Smithers Foiled!

Article

Wow, the great Smithers has been blocked to blow another billion! Having blown billions on the Niagara Tunnel and ehealth (perhaps some more?), he was set to pour billions on an untendered subsidy. Are people getting tired of this?

So, the power use for Ontario is going down like a rock. The economy will be suppressed more when the time of use price hike comes in force. I was talking to a lady from Shelburne, and she says the general consensus is that those wind turbines never turn. They estimate under 5% capacity rate. The break down a lot, and when the bearings fail you can hear the horrid screech for miles!

Niagara Tunnel Puts on a Life Show

Reference


Last updated on October 25, 2009


When dictators in totally Soviet states are nearly dead, the news always goes quiet. Once in a while, they feel obligated to prop up the body for a photo op. Yes, the Glorious Dictator is still alive!, the state media puts out. But we know he's dead.

And so, in Ontariostan, we have to do the same thing. In this case, it's the Niagara Tunnel, and I've been saying it's dead for a long time, and the body is starting to rot. My main reasoning lies with the fact that all technical news has been suppressed by the Information Bureau of the State Energy Commission. Now, however, they feel obligated to trot out the body.

They have recently updated the Updated label on the web site! But they have added no news whatsoever! I think General Franco's guys did a better job. They are just going to close the tunnel up, and pretend it never happened...

The End of Writing as We Know It

Article

In 2010, advertising opportunities will be expanded to include sponsorship of individual writers. Currently being test-driven in Denver, CO., the sponsorship package allows a local advertiser to be aligned with specific local writers and their audiences, with ad units on a chosen writer’s page and access to that writer about announcements ...

It used to be that writing had a high barrier to entry. This ensured a cartel of distribution, and good money to the few that could scale the walls. Now, that's all over! The writing cartel is broken, and that means nobody is actually going to pay for writing, much like music. But I'll bet that the overall amount of money going to support writing will increase, but I don't know if the writers will get any of it. The end result might be a reduction in quality writing, which should drive up prices again.

I know that I never want to write unless there is some token of appreciation. For these new 'newspapers', the limiting factor might be good editors, but they've probably got new, starving writers climbing up the walls!

McMaster Varsity Water Polo Pictures

I nearly killed myself Wednesday, filming 2 games! All the videos are on my youtube site. As usual, I get no appreciation for this, but I feel water polo needs some promotion.

Small seismic sensor deployment

Article

If you can spare a little space on your office wall about the size of a small Post-it Note, you may be able to host a tiny seismic sensor that will help the researchers of the Quake-Catcher Network delve deeper into the subterranean world of earthquakes.

These sensors can only detect really strong ground motions, so they should tell you to glue them onto the floor, or the wall. They are cute, and you can buy one from their site.

Consultant Goes to CNSC

Article

Ms. Beaudet is a communications consultant who has advised the Office of the Auditor General of Canada on issues related to the Canadian North, organized strategies on climate change and air pollution and advised the Task Force on Sustainable Transportation for the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.

'Tis the age of the consultant. The Mo-Mafia may skim 3% back to the politicians, but consultants do a better job than that! But they need more madmen on the CNSC! In the old days, the AECB (former CNSC) used to be worried about destroying the entire Canadian nuclear industry, but now the CNSC doesn't have to worry about that! All they have to worry about is their image....

Neato Seattle Collapse Simulation

Article

You have got to see this! Kaboom! Godzilla tramps through Seattle! A lot of cities have this old garbage that would do exactly the same when faced with a genuine scenario earthquake. Oh well...

Pickering Unit 8 Down

Article

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ontario Power Generation shut the 515-megawatt Unit 8 at the Pickering nuclear power station in Ontario by Monday for short maintenance in the switchyard, a spokesman for the province-owned generating company said.

He could not say exactly when the unit would return to service due in part to competitive reasons. Electricity traders guessed the unit would return in about a week.

They work under a perfect cloak of secrecy, and the perfect excuse for it! So, we can't blame them... I wonder if this is my most favourite Sinking Transformer of Pickering? That thing has got to go sometime. So, watch this space, if this sudden outage goes on for more than a week.

October BSSA

After this year, I'm just getting my journals electronically, and I can probably read them on my book reader. This month's journal is over an inch thick, and quite heavy. It is all dedicated to ground motions, which are fun. This journal is behind the paywall, so you can't see it.

