Something that I have said in past notes is that I feel that on certain days of the week or year etc. people should be spending time with their family members and not having bulletin board discussions about earthquakes. I just received permission to release a fair amount of information regarding that conference. But considering that December 25 is one of our major family days I am going to wait for a few more days before saying too much. The following are just a few notes:

The conference I mentioned was titled:

"The Annual Natural Hazard Prediction Summary for Year 2003 & Academic Discussions, Committee of Natural Hazard Prediction, China Geophysics Society."

It was held on December 21 to 23, 2003 at Beijing Polytech University and was attended by researchers and news personnel etc.

One of the sessions dealt with earthquake forecasting research being done by people in other countries. About a half dozen presentations were made regarding my own informal international "group" members' research including Shan's work on his sun shadow based forecasts. I began working on my presentation around last June. Its title was "Wave Chart Technology and Earthquake Data Fingerprints." I am not yet certain if the information I sent along regarding Ear Tones was discussed.

Roger's earthquake probability program was discussed. Copies were given to attendees. One question that was asked was if additional earthquake data could be added to its database file. This is something that I discussed with Roger during the program development phase. And my response to that question based on our conversations is, "Yes. Earthquake data can be added (or removed) as long as they have the same format as the data in the file. However if the file gets too large then program cycle speed will be affected."

I am also advising people that they need to be careful regarding what they add to the file keeping in mind the popular phrase, "Garbage in, garbage out."