Thanks Mike for the suggestion. Seems to me that we should automatically
discount any claims of prediction which are made on this board unless the predictor
clearly makes those predictions in advance in public to this board either using the form
available or if this is not possible for some reason, at least in a clear posted message
(as Petra does with ear tones, which are extremely difficult to localize, and therefore
difficult to use the form on). I am aware that EQF has reasons for not posting
any of his predictions here, but since he sends these out to a group of people
via e-mail, some of his reasons seem unsatisfactory - such as fear that the predictions
will get into the wrong hands etc.

As for EQF's claim, I have looked through e-mail I got from him on the 15th and
have found one which suggests a small, non-damaging earthquake might occur
in Japan at some time in the future. There is no date (no window of occurrence)
or magnitude range, just a general statement that an earthquake may occur
somewhere near a given location in northern Japan where an earthquake had
occurred on Nov. 13. Since small non-damaging earthquakes occur in Japan every day, and
this section of northern Japan has been quite active over the past two months
with minor, non-destructive events, and since no magnitude nor time window
was specified, a claim for a successful prediction, while quite true, should be
greeted with some skepticism, since this type of prediction is equivalent to saying
there will be an earthquake in California in the next month. The prediction is
correct, but totally useless and impossible to evaluate since too much information
is missing.