I liked the front review article entitled "Strong Ground Motions - Have we seen the worst?" It is a very interesting piece that explores how "records' are broken all the time, and what could be the maximum that we might see in the future. In this article, the concept of PGA being good for anything is shattered, and PGV has a better correlation with damage. Were I still in the old business, I would use this to get rid of PGA forever. PGA- peak ground acceleration, PGV - peak ground velocity.

If you use PGA and standard hazard probability, you have no limits as to the maximum magnitude. A Yucca analysis eventually got to 12 g for something like 10-8 chance per year. The article does not explore the physical limit to PGV on rock, which is linked to the maximum stress that wet, fractured rock can handle.

Finally, if we look at oceanic super-waves, there may be no known limit to seismic basin waves. If a bunch of these group waves all combined together for an instant, the PGV could hit several metres per second.

Most of the rest of the articles are on standard probablity seismic hazard, which I'm really starting to hate. I want more velocity time histories on solid rock.

Geology and Wine

Article

Wine critics love to talk about "gout de terroir," the taste of the soil.

But don't be fooled next time you hear one muse about the "weathered Devonian slate" or quartz soil "minerality" detectable in wine. They've stretched the meaning of terroir to the point of silliness.

Oh, this has to be my most favourite combination! Except maybe Geology and Fishing, but I never found much on that. So, we have found out that a bit of limestone in the soil doesn't make the wine chalky, but that soil drainage and porosity are probably more dominate. Now, if we found out that better wine is made near active faults, that would be something!

Soft Story Tsunami Shelter

Article

One way of improving survival odds is to build tsunami-resistant shelters in what's expected to be the worst danger zones, said Yumei Wang, a geotechnical engineer at the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries in Portland.

What is wrong with this picture? Is this a good tsunami shelter, kiddies?

We have a heavy brick building on spindly poles. There is not much chance this would survive the major earthquake that causes the tsunami. When we build these things, we should be looking at steel, and making it so it can survive a theme park ride, in fact, making it like a ship, without the heavy hull.

Seismic Retrofit in the East

Article

The bridge connects Ottawa's St. Patrick Street to Boulevard des Allumettières in Gatineau.

The work on the bridge involves seismic reinforcement of the piers.

I've simply never seen this for an eastern city. I wonder what's the real story behind this. Were the piers falling apart anyway? Did some brave crusader spill his guts getting this done?

Niagara Tunnel News Blackout

I was going to wait until Nov. 14, which would be the 2 month anniversary of the news blackout, but I'm not.

In Canada, we are used to letting super-secret agencies spend billions of dollars without a shred of transparency. Has this led to good things? No News is Good News? We think not.

Our bankrupt news media can't do anything. They live on the droppings of official news, since it is only given to tame agencies. But we can imagine! Here is my phony report:

The TBM has encountered more 'bad rock'. Nobody told them that conditions were this bad, and they are saving all this for a monster lawsuit. That is why they have clammed up on the news, since the lawyers are now in charge. All the intelligent engineers (designers) have run for the hills, since who wants to get sucked into a trial? The toadies are now in charge, since they never have anything to lose.

This rock has a history of serious rock squeeze problems. The TBM is advancing at 3 m a day, with 3 m overbreak. Some overbreak may be stopped temporarily by thin limestone layers, enough to get in some quick flimsy steel sets and shotcrete. Looks good for while!

Meanwhile, along the rest of the tunnel, there are worrisome cracks, which don't cause any worry, because there are no worriers left. There may have been some more rockbursts, but they haven't killed anybody yet, so there is no need to let it out. They just sweep up and paste over.

Yeah, I love making up news stories! :)

The preceeding has been a work of fiction. No inference of any kind is meant to cast aspersions on anybody living, dead, or disappeared.

Lepreau Launches Lawyers

Article

A fight over compensation for cost overruns at the Point Lepreau nuclear plant could be heading to court.

If all these things end up in court, we'll never get anything done. Everyone will be preparing their 'Stupidity Defence', and looking over their collective shoulders.

Buy of the Week - Yoropen

Reference

While we were down in Boston, we stopped at the MIT Museum and gift shop. There we found these pens and bought 2 for the middle son at $14 each. He found it fantastic! It has saved him at university, with all those stupid hand-written test essays. This pen alone will launch him into an infinitely expensive law school! (aaarg, more ad clicks please!).

