs. plague: The accidental conquest of the Americas.
September 8, 2005
Oot and aboot: Peter Jennings’ “Canadian accent”.
August 8, 2005
The boring Royal Family at the boring Saskatchewan Centennial Gala.
May 20, 2005
Seashells on a beach: Our aging brains.
May 13, 2005
Tuesday Weld: Thoughts on the ’04 election.
November 3, 2004
Birds falling from the sky: Iraq and the ’04 election.
November 1, 2004
Rumsfeld’s “known knowns” and the Plain English Campaign.
December 01, 2003
Scenes from the 2003 Saskatchewan leaders’ debate.
October 29, 2003
The unkillable Saskatoon public school board trustee.
October 24, 2003
Books
See the Bibliography page for a listing of most writers and books discussed on this blog.
Schedule Bare Back.
December 16, 2020
Vulgar envy and spite: Cleon, Socrates, and Aristophanes.
December 6, 2020
Strategic capitulation and the Last Man.
November 3, 2020
And this grave gent lives on.
August 31, 2020
The lessons of three elephants.
August 26, 2020
Cathy and Hareton choose peace over remembrance.
August 16, 2020
A tinge of regret.
August 13, 2020
Brung up to it: 19th, 20th, and 21st-century morality.
July 22, 2020
Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward: “A definite opinion has been established.”
July 11, 2020
Two literary eunuchs.
July 2, 2020
“Pardon me, madame, my name is Tarzan.”
May 19, 2020
Max Beerbohm’s “A Clergyman” and posterity.
January 20, 2020
Assimilating strangeness.
December 30, 2019
Eleonora Duse: “I had the feeling that I understood every word.”
November 28, 2019
The Far Country: The case for (and against) emigration.
November 18, 2019
The media vs. the populists, Jazz Age edition: Mencken vs. Bryan.
September 28, 2019
John Diefenbaker’s One Canada.
June 30, 2019
Eisenhower Derangement Syndrome.
June 15, 2019
International Airport Man.
May 21, 2019
Rye and weeds: Solzhenitsyn and Jordan Peterson.
April 4, 2019
Pictures of Apollyon.
February 20, 2019
We may prate of toleration: Saint Joan and the Inquisition.
January 30, 2019
Faking fluency.
December 7, 2018
What’s above the text.
November 8, 2018
Tonypandy.
October 29, 2018
The chain of incomprehension.
September 24, 2018
Shakespearean knots.
September 12, 2018
A sympathetic reaction: C.P. Snow’s The Light and the Dark.
August 25, 2018
“You think I know f*** nothing?”
June 13, 2018
Sergeant, erect that flagpole.
June 2, 2018
Aspects of the Novel and the limits of readers’ memories.
May 13, 2018
Updike’s The Coup: Opposite possibilities.
April 11, 2018
Shabby Russians, tidy Prussians.
April 6, 2018
No harm done: Racism and rape in Nevil Shute’s The Chequer Board.
January 24, 2018
A discerning elimination.
December 11, 2017
Robert A. Heinlein’s Crazy Years.
November 5, 2017
Breakfast of Champions: Unsanitary ideas.
September 28, 2017
Why read?
September 2, 2017
The Odyssey: Mostly non-odyssey.
April 21, 2017
The medical men of Middlemarch.
September 14, 2016
The old, illogical morality: The Kindly Ones and Darkness at Noon.
April 16, 2016
Bertrand Russell and the conquest of narrowness.
February 27, 2015
Nevil Shute’s bad language.
February 21, 2014
A fox at his breast.
June 5, 2013
Berks and wankers: A Canadian reaction to Kingsley Amis’s The King’s English.
May 31, 2013
Crossing over: Allan Bloom, Saul Bellow, and Christopher Hitchens.
October 27, 2012
Paul Theroux and the Hanoi Christmas bombings.
September 19, 2012
Stanley and the Women, and why Martin Amis didn’t like it.
July 24, 2012
Under weigh? Right away! (Observations on language in Dickens’ American Notes.)
March 4, 2011
John Howard Griffin and other people’s music.
October 26, 2010
Finding myself in a book.
October 3, 2010
Solzhenitsyn, funnyman.
September 29, 2010
Peter Watts is a jerk (but Blindsight is awesome).
September 27, 2010
The Red and the Black: Julien’s game.
July 17, 2010
“Someone knocked at the door as foreigners do” – a question regarding Tolstoy.
May 16, 2010
John Wayne and Girl In Landscape, by Jonathan Lethem.
March 15, 2010
People who write in the margins of books.
November 28, 2009
Catch-22: Not as great as remembered.
