There goes another one ...
Discovering a coffee shop in Sydney is rather like finding a Defence of the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. It doesn't matter whether they are good or bad, they disappear after a year. On four days of the work-week I buy a piece of take-away food to accompany my breakfast cup of coffee. Once a week it's an orange and poppy seed "muffin" - not really a muffin at all, despite its name, but a cupcake with delusions of grandeur. On other days it's a danish or a snail or a similar bakery item. And I make a long black at work to drink with it. It's become a habit of mine to have a sit-down breakfast at a local cafe once week, usually on a Friday. Throughout 2006 I used the same cafe each Friday - one that served a decent cup of coffee and a very good version of French Toast (never renamed "freedom toast" in this neck of the woods despite the doggedly pacific attitude of the French government). There is something comforting about certain routines: in a world where change is more prevalent than stability, you need to be assured that some things remain the same. (I wouldn't want a world that stagnates in a lack of variety, but some islands of certainty amongst the currents of disorder are good.) This year, as I set out to renew my weekly visit, I found that the cafe - like many before it - has closed over the summer break and there is no forwarding address. Dang! Now I have to look around the place to find a replacement. This means experiment and elimination of candidates. It may take weeks, or months, before I can recalibrate a Friday routine. Such are the challenges of the urban life - not quite in the league of the extinction of the megafauna, but trying nonetheless.
My taste
Some time agoI was quizzed as to my musical tastes and the artistes who might dominate my record collection. I avoided the question. The recent ABC survey that claimed to have found Australia's 100 favorite albums reminded me that I needed to answer the question - and that some of my tastes are fair very mainstream. First I should say that the Herman-McDonnell collection of CDs is a amalgam of my choices and of Cath's - lots of hers and a few less of mine - with the occasional "ours" thrown in. She is responsible for the Sting, Elton John and U2 albums and I plead guilty to the Pink Floyd and the Beatles. But, if you were to look at the collection of vinyl I once owned (and many of which I still have stored in the hope of one day finding adequate reproductive equipment and many of which I have never replaced because of cost or lack of availability), you'd find a very different story. Certainly you'd find a fairly complete Beatles discography from Please Please Me through Abbey Road, and lots of Pink Floyd, but you'd also find a heap of jazz (Bird, Diz, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Stachmo, Nat "King" Cole, the Duke, the Count, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Australian stuff like Galapagos Duck, James Morrison, Kerrie Biddell and Ricky May - yeah, I know he was originally a sheep-shagger but ...), show music (original cast albums from Broadway, as well as TV and film soundtracks, and a few spoken word recordings, like Orson Welles' War of the Worlds and JRRTolkien reading from tLotR), R&B and early rock (Ray Charles, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Gene McDaniels), and the progressive and psychedelic rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Big Brother and Holding Company, The Who, The Doors, Procul Harum, The Kinks, Cream, The Small Faces, Jefferson Airplane, and The Animals. And an incredibly diverse collection of comedy albums from Stan Freberg, through Tom Lehrer and Monty Python to Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong. All of which gives some indication of my taste.
Looking at the ABC poll, Dark Side of the Moon was number one and two Beatles' albums were in the top ten. Additionally numbers 11 through 14 were Wish You Were Here, The White Album, Revolver and The Wall, in that order. That's 7 of the top 14 between two bands - the two groups that have produced, if not necessarily the best songs of the rock era, undoubtedly the best albums. Or maybe I think that because the results reinforce my prejudices. The rest of the list is of interest as well. Cath says that the list indicates that people of my age were the majority voters - those who were born from, say, 1948 (The Beatles) to the late 1950s (Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin). Those a bit younger would have nominated Meat Loaf. The 1970s kids went for U2 and Nirvana and the youngsters for Red Hot Chili Peppers and Radiohead. Where the Jeff Buckley votes came from I cannot say. ("The ABC's core female audience," says cynical Cath.) Interestingly there were no female artists until Carole King at No. 18, no Australian before the Oils at 23, no blacks until Prince at 61, and no Rolling Stones before No. 95 (behind even Mike Oldfield!!!). What the list says about the Australian audience is as interesting as the question of whether the list is in fact a fair reflection of great (modern) music.
