Weird radio waves: earthquakes ahead?

Did you catch that quirky little blurb this week about the Japanese researcher Yoshio Kushida who claimed to be able to predict an earthquake’s occurrence within the next week based on radio wave emissions?

Some of you probably thought he was one of THOSE special people who wear tin-foil beanies.

Did you know that radio astronomer James Warwick made the same claim in 1982 in regards to the devastating 1960 Chilean earthquake?  Seems he’d noticed the phenomenon at the time of the quake, but after reevaluating his work a couple decades later, he noticed the connection.

In fact, electromagnetic anomalies across the radio spectrum have now been studied as earthquake precursors or predictors for a couple decades.

It’ll be interesting to see if Kushida’s prediction is accurate.  I gave it only passing notice when this story hit the press earlier this week.  As I spent this evening digging through a couple odd and extremely ancient copies of GEO magazine while helping the kids with homework, I ran across a little tidbit in the back on Warwick’s theory regarding radio waves.  What a coincidence; that made me take pause and check out Kushida’s claim.

If you want to watch along, here’s a website that displays recent or active seismic activity.  It would be great to finally have a good predictor for earthquakes; I hope no one gets hurt if there is a quake this week!

10:37:39 PM    comment []

DharmaSurfing:  Juggling multiple placement firms…

Another opportunity rears its head: what do you do if you discover the blind job ads you’ve been signing are with competing contract employment firms for the same client?  What do you do if you see nearly identical postings offered by different and competing contract employment firms – do you sign on all of them?

I have no clue what to do here.

Worse, I uncovered the latter situation after I got miffed with one of the competing firms.  There were a number of job postings listed by Firm C that were very similar to placement firms A’s and B’s postings, for which I’d already applied.  I hedged my bets and applied for these with Firm C since there was no information to ascertain the end client.

No response back except an autoreply to confirm my resume had been received by Firm C.  Weeks pass and nothing – except that the openings continue to appear on job boards.  I send Firm C an email using the contact form at their site, asking for status; there is no local phone number, no local contact listed at either their website or in the Yellow Pages.  I’ve already discussed the postings for which I’d applied with Firms A and B, yet nothing from C.

I’m beginning to wonder what it’s all about; what exactly is Firm C?  The kindest of thoughts are not coming to mind since they’ve made themselves inaccessible and are unresponsive.  I get peeved and send a second inquiry, prefaced, *SECOND REQUEST* and ask them once again for assistance with the postings and status and a local contact.

This time I got a reply – several, in fact.  I think I jogged something loose.  The first reply is a formal acknowledgement that they received my second request, the second and third are from a local (in-state) contact regarding positions for which I’ve applied. 

In the second and third replies, it becomes apparent I’ve signed on postings for the same ultimate client for which I’ve already applied with Firms A and B.

Now what?  Do I respond to Firm C and let them keep running with this, even though I’m already being presented by Firms A and B?  Can I have too much exposure to a particular client by using three placement firms?

This is new territory for me.  Got any suggestions?

11:21:41 AM    comment []