The Beeb's Richard Black explains why it's still up to governments to act on the IPCC's findings about the how-tos and costs of mitigating climate change -- and they might well try to weasel on that.

The actual IPPC summary for policy makers can be found here.

BBC: Climate change 'can be tackled'

Washington Post: Scientists put price on global warming effort

NYT: Climate panel reaches consensus on the need to reduce harmful emissions

Guardian: World 'must act to avoid devastating global warming'

Times Online: We have the technology to tackle global warming, scientists say

The Telegraph: World agrees it can afford to tackle climate change

Overheard in Kensington Market:

We went to the zoo at Christmas. Nobody was there. Not even the fuckin' animals.

From the NYT:

The New York Times yesterday named its next public editor, Clark Hoyt, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor who oversaw the Knight Ridder newspaper chain’s coverage that questioned the Bush administration’s case for the Iraq war.

Mr. Hoyt, 64, was the Washington editor at Knight Ridder from 1999 until the company was sold last year. His responsibilities included overseeing the Washington news bureau, the chain’s foreign bureaus and the news service that the company ran jointly with the Tribune Company.

Before that, he served as Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau chief, and then as vice president for news, with responsibility for hiring and promoting top editors at the company’s newspapers, which included The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The San Jose Mercury-News and The Detroit Free Press.

In the prelude to the Iraq war and the early days of the war, Knight Ridder stood apart from most of the mainstream news media in raising some doubts about the Bush administration’s claims, later discredited, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said that record contributed to his selection of Mr. Hoyt.

“There was a lot of work Knight Ridder did that was prescient, that wasn’t easy to do,” Mr. Keller said. “It’s always hard to go against conventional wisdom. I think it probably brings him a measure of credibility that helps in getting started on a job like that — that he’s been associated with a brave and aggressive reporting exercise like that.”

The one odd thing about the story is how little it says about current public editor Byron Calame. I think he did an excellent job (as did the first public editor, Daniel Okrent).

The Royal Theatre screened a trilogy of Bruce McDonald films Thursday night - Road Kill, Highway 61 and Hard Core Logo as part of the launch of filmcan.ca, a new website about Canadian film.

I saw the latter, a 1996 mockumentary about the reunion tour of a legendary Vancouver punk rock band.

Early on in the film, the character Bucky Haight is introduced, a seminal figure in punk rock left a double amputee by some shotgun-wielding psycho, leading to the reuniting of Hard Core Logo for a benefit concert and subsequent Prairie tour.

There is some concert footage of Haight labeled "Smilin' Buddha Cabaret 1982."

I'm glad the film acknowledged the Smilin' Buddha, which was the CBGB of Vancouver in its day (it was closed by the time the film was shot).

However, I've always wondered why McDonald didn't use the club's neon sign in the film. Here it is; you tell me if it's cinematic! :)

McDonald explained in the Q-and-A after the screening that the Vancouver band 54/40 (who named an album after the club; they played their first gig there in 1980) had possession of the sign by that time. They would have liked to use it, but nobody seemed to know where the sign was when they were shooting (the movie was filmed in Vancouver over an 18-day period, but the sign may have been in Toronto at the time).

There is currently a Smiling Buddha bar near Dovercourt and College, but they had never even heard of the Vancouver club. An important part of our country's cultural heritage has been lost to future generations! :)

If you still doubt that the Smilin' Buddha sign is a special piece of neon, there is a segment on it in the 1997 film Glowing in the Dark. Members of 54/40 talk about how they saved and restored the sign.

Update

More on the Smilin' Buddha from TrekLens:

... Anyway, this image is really here in honour of the Smilin’ Buddha, a legendary club once located at 109 East Hastings Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, now sadly gone. It was also a small Buddha, a tiny place that couldn’t hold more than about a hundred people, but its reputation was mighty.

Early in its history it had hosted Jimi Hendrix, amongst others, but by the early 1980s it had become the home to local punk bands. It was here, for instance, that I saw the infamous D.O.A., as well as Pointed Sticks. When the Smilin' Buddha finally gave up and closed its doors, the band 54-40 -- who had debuted there in 1980 -- bought its famous (and very beautiful) neon sign (manufactured by Walburn Neon, circa 1950), on which Buddha’s tummy “jiggled” as he laughed. In 1994, 54-40 released an album called Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret (the club’s full name) and took the sign on tour with them. At one time there was also a large wooden Buddha that sat outside as well… I wonder who got that?

From a Cannabis Culture discussion:

P.P.S.: My wife got high with Tommy and Cheech millions of years ago when they used to play the Smilin Buddha Cabaret in Vancouver.

There is a 1979 Ubyssey article available here on the club (it's a .pdf, scroll down to page 8). The lede:

The Smilin' Buddha Cabaret is presenting some of Vancouver's most exciting rock groups in the seediest, dirtiest, most depressing strip of the city.

The 2005 compilation CD Vancouver Complication collects some of the music of Vancouver's punk heyday (more here).

Here's a gig poster for the Subhumans.

Finally, YVR photog Bev Davies took punk rock pikturs back in the day. She had some collected and published a selection of them in a 2007 calendar supplemented by interviews with Nardwuar the Human Serviette.