Talk:John Ralston Saul

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Marriage?[edit]

It's really odd to me there is no mention of him having married Adrienne Clarkson and being the former consort to the Governor General. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.183.57.148 (talk) 17:35, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Horror writer?[edit]

Is this writer the same John Saul who writes horror stories such as The Unwanted, The Locket, etc?

(please answer in my talk page, otherwise Id forget I asked the question in the first place..LOL!) -- Antonio I am a Wiki administrator!! I am a wiki administrator!!! Martin

Ps: Im saying that to the rhythim of I am the Master of disguise!!..lol

No, they are not the same person. -- Montréalais 06:24, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Date for Harpers article[edit]

Can anybody find a date for that Harper's article instead of the ambiguous "recent"? Padraic 00:16, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

March 2004 issue. And, done :) mu5ti/talk July 8, 2005 04:12 (UTC)

Official portrait[edit]

I have added an official portrait of John Ralston Saul from the government of Canda website. This is crown copyright making it okay. User:Dowew March 28th 2005

Title after 27 Sept.[edit]

I assume he'll lose the style of His Excellency after his wife leaves office, but does he get a The (Right) Honourable before his name like her? (Alphaboi867 07:31, 6 August 2005 (UTC))[reply]

The style of Right Honourable is not extended to him; I assume after his wife leaves office, he will simply be "Dr. Ralston Saul, CC, PhD"

Removed section and request for clarification[edit]

Removed until this can be made more concrete/specific:

Due to Saul's role as Viceregal Consort, his publishing of On Equilibrium subsequent to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks raised political controversy due to what some perceived as 'anti-American themes' in the book's final chapter. Many saw these criticisms as risible and politically motivated.

On removing some Clarkson focus...[edit]

Does anyone else agree that upper of the two images (and respective captions) of Clarkson and Saul is primarily Clarkson-focussed and could be done away with? I'm referring to the one with the caption: Adrienne Clarkson was the subject of considerable criticism for how closely Saul worked alongside her. Particularly his co-laying of the wreath on behalf of the People of Canada during Remembrance Day ceremonies. The criticism is actually directed at Clarkson, not Saul, and in my opinion there is sufficient image and written content on Clarkson in the article already. Thoughts? --Ds13 21:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One of Saul's heuristics[edit]

In the question period after his 1998 Vancouver Institute lecture Saul noted that whenever he reads in the newspaper some statistic that is supposed to be significant for public policy debates, he mentally divides or multiplies it by two -- going in the opposite direction (that is, multiplying by two if the number is supposed to be noteworthy because it is so low, dividing by two if the number is supposed to be noteworthy because it is so high) and then seeing whether the statistic is still significant. I.e. many reported numbers are really accurate only to about a factor of two. I thought this interesting in light of the later reports of the deaths caused by the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. For about a month or so after the attacks the reported number rose steadily to about 7,000 deaths, when one might have expected the number to be fairly accurate. (Obviously a sensible person would not trust estimates given the day after the attack, but this was a month after. I don't think there was a deliberate attempt to exaggerate the number of deaths.) But then over the next month or so the reported number fell to about the now-considered-accurate 2800 or so -- a factor of about 2.5 difference. 137.82.188.68 01:19, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Another example of this factor-of-two heuristic that I found amusing is that apparently some polling group did a retroactive voters poll on the voting for the 1992 U.S. presidential election some years after the election (as I remember reading), a large enough poll that the effects of sampling error would reliably be expected to be small. The result was in this retroactive poll only 9 percent or so of the people polled said that they voted for H. Ross Perot in 1992, whereas we know that H. Ross Perot got 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992. (He got about 9 percent in 1996.) 137.82.188.68 04:57, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

thesis[edit]

Since it is apparently his (informed) views on a selection of topics that makes him notable, would it be possible to summarise what his core theses (and supporting rationales) actually are on some of these topics? (Merely listing topics he has spoken on doesn't really say anything to distinguish him.) Cesiumfrog (talk) 23:44, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

as essayist?[edit]

I'm a bit puzzled why the section on his non-fiction is 'As an essayist' as most of these don't strike me as books of essays. (I haven't read them all) Is it an attempted translation of 'belles letres' or meaning "as man of letters'? 'Essay' or 'collection of essays' isn't the same as 'work of non-fiction'. It's kind of ironic to see this mislabelling on his page, since he addresses in his writing the decline of the essay since the 18th-19th C and the reasons why. Using 'essayist' like it means any non-fiction at all, papers over that whole phenomenon. I guess there is no good counterpart to 'novelist' - 'As a novelist', 'As an X' so the form of these headings should be changed. (to Fiction + Non-fiction I guess.) Yes, sometimes there's a fine line between an essay and a chapter of a non-fiction book. Yet, for example, Voltaire's Bastards and The Doubter's Companion (to name only the two I know best) don't seem to me books of essays. I've never seen 'essayist' as meaning 'writer of non-fiction prose'. Maybe it would be good if it did mean that, but then we would need another word for an essayist. 110.20.168.169 (talk) 00:36, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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