When I looked it up on the internet, they're only about 3 bucks each at Canada Office Supplies, and I bought a few for Christmas. I just get the cheapest disposable one, and that is one heck of a good gel pen! I can't use normal gel pens because I want to write too slanted, and they always cough up blood on me. These pens keep the tip vertical.

So the lesson here: Stupid MIT! Great pen!

Zone 4 Seismic Cabinet

Article

Sure, this has got to be the dullest thing in the world, but it reminds of a story.

For nuclear plants, the toughest thing to buy is misc. shit that has to be seismically qualified. They used to have a bizarre system where they used their own totally weird seismic history, and shook things like hell. Hardly anything ever survived, so if they wanted a simple cabinet like this, they paid a fortune for it.

One thing I promoted there was "If it's good enough for California, it's good enough here." I had all sorts of good industry data behind that, and for a while I was successful in getting stuff like this into the nuclear plants. Then I left, and they erased all trace of me, like Orwell-1984, and I don't know what they do.

But basically, cabinets like this have to undergo a shake test. They are heavily reinforced, and the Zone 4 classification is quite severe, and good enough for the worst places in California. Yep, I saved a lot of money with that.

Knol Still Lives!

The knol: Great Hotspot Controversy has been accepted into the collection: Structural Geology as submitted by Eric Clausen.

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I just got this message. At one time I rewrote a lot of my stuff into a knol. You get no feedback at all from that, so I gave up, since it didn't produce any wine. This is the first indication that it still lives. Who knows?

Lepreaux 2 Burned Out

Article

On Tuesday, Energy Minister Jack Keir, once the megaproject's most enthusiastic booster, gave a less-than-optimistic update on its status.

"It's on the back burner. I wouldn't say it's off the stove, but it's simmering on the back burner," he said in an interview. "There are so many other issues facing NB Power right now.

Ah, all those things on the back burner, you'd think it would just collapse from the weight!

Next San Fran Earthquake as Expensive as Bungles

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A new report by modeling firm Risk Management Solutions estimates a 7.2 magnitude quake along the Peninsula segment of the San Andreas Fault could result in $19 billion in insured losses -- about $4 billion in residential losses and $12 billion in commercial losses.

Seems kind of cheap, really. Especially if you compare it to all our gov't bungles recently. Now, I'm including ehealth, infoway, Niagara Tunnel, the lack of any nuclear plants when all the old ones are about to go tits up, and future disposal money at Bruce. Of course, it would be cheating to include our very own, up and coming, Toronto Earthquake!

Chalk River Duct Tape Costs 70 Big Ones

Article

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. has put a $70-million price tag on repairing its downed Chalk River reactor.

They've mucked up lost revenues into this, so we don't really know the cost of the chewing gum and duct tape. Are they going to replace the whole bathtub? That's supposed to be around $10 million. It will still be a Seismic Death Trap, but we might get some isotopes out of it.

Of course, maybe all the money is going to consultants???

Rain, With a Chance of Earthquakes

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"Dillsburg has a tremor every time it rains," Jones said. "There seems to be a correlation."

This is a swarm, probably related to mining activity. You can see that the process is probably water-starved, and is most likely not in the lowlands.

Varsity Water Polo Clips

So, life is exciting at the varsity level! I'm hoping my clips spark some interest in the sport for our local Ontario universities. It is barely supported here, not even swimcaps provided! Football takes all the money!



I'm quite amazed, I put in a short music clip, and it gets tagged. But they still allow it to be watched, but just with a music ad. I don't mind.

Infoway Doing the Ehealth Jig

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OTTAWA — The eHealth scandal in Ontario that recently rocked the provincial government may have been a dress rehearsal for its larger counterpart at the federal level.

The troubled Canada Health Infoway Inc., which like its provincial cousin is trying to convert medical records into electronic form, gets a long-awaited report card next month from the auditor general of Canada.

And so far, the prognosis is poor for the secretive agency, which has already swallowed $1.6 billion of federal money and was promised $500 million more this year by Health Canada.

A couple of years ago I read the main tender for their Public Health project. It was a politically correct technical nightmare. "Like, let every province do their own thing, and we'll like, connect them together, and everybody will be Happy, Happy!"

