Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website.
Toby Manhire: This stunning map shows that six faults – at least six – ruptured in the big Kaikoura quake
“To be clear, that’s six faults that have ruptured?
At least. On our initial flight we only flew down the coast and straight to the epicentre area and there are some flights going on today, inland, and I think we’ll find more faults inland.
We certainly saw some faults going offshore. So the Hundalee fault and the Kekerengu fault, and actually the Waipapa Bay and the Hope fault – all of the faults along the coast, we definitely saw from the flight going across the beach and heading offshore. So they’ll be the ones that caused the tsunami.”
Guest Post: New post-Kaikoura calculations put chance of a 7+ aftershock in next 30 days at 25%
“Scenario Two: Unlikely (approximately 25% within the next 30 days)
An earthquake smaller than Monday’s mainshock and between M7.0 to M7.8 would occur. There are numerous mapped faults in the Marlborough or Cook Strait areas capable of such an earthquake. It may also occur on an unmapped fault. This earthquake may be onshore or offshore but close enough to cause severe shaking on land. This scenario includes the possibility of an earthquake in the Hikurangi Subduction Zone. Earthquakes here or in the Cook Strait have the potential to generate localised tsunami. The Hawke’s Bay earthquake sequence in 1931 provides an analogy to scenario two, as a M7.3 aftershock occurred approximately 2 weeks after the initial M7.8 earthquake.”
Simon Wilson: Calm down, NZ Herald. The new Auckland slogan search was fine
“Was the cost too high? I don’t know. The Herald doesn’t, either. It made no attempt to benchmark the spend against any other similar campaign. But, for the record, when the current New Zealand government went through a similar exercise to create the ‘New Zealand story’ it spent $2 million.”
Chlöe Swarbrick: Chlöe Swarbrick explains herself
“I was told I should have run for Local Board, or Council. I was too young. Too earnest, too docile, too uneducated, too uninformed, too bossy, too disrespectful, too much of an upstart. I should have worked my way up.
How dare I take a stand on something I cared about, try to engage people so they cared too, and run for a public office I fit the legal requirements for? How dare I endanger our democracy by offering another option, being fair game for critique, putting myself up for the vote?”
Ken Gledhill: ‘Kiwis are a unique type of tough’: a note from GeoNet’s director on responding to the monster quake
“One thing I know about us Kiwis, we are prepared, tough, and able to cope with almost anything. It is perfectly acceptable to be scared by this earthquake but we will get through this by doing what I think Kiwis do best: helping each other. We saw this with the Canterbury earthquakes and we are seeing this again. We are also good at taking care of our visitors and our new Kiwis as well.
I can’t relieve anyone’s anxiety about future earthquakes; more will come. What I can say is that preparedness, that old Civil Defence and Emergency Management mantra, is the best solution to being ready for these events.”
Thomas Coughlan: UK, USA… NZ? Why the Greens’ surrender to the dark side of immigration should scare us all
“New Zealanders should look at this in fear. When even the apparently far-sighted Greens look at weaponising high house prices and low wage growth via anti-immigrant sentiment, we know our political discourse has truly jumped the shark. Lurking in the shadows of the nativist madness gripping Britain is the hubris of her politicians who recklessly thought they could open the Pandora’s Box of immigration and tame the horrific nationalism inside. There is only one end to that kind of anti-immigration debate, and it is an end that Britain and America are fast approaching: outright fascism.”
Alex Casey: ‘I’m disappointed and I’m angry’: Mike Puru, the nicest man in NZ show business, has finally had enough
“‘It’s embarrassing, you know?’ Mike began to well up, and I bit the inside of my mouth harder than ever before to stop myself from joining him. “That’s the thing. It’s embarrassing. It makes you look like a failure, and that’s the hardest thing for me to deal with really.” A moment’s silence passed, his phone flashing with what looked like hundreds of messages and calls from people who were just finding out the news of his bronzed replacement.”
“What does ‘urban’ mean? And then ‘urban-slash-hiphop’, what does that mean? Is that the brown people award? To me, it felt like that. I’ve always had that in the back of my mind. Like, this is kind of unfair. I’m a singer! I feel for the hiphop artists as well.
I just thought it would go against what I’m singing in this song, about being placed in a box, if I was to accept the award now.”
Brian Turner: Book of the Week: Who the hell does Brendon McCullum think he is?
“A trailblazer, if you like, taking the game to a new level. Others felt a lot of what he was doing, thinking, was nothing short of idiotic and selfish. Some maintain that his field-settings were often silly, if not stupid, and that tactically he was responsible for NZ losing a couple of series they ought to have won. Also, when considering the last World Cup final, I’ve heard some notable older heads argue he lost it for us.”
Madeleine Chapman: The definitive history of Brian Tamaki’s horse-obsessed Twitter page
“Not wanting to wait until the next Destiny Church service (and not wanting to go to one), I turned to Twitter. A mere 4,813 tweets later and I know more about Mr Brian Tamaki than I ever thought I would. Tamaki himself believes that Twitter is the great revealer of truth and therefore it’s correct to assume that all tweets presented in this article are 100% Brian Tamaki’s beliefs and values.”
