[John H K]

I've recommended these books before but if you have even the slightest interest in geology, you should get the series of books by John McPhee where he traveled across the country with a series of Geologists (Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain,. Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California, and now all together in one book, Annals of the Former World, with an added 5th section contained within it about the Midwest.)

Anyway, in Basin and Range, McPhee sits at a diner in a small Nevada town, and the geologist explains that he thinks in millions of years the Gulf of California will run up into Nevada and all of California will split off, and then McPhee wanders around the town asking people what they think of that, and he gets some hilarious answers :-)

[djf]

Actually, the Baja peninsula will continue to get longer. California will split down the middle, with everything west of the central valley being part of the (longer) Baja.

My personal thoughts about the greatest quake window this year is:

Very near the time of the transit of Venus, the first one in about 150 yrs., occurring June 8th.