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Flight(less) Club

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The weird news of group bird deaths in Arkansas and Louisiana has me thinking about the ways birds (and other creatures) adapt to changing conditions in the name of survival.

It led me to a great avian idea whose time came (and apparently went). Scientists have uncovered evidence of a kind of ibis with clubs at the end of its wings for bonking predators and other birds over the head. The scientific name of the beast is Xenicibis xympithecus, which I believe is Latin for Thumping Headache Chicken.

For our purposes here, let’s call it the Jamaican Alleythug.

The thick bones at the end of the Alleythug’s wings have been described as nunchucks, and scientists have expressed amazement at this brief evolutionary departure from the more typical bird defense strategy, a four element toolkit-for-battle known as SP squared – squwaking, pecking, scratching and pooping.

One might expect a bird armed with this new kind of weapon would soon become dominant of the SP squared crowd, and might even ascend to King of the Birds. But no! The Jamaican Alleythug is no more. Extinct for unknown reasons, even though it coulda been the champ!

I expect peaceful baboons to sympathize with the more delicate winged birds and conclude that the Alleythug’s demise is biological evidence that violence is not a good long-term survival strategy. But really, consider the mismatch! How would you deal with that?

Describe a time when backing down was the better part of valor.

121 thoughts on “Flight(less) Club”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I am drawing a blank this morning. I guess I will have to think about it awhile. The issue might be that I rarely back down; instead I think I leave the situation if I don’t like it. Which appears to have been a bad idea for the alley thug.

    Meanwhile, morning to you all. Yesterday’s discussion inspired me to go buy office supplies after work today!

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    1. As I continue to consider this, I realize I did back down during my employment days in order to keep my job(s), but I could not tolerate bureaucracies for more than 5 years at a time. I’ve been self-employed for 7 years and there is no looking back. So, I think the answer is, I do back down when it is needed, but it takes a toll. In the long-run I leave. Most bureaucracies don’t operate that well and I can’t take it over the long-haul.

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      1. a good philosophy, Jacque – i usually backed down in any conflict with a boss – but if that conflict continued in my mind (like during the night, not sleeping, going over and over things) i got outta there. with work (and with Steve) i have been very lucky though – i haven’t had to hit anyone since i was 4 and i have only had to escape from one job.
        my current job, being the adoring slave of the MeadowWild Goat Herd, requires careful balance of being in charge and knowing when to back down.
        a gracious good morning to You All

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  2. i almost always back down – but that wasn’t true in my early years. when Gary Mueller broke every one of my beautiful, small glasses that i used in my doll fantasies, i hauled off and hit him – and gave him a bloody nose! i was 4 years old. i think i cried harder than he did, and i decided hitting wasn’t the way to go. so i became passive-aggressive 🙂

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    1. broke every one? sounds like he deserved a good pop in the nose. may want to rethink your stratagy for the future glass breakers and give them more of the same

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  3. I’ll answer your direct question later, Dale. But when I hear this description of the Jamaican Alleythug with their “thumping” knobs for whacking others I have to think: “Oh, we’re talking about grad school nun teachers here!” I was never in a parochial school, but this description eerily fits what I heard about the older, sterner nuns. And I suffered through one school year with the infamous Miss Bentley and her stinging ruler, so I can empathize. She was as mean as she was ugly, and her ruler whacked the saintly kids as well as the sinners.

    The Jamaican Alleythug might have faded out for the same reason as mean nuns seem to have: they don’t reproduce well.

    Hey — it isn’t 7 AM yet and I’ve offended many thousands of Minnesotans already! This could be a Big Day for me.

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    1. not reproducing is what they do very well and thank goodness. i went to catholic shcool for elementary school and those battleaxes had a way of teaching straight out oliver twist. mean spirited and loving it. give you charachter it will. may as well name the little sinner sue (johnny cash reference)

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  4. backing down is a good idea if you can’t live with the consequences of losing but as the old saying goes i’d rather die a death of valor than to live a life where i backed down a million times due to fear. ah what a catchy quote. i have a business associate who is pulling some crap right now and the confrontation we have coming up is not going to be a fun one. he needs to back down or go away and if he backs down he loses macho points and integrity (in truth he has already lost that , there lies the problem)
    with my wife i find it wise to back down unless necessary to take a stand but i do choose my battles carefully. i think she would be happy to have a spineless creature who suced it up 24/7 ( as she has told me is the family history at her family tree) but she knows she married the wrong guy for that. i would love to have a wife who worshiped the ground i waked on , but i married the wrong gal for that. (don’t tell her i said so)

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  5. Like Jacque, I have a long history of never backing down. Like Bib, that has not worked out so well for me, and as the now grown-up in charge and role model, I’m trying to find ways to win by backing down. I’ve gotten better at figuring out “who owns the court” in work situations-that person will always win, no matter how very wrong they may be. Being right is not always correct in that situation (which rankles my Prussian soul, where being right is everything) and you can quickly find yourself right, but without next week’s check in hand.

