Petra,

Good points. Shan's shadow of a stick on a wall is a very crude version of the numerous geodetic instruments the scientists have deployed for years. Tilt meters had their day in the 60's and 70's, but have not produced precursors (remember the Palmdale Buldge?).

The PBO (Plate Boundary Observatory) planned for construction by NSF will have hundreds of much more sensitive instruments in place in ten years.

I'm skeptical of ear tones, but the correct approach is to make predictions and see how they work. A track record with statistics is the test of both mainstream and original ideas.

EQF's claim of politics is just a cover for a paradigm that hasn't been able to predict anything, most likely because it doesn't work, or even make physical sense. Shan's method is physically sensible, but far from the state-of-the-art, which isn't predicting quakes well either.

John