I'm sure some big consultant said "We've got the people!". :)

Fall closes in

Cleaning up the garden today. My arms are falling off! So much to stuff into the big paper yard waste bags. Tonight we are having BC crabs. One of those Chinese supermarkets opened up in Weston, which is quasi-inner city. Great to have reasonably priced food for the hard workers of the city. Anyway, they have great fresh crab and lobster, and the crab is reasonably priced. I boil 2 crabs for 30 minutes and then split and separate the legs. Yummy!

Today's wine is a 2003 Chilean Merlot (Carmen). I think I've had it a few years in my wine cooler. I installed one of those fridge wine coolers (a small one) that you get at Costco, when we did our renovations. This is a magnificent wine! Everybody should scrimp for a fine wine once in a while, it's better than happy pills and the memories linger.

Santa Cruz earthquake diary

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SANTA CRUZ -- She was the "earthquake stalker," according to the Los Angeles Times.

Clued in by rumblings around the San Andreas fault two years before it broke, UC Santa Cruz geophysicist Karen McNally placed state-of-the-art seismic instruments along the fault just months before the Loma Prieta earthquake shook Santa Cruz on Oct. 17, 1989.

Nice article about the action after a big quake.

California seismic early warning system

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"California is dead broke, so they're not going to be able to fund the system," said Mike Price, chief technology officer of Seismic Warning Systems and a sharp critic of the USGS program. "What they're building is a massive, government-centric research project. At the moment they're nowhere."

This article is hilarious! This little company builds those cheapie P-wave warning systems, so the guy is a bit self-interested, but he really lets go! A larger system tries to gather P-wave signals near the source, and then transmits the signal electronically. Supposedly giving you another few seconds, but they always screw up, since they are running Microsoft.

French want transparency

Article

The Cadarache research center near Marseille had stated it had eight kilograms of plutonium slated for decommissioning, but there were 22 kg found at the location during the operation.

The facility had a license to store more than 22 kg of plutonium, but authorities are nonetheless curious as to why the extra 14 kg went unregistered.

"We need to have some transparency in this matter because this is not normal," said the French junior environment minister, Chantal Jouanno.

Ha, ha! The French are as transparent as the Montreal road mafia! Now, they are rolling in plutonium! They could slip some out the back the door, and Iran wouldn't have to go through all that trouble with uranium centrifuges!

AP1000 Continues to Stumble

Article

The nuclear reactor design that Florida Power & Light has chosen for its expansion at Turkey Point has safety flaws, federal regulators said Thursday.

The problem, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is weakness in a structure called the shield building. It is erected around an internal nuclear containment building primarily to protect it from natural disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes.

In a letter to the Westinghouse Electrical Co., manufacturer of the reactor, the NRC said that part of its AP1000 reactor design did not withstand design loads. The agency said it would require additional analysis, testing and possibly redesign.

The US NRC doesn't like these guys! I was all hot on this design, but it seems to have it's troubles. Still, it's a matter of how you do your analysis. I always found the results could vary by a huge amount depending on your assumptions.

All bright engineers will leave AECL if sold

Article

If AECL merely becomes a branch plant for a foreign firm, some of the Crown corporation's engineers and scientists could leave the country in search of more interesting work, he added.

"Once you start breaking up the engineering division piecemeal, you lose the ability to design and build," said Ivanco. "Ontario Hydro, 20 years ago, could build reactors. But they stopped building reactors and a lot of their good people got bored and left."

I'm playing this pretty straight. yep.

More Insar on the Chinese Quake

Article

First the Italian earthquake, and now this. The Insar technique is proving to be very powerful in mapping out the post-quake deformation field.

Cheerful News for Padang

Article

SINGAPORE — A colossal earthquake may hit Indonesia's Sumatra island within 30 years, triggering a tsunami and making last month's deadly temblor look tiny by comparison, a geologist has warned.

Kerry Sieh, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, said the next big quake would last more than six times as long as the 7.6 magnitude quake which struck western Sumatra on September 30, leveling the city of Padang. "We expect it will be about a magnitude 8.8, plus or minus say 0.1," Sieh, an American professor, said at a presentation late Wednesday at the Nanyang Technological University, where the observatory is located.

And you thought that I was a doomster-gloomster!