    I’m also lousy at passive-aggressive (I suspect you have to have a knack for passive for that to work for you). My usual approach is to mentally say, “you may be stupid and wrong, but so help me, you are not going to do me out of my livelihood!” That and not having to think about work off hours has left me perhaps poorer, but less battered.

    In the case of the Alleythug, I submit for consideration that being heavy on weapons makes it hard to maneuver, you have to shlepp the things around all the time and expend a lot of resources maintaining your arsenal. Resources you could be spending on something else, like say, being smarter, or figuring out how to get along with the other birds so you aren’t constantly in conflict with them.

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    1. Yeah, the Passive-Aggressive thing is a problem for me, too. I just can’t do that much, which got me in real trouble with my late mother-in-law. She was the Queen of PA, running the family like an 8th grade girl queen. I just could not do it effectively, and she could not do straightforward. Not a great relationship.

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      3. Jacque — my mother would certainly give your mother-in-law a run for her money. As a result of growing up with an undisputed goddess of p-a, I am good at it, but when I catch myself doing it (luckily I’ve worked hard to not do this often), it really pisses me off. It helps to have a very straight forward teenager, on whom p-a strategies don’t work well!

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      1. That is so true, it is scary. Makes you a very Good Employee as long as you only hold yourself to it in my experience.

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  6. “The solution to many of New York’s problems is a nun on every corner with a ruler in her hand.” Jimmy Breslin, while running for NYC city council
    “I am appalled to have been a part of anything responsible for closing of the bars for even one day.” Jimmy Breslin, upon losing

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    1. i think if new york figured out way to stick em out on the street corners that is a good place for them. you can walk away.

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  7. I can think of no specific moment when I did, nor of any specific moments when I wish I had, but I know there have been far more of the second than the first.
    An OT morning observation: I have reached the age my feet crack and my jokes don’t.

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      2. Try filling a basin with tea. Take off your shoes and socks and stand in it. Scientific research just in shows that this cannot make you drunk if you have vodka in your tea, but it has a chance of improving subordinate conjunctions in cracked feet.

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  8. i would think to be given club like arm as your means to survive in the world would be kind of a cruel trick. the article said it was to fight off snakes and monkey, what about all the other critters with teeth and size and other tools that minimize my clubs. ok i am getting ready to hit you because i have clubs but you are a snake and can recoil bite and zip away or a monkey who throws coconuts out of the tree and flips off to the next branch. if i were the jamacan thug i would need ulcer medication. maybe he was blessed with a brain the sie of a pea and didn’t worry about his own demise, just focused on bashing others until he was outmatched by anything bigger than a chicken. can you imagine being threatened by a club bearing chicken, doesn’t sound too scary. reminds me a little of my inlaws.

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    1. As a small child I was attacked by a hen at a petting zoo, when I was holding one of its chicks. Lesson: never underestimate a truly ticked-off bird! The idea of a club-wielding chicken gives me pause, that’s for sure. That’s not even considering geese and swans, the mafioso of the poultry world.

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      1. Geese are mean. About the only critters besides a llama that ever frightened my prior basset hound (the llama she chose to ignore, the geese she flat out avoided – walking *way* out of her way to get past them at a friends farm).

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      4. Dale, I don’t remember doing so, but then again I don’t remember what I had for breakfast. I meant more that geese are an image of Satan than Satan is a goose. But it works the other way. Somehow the goat is the animal associated with Satan–and with Bacchus or Dionysus–not sure why. So geese would work for me. They know how to use their wings and are willing to do so. Foul-tempered fowl. If I did a sermon as geese as the devil, I would have to speak of their excremental habits, too. Not fit pulpit fare.

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      7. just because of those horizontal pupils – it’s only because their eyes are lighter colored (e.g. Alba’s lovely amber/sandalwood eyes) that you can see that scary horizontal slit. it’s in other animals eyes as well (cattle, most horses, deer, many types of sheep). i’d say a goat is a god or goddess – an Alpine Dairy Goat, to be specific. certainly not a Nubian!!

