Brilliance among the Mess

My review of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King. Read it here.

What to do about the Windsors

Why Canada needs her own King. Read it here.

Rain Man: The Next Generation

The rise of the comic Asperger's hero. Read it here.

Snooki's "A Shore Thing"

My review for the National Post. Read it here.

Euphemania

The softest slurs. Why Human beings have always needed to avoid saying what they have to say. Read it here.

Pastiche Unleashed

How Prim Victorian ladies invented our mash-up culture. Read it here.

Re-emerge from a sex scandal stronger

The rules for recovery from a sex scandal. Read it here.

What would Buddha think?

On the genius of fictional columnists. Read it here.

The New Expo

For the first time since Expo 67, we're showing the world a different face. Read it here.

In Defence of Mexican Gangster Polka

The Narcocorrido. Read it here.

"It's simply that we're no longer new"

he NDP's national director is a big fan of dropping the first word of the party's name, but has he considered the unfortunate acronyms that would create? Read it here.

"Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three"

Fifty years ago this week, the ban on Lady Chatterley's Lover was lifted, thus changing a culture that treated sex as a preposterous allegory to one overrun with naked videos of sportscasters. Read it here.

"We're not robots"

Conservatives once appreciated the complexities of human life, but the Republican line at this week's Supreme Court nomination hearings in the U.S. Senate would make Edmund Burke sigh. Read it here.

"You can't negotiate with yourself"

David Miller's koan sums up the new reality of Toronto's garbage strike: When we become our own garbage collectors, we soon find there are truths about our waste we'd rather not learn. Read it here.

"Tell her what u think of snarky critics"

Novelist Alice Hoffman's 27 angry tweets about a bad review -- including the posting of the reviewer's phone number -- portends an exciting new era of bloodshed in book reviewing. Read it here.

"Appalled and Outraged"

President Barack Obama's reaction to Iran's Green Revolution was an understatement, but what can he --or any of us -- say? The good guys are silent while the ayatollahs refuse to whisper. Read it here.

"The prince always goes round the back to wield his influence"

The architect Richard Rogers was understandably frustrated with Prince Charles's campaign against him, but the rest of us should be pleased: Finally, our potential king is acting in a regal manner. Read it here.

"They should fuck off"

In his impromptu response to Toronto's request for infrastructure funding, did John Baird speak the truth about Canada's largest city? Read it here.

"Let me make myself useful"

Matthew Crawford's aim in Shop Class as Soulcraft is the opposite of lofty: To immerse himself in practical, manual work, in auto engines instead of search engines. Why is that such a taboo? Read it here.

"A period of reflection may now be in order"

Such was Oxford's reaction to the battle between two candidates for Professor of Poetry. Let's hope they realize that any poet worth his or her verse ought to be mad, bad and dangerous to know. Read it here.