Today's guff

This Makes Me Feel Old


I remember when these guys were the self-styled Atomic Punks. Even subtracting the massive social negative that I was introduced to this band's music by Sandy V a.k.a. the headbanging Sassan-I-hit-you-with-my-spoon-V, in the school ground; these guys rocked. Eddie to my generation of guitarists was what Jimi was to the previous generation. Shred 'rooled' - not that I ever mastered that style.
Now they're up for nomination to the Rock Hall of Fame.

To be eligible, artists must have issued a first single or album at least 25 years prior to nomination.

Van Halen and R.E.M. came from opposite sides of the 1980s rock 'n' roll spectrum. Led by cartoonish frontman David Lee Roth and fleet-fingered guitarist Eddie Van Halen, the California quartet was a hard rock favorite with songs like "Jump" and "Hot for Teacher." R.E.M., meanwhile, was the quintessential indie rock band until breaking through to mass success in the early 1990s.

I don't know what's worse; that time should fly so fast, or that they're lumped in the same paragraph with the extremely lame REM. I mean, if it's the kind of Hall that would consider REM, do they want to be inducted into that?

Take THAT Johnny!
Here's interesting news on polls conducted in Australia regarding climate change.

The Newspoll found 79 per cent of Australians want the government to sign the Kyoto Protocol and commit to targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Seventy-one per cent of Coalition voters said the same thing.

A massive 91 per cent want a shift from reliance on coal-fired power to focus instead on renewable energy sources. Ninety per cent of Coalition voters agreed.

Four out of five Australians, and 77 per cent of Coalition voters, agree that polluting industries should pay levies on greenhouse gas emissions.

Times are a changing when your supporters turn like this. John Howard is trying to fight the perception that he sat pat on global warming by announcing packages.

Climate change leapt to the top of the political agenda yesterday after the release of an alarming report by a former World Bank economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, warning of global economic depression should the problem not be dealt with within 10 years.

As the Prime Minister warned his back bench not to be "mesmerised" by the report, the Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, accused the Government of not being fair dinkum.

"We need decisive national leadership," Mr Beazley said.

"We do not need this Johnny-come-lately to the climate debate. He has failed our children and our grandchildren." The Opposition Leader has long advocated signing the Kyoto Protocol, which sets greenhouse gas emission targets, as well as spending on developing renewable energy and clean coal technology.

Mr Howard said ratifying the protocol - which does not include the major polluters China, India and the US - would hurt Australian industry and cause job losses for no measurable reduction of global emissions.

He said Australia was keen to establish a "new Kyoto" and participate in an international carbon trading system if all countries agreed to do so.

"If everybody is in I'm prepared to lead Australia in," he said. "I say no to the old failed Kyoto because it did not include the world's major emitters."

Is it just me or does he sound like a lame duck?
Meanwhile, it seems Al Gore has found a new place to plonk his soap box.

Earlier this week Gore was appointed an international consultant on climate change in the United Kingdom.

The announcement came timed to the release of a new report from British economic adviser Sir Nicholas Stern warning of devastating economic and social disruptions for the global community — on the scale of the Great Depression and the two world wars — if world leaders don't take aggressive, immediate action on climate change initiatives.

That is exactly the point Gore has been trying to make here in the United States for years. His film, "An Inconvenient Truth," makes that point. He has criticized the Bush administration for not signing the Kyoto treaty and not pushing global warming to the top of the agenda.

In this morning's press briefing, White House press secretary Tony Snow repudiated the claim that President Bush wasn't serious about climate change initiatives.

"He's talked about ethanol. He's talked about nuclear. He's talked about biodiesel," Snow said. "And he's talked about the importance of being aggressive in … innovating our way out of it."

But British Prime Minister Tony Blair's mounting displeasure with countries like the United States, China and India was evident in his remarks Monday. He described the Stern report as the most important account on the future published during his time in office.

"Unless we act now, not sometime distant, but now, these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible," Blair said. "There is nothing more serious, more urgent, more demanding of leadership, here of course, but most important, in the global community."

Yep. Days of our lives.