In which she reads the news

[zeborah]

Twitter is divided between those who want to knock down all the buildings and those who are afraid that Civil Defense will knock down all the buildings. Twitter is also divided between those outraged that we're paying for Prince William to visit, those grateful that he's asking for donations to charity including #eqnz in lieu of wedding gifts, and those just squeeing that he's here and hasn't brought Kate with him to ruin their fantasies.

On The Press's site:

Water may be drinkable by the end of the month. Scared Scriptless (local improv group) will be resuming next week, starting in the Big Top tent at uni. (Have I mentioned most of the uni classes that are a) being held and b) not off-site are being held in tents? Never fear, they plan to have pre-fabs ready before winter kicks in.)

In "Earthquakes are weird" news, "Ground accelerations in Christchurch [...] were as much as four times higher than the highest accelerations measured in last Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the east coast of Japan." [from Christchurch bounced during deadly earthquake] Despite what someone on Twitter thought, this doesn't mean our earthquake was bigger than theirs, nor that Mercalli is a better measure than magnitude. Personally I think Mercalli is pretty useless for the purpose most people want a measure for, ie to attach a single number to the event. Mercalli effectively gives a different number to every level in every building.

In "Let's pay attention to the important things" news, Nation's Guinness supplies saved in time for St Patrick's Day.

In "OIC what your word choice did there" news, compare and contrast these articles from the same newspaper on the same day about the exact same event:

Big change for Shirley boys
An army of Shirley Boys' High School pupils boarded buses yesterday, ready for their new school site.

and

Girls giggle as school site-sharing takes off
Teachers yesterday ushered Papanui High pupils off the school grounds as Shirley Boys' High pupils waited to start their school day.
Some girls giggled and chatted as the Shirley boys gathered for their first afternoon at their new school site.

Further reading of both articles suggests to me that on the whole both boys and girls have the same ranges of reactions.

And an awesome opinion column. Don't read the comments unless you enjoy "I don't live in Christchurch but I don't see why you can't be more positive" nitwitery.

Comments

[poetrychook.blogspot.com]

Of course since you said don't read the comments, I had to go and look for the comments. And there weren't any. Maybe they've been removed?
I enjoyed the column, but I think Vicki is being a little hard on poor Hayley Westenra, who does after all come from Christchurch - all her family are still here, (even if on the less affected northwest side) and she probably wants to do her bit.
Still, I've decided the best thing I can do for the city tomorrow is to go to work, instead of to the memorial, because if I don't go I will get stressed about all the work piling up, and the last thing the city needs right now is more stressed people.