Update – December 22, 2012

First - I would like to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season.

To help with that I can add that although there have been some moderately strong EM Signals detected lately, there have not been any that would indicate to me that any really destructive earthquakes might be on the way. So, perhaps the New Year will arrive without any of those yearend catastrophic disasters.

Second – Everyone can start breathing again. For some unexplainable reason the “Wave of Doom” that was supposed to hit the Earth on December 21, 2012 just barely missed us. And we all luckily somehow survived. (Humor intended of course).

It doesn’t look like too many people took that doomsday prediction seriously. But people had a lot of fun with it. And if we didn’t have one of these “End or the World” forecasters appear every year or two and state that some type of mystical revelation let him or her know that the end was near then the world would probably be a more boring place. What would the news service people talk about?

Third – I would like to again thank Canie for keeping the EarthWaves board running all of these years. And it looks like some of the board’s important goals might have been met, and just recently.

One goal was to see if earthquakes can be predicted. And two recent important earthquakes in Myanmar and Japan appear to have settled that question from what I can see. The Myanmar earthquake demonstrated that a technology known as Total Electron Content does have the ability to generate high quality forecasts for at least some earthquakes. The Japan earthquake is a little more complicated.

That earthquake demonstrated that the EM Signals that I am working with could probably be combined with data being generated by Dr. Pavel Kalenda’s group and their ground tilt sensor network to produce high quality earthquake forecasts.

My EM Signals provide When and to a certain extent Where information for an approaching earthquake and also How Strong it is likely to be. Pavel’s data show that certain types of events are taking place at specific times in fault zones at a number of different locations. The lines on his charts sharply change directions when those events occur. And what I found in connection with some earthquakes is that the EM Signals that I am working with are often occurring at the same times when his chart lines change direction. So, it might just be a matter of matching the EM Signals with the changing lines on a specific location chart. And that might indicate where the earthquake is going to occur. The lines on other charts linked with other fault zones would not be affected.

Additionally, Shan’s sun shadow based earthquake forecasting method might be able to generate data that are somewhat similar to Pavel’s sensors.

I don’t know enough about how Amit Dave does his calculations to propose if his results are that reliable. It appears that he did get that December 6, 2012 date right for a significant earthquake. Once occurred in Japan on December 7.

Another goal was to learn how Ear Tones etc. are being generated. And it now looks like the link might be through Total Electron Content related phenomena as they interact with earthquake fault zones around the world.

Fourth – Getting a degree in one of the physical sciences is something like getting a driver’s license. When you have finally jumped through all of the hoops that are necessary to get that degree, some college or university will state that it is their opinion that you have demonstrated that you are capable of doing scientific work. It does not mean that you will be a productive scientist but rather that you at least appear to have that capability. It can also be a sign that you are serious about the matter. Without a degree, no one is likely to take you seriously. You might have a lot of talent. But you don’t have any physical proof such as a degree that states that you want to be taken seriously.

It is my opinion that colleagues and universities should require that people getting degrees in the physical sciences also take ethics and public relations courses that would increase the chances that after graduation they would realize that they need to make decisions that are beneficial to society and also how to deal with controversial subjects such as Earthquake Forecasting. Or, the colleagues and universities could offer those courses as a special type of extension for their regular science degrees. Then when a person with a degree in geology for example wanted to work for a disaster management agency and he or she had that extended degree, his or her prospective employers would know that he or she would be able to discuss Earthquake Forecasting in public without causing people and governments to get upset.

Fifth – My new bulletin board development effort is moving along. The first version might be running by Monday.

The following is some information regarding developing the WWWBoard program on a PC using Xampp. This could be helpful though it is likely no one else will ever attempt this.

At the start of WWWBoard there are a number of statements that tell the program where to find different files and directories. But on a PC they will be different than the ones on the Internet Server. That problem can be overcome in a number of ways. The following is and easy one.

Create two (Perl language) programs. The first would have all of the addresses. Different versions of that very short program would be stored on the PC and the Internet Server.

At the end of the first program would be a “DO” command that would start the second program running. All of the addresses would be transferred to the second program and it could do all of the actual CGI work.

So, the second program would be the one developed using Xampp. Then program updates for that one could simply be copied from the PC to the Internet Server. And there would not be any problems with the program finding the addresses it needed.

These are personal opinions.