My amateur interest in astronomy brought out the term 'magnitude', which is used for the brightness of a star.

Lately there have been complaints that the use of the magnitude scale is confusing, or at least the reporting of magnitudes in the newspapers ’confuses the public.

I would walk – not run – to the nearest seismograph.

Don’t wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations.

Only fools, liars, and charlatans predict earthquakes.

A good deal of my consulting work consists of site analysis for proposed developments. The problem of assessing seismic risk starts at the geological-geophysical end and winds up at the engineering end.

At least there is progress of California toward building new construction according to earthquake-resistant design. We would have less reason to ask for earthquake prediction if this was universal.

So we tried to keep the interpretation of the 'size of the earthquake' as closely tied to the actual instrument observations involved as possible.

These are usually described in the form of a design earthquake with a time history of the motion and shaking characteristics that are expected.

We have a given site, and we have to ascertain what disturbances will affect the structures on that site as a result of an earthquake.