Posts by ChrisW
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Witi's obituary tribute to his father Tom Smiler Jnr was published in the Gisborne Herald on Saturday 18 September as a full (tabloid) page under the headline "Our father was the sky", but strangely has not been posted on their web-site. Full of interest, but doesn't seem to carry the emotional depth of that obituary/ eulogy to his mother in January, linked to by Jolisa.
Tom's given birth name - Te Haa O Ruhia (Ihimaera) = The Czar of Russia, no doubt reflects a parental interest in June 1915, but perhaps understandable that usage of the alternative name soon arose, after his father's.
I would think Witi is not at all happy all things considered, is feeling vulnerable and without the oomph to do an adequate job of rewriting Trowenna Sea. Not just addressing the plagiarism but also perhaps (more deeply challenging) the lack of authentic, integrated perspectives appropriate to his characters and their time. Discussed with his editor at Penguin and accepted, and left it to them to announce no version 2 for Trowenna Sea, with an understandable lack of explanation.
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They deserve not to be turned away from any more.
Yes. And Oh the dreadful irony of the Pope describing these as "unspeakable crimes"!
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Fairburn’s 1939 The Sky is a Limpet is surely a gem of a pollytickle parroty, footnoted “All the chiropracters in this burke are untidily menagerie and have no reverence to any loving parson” by way of example.
Where the "burke" is only 2 short pages, indeed would be great for a blog post, and imagine the fun in the comments with Dalziel and all.
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The timing on the "Sussing out the shop" video emphasises just how extraordinary this was - not just that the aftershock struck within seconds of them opening the door, but that it was Wednesday the 8th at 7.49 am - so this was by far the most dramatic of the aftershocks felt in Chch, the Mag. 5.1 one only 6 km deep under the southeastern edge of Christchurch itself.
Just when they thought it was safe to go back in the water ...
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Effective nevertheless Amanda - but I'm sorry you got no sympathetic response in the night, instead from an early riser from where the birds have already finished greeting the new dawn.
If your house is OK enough now I guess that means you're not in the worst liquefaction zones. The aftershocks seem to be tailing off implying much reduced likelihood of fundamentally bigger ones to come (a credible expert yesterday said now only 10% likelihood), so soon your Christchurch will return to the 'somewhat lower risk of catastrophic earthquake damage than many other places' sort of place that it was.
But I guess that 'always darkest before the dawn' crap doesn't help with the stress of living through it day by day. Best wishes to your family for the days to come.
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There are thermal springs near Tai Tapu & Governers Bay. I don't buy the extinct line.
There are many thermal springs not associated with volcanoes ancient or modern – Morere hot springs for example near Gisborne, nothing significantly volcanic within 100 km.
It’s the geothermal gradient – those trapped Chilean miners are sweating because it’s 30-something degrees down there 700 metres underground. In a few quirky places, heated water from such and greater depths makes its way to the surface. In most the flow and the temperature aren’t enough for a good winter soak, but there are splendid exceptions.
Volcanoes too have their entrances and their exits, and 5 million years is a long time dead even on the lifespan of a big volcano. The world has kind-of literally moved on since then. If there's another in the Banks Peninsula family of volcanoes in the next few million years, it will probably pop up somewhere else.
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Appreciate that thanks Steve B, and the further link to Mark Quigley's site.
And Marcus Turner - that nuclear bomb animation was awesome, the 'geo'politics never clearer.
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Resident geologist here. The main earthquake was from abrupt movement on a fault analogous to the Hope Fault, more-or-less parallel to it and with the same sense of movement. So the surface fault trace is aligned west-east from Greendale to near Rolleston, and the fault-plane dips to the north towards Darfield. The north side of the fault moved eastward up to 4 m relative to the southern side, and also a little upward, up the fault-plane.
This new fault is an outer part of the Australian/Pacific plate boundary system that links between the Alpine Fault in the SW and the Hikurangi Trench off the east coast of the North Island. The plate boundary in this form is only a few million years old, much younger than the Gondwana story. The new fault may really be 'new' but more likely just newly discovered in that it has previously undisturbed 16,000-year-old gravels overlying it, demonstrating there had been no movement on it for 16000 years (which does not mean "it last moved 16,000 years ago").
The aftershocks are from secondary release of strain within crustal rocks (not surface gravels) caused by the main earthquake. This last intense one under Christchurch is right on a continuation of the observed faultline. I think this is a good sign, in that it's 20 km away from the eastern end of the new surface break, and makes it seem less likely that there will be a fundamentally bigger one from propagation of the original fault displacement further along the fault plane.
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Why that aftershock at 7.49am felt so much worse than suggested by its magnitude of 5.1 -
I've been off-line and only just heard of this one so missed the actual coordinates, but Geonet now puts its source as 6 km deep "10 km NW of Diamond Harbour" - an odd reference point, they might have said "2 km SE of the Square" (it won't really be that precisely located, but still).
So - inverse square law again - the intensity of the shaking felt in central-eastern Christchurch say 7 km from the source (hypocentre) of the earthquake would be expected to match that of a magnitude 6.1 earthquake 40 km away.
Earthquake Magnitude is always only part of the story, not very meaningful on its own.
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Magnitude scale cf. felt intensity - The sources of the aftershocks are scattered around quite a lot and this makes a big difference to the felt intensity from any one point.
To good first approximations for small crustal earthquakes like these, the difference between 40 km and 28 km away represents a doubling in shaking intensity, 40 to 56 km a halving (inverse square law). Same effect as a difference of 0.2 magnitude units, also a doubling or halving of total energy release.
The 5.4 was closer to town than the main shock and many of the other aftershocks, so feeling that much more intense.