Charleston Lines Up With Fishism

I now get my BSSA journals electronically. This saves getting those giant 'Brick Books' that threaten to collapse my bookshelf. The article is from the recent SRL.

Fishism states that the only energy source for these eastern NA earthquakes is the high horizontal compressive stress (strain) of the NA plate. The Niagara Tunnel shows us that this is a very destructive force. The strain energy is released through stress corrosion by fresh water, and each source mechanism can remain active for millions of years. These mechanisms grow from a baby (Hamilton), to a single wing (Charleston), right through to a giant old-sucker double wing that is New Madrid.

Now, when I first started out, there was great confusion as to the source of the Charleston earthquake. Finally, with a lot of seismic monitoring, they have pinned it down to the area in the map. They have increased the monitoring to decent levels, and can relocate events. The pattern takes on the shape of a single wing.

Now, to get these mechanisms started, there has to be a reactivated thrust fault. Most likely, the giant megathrusts that go through ENA. There is not enough deep seismic reflection work to find it in Charleston. Still, to capture compressive strain energy, you need a thrust fault. Lots of water is then required to keep things going, since the most likely outcome is a 'locked fault', where strain energy is relieved, and the fault doesn't grow. The water starts corroding at the edges, and keeps things weakening.

The thrust weakness can't keep growing forever without 'catching'. For a successful mechanism, a strike-slip wing has to break out. You can see this here. More work has to be done to which is the thrust zone, and which is the wing. I still can't imagine the force required to break out a second wing through the footwall, as with New Madrid. Those would be huge earthquakes!

Now, the fundamental conflict with Fishism versus the rest of the world, is that these mechanisms continue to grow, and will always be the centre of great earthquakes in the region. Other people think that these places are 'shot', and some new source zones have to appear. Poo-poo on that!

Ontario Installs Fancy Benches

Article

I was thinking how Germany was giving up on these things because they don't have any sunlight, and we have less!

Speaking of the sun, I propose a new Sunshine List for consultants. They publish that thing for employees, but we really need more. I think it should be for over a million dollars per year, and they should also publish the total accumulated. As well, we need names behind those companies. Numbered Ontario companies are very mafioso!

Tsunami Test

Article

These things are so cute! No wonder people are collecting them. I had read somewhere that nasty people were stealing these things. They should have a video camera on them, or something.

Continued no news from Niagara

The Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend is over! I just dropped off the last student over at the Queens Riot. Lots of driving this weekend. I just spent my last Google cheque on some fancy wine, and the annual BSSA dues. Boy, that Canadian dollar has made the wine cheaper! The 'Rave Review' stuff I usually buy used to be all $25 per bottle, now it's like $15-20. But that's all in the past, since I'm not getting any more ad clicks! Time to retire from retiring.

So, No News is Good News! That's what everybody believes in Canada, and Darkest Ontario. If the Power People supress all the news, then things must be going well....

I've never believed that. If I don't hear any news, then I assume the worst, especially in Ontario. I didn't really believe I was actually right about the Niagara Tunnel web site, thought it was just a glitch, and I was having fun with that. But they have actually truly stopped all technical news! You can only get information through the OPG Media Desk - HA HA! That is the blackest of all black holes - I knew the people there!

So now I have to assume that the whole thing is sinking into a deep pit. Can we guess the final cost of a non-functioning hole at 5-10 billion? Can we guess when they finally give up on it? Will anybody hear about it, or will we assume it's working perfectly when it's all filled with spider webs?

French in Nuclear Waste Tizzy

Article1 Article2

PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - EDF (EDF.PA) is sending to Russia spent nuclear fuel that needs to be reprocessed, the French nuclear power producer said on Monday, denying a French press report that it was using Siberia to dump nuclear waste.

The world's largest nuclear energy producer said that radioactive waste was kept in France, where it was processed and stocked in dedicated facilities at Areva's (CEPFi.PA) storage site of La Hague, on the northwestern coast of Normandy.
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MOSCOW, October 12 (RIA Novosti) - France's Liberation newspaper has published the findings of a report claiming that spent fuel from French power plants is being stored at an open-air site in Russia.

The findings will be broadcast in a documentary on the TV channel Arte on Tuesday.

According to the research, EDF, the main French electricity company, sends some of its nuclear waste to a center near the Siberian city of Tomsk. However, the technology for processing the waste is reportedly absent, and the depleted uranium is merely dumped in an open site.

