Hello Spider and Canie,

Though this message boards requirements are certainly more lax than the scientific community would find acceptable, in the long run considering the source of the prediction methods I think overall the hit record would be fairly good, though not great.

A question I have thats been running through my mind of late, is the long term and short term averaging for large earthquakes. It seems of late there are quite a number of large quakes, but maybe its not the number, but the locations being in populated area's.

Certainly the ultimate goal of earthquake prediction is to warn people who live in large metropolitan area's that a possible quake may be coming. However, when addressing the financial needs to accomplish the winning prediction team, then suddenly everything shifts and you hear something like this, "well, large earthquakes are a mostly rare event." If you had one large one per year in a heavily populated area and people died, then when thinking of their families, can you honest say to them, we can't afford to warn you, after all, "its a mostly rare event." So far of late, we've had Turkey, Taiwan, Volcano Islands, Hector Mines. I wonder where the next "mostly rare event" will be striking? ie: where are all the seismic gaps?

Mostly curious...Pat