When dealing with political organizations like usgus or the deep waste disposal you have to infer their working basis for their physics. They never lay it out, because a political animal can never admit he is wrong. Can you imagine Putin saying "Sorry about that Crimea thing, it was a mistake and we're going home." Nope, will never happen. Same with the climate-teests.
The essence of the Scientific Method is that you put up Straw Man hypothesis and you try to knock it down with experiments. That means, to be effective, you'll have to admit you were wrong lots of times. My hero was J. Tuzo Wilson, who was proud of how many times he was wrong. Would never find him in the usgus!
The usgus secret Straw Dog is:
Elastic Rebound is demonstrated in the horrible muck of the surface, instead of just being slopped.
Surface Mapping is the be-all end-all, and all new earthquakes are on 'hidden faults'.
Everything is California
These three things are carved into their collective foreheads and have the strength of religious beliefs. To attack them would mean the destruction of their universe.
My Working Hypothesis
All earthquakes are caused by the weird properties of quartz and water.
When thinking about the Precambrian --
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
Certain properties of water lead to Stress Corrosion
Now, I am always trying to shoot these down, but I can't. Every new discovery confirms, and I haven't altered them for years. :) Don't forget that if you don't scrawl a line in the sand, you can shift it for every single new observation. The political people are experts in this.
- to be continued (getting harder to write, I need some clapping, and "I believe in fairies."
End of Series - Nobody's reading it, so I'm going on another sabbatical. :( usgus remains undisputed.
Update: One person reads this, so I go on.
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