Don,
You could have quoted differently from the same article, from Hough for example:
"There's this history in seismology of people making a lot out of patterns (of earthquakes)," Hough cautioned. "It's easy to make a lot out of nothing."

None the less, the link was interesting. We were deciding whether or not to include earthquake predictablity (as opposed to prediction) in a workshop that Wife in Suburbia and I are organizing (with others). Except for something on SCEC's efforts in Tom Jordan's presentation, we are probably going to drop that session, as premature.

On the other hand, I don't know if it is all in his thesis, but Lowell Whiteside did a lot of work at least as early as the late 80s on distant triggering, with statistics. I better not check his thesis now...up early to complete version #7 or #8 of a paper....Lowell's work was different than the "ring" stuff (I don't know whether or not the FFAs that used to be posted here originate with Lowell or someone else). I'm being vague because if not in Lowell's thesis, is not fair game for me to be less specific.
Chris