CALLING AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

[shostakovich]

The old VW ads were always a breath of fresh air.

It's sometimes interesting to try & figure out the subliminal message in an ad...

Any thoughts on Flo, the fair faced frumpy dressed Progressive Insurance girl with too much makeup and and the sterile white surroundings ?

psych.

a.

She's very annoying, but the add that will get me to change channel or mute immediately is John McEnroe for National Car Rental. I have built-in tune-out in my brain when it comes to commercials, but those two manage to get through. Back when Davey Crockett was running for office, his advice was to get your name out in front of the public as often as possible. It mattered not whether the reference was good or bad. Celebrities live by the addage "There's no such thing as bad publicity". I have a theory that the decline of both classical music and the fine arts was caused by worsening taste and an untutored public that could not distinguish aesthetic values, letting critics and promoters determine those values for them. I think that's also what happened to popular music in the 20th century, and is happening now on TV and the internet.
Old Fogey

[dai bread]

The Bunker ad must be about the only one ever that didn't show the product.

[Haggis@wk]

The Bunker ad must be about the only one ever that didn't show the product.

I can't seem to find my most favorite Hamlet ad. It was Chris Columbus sailing along and all the sailors complaining they were going to fall off the edge of the world. He gives a stirring speech and then the camera pulls away from the ships andd in the distance you see water dropping off the edge of the world; then the music begins

[dai bread]

The Bunker ad must be about the only one ever that didn't show the product.

I can't seem to find my most favorite Hamlet ad. It was Chris Columbus sailing along and all the sailors complaining they were going to fall off the edge of the world. He gives a stirring speech and then the camera pulls away from the ships and in the distance you see water dropping off the edge of the world; then the music begins

Love it!

[barfle]

The Bunker ad must be about the only one ever that didn't show the product.

I can't seem to find my most favorite Hamlet ad. It was Chris Columbus sailing along and all the sailors complaining they were going to fall off the edge of the world. He gives a stirring speech and then the camera pulls away from the ships andd in the distance you see water dropping off the edge of the world; then the music begins

It's a little-known fact that Columbus started with five ships, but two of them fell off the edge.

[piqaboo]

Holy Cow! Christchurch got hammered by that earthquake.
Dai, I hope all who are important to you and your family are ok. So many people arent.

(Parts of )the cathedral had been reroofed not too long before our trip. They were selling the old roofing tiles as coasters, to raise funds.
Altoid's godparents have a set.

[Schmeelkie]

Thought of you Dai when I saw the earthquake coverage on the weather channel... so this was an aftershock from a bigger quake in September?! Heck of an aftershock! Repeating Piq's hopes that you and all you know are safe.

[Haggis@wk]

Piq,
Do you guys have any phone numbers for Dai? I suspect the internet was among the first casualties of the earthquake.

I hope like Hell he and his are all right....Damn

[dai bread]

Yes, all is well here in Cambridge. We're well north of Christchurch (930km according to Google Maps) and I didn't even feel the earthquake.

The September quake was 7.1, this was 6.3 or so, but it was a lot closer to town, being right under Lyttelton harbour, and only 5km deep. Pretty well within city limits really, though there's a range of hills between Christchurch and Lyttelton. Also a road tunnel. It held up, but I'd have hated to have been in it at the time.

Repairs after the September quake had barely begun, so a lot of the buildings had already been weakened. There seems to have been a bigger problem with liquefaction this time too. Christchurch is built on river shingle and sand, and this mix liquefies readily, rather like beach sand near the waves.

The internet was fine as far as I'm aware. Local cell phone circuits were overloaded, and no doubt phone lines were down in various parts of town, as were power lines, but any interruption to the internet would be due to that rather than problems at the exchange.

For more detail, google NZ Herald, TVNZ, TV3 or The Press (Christchurch's newspaper).

[DavidS]

Dai, glad to hear you and yours ok, very sad about all the casualties and damage.
Are there special building codes for earthquake protection in NZ?
They have been chattering about them here for years, hopefully learning from Japanese experience - a big problem is with upgrading/reinforcing existing buildings.

[dai bread]

Same here. We have had building codes relating to earthquakes for years, but they've just been shown to be pretty inadequate against the sort of shaking Christchurch just got. Upwards at 1.something G, then straight down and sideways. The G-force went up to 1.9 according to people who measure such things. The codes were strengthened in the late 1970s, but I don't know what happened during the era of Rogernomics and Ruthenasia. It wasn't just our economy that got reformed, and one result of the building code reform of the time was leaky homes.

Christchurch Catherdral, which is now a fair mess, was strengthened a few years back at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars.

This site gives "before and after" pictures of several parts of town, including the cathedral. http://www.3news.co.nz/National/ChristchurchEarthquake/PhotosBeforeandAfter/tabid/1495/Default.aspx

[piqaboo]

Finally got a look at those. Oh my.
That poor cathedral. and poor pedro, among many others.

5th pic down, I think we bought icecream at a shop under one of those awnings, to help celebrate Altoid's bday.

Wow.
Yuck.

[Giant Communist Robot]

If I understand correctly, New Zealand is part of a continent that has sunk underwater, and there is some kind of bubble or something under N.Z. that holds it up. At any rate, it's sinking. Japan too.

[dai bread]

Well, most of NZ has been under seawater at some time in its life, but I think it's stretching geology to call it a sunken continent, although if you take in the Chatham Rise and the Lord Howe Rise and a few things like that, you could make a continent out of it. The last decent Ice Age could have absorbed enough water to bring the land to the surface.

NZ sits above a subduction zone, which includes a twist. The Pacific Plate is subducting under the Indo-Australian Plate north and east of New Zealand, but the direction of subduction reverses south of the Alpine Fault where the Indo-Australian Plate starts subducting under the Pacific Plate.

What is happening at the point of change, I hate to think.

[Giant Communist Robot]

Zealandia

[dai bread]

A fascinating article, GCR. Though I find it odd that it doesn't mention the Taupo eruptions.

"Lake Taupo lies in a caldera created by a supervolcanic eruption which occurred approximately 26,500 years ago. According to geological records, the volcano has erupted 28 times in the last 27,000 years. It has ejected mostly rhyolitic lava, although Mount Tauhara formed from dacitic lava." This is from Wikipedia.

[Giant Communist Robot]

That article looks like a work in progress. It does need more info.

[Haggis@wk]

Health bosses: We overreacted to airport flu scare

okay dai, what's the real story????

[dai bread]

I don't really know, Haggis. I do know that our bureaucrats are very slow off the mark; cf. the many Christchurch earthquakes, the Rena hitting Astrolabe reef, and the Pike River mine disaster.

The Christchurch affair is semi-excusable, seeing the ground still hasn't settled down, and in hindsight it's just as well they were slow as the February shake (2011), following the September one (2010), would have caught a lot of people with half-repaired buildings. The other two are not, and reflect bureaucratic and managerial ineptness of the first water.

Anyway, our national motto has always been "she'll be right, mate!"