The boring man makes it interesting
Last year ended with my plaint about the fact that the ALP had again turned to self-immolation in the hope that it could deflect public attention from the fact that the Howard gang had lied (or been incompetent) over the Wheat Board bribery of Saddam Hussein. In somewhat of a surprise, Labor has determined to make an effort to win the next federal election by electing Kevin Rudd (a.k.a. Kruddy - although I'd prefer, for good historical reasons, Ned Rudd as the new leader's moniker) as the leader. Ned is every bit as uninteresting as the Prime Miniature, so he should be a good match for him. In re-organising his front bench to promote a few of genuinely talented backbenchers, Ned has somewhat re-invented federal politics and Howard has been on the defensive in recent weeks, with changed attitudes on climate change, water policy and David Hicks. In order to match the promotion of Peter Garrett to the ALP shadow ministry, Howard has put my old debating partner, Malcolm Turnbull, in charge of the environment and water policy and promoted Joe Hockey into the IR role, dumping Amanda Vanstone, the last surviving moderate (and the only individual dresser) in the government, from the ministry. I still think that Howard will win later this year when the federal election is held but Ned and the Ruddites will at least make it a bit more of a contest than Kim would have.
Life imitates satire
Springfield's richest multi-millionaire and its energy maeven, C Montgomery Burns, was shot, and nearly killed, after his plan to block the sun led to a revolt by the township's peasants. It seems like Monty Burns has been put in charge of the US response to climate change. In its input to a draft UN report, the US has recommended that, instead of seeking to solve human-induced global warming by reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the best solution would be to reduce the amount of sunlight coming in by means such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere. "Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails," they say. The US response also complains that overall "the [draft UN] report tends to overstate or focus on the negative effects of climate change". Yeah, guys, let's have some positive spin on the good side-effects of irreversible damage to the terrestrial ecology.
Technological solutions have been so obviously successful - leading only to minor problems like, say, human-induced global warming - that we can afford to ignore that such attempts to reduce temperature by blocking the sun might have some unfortunate and unforeseen side-effects. But we cannot ignore the high-pitched cackle of laughter in the background, accompanied by a breathy exclamation of "Excellent!", emanating from the US panel responsible for the report.
More climate change
According to the press release for the latest edition of the magazine, Ecos, "cutting greenhouse gas emissions through targeted policy action would not adversely affect Australian living standards". Dr Steve Hatfield-Dodds, a senior CSIRO researcher, explains that making a 60 per cent cut to national emissions by 2050 is consistent with significant improvements in living standards and on-going economic growth. He cites economic modelling carried out for the Australian Business Roundtable for Climate Change to counter the popular myth that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would result in economic disaster - or, indeed, that it would result in some sort of catastrophic fall in living standards.
"The headline economic result is that with early policy action, GDP would grow at 2.1 per cent per annum, rather than 2.2 per cent per annum without further action," writes Dr Hatfield-Dodds. A key assumption of the economic model is that emissions reductions will be driven by a carbon trading scheme. This effectively decouples greenhouse emissions from economic growth, and would raise significant revenue that could be used to reduce taxes in Australia. "The modelling suggests that early action to reduce emissions is consistent with strong real GDP growth and substantial increases in living standards, while impacts on energy prices and equity issues are likely to be manageable," Dr Hatfield-Dodds concludes.
Ecos is a bimonthly colour publication covering sustainability issues relevant to Australia and the Asia-Pacific region and can be downloaded at: http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/214/issue/4011.htm
Buster's flush
I want to acknowledge an Australian athlete whose name is rarely mentioned, although some of you may remember him from last year's Comm Games where he won a silver medal. Craig "Buster" Mottram is a middle-distance runner and one of the best in the world. In the 5000 meters in Melbourne he was second to world champion Augustine Choge in what Steve Ovett described as "the greatest championship 5000 meters of all time", certainly the best race at the 2006 Games. Buster has just opened his 2007 racing campaign with a stunning win over 3000 meters at the Boston Indoor Games in the US on Saturday 27 January. You read all about it, didn't you? He dismantled a quality field to smash his own Australian indoor record by nine seconds. While we get lots of stories about our swimmers, footballers and cricketers, Buster Mottram struggles to attract the attention his performances deserve. He beat the "Emperor of Ethiopia", world and Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele, over 3000m at the world cup in Athens last year and, after, the world's best athletes rose for a standing ovation as he boarded the bus back to the hotel. Didn't read much about that in Australia, either. On 3 February he finished second in the (indoor) Millrose Games mile in the same time as the winner, Olympic silver medallist Bernard Lagat. I wonder if that will earn him some kudos? Buster has to compete in events that draw competitors from all over the world, especially from east Africa and north Africa, whose athletes dominate middle-distance running. He deserves more recognition in his own country.
First written: February 2007
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