Liberation says that 13% of waste from nuclear power plants owned by EDF is stored there.

Who cares what the eventual story is, this is funny!

Germany goes for nuclear power

Article

If anybody has a chance to do nuclear right, it should be the Germans. Well, they did really botch up that salt nuclear waste thing, but I have confidence that they will line up somebody competent to be in charge. So, this will be a good thing to watch.

Earthquake Clusters

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Whenever one earthquake pops up, and then another somewhere else in the world, there is always the popular question "Are they related?". Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn, but some people do.

If earthquakes are controlled by fluids, which is my big thing, then it is possible that a distant earthquake can pressurize some situations. That's because you can have a huge amount of fluid, with a very narrow top. A tiny bit of compression can move a lot of fluid at the restriction.

There is also the fact that a totally random series of events can appear in clusters, simply because it would not be random if they took place at exactly even time intervals. So, are these random clusters, or mechanically linked? Who cares?

Creative use of seismic base isolators

Article

With luck, you'll be in this block-long behemoth when the Big One hits. A three-story mix of office and medical space was enlarged by placing seismic base isolators on the roof and then adding two extra stories. The rubber bearings are concealed behind a metal screen running the length of the building. The bearings form a shock-absorbing platform for the addition, while the new space acts as a large damper to steady the floors below. Architecturally, this won't grace any postcards - but it's a building that could be nowhere else.

When they have their earthquake, this will provide an extreme test for base isolators! I'm not a big fan of these things, but this application takes the cake. I wish them luck.

Ehealth Transparency Required

Article

I've just closed the cottage. Since I just have water access, I have to abandon the cottage during the winter. I take up all the boats, and drain all the water lines. Then I inject plumbing antifreeze into everything. This spring there was a pocket of water in the lines, and it caused a crack in the most inconvenient spot. Such a bitch to re-solder!

Courtyard is claiming they only sucked up $7 megabucks, but they 'took control', and threw out a lot more. It would be great to have a 'sunshine list' of all these guys. They should list what each guy produced, for how much, and opensource (publish) the product (such as a report or computer code). Then everybody could see what was done! And laugh at it!

How are they ever going to start again? If you want to see the concept of doctors and business, here's an article.

Pushing for a piddly old reactor

Article

They're tiny, they're old, and the Chinese don't like them anymore. Let's build a Candu 6!

Ontario sends billions to the mafia

Ok, who else could absorb billions and not even burp? This is the generic white-collar lower case mafia, not the Sopranos. It's comprised of the top circles.

I was at the cottage for 2 days, and all I heard on the radio was that the ehealth tab is over a billion (probably 2!). I was involved, through family connections, with the Alberta system, and even did some design work for scalability. This is a good system, and could transfer over to Ontario for less than 10 million (if that!). But it will never make it here, because it's a clean system that runs over the murky doctor sideline business, because it provides transparency. That's like putting a search light under a rock!

So, let's give that 2 billion vapourized. That's extremely difficult to do! Where did the money go? As an example, take the Niagara Tunnel. That's 2 billion wasted, but we have a nice useless hole. The military can test out their new Afghanicars, with all the random rockbursts. We also have all that rock. Now, let's say 1 billion for moving rock, and 1 billion goes to the mafia, for contract work, design work that was never done, and general slush. Still, you can see you need a huge hole to sink a billion!

I think if we keep this up, with the Bruce deep disposal project, we can probably do better than the Montreal Olympics! I'm not complaining, since an economic slump in the province brings down prices, but still.....

Bloggers Must Disclose Freebies

Article

This is my statement:

Much to my regret, I have never received any freebies with this blog. Sure, I hustle for a few pennies on my ads, but less than 1% ever click on them! My readers never spend any money! They're so cheap, their keyboard squeak!

Sure I should have got a freebie from the barrel sauna guy, since I had a couple of thousand hits on my utube video, and brought him business, but did I? No! And I've been expecting a bribe from the Major Powers to keep me quiet on all their screw-ups, but they aren't smart enough for that! Once in a while, I have really laid into some companies who have pissed me off, but I only got the service they should have given me.

The day I do get a freebie, I'll let you know! Meanwhile, Hello MS! I'm here!