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      8. We got some geese because Kelly remembered having geese as a child and she wanted to re-live that. These were not her childhood geese. I’m telling you these WERE the Devil! Nasty, mean, chased everybody and everything. Chewed the block heater plug off my car. Twice! Chewed the starter wire off the gas grill. Would attack cars or 4-wheelers.
        We finally gave them away to a couple that had some other geese. But first we had to catch them. And the people arrived in a car and simply put the geese in the back seat. Whoa– good luck with that fella! And I bet my geese beat up your geese!
        Never found the wreckage so I guess they’re all surviving…

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      11. One more story then I really have to get back to work… this is however vaguely related.

        Several years ago a Muslim group came before the township board asking for permission to build a Mosque in the township. And that is an allowed use with conditions (parking, lighting, ect…) Some of the neighbors objected. It was a rather contentious issue to say the least.
        And then one of the neighbors started circulating a letter that stated in part “…Muslims think Americans are Satin….”
        Satin. Hmmm…. Well then….

        This all happen August – October of 2001. There is a Mosque in Downtown Rochester but after that there wasn’t a need for a second one…

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      12. I dunno Ben, having heard so much in the last day or so about The American People and What The American People Want, I am starting to think they are mostly burlap.

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      15. Barb I’ve never met a goat I didn’t like, but those eyes do spook me. But they look a whole lot better in a goat than they would in a person. No, I don’t think goats look like Santa. The notion of a roly poly Santa with goat eyes is extremely spooky!

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  9. My job history shows that I will cheerfully back down if I respect the higher authority, as I did when working in the College of Liberal Arts (U of MN). When confronted by authority I don’t respect, I tend to stick to principles until I’m shot out of the sky (think Snoopy, Red Baron and a doghouse riddled with bullet holes). And as I plummet toward earth and some French vineyard, trailing my scarf and a long plume of inky smoke, I’ll be waving both hands with the middle finger extended . . . a Quixotic gesture, under the circumstances. Up yours, Tom Billig! Take that, Laura, you loony conniving witch!

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  10. Good morning to all,

    I agree that it really isn’t good when you have to back down to keep a job and when teachers get too heavy handed. There are times when backing down is a good thing. I give agressive drivers plenty of room and wonder why they think they can get away with driving like that. When raising children you need to stand your ground about some things, but some times it is not good to try to force them to do things they don’t want to do if it is something that you can tolerate even if you don’t like it.

    As a substitute teacher I had some experiences with fights. I wasn’t the type to get into fights in school myself, except when I was very young. Of course, teachers should do all they can to prevent fighting and I did. Still, there is something about those school kid fights that attracts people. I broke up a couple of fights and I think I took a little too much pride in doing this.

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    1. Ah, driving, there is an combat arena, a place for discretion for sure. My bile rises but I do go insubordinate on the road.

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    2. Yup, when raising kids, pick the battles carefully. My son’s basement bedroom was a disaster, but the door was shut and I ignored it. The need to graduate from high school was a more appropriate battle.

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      1. I used to repeat to my wife re our son’s bedroom and one or two other items: “Can you win this battle and is it worth the fight?”

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      2. Jacque, you are absolutely right. “Choose your battles” is a common phrase in our house… doesn’t help to win the battle and loose the war.
        But isn’t it interesting; my son knew how to push all Moms buttons and our daughter knows how to push all mine. Curious. But better than both of them pushing both of our buttons…

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      3. What becomes difficult is when others question which battles you have chosen to fight…oh the scornful looks I have received for not fighting the picky eater battle (mmmkay – ya wanna hear the first battle about getting her to complete a meal in under an hour?…you figure that one out, then I’ll worry about expanding her diet beyond broccoli, peanut butter and Boca nuggets…).

        But yes, totally agree on picking battles. Other hills to die on, I say.

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      4. Backing off is especially important when dealing with kids that are opositional. Most kids are a little oppositional and some are very oppositional. You just make matters worse when you force too much stuff on those very resistant ones. I know what Anna is talking about. It becomes very hard to deal with difficult kids when you know you should back off and someone else thinks you shouldn’t.

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      5. My daughter and I have exactly the same mind; I know everything she thinks and feels. It was once a great help when she went through a major crisis 500 miles away because I could interpret what she said to my wife. But because we were so alike we never argued. We both just know the hot buttons and backed down. My wife and my son are very much alike emotionally. So they had huge fights for years because they each knew and pushed the hot buttons. It always confused me because my wife is in every other instance more non-confrontational than Dale and a master of PA, as most first born abuse children are.

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    3. I had a teacher when I was in 11th grade; I think he was fairly new and clearly had a lot of ideas and probably un-orthodox teaching methods and I don’t think he fit in to the “establishment”… he taught ‘Current Events’ and I think he was a great teacher but he would make a few comments; allegations really, about how he and admin didn’t exactly see eye to eye… haven’t been able to find him again but I hope he kept fighting!

