Suppression of Science

There are some scary bits in this nytimes article (following up on my reporting in my last post about suppression of hurricane work at NOAA).

For example: "At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone."

How much longer before we have political commissars just like in the good old days of the USSR?

Plane Talk

Poll: Under what conditions do you talk to the person sitting next to you on a plane?

1) Always. Especially if it annoys them.
2) Usually. I meet interesting people this way.
3) Only if they are cute.
4) Rarely. Too shy.
5) Never. I put on sound-canceling headphones, bury myself in a book, and glare at anyone who looks like they are even thinking about bothering me.

Just wondering, because I had long conversations with my seat-neighbor both to and from Miami. On the way there I met a commodities trader. He and I had an overlapping interest in the future of natural gas prices. On the way back, I met a woman who works on user interfaces for productivity enhancement tools at GE. In other trips I've met everything from a Seventh Day Adventist to a nuclear missile silo technicians, from a blind woman with a really cool computer setup on her way to lobby Congress to a kid traveling from his dad's house to his mom's house, from a guy who sang next to VEG at their ward's choir to a prefrosh visiting MIT. My mom always had the superpower of being able to extract life stories 5 minutes after she bumps into a stranger in a supermarket or a street corner. I seem have a lesser version of this talent that mostly only works in planes.