Niagara Tunnel Stops Reporting

Reference

I knew this would happen. Someone at OPG would figure out this site has been operating since the beginning of the tunnel. That's where I've been getting all my 'inside' information!

With the tunnel mucked up again, and the liner ready to explode at random*, they have clammed up. Maybe they aren't doing anything?

*When dealing with the overbreak, they have straightened up the steel sets to fit the oblong geometry. This is a big no-no! Now, the steel sets are primed for a buckle-explosion, with just a little bit of rock squeeze and compression. They principle is the same as the little cricket clickers we had as a kid. If there is another rockburst, we might not hear about it, although they will... :)

Blah, Blah Darlington Environmental Assessment

Article

The federal process for an env. ass. is sooo boring! Where's the sizzle? All they say is that they'll have more traffic. And the pasty toadies will accept that, in a boring way. Do they mention blasting? Do they lay in a seismic framework? No. I'm not even going to read this.

The one for the Bruce deep disposal will be exactly the same - more traffic. They'll leave out the trainloads of grout, the massive drainage, the rockbursts, everything. And once again, it will all go down with a spoonful of sugar.

Back to Water Polo

So, the daughter now goes to McMaster University in fault-ridden Hamilton. She's in an ancient stone residence, so I'm hoping the foundation is good up on the high ground. If it's on hard till, she's golden.

Their varsity water polo team had its first 'friendlies' on the weekend. This is a video of her forcing a classic turn for a kickout. The person checking her cannot grab her from behind, so when this happens, they should spin with their hands up.


Her friend plays hole, which is a constant 'washing machine' of action. The most powerful weapon in a hole's arsenal is the quick backhand.

Microseismic Oil

Reference

Just like the porn industry led the internet, the oil industry is now leading seismic monitoring. This is amazing technology, just the thing we need for interior seismic zones. Oh well, I can dream...

Padang Earthquake Not the Expected One

Article

Padang, meanwhile, has indeed had its big quake. The 7.6-event on Wednesday may have killed thousands, Indonesian officials fear.

But how it happened was unexpected.

The expected earthquake would be an 8+ earthquake along the subduction zone, probably just like the big 2004 quake, or like this recent Samoa event. Instead, it was a deep interior-plate earthquake, most likely thrust, and most likely 'focused' (super quake, or 'Fist of God'). That's probably why we got so much damage from a deep earthquake.

The standard subduction earthquakes are way out in the ocean, and focus all their seismic energies down into the earth. They rarely cause shaking damage on shore. Instead, they whip up a giant wall of water!

Interior plate earthquakes are a reponse, in firmer crust, to all that shoving around, and bending, etc. That Japan nuclear plant got hit by one, the Kobe earthquake, etc. They can have huge intensities (high PGV) for their 'size', in terms of magnitude.

Tsunami Warning System Heart Attack

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And it didn't help that an international computerized system, designed for relief agencies to figure out if they needed to respond, had a computer failure that caused it to pooh-pooh the tsunami's wrath initially.

I've kept an informal tally, and every single warning system breaks down when it is needed. Why is that? Are warning systems designed by Power People? Is there a political component? Is it the fact they are always centralized, in the most comfy places for seismologists?

I think it's because they design for a linear input, and an earthquake hits with massive exponentials. I wonder if any system will ever work.

Drills Save People

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The Pacific islands were so close to the epicentre of the earthquake that a wall of water hit Samoa within eight minutes after the Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii sent its first bulletin Tuesday.

Several Samoans said they heard no sirens or warnings, but fled as soon as they were woken up by the earthquake.

Nevertheless, the fact that scores left for safety underlined that lessons from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunamis have not been forgotten.

8 minutes to get to the high ground, and yet a lot of people did it. This was an amazing response! Far better than people collecting shellfish when all the water goes out!

Fluids Control the San Andreas

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The researchers found that the San Andreas Fault zone was riddled with fluid-filled fractures, and these fractures sometimes shifted slightly. The repeated earthquakes also became smaller and more frequent, indicating a weakened fault, the researchers said.

On the San Andreas, where things move quickly, you get closed fluid sacs that migrate by 'popping'. For interior earthquakes, you get the fluids migrating through seepage. Either way, the world is starting to come around to my thoughts on the importance of fluid motion. 'No earthquakes without water!" That's my mantra!