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  11. When I was in the 8th grade, I decided that I wanted to be “Sherrilee” instead of “Sherri”. Of course, this was difficult for most of the people I know, since a change like this doesn’t roll off the tongue that easily. My gym teacher had a particularly difficult time and, truth be told, I don’t think she cared that much is she got it the way I wanted it. One day in class, I had corrected her and this was apparently too much for one of the other girls. As we were walking out of the gym, she slammed me in the back w/ her fist and then said “excuse me… sherri…. LEE”. It was a hard enough hit to make me trip a little, but not a serious pain. Without even a moment’s thought, as she pushed past me, I hit her in the back w/ my fist — about the same amount of force and said “you’re excused… Bett….EEEE”. She went completely balistic, threw down her books, screamed, got in my face, threatened me that after school I was toast (or the 1960s equivalent threat), but she didn’t touch me. I was terrified walking home; she was bigger than I was and had a cadre of bigger friends, but decided that I wasn’t going to wimp out and call my mom for a ride. Betty never came near me or spoke to me again the rest of junior high.

    If my teenager came to me with this story, I’m sure my now adult self would counsel against the return hit, but it certainly worked for me!

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    1. In my senior year, during band (I was first clarinet) I got the snotty first flute player. A friend of mine called her name, and I shot her in the face with a squirt gun. Very satisfying!

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      1. Speaking as a fourth-chair flutist of several years (occasionally third, and once or twice rather triumphantly first chair after a “play-off” that landed me there for a week or two), I’m here to tell you that those first and second chair flutists are pretty snotty. I bet she totally deserved it.

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      2. Haha, I was first chair too clarinet too! Still am, in city band 🙂 I was friends with the flutists in high school though. Actually, I don’t think there was anybody that I didn’t like in band. Orchestra now, that’s where the snotty people were…at least in my school.

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      4. as a former 1st chair flutist deposed to second chair for completely non-objective reasons which I will not bore you with here, I take exception to that remark and while I will not fight you all on this one, neither will I back down.

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      5. My sophomore year in HS the lead flutist was also the quarterback of the football team. Tall, good looking young man. I have always wondered how he weathered that… we’re talking 1979 and times were different to the point that he must have been able to fight off those that questioned him playing flute.

        I played trumpet. Wasn’t quite good enough for the ‘good band’ but also wasn’t good enough to be first chair in the other band either. The director solved the problem by making me and my best friend (we were always next to each other in band) 1st and 2nd ‘Trumpet’ parts in the good band. Which really meant Last Chair ‘Cornet’ parts. Our big solo was 4 notes: “da, da, da, da” during one song when the rest of the band had a 1/4 rest and took a breath…. ah the glory days. Showed up those snotty woodwind players I can tell you! 😉

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      6. Either the dumbest or most noble people on the planet are junior high band instructors/directors. They deal with junior high kids in groups of 30-150, which itself will sap brain cells to a dangerously low level. Then they give each kid a combination noise-maker and weapon. Pshew!!

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      7. I will admit that my notions of first chair flutists is heavily colored by my junior and senior high experiences where I was first snubbed b/c I didn’t have an open-hole flute (at age 14, no one needs and open hole flute yet), and then b/c I took lessons from the “wrong” teacher…bah. I liked my teacher, thank you very much. Even if she didn’t play in a professional orchestra. I’m sure, MIG, that there are nice, decent people (like you) who sat first chair in the flute section. They just didn’t play in my high school band.

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      8. i have been assured that all male ftautists and female trumpet players are gay. there are other gay football players in the world so it is good to be able to come to grips with your choices in life as you go, flute and football, ill bet there were more challanging ones after that. it was a couple of orchesta guys who had traveled the world as orchastra members and they say its true so it certainly must be.(many gay friends, o quarterbacks though at least not current quarterbacks, maybe in high school… i will take a poll)

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      9. In my own defense, I was only commenting on that ONE first flute player, not ALL! MIG, you are off the hook. I do not hold all floutists to the snotty label.

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  12. I prefer the terrier method of problem solving in these cases, which involves walking away but then finding an alternative and previously unknown way to get what you want. Just go around the other way, that’s my motto. I don’t think I would call it passive-aggressive. My terrier is very bold in her attempts to get what she wants-she’s just creative about the direction she attacks a problem.

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    1. Okay, I looked up some recipes on Cooks.com, and there are versions that have eggs in them, and other versions without. What’s more authentic? What works better?

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      1. I have made them once on my life, in the last 90 minutes or so. I did a James Beard recipe with eggs. Then my wife and I had a brