Jim seems to get excited a couple of times a year, and maybe he was particularly excited that month, which would speak in favor of that specific prediction. But the are enough earthquakes of the size of Loma Prieta that we can check many others and see no relation to the tides.

No scientist I've ever met has the slightest inclination to think a biweekly-tide correlation has been shown (except very shallow events on ocean ridges). I think I currently hold the honor of the most willing to suspend honoring friction predictions to check it out. Jim must be thinking of comments he heard decades ago, before we had checked so carefully.

The latest claim, some excess of the biggest events of the century at the time of full and new Moons, is the hardest to reject (if he counted right) because we won't be able to double the size of the catalog for another 100 years.

It is difficult to imagine tides affect only the biggest earthquakes and leave the smaller ones alone, however. Also Jim has already shown an ability to select favorable numbers from noise, and the ability to close his eyes to unfavorable evidence, like the fact that apparently his 8-day window was left in the dust by the latest catalog. There was a darning (this page is censored?) exchange about a month ago in which a post shredded his oft-quoted claim for Pacific Northwest syzygy. I didn't check it myself, but Jim's posts about that region abruptly stopped without any statement acknowledging any problem.

Frankly, a sound study showing tidal correlations would generate much scientific interest. My own work on the diurnal tides has not created any more skeptics than usual for a lively topic. The key is that a study would need to be sound. If a statistical test showed a biweekly modulation of large earthquakes to be highly significant, so be it. The problem is data doesn't back syzygy.