Andy,
diplomacy, someone wiser than me used to say, is never a waste of time. Your
point is simple and practical. As you very appropriately outline, this is
science.
Personally, I never sensed misconceivements in Ethan's questions. In fact,
they had the (unvoluntary?!) effect of stirring up attention towards "maxima
sistema" broad points (will you all pardon my latin presumption?), as if
asked by someone who just entered the geologic arena.
I cannot help but thinking about what a very wise friend colleague once told
me. Some of his senior colleagues once invited him to see a fresh trench dug
for paleoseismological purposes and he brought a junior colleague along. The
former, in front of the trench (she never saw one before), thought out of
her head a simple: "Oh, look, what a nice landslide".
Imagine the faces of the senior colleagues (the ones who actually did open
the trench, hoping for a fault indeed)..
Then imagine what the trench really showed.. I suppose you all guess the end
of the story: it was a landslide - and not a fault - there. This is science.
Oh, I forgot to say: sometimes landslides are fault-triggered.. As Alphonse
the Learned wrote, "Had I been there on the Day of Creation, I would have
given God two or three hints to make things simpler". Very regrettably, he
wasn't.
Friendly,
Umberto
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Umberto Fracassi
Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minieres
Div. ARN/MAS
3, Av. Claude Guillemin
F-45060 Orléans cedex 2
France
Tel. +33-2-38644606
Fax +33-2-38643361
E-mail [log in to unmask]
WWW
http://www.ingv.it/~wwwpaleo/basili_r/umberto/public/imperatore_project.html
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