October 2011
2 posts
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September 2011
1 post
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August 2011
9 posts
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“Account Needed/ Very Confidential ,Pls.
Sir,
In confidence, can i trust you...”
– Received a very trustworthy email. Putting together all my paperwork (bank account details, etc) so I can help General Lloyd.
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July 2011
7 posts
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“One of the men contacted his wife via cellphone about 4.30pm, saying they...”
– Five and a half hours! That will teach him! (The Press reporting Six rescued after chilly night).
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June 2011
6 posts
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“Fuck earthquakes”
– In the mind of many Cantabrians this week.
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May 2011
1 post
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WatchRecovery. It would be nice to have the Mapudungun writing as well. | Recuperación. Sería bueno tener la escritura en Mapudungun también.
April 2011
5 posts
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“It is the market—the least overtly spiritual of contexts—that delivers a...”
– Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Britain and the British Commonwealth.
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“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if...”
– Brian W. Kernighan.
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March 2011
15 posts
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Boston Globe's Japan earthquake pictures →
Inmense destruction. Photo 12: the strange beauty of enormity.
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Reciprocal
Less than three weeks ago I was receiving emails from worried Japanese friends asking how we were after Christchurch’s earthquake. Then we had Japanese search teams searching for people among the rubble of the city’s CBD. Only two and a half hours ago we live the reverse situation. Even bigger earthquake followed by several Tsunami waves hit Japan at 7:46 pm (NZ time, 2:46 pm...
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“It was a ‘fair point’ that the day off would cost time and money to...”
– Prime Minister John Key explaining the timing of the national day of mourning for the victims of the Christchurch earthquake.
I’d rather have the memorial later, when all victims have been returned to their families. “[L]ot of people who played sport…” is one of the lamest...
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“An influx of earthquake relief workers has made Christchurch’s disaster a...”
– Sex workers enjoy post-quake boom: headlines do not get much better than this (Hat tip: Eric Crampton).
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“EU has spent hundreds of millions of euros on 25 years of research, and the...”
– Dr. Nina Fedoroff (Professor of Biology, Pennsylvania State University) in an NPR interview.
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“We’ve been growing - commercially growing GM crops for 15 years now, and...”
– Dr. Nina Fedoroff (Professor of Biology, Pennsylvania State University) in an NPR interview.
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Working on the planter
One of the first useful things I did after the 22 February earthquake in Christchurch was to fill the bathtub with water. The idea was to have water to flush the toilet; it was hard to imagine other use given that the water looked terra-cotta color and had a lot of sediments. We got back water and sewage services pretty much the same day, but the bathtub stayed full of dirty water for a week (one...
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A good discussion on Ken Ring's pseudoscience →
It is like the belief in astrology. Nuts.
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How does the University Library look like?
After last year’s earthquake the university added braces to the bookshelves to avoid having again a mess like this one. So, how does the University of Canterbury library look like after the new earthquake? Here is a couple of pictures from the library Facebook page:
Lots of book still fell, but the shelves are in much better shape and, more importantly, nobody was hurt.
February 2011
20 posts
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“What is clear is that the progressive re-start of delivery of UC programmes...”
– Rod Carr, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canterbury, concerning the restart of the semester. The earthquake hit Christchurch on the second day of lectures of the semester.
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Aftershocks, triggered earthquakes, and... →
Interesting discussion on the connection between the 4 September 2010 and the 22 February 2011 aftershock (from Highly Allochthonous).
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Peak ground acceleration
After each quake Geonet made available maps displaying Peak Ground Acceleration. It is easy to see that PGA for the 22 February quake was 1: much larger than the 4 September 2010 quake (2.20 g rather than 1.26 g) and 2: the geographical distribution was quite different (and closer to Christchurch). Please notice that the maps are on different scales (1:250,000 for September and 1:125,000...
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UC and Earthquake
The Western side of Christchurch seems to be mostly fine (with power and water), but the situation downtown and on the Eastern side is still very complex. The University of Canterbury is going through the process of checking buildings for structural integrity with both the Ilam and Dovedale campuses having power and water.
The question is now when can we restart the semester? There is discussion...