Hi Roger,

I have no doubt you are probably correct, but we only have to answer one question: Did an earthquake show up at that time, or did something else happen like a swarm in the area that would have served to be about the same thing?

I've seen this all to many times in relationship to what I've posted. In the early days when I was working on this I made the mistake of using closed magnitudes so if I was .1 off it was a no hitter, yet, there was a quake there. There are lot of plus/minus issues regarding prediction and while Don is working hard to realize some success his parameters are very tight and especially if you consider Keilis-Borok's SoCal prediction was for 12,000 square miles and 9 months. If we gave everyone that kind of latitude, we'd all be winners.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of rules of acceptability, ours and KB's. For some reason he gets credit for making predictions with incredible acreage and the rest of us who are held to a higher standard. He was lucky that he got two of his predictions; but he's missed all of the rest. He's not doing very well at all.

And in the not understanding a lot of what we hear or see, yesterday I sent an e-mail to Tom Jordan so he could read Roger Musson's evaluation method and asked him why we are hearing about one program in the press and yet Don, I, Adventure Woman and sixty scientists heard something entirely different. We did hear what we heard and over here it looks like we were fabricating something when are not. So there are either two programs or only one, but I don't appreciate looking like the class clown. My best guess is that he had to change what he wanted to do to get funding and I sure understand that. So, if he decides to answer his e-mail, we'll see about that.

I wanted to say we have a few days before my window the "west coast undisclosed location" prediction expires. Honestly, this is one I hope does not materialize; if it does, I hope no one gets hurt, but if it doesn't it was one of the best lessons I've ever had in predicting earthquakes. I won't ever do what I did this time. There has to be another way, but this isn't it.

Roger, you're a good man and good evaluator and if Jordan does decide to go with what he proposed last April and I go, then you had better go with me.

Petra