Don't Wear Red or Mention Montana

The Science Times this week appears to be the Special Coturnix Issue, at least judging from the titles in my RSS reader-- a huge stack of articles about sleep and biological clocks. Bora must be thrilled.

Mixed in there, though, are two articles about NASA. One bears the dramatic headline "NASA Faces House Hearings on Air Safety," while the other is a detailed profile of the astronauts for the next Shuttle mission. The first one turns out to be about the "aeronautics" rather than "space" part of NASA-- it's about a survey of pilots about safety issues in air travel-- but the combination is really striking.

The profile article is the sort of thing you rarely see any more-- or at least, that I rarely see any more; it may be that somebody publishes these biographical pieces about every Shuttle crew, and I just don't read them. This is probably just a fortuitous combination of the Times trying to fill column inches and NASA trying to generate positive press, but putting it together with the other headline, and recent stories about the risks of the upcoming mission, makes this look like the part in the movie where the noble supporting character tells the protagonist what he or she plans to do after the war/ heist/ adventure is over.

Maybe I've seen too many formulaic action movies.