> From: Dan Hollis [mailto:goemon@sasami.anime.net]

> There is absolutely *NOTHING* unusual about the number of earthquakes
> this year. None.
> 
> http://earthquake.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/eqstats.html#table_2
> 
> Seismically speaking, 1999 is yet another 
> ho-hum-business-as-usual year.

  Wow.. that's a lot of earthquakes a year.  Hm.. if you look at the data,
at first it appears that there's a general trend of increasing earth quakes
from 1988 to 1998.  But the paragraph right below the data states that those
are in fact the earthquakes located, not all the earthquakes in the world.
So the actual number of earthquakes is not being reported here, only the
ones found.  

  So perhaps the actual number of earthquakes have stayed constant since
1988...

  What about locations of earthquakes?  Taiwan and Turkey don't seem to be
usual places for an earthquake (even if they are on the boundaries of
plates, I guess.)  Do you know of any data on geographical locations of
earthquakes from 1988 - 1998?  

  Perhaps it only seems worse because the earthquakes are hitting major
cities this year... after all, a huge 7.0 earthquake in the middle of
Siberia that killed no one and cracked a little ice wouldn't be remembered
as much as an earthquake in Turkey that killed 15000 and leveled entire
cities...

--
Kevin Aw
Seagate Software