Petra, we are not jealous of kooks...what is there to be jealous of? Lowell is not a kook. But, it would be interesting if someone tried to exactly reproduce some of the stuff in his thesis (Roger did not attemot to reproduce this exactly...instead the graphs made it look like there was no strong effect for FFAs or solar flares for M5+ quakes.
There is a lot of territory between "mainstream scientist" and kook. A kook (where did this word come from?) ignores massive amounts of data and come up with their own ideas without addressing the data. For example, pretending plate tectonics or evolution does not take place, or the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago. Which repeated surveys have shown 40+% of Americans believe. Yes, with this kind of clear thinking, we are going to compete real well in the world economy. Actually, most of these people are probably not "kooks", they are "ignorant". Ignorant is not as negative a term as it sounds...it means that they are poorly informed, and have not been trained/refuse to be trained to disciminate between ideas.
Petra...from reading your posts for years, you are not a mainstream scientist. But, you are not a kook either.
Chris