Glen,

In your post you didn't say how long the ear tone was, so there's insufficient evidence that your ear tone belonged to that earthquake. Is a loud sound a match to an earthquake of only 2.3? Not to we experts. You see, that's the difference between using a formula vs just guessing. It's either there, or it's not. We may not collect every bit of information that we could use, but the scale of 1 to 5 narrows down what size of an earthquake to look for and the type of sound will tell us where it belongs. Honestly, you could stand on your head and it wouldn't make one iota of difference. You have a direction built into your system and that's what counts, not what direction you're facing. What would you think if you were in bed laying on your right side and you heard an ear tone with your left ear? It comes from outer space? Not likely.

It's time to cut to the chase. This method works with the exception of human falibility, mostly mine. I'm not perfect, but I've spent years figuring this out. So much for the popsie squad that says a 5 second ear tone is for a 5.0 earthquake in Japan once a month. They have a 5.0 earthquake there on average every 3.5 days. So what happened to the rest? And do you think they'd give this program a whirl? No. Wanna figure out why? I know, but I'll be polite and leave it to everyone's imagination.

If you really like scientific protocols, then we all have to follow the same criteria. That's what they expect of us, right? Keep counting, use the math program, check your geology and prove it to yourself. After all, no one believes me anyway.

Petra