Sadly, I consider HZ to be a little like a storm drain.

I'm almost glad of the HZ - it's considered 'serious' enough by the loons to rank as a proper venting of their nonsense, yet is considered stupid enough to be considered a safe place for that nonsense to be vented by those less stupid. Sort of like a storm drain of stupidity - it leaves the rest of us at a lower risk of flooding - Alex's forum is a veritable nirvana of intelligent discussion and friendly banter - and I'd like to think the visitors to my forum might think the same. The New Mars forums are damn good as well. We all operate a sort of rubbery rule system. There are rules, people know them, and they bounce against their limits with the more excitable moments and in doing so return to normality. Here at HZ however, it's like a rule book made of an iron grid. It may be there, but most things fly straight thru the gaps un-checked.

BUT - there is a line imho - and when people just start lying about you - you have to take a stand. For some reason, Grondine thinks I'm on the payroll of a aerospace firm and am seeking governmental funds or aid to publish the book I'm hoping to write. Both points are complete, utter bullshit.Nothing more. I have never worked for a governmental or aerospace department, nor do I seek government funding or backing in anyway. Neither have I said that I work for a government agency. Once - and only once in my memory - someone though I worked for JPL as I seemed to know quite a bit about MER. Flattering though that was, it's not true ( and given that, w.r.t. JPL, I'm a foreign national, it is an impossiblity )

Hell - I'm British FFS - what the hell would His Tonyness et.al. want with a book of MER images. Not to mention that fact that our space science industry in this entire country is probably smaller than JPL's janatorial dept.

He says that I am embarking on a smearing campaign against him. I've certainly never attempted to smear him. The only smearing is his continued lies about me and my project. It's vile, unjustified and on more than one occasion would be sufficient to gain punitive damages for defamation.

Whats really REALLY stupid - is that the very obsession with mars some scientists demonstrate is the same obsession with impactors that he demonstrates. That he fails to see the blinding irony is astonishing.

Maxson over at s.s.shuttle was a troll, tax leech was a troll - but Grondine's direct personal attacks based on nothing but lies are more than that - and it's a shame that this place is not where it would be unacceptable to be such a vitriolic lying idiot.