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FactsandOpinions this Week

Fresh up on FactsandOpinions: commentary, reporting — and one very cool video of an unusual musical performance. Take time out for some slow journalism in a week fraught with the mysterious disappearance of a Malaysian airliner, and growing tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine. In Sound Art, by F&O photojournalist and web designer Greg Locke, musicians take to a Newfoundland beach to create sound with resonant rocks transformed into lithophones. (Public access) Every two years since 1983 Sound Symposium has been happening in Newfoundland, Canada at the edge of the North Atlantic. Founded by classical musician and percussionist,

Frederick W. Taylor: the man who made us

Our world is Taylor-built, and we don’t even realize it because, rhetorically asks Jim McNiven in his new Thoughtlines column, “Does a fish know it’s wet?” An excerpt of his thoughts on Frederick Winslow Taylor: This application of research and science to human work behaviour is so much a part of our lives that we hardly notice it today. It has led to a system that produces and distributes more goods and services to everyone than has ever been seen before. Without Taylor’s application of experimental research to the problems of production in the late 1800s, Henry Ford could not

Sound Art

Every two years since 1983 Sound Symposium has been happening in Newfoundland, Canada at the edge of the North Atlantic. Founded by classical musician and percussionist, Don Wherry, the event grew from a bunch of avant garde musician friends to a ten day international festival of new music, performing and sound art with everything from classical and jazz musicians experimenting with new sound, dance and theatre to audio engineers and sculptures creating audio art installations in the wild coastal environment. The soundscapes created have become the hallmark of Sound Symposium which happens once again in July of 2014. This video

A lost airliner triggers China’s fear of Uighers

To its Muslim Uigher residents, the Chinese-occupied Xinjiang region of Central Asia is East Turkmenistan — and they want it back. Efforts by the Uighers to reclaim the land from China have intensified under the recent influence of Islamic radicalism, writes international affairs analyst Jonathan Manthorpe. Now fear of Uigher militants is spreading, as shown by initial Chinese reaction to the disappearance of the Malaysian Boeing 777, full of homeward bound Chinese. An excerpt of Manthorpe’s new column: The first thought in many minds when Malaysia Airways’ flight MH370 disappeared a week ago was that the plane had been bombed

Putin vs Obama: who is in step with the times?

As the world focuses on Ukraine and the dispute between Russia and the “West,” let’s take a step back for a wider view. Democracy — as a system of representative and accountable governments, operating under the rule of law mediated by an independent judiciary – is struggling or under threat in much of the world, from former Soviet satellite states now in the European Union to the Caribbean to the countries washed by an Arab Spring that has largely failed to blossom. International affairs analyst Jonathan Manthorpe looks at the big picture. Excerpt of his new column: One of the

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