For centuries folks in the orient have known that animals can sense earthquakes, including earthquakes that produce tsunamis.

I saw on PBS that a guy named Jim has produced a Lost Pet Index that predicts earthquakes. He says that pets run for the hills when they sense an earthquake. All you have to do is watch the lost pet ads in the newspaper. If the number of ads rises above tne norm, WATCH OUT!

Some think that Jim is not being scientific, as if that had anything to do with it.

Anyway, he has the right credentials.

You can read about this theory at: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/info/scifair/lostpets/. This performer of the experiment was a 10-years-old. Therefore we know there was no preconceived bias.

Seeing that Jim and the ancients of Asia where probably right, I went to PBS to see the television article report. You should too, shouldn't you? The URL is: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/animalspredict/talltales.html.

Some scientists are poo pooing the conclusions of these See the Animals Run articles.

You know what we scientist say about statistics: There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Scientist are saying that the statistics gathered by the 10-year-old boy and all the other collectors of running animal data are not drawing the proper statistical conclusions from the data.

Darn those statisticians. They always ruin everything.

Anyway, the snakes and worms in China are leaving their winter haunts. The catfish are jumping in Japan, and I have to do something to protect myself. After all, Idaho is an earthquake prone state.

Some years back my neighbors were trapped in the mountains near here for a week because an earthquake made the roads impassible. Steve said, "I knew those rock chucks were acting crazy." Cheri said, "We were acting crazy too when all those house-size boulders came tumbling down the mountain!"

I'm going out to buy an earthquake sensing pig!

The End

copyrightJohn T. Jones, Ph.D. 2005

John T Jones, Ph.D.

Jones was a vice president of a Fortune 500 company subsidiary having the major responsibility for research and development and certain engineering functions. After he retired, he became editor of an international trade magazine. Jones is Executive Representative of IWS, sellers of Tyler Hicks wealth-success books and kits. He is a direct mail and mail order marketer and operates a dozen websites.

He has written three technical books, four novels (Bull, Revenge on the Mogollon Rim, Bone China, and In No Way Guilty), and many published papers on business, marketing, engineering and other topics. Details on many of these topics can be found at his personal web site.

Jones is a hack poet and amateur landscape painter. He lives in Idaho with his wife of 52 years. He has five children, three in medicine, a lawyer, and a portrait artist. The Jones? have thirty-two talented grandchildren (many with special musical talent and skills), and one great grand child.

Jones is a prolific writer which started when he was an engineering professor at Iowa State University (Go Cyclones!). He doesn?t know how to stop.