November 11, 2009
Homage to Catalonia: George Orwell is not like you or me.
October 11, 2009
Highlights from The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux.
July 1, 2009
New Maps of Hell, by Kingsley Amis.
June 20, 2009
Good books in ugly covers.
May 31, 2009
The Brideshead Generation: Humphrey Carpenter doesn’t get Evelyn Waugh.
May 18, 2009
Voltaire in favour, temporarily: More on Nancy Mitford’s Voltaire in Love.
May 13, 2009
…In which I perform a Ron Rosenbaum on Ron Rosenbaum.
May 12, 2009
Voltaire in Love, by Nancy Mitford.
May 10, 2009
Milan Kundera and the ostriches: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
May 2, 2009
My favourite scene in Flaubert’s Sentimental Education…
April 5, 2009
The Master and Margarita: The best translation?
February 9, 2009
From Dawn To Decadence, by Jacques Barzun.
January 12, 2009
Nancy Mitford (and Milk In First).
December 7, 2008
Holden Caulfield.
December 5, 2008
The Terror, by Dan Simmons.
November 24, 2008
Triumph, by Philip Wylie.
November 23, 2008
Arbuckle Avenue, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene.
August 13, 2008
The ink ghost: Gravity’s Rainbow.
May 5, 2007
Dickens – Chesterton – Waugh.
July 15, 2005
On “The Harvey Pekar Name Story” and American Splendor (the movie).
May 7, 2005
H.G. Wells’ Outline of History.
March 15, 2005
Michael reviews the weekend: 3 books. (Alongside Night, A Kiss Before Dying, and The Man in the High Castle.)
March 7, 2005
Groucho in Canada.
November 29, 2004
Plato’s Republic.
April 13, 2004
John Milton and the power of positive thinking.
April 7, 2003
God versus Robinson Crusoe.
December 12, 2001
Movies (& occasionally TV)
Reclassifications: Parasite, The Million Pound Note, and My Man Godfrey.
February 3, 2020
It: Bullies in our own minds.
September 12, 2019
Casting aspersions.
January 9, 2019
Movie bad guys, by the numbers. (Follow-up to “Because. That. Happens.”)
February 27, 2018
Because. That. Happens. (A discussion of “representation” in Hollywood.)
May 12, 2017
Jim Jarmusch: Rock-n-roll vampires are just like you and me! (Review of Only Lovers Left Alive.)
May 4, 2014
Marvel’s mannequins of SHIELD.
November 15, 2013
Why Anna Faris will never take a wrench to the face.
October 3, 2011
Dren / Not Dren: The unsatisfying ending of Splice.
June 22, 2010
Spike Jonze’s I’m Here will melt your callous human heart.
March 27, 2010
Reviewing John Podhoretz, movie critic for the Weekly Standard. (My takes on Watchmen, the Star Trek reboot, and Rachel Getting Married.)
June 14, 2009
Drag Me To Hell – heck of an ending.
June 13, 2009
That sex scene in Watchmen.
March 21, 2009
Let The Right One In: The crotch shot and other unanswered questions.
January 18, 2009
Southland Tales is a spoof…isn’t it?
January 14, 2009
Some movies I’ve seen. (Keanu’s The Day the Earth Stood Still; The X-Files: I Want To Believe; and Stuart Gordon’s Stuck.)
January 8, 2009
Kristin Scott Thomas, continued: Tell No One and I’ve Loved You So Long.
January 5, 2009
I’ve Loved You So Long.
January 2, 2009
Confusingly (to some), 300 isn’t an anti-war movie.
June 26, 2008
George Romero’s Diary of the Dead.
February 28, 2008
Alfonso Cuarón’s ideological Children of Men.
April 30, 2007
The Conspiracy Artists: Syriana and V For Vendetta.
September 24, 2006
X-Men: The Last Stand: Not as terrible as reported.
July 6, 2006
Da Ali G Show & Stephen Colbert’s speech.
May 6, 2006
Trudeau, the CBC miniseries.
October 24, 2005
Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.
July 4, 2005
Do we still need the Batmobile?
June 27, 2005
Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and non-crappy comic book adaptations.
April 7, 2005
Hotel Rwanda and humanitarian intervention.
March 31, 2005
Warren Beatty, Deborah Kerr: Reds, Bulworth, and The King and I.
March 15, 2005
Michael reviews the weekend: 6 movies. (Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Shadow of a Doubt, Tea and Sympathy, and End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones.)
March 7, 2005
Laurence Olivier is dead, dead, dead: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
October 19, 2004
Super-Size Me: Before and after.
July 19, 2004
The dreadful, dreadful 2004 Academy Awards.
March 1, 2004
Signs: God versus the aliens.
December 6, 2002
M. Night Shyamalan.
October 1, 2002
Transportation & Cities
Covering Vancouver.
October 23, 2020
Quick and dirty: Once more on cost disease.
September 6, 2020
Urban rethink.
May 24, 2020
The Hastings SkyTrain alternate reality.
December 25, 2019
Cutting corners.
August 31, 2019
A SkyTrain historical footnote: The Edmonds-Cariboo extension.
May 14, 2019
Concrete octopus: Some unrealized Vancouver rapid transit plans.
April 21, 2019
Prophylactic planning: Rapid transit in the era of cost disease.
January 18, 2019
Surrey’s reluctant rapid transit lab rats.
November 25, 2018
And now, a word in favour of high-rise living.
October 8, 2018
Apartment hunting in Vancouver.
July 17, 2018
Sooner or later: Cost disease and Canadian transit.
March 2, 2017
Do crosswalk timers cause more collisions, and if so, why?
July 1, 2016
Planners versus riders: Metro Vancouver transit after the referendum.
July 4, 2015
Old Favourites
On reading Faulkner’s “The Bear”.
October 26, 2006
Bono, President of the World Bank.
March 8, 2005
Plato and Dion: A play.
November 18, 2004
Rezkallah and Bergstrom and Sumner and Bugg.
September 23, 2002
Yo! Bum rush the Pope! (A scene from World Youth Day celebrations in Toronto.)
August 3, 2002
Rewriting Steinbeck: A parody.
September 23, 2002
Dendrochronology – A boon to archaeology!
March 20, 2002
Song of the splake.
January 7, 2002
Three short porno-clerk plays.
August 5, 2001
Self-Indulgent Nonsense
Michael A. Charles is a jerk.
January 18, 2020
Red lentils.
August 8, 2019
My father, Roger Warner.
February 12, 2013
Sea Water Bliss voted off The Duo competition.
September 21, 2011
It’s 2011 and I’m still lazy.
January 26, 2011
Caveat.
September 21, 2010
Who’s the asshole?
June 7, 2010
UPDATE: Not too depressing after all.
March 24, 2010
This interview is too depressing for Colombian web TV.
March 12, 2010
Side roads in Death Valley.
February 8, 2010
The lost “Sea Captain” video.
January 28, 2010
More about that Mendel gig.
January 3, 2010
Truth at 0.25 frames per second.
December 7, 2009
Flipapalooza & LUGO.
November 25, 2009
Dream journal: The vending machine.
November 15, 2009
The Sexy Mathematics origin story.
November 11, 2009
My new thing.
September 29, 2009
Tiny humiliations.
August 25, 2009
Dream journal: Swimming to Filmbodia.
August 8, 2009
Cartoon news.
June 23, 2009
Dream journal: Tom Cruise.
April 25, 2009
On being offensive.
January 10, 2009
On negativity.
December 2, 2008
Dream journal: Ahmadinadream.
August 15, 2008
Deric Ruttan: Workin’ in a coal mine, or possibly a salt mine.
July 3, 2007
Dream journal: The hyperlink crossword and the mile-high skyscraper.
February 25, 2007
Old phone number.
October 19, 2006
America unbound. (Visits to Wall, South Dakota; Santa Fe; Mesa Verde; Las Vegas; and Salt Lake City.)
June 14 – June 26, 2006
I can tell when I’m not wanted.
March 15, 2006
A tour of the Regional Psychiatric Centre.
March 3, 2006
My archnemesis, Kevin Chong.
November 23, 2005
Witness for the prosecution.
September 12, 2005
Nathan (the band).
August 4, 2005
The Man clamps down.
March 3, 2005
The accidental wedding band.
June 28, 2004
Dream journal: Bee cereal.
June 24, 2004
An encounter with Black Francis.
April 19, 2004
Dream journal: Exercise bike.
March 12, 2004
List-making.
February 24, 2004
Jungle Gym.
August 22, 2003
Adam and Eve: A work story.
December 18, 2002
He is the stockboy that gathers the carts.
December 2, 2002
The argument from design.
October 22, 2002
My infamous work history: On revising my resumé.
October 11, 2002
Carfree.
October 8, 2002
No sense of history.
August 2, 2002
Dream journal: I am Jesus.
July 29, 2002
RIP newts 1984-2002.
July 2, 2002
Crossroads: A short story.
June 26, 2002
Ta-ta, y’all: A Canadian accent in England.
June 3, 2002
Steve McQueen: A stay-at-home adventure.
January 31, 2002
Stuff I Done Wrote - The Michael A. Charles Online Presence 