Saturday 4 September 2010

The Christchurch earthquake is being Twittered

Search on Twitter using the #eqnz hashtag for the latest on the Christchurch earthquake. It’s way ahead of old media.

19 comments:

Paul Walker said...

Well that was fun! Hell of a way to be woken up at 4.30am.

Peter Cresswell said...

Glad to see you're okay Paul, and your internet appears to be up.

James said...

Anyonr taking bets on the damage total being somewhere round....1.6-7 billion...?

;-)

Paul Walker said...

PC: Thanks. All ok here and Eric Crampton tells me all ok with them as well.

Anonymous said...

so will the peoples' republic of Canterbury force the building owners to rebuild the 'heritage' buildings whose facades have littered the streets, or will they allow the remains to be used as land fill?
The lean times in the building industry just look like they got their panacea. Hopefully tyhis bail out will be on the back of Insurance companies, rather than the govt.
At least inner city CHCH should look pretty nice for the world cup next year, if the Council don't try to fuck things up too much.
Perhaps there's even an opportunity or 2 for a Libertarian Architect

twr said...

Does anyone know where Comrade Jim Anderton is? Surprised he hasn't taken the opportunity to blame it all on Roger Douglas' asset sales, so maybe he's out of the country on one of his jaunts.

Canterbury Atheists said...

Share disaster in my household, I tell you.

Firstly I lost two bottles of beer in my beer-fridge in the initial quake and then to add further distress in the aftermath I couldn’t access my TAB phone-account. And all the bloody useless council were interested in was running around trying to repair the friggin’ power and water when I had bets to put on at the Aussie gallops. I mean to say they could prioritise things?

If that wasn’t bad enough to top things-off my local closes its doors at 7 PM.

That’s right – I waltz in at 5 o’clock to find its closing its doors for the night at 7PM on a Saturday.

Gotta go, the crew from Campbell Live are at the door. I’ve got the kids dressed in bloodied rags and given TV3 the exclusive on the beer bottles.

Praise-be to Poseidon (The God of Earthquakes) no one was killed and for breaking just the Speights and not the Yeasty Boys.

See ya.

Paul.

Mark Hubbard said...

It's 8.16am Sunday morning, and two more pretty good aftershocks have just gone through.

I don't fancy doing another 7.1 shallow earthquake anytime soon, especially hanging to a hill over Lyttleton harbour, but hey, I've heard there's a mini-building boom coming to Chch.

I'm actually more worried about the wind coming today; I hate strong winds. And long term, I've found I'm lactose intolerant - or something similar: can't seem to drink milk, cream, or eat ice cream with some very awful side effects: now that's a disaster.

PaulB said...

PC,
Yout tweeted about whoe will the first moron to mention stimulus. The answer is John Key on Q+A this morning at 9:20.
Paul

PaulB said...

Don Brash is close on his heels

Mark Hubbard said...

Ahem. And with Paul's post I will point out, in regards to my own, yes, I know the fallacy of breaking windows :)

With that, and now both Key and Parker muttering on about how those who were un-insured must be helped out for the good of the 'community', then there is much moral hazard upcoming.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many homes built with plasticcoats and no eaves will have lost a wall or 2?

Julian said...

If anyone has links to any "economist"/politician/media commentator or uninformed Prime Ministers committing the Broken Window Fallacy following the Christchurch earthquake, then can you please post a link here. I am keen to use it for my university class who I introduced to the concept a few weeks ago.

Julian

PaulB said...

@Julian
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news/q-interview-prime-minister-john-key-13-56-video-3760778

About 11:30min in to it. "every cloud has a silver lining"

Anonymous said...

"Perhaps there's even an opportunity or 2 for a Libertarian Architect (sic)..."

Yeah, and maybe a libertarian carpenters and brick-layers too! They're so much better than those social democratic tradesmen!

Judge Holden

twr said...

"They're so much better than those social democratic tradesmen!"

First sensible thing you've ever said "Judge". The commie tradesmen will be on strike all the time, so yes, the libertarian ones will be much better.

Mark Hubbard said...

To change channels for one post, an Austrian critique of Bollard's book, Crisis would be interesting:

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/lessons-global-financial-crisis-bollard-129478

The contradictions even in the above summary are noteworthy.

Perhaps Paul Walker could do it in his week off from Uni ;)

Anonymous said...

Good spotting PaulB. That was good one.

Interesting for our Prime Minister to say in the interview that EQC has $15 billion largely invested overseas with $6 billion in cash. The facts, unfortunately, do not support his thesis.

http://www.eqc.govt.nz/abouteqc/publications/annualreport/2008-2009.aspx

Sally O'Brien said...

a time-lapse visualisation of the earthquake and its aftershocks http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/