Mother Earth. She has so much to teach old school, unlike so many human and compassionate mothers. Children of the latter can wear them down. Such kids sometimes comply, sometimes listen, and sometimes learn, but they often exhibit willfulness, self-importance, or sophomoric pride, all shown in emotional outbursts. And grownup, they sometimes continue their tantrums, not even lessening their intensity into old age. Children of Mother Earth get no helicoptering protection and enabling. She gives her lessons the hard way. When her children get complacent and haughty, she hands them a forest fire, landslide, sinkhole, eruption, flood, or earthquake. She knows how to keep her children humble and on their toes, especially when they go back to their old ways after discipline. After any of her “punishments” or wakeup calls, we wonder, “Is there more, or can we slink off to our computer games in the refuge of our bedrooms, that is, can we resume life as it was before the disciplinary action?”
You offer, “Did you read the recent research by Gulia and Wiemer on earthquakes? * They looked at 58 earthquakes and their aftershocks to determine whether a major earthquake might be followed by another major earthquake or by a series of tremors with decreasing power. They think they’ve identified a system based on a ‘b-value’ to predict whether or not Mother Earth is done with us after the big shock. When the b-value drops, all her ensuing outbursts will gradually fade. When it rises, look out; you’re in for more trouble. You know you can handle subsiding intensity, but another major seismic event is scary.”
“That makes me wonder,” I say, “whether it’s possible to predict any emotional outburst, not just one from a mom angry about clothes strewn over the bedroom floor or incomplete chores. Wouldn’t that be great? I mean, having a b-value system that enables us to predict if not when the big outburst occurs, then at least when it will stop or turn into some lesser form. If only we could determine the b-values for all her disciplinary outbursts, we would know what to expect from her. Maybe we could also use the b-values for others, not just for angry moms. Then we could forecast when someone was driven to shake the surrounding landscape with high emotions. What if we had a robot companion to warn us about the intensity and repeatability of emotional outbursts, you know, something like that self-driven floor vacuum iRobot Roomba 675 that has free range over the entire house so that it could follow around to observe and detect?”
“Yeah,” you add. “But you would have to have an intricate monitoring system. Even those seismologists admit that predicting aftershock intensity requires numerous seismometers for the data necessary to determine a b-value. I just can’t imagine all the emotionmometers we would need on every person who lacks emotional control. And even if we were to strap such monitors on individuals or have individuals followed by carpet sweepers, what would we do with the alerts? I can imagine the system acting like the robot from the TV series Lost in Space, shouting, ‘Danger! Will Robinson, danger!’ ** Would we have enough time to respond? Could we act to stop the additional major outburst? And if the b-value showed a high probability of fading and lower intensity outbursts, would the b-value have any real value? Wouldn’t we just be inclined to think, ‘Whew! The big one is over; I can handle the ever-weaker aftershocks.’”
*Gulia, Laura and Stefan Wiemer. Real-time discrimination of earthquake foreshocks and aftershocks. Nature. 574, 193-199. 9 October 2019. Reviewed by Marti, Michèle. ETH Zurich, Distinguishing earthquake foreshocks and aftershocks. Phys.org. October 10, 2019. Online at https://phys.org/news/2019-10-distinguishing-earthquake-foreshocks-aftershocks.html Accessed October 10, 2019.
**https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-pty-pty_maps&hsimp=yhs-pty_maps&hspart=pty&p=the+warning+from+the+robot+in+lost+in+space#id=4&vid=f8fa838eb73a74b52c2455652ad394b7&action=click at 24 seconds into the video clip.
You offer, “Did you read the recent research by Gulia and Wiemer on earthquakes? * They looked at 58 earthquakes and their aftershocks to determine whether a major earthquake might be followed by another major earthquake or by a series of tremors with decreasing power. They think they’ve identified a system based on a ‘b-value’ to predict whether or not Mother Earth is done with us after the big shock. When the b-value drops, all her ensuing outbursts will gradually fade. When it rises, look out; you’re in for more trouble. You know you can handle subsiding intensity, but another major seismic event is scary.”
“That makes me wonder,” I say, “whether it’s possible to predict any emotional outburst, not just one from a mom angry about clothes strewn over the bedroom floor or incomplete chores. Wouldn’t that be great? I mean, having a b-value system that enables us to predict if not when the big outburst occurs, then at least when it will stop or turn into some lesser form. If only we could determine the b-values for all her disciplinary outbursts, we would know what to expect from her. Maybe we could also use the b-values for others, not just for angry moms. Then we could forecast when someone was driven to shake the surrounding landscape with high emotions. What if we had a robot companion to warn us about the intensity and repeatability of emotional outbursts, you know, something like that self-driven floor vacuum iRobot Roomba 675 that has free range over the entire house so that it could follow around to observe and detect?”
“Yeah,” you add. “But you would have to have an intricate monitoring system. Even those seismologists admit that predicting aftershock intensity requires numerous seismometers for the data necessary to determine a b-value. I just can’t imagine all the emotionmometers we would need on every person who lacks emotional control. And even if we were to strap such monitors on individuals or have individuals followed by carpet sweepers, what would we do with the alerts? I can imagine the system acting like the robot from the TV series Lost in Space, shouting, ‘Danger! Will Robinson, danger!’ ** Would we have enough time to respond? Could we act to stop the additional major outburst? And if the b-value showed a high probability of fading and lower intensity outbursts, would the b-value have any real value? Wouldn’t we just be inclined to think, ‘Whew! The big one is over; I can handle the ever-weaker aftershocks.’”
*Gulia, Laura and Stefan Wiemer. Real-time discrimination of earthquake foreshocks and aftershocks. Nature. 574, 193-199. 9 October 2019. Reviewed by Marti, Michèle. ETH Zurich, Distinguishing earthquake foreshocks and aftershocks. Phys.org. October 10, 2019. Online at https://phys.org/news/2019-10-distinguishing-earthquake-foreshocks-aftershocks.html Accessed October 10, 2019.
**https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-pty-pty_maps&hsimp=yhs-pty_maps&hspart=pty&p=the+warning+from+the+robot+in+lost+in+space#id=4&vid=f8fa838eb73a74b52c2455652ad394b7&action=click at 24 seconds into the video clip.
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