[X] My Assistant

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

In its latest print issue, the Planetary Society reported the following, in connection with GROZA (the attempted thunder-detecting microphone on Veneras 13 and 14):

"The Planetary Society recently contacted GROZA's principal investigator Leonid Ksanformaliti, an old friend of the society from the Space Research Institute in Moscow, and asked if these data had ever been converted to sound. They had not. At the Society's request, he generously pulled out the old data and has begun the process of converting the data to sound. These Venusian sounds will soon appear on the Planetary Society's website."

Well, Jeffrey Bell -- AKA Mr. Sunshine -- now reports to me:

"Argh! Unpleasant memory blast from former life! Resist powerful urge to smash expensive flat monitor!

"I had some dealings with Comrade Ksanfomaliti back at the time of the PHOBOS fiasco in 1988. I wouldn't trust him to clean my air conditioner. He was one of those all-purpose scientists who made an instrument for every mission, always a different instrument in a different field, and always a disaster. He seemed to have some powerful political influence that kept him in the program. Of course the PS
would latch onto this guy, with their unerring nose for incompetence."
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Well, that's OK -- if no interesting Venusian sounds turn up on those tapes,
the Russians can always fake some. (After all, their "scientific space
program" now consists entirely of ways to continue sponging off NASA's Space
Station budget.) Be on the lookout for Venusian "thunderclaps" that sound
suspiciously like someone shaking a large sheet of tin.