By Brian Brennan Today is Persons Day in Canada. I was reminded of this, not by a story in the Canadian media – which by now has become blasé about this annual commemoration of women’s rights – but by an opinion column
The Law of Conservation in physics says energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only transformed. But lawless politics have no such constraints — and here the role of energy has ceaselessly expanded, and come to dominate economics and polarize politics. F&O
By Greg Locke Only three years after becoming Premier and two years since a decisive election victory, Kathy Dunderdale is stepping down as premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada’s most eastern province. First elected to the province’s legislature in 2003, Dunderdale came
Truth is not always stranger than fiction: sometimes they combine, to create a good yarn. Historian and author Brian Brennan writes in F&O about two eccentric ranchers, Maurice and Harrold King, characters of both myths and outlandish facts. An excerpt of Kings
Found on the web: Beauty, directed by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro, a remarkable interpretation of beauty in art. Beginning with Shakespeare Sonnet no. 9 and ending, as does all life, with death, a work of art that brings sound and animation to masterpieces. The
New work on F&O this week includes a column by Chris Wood about an aspect of climate chaos that is often ignored: the extremes that kill, compared to averages of which climate scientists speak. The average, writes Wood in Natural Security, is
The Russian inventor of the AK-47, Mikhail Kalashnikov, died last month aged 94. In life he publicly denied responsibility for what became of his weapon: politics and politicians bore responsibility for the millions killed with it, he said. Last week, a newspaper
Climate chaos dominated world news again this week. A heat wave broke records in Western Australian, with reports of tens of thousands of bats falling dead from the sky and kangaroos collapsing. Meanwhile frozen residents of the northern hemisphere became acutely aware
New work on Facts and Opinions, and random observations from the week past: In Think, Commentary, Natural Security columnist Chris Wood writes of ecosystems as life-support systems in We’re All In This Together, a perspective that challenges the outdated biological understanding that
As the year ends and winter gets a grip in the Northern latitudes, many cultures mark the passing of another year and the coming of winter with annual religious and folk festivals and events. In the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador,