Unfortunately, when you start with a hypothesis that requires a cold-dead-lunar-like Mars, it can be hard to imagine that anything you see on Mars fits any other hypothesis.

You say: "...if these areas had been active 'recently' then they would be free of microcraters. Careful examination of most of the tuff-ring features of Mars shows them plastered with small craters, leading to ages of hundreds to thousands of millions of years."

Since you really don't know what the impact flux is on Mars and you can only very roughly determine when this or that cratering event occurred in a relative sense rather than an accurate dative sense (provided you have correctly identified impact craters, which is often not the case) your concept of tuff-rings -- assuming they are accurately identified -- plastered with microcraters is approximately useless. There is no way on Earth or Mars to accurately assess the absolute age of this or that feature and you know it. Since I am maintaining that large numbers of circular formations on Mars are routinely misidentified, it's even harder to claim this or that formation is such and such an age -- if you are determining ages by crater counting.

Here's an example: we know that Phobos orbits within the Roche Limit of Mars and some workers believe it may be breaking up. The moon is certainly experiencing strong tidal stress. Should Phobos break up, what would happen on the surface of Mars? Can we assume most or all of the pieces of Phobos would sooner or later impact the surface? I think we can. It is reasonable to think there would be hundreds of large impacts and thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of smaller impacts, all of them occuring over a period of a few months or less time. There are many indications that multiple impacts over short time frames is how cratering occurs on Mars and other planetary bodies, not a steady rain over ages. Thus a single event might well account for a significant portion of all impact craters on Mars, an event that could have been very recent indeed, but the number of craters produced would lead you to the erroneous assumption that the surface was billions of years old, when it was actually much younger. I remember with a certain astonishment that Matt Golombek kept diminishing the age of Ares Vallis during the Pathfinder mission, going from 3 or 4 billion years, to 2 billion, to 1 billion, and finally less than 1 billion years, all over a period of a few weeks. It was funny to watch. The fact is, he doesn't know when the Ares Vallis floods occurred, and neither do you. Certainly neither do I. While we can fairly accurately determine relative ages of these events, we cannot even come close to determining absolute ages. Regardless of what the literature says.

Much of the surface of Mars has a relatively fresh appearance -- that is to say it appears to be either relatively freshly deposited volcanic or other fluid flow that has yet to be significantly eroded in any way, much of it barely cratered by impact (though there may be many circular formations on these surfaces that are not at all impact related, or there may be none) or it appears to be currently active, such as the polar layered deposits or the fretted terrain -- which looks as if it were some kind of glacial terrain. Significant portions of the surface -- primarily in the Southern Highlands -- appear to be heavily cratered and eroded ancient terrain; but there are also vast areas of the Southern Highlands that appear to have experienced relatively recent (ie: barely cratered or eroded) volcanic floods, or polar-like layered deposits. When did these events occur? No one knows. No one can know given the current state of ignorance.

I am not claiming that these "relatively recent" formations are necessarily only a few thousand years old. Some could be; most probably aren't. I am claiming I don't know and you don't know and no serious planetary scientist knows how young or old a particular unit of the Martian surface is in any absolute sense, and rather than pretending knowledge you and I and they don't have, it is more useful to keep an open mind and let the evidence lead wherever it may.

Wonderful discoveries await!

But if minds are closed and workers insist that only published observations are worthwhile, and they deny the validity of what is staring them in the face because it doesn't fit with their pet hypotheses, then what's the point of bothering? This is the very definition of a science that "progresses one funeral at a time." It's pitiful.

You say there is "ongoing" volcanism on Mars. This would seem a very promising statement for those who, like me, strongly suspect that the Martian near sub-surface is currently warm and active.

Let's hope that minds will continue to stay open, that discoveries will continue to be made, that Mars will continue to provide astonishment and surprise and delight.

Just a reminder: Mars will be closer to the Earth this August than at any time in almost 60,000 years. I hope that everybody who has access to a telescope will spend as much time as they can muster observing Mars this summer!

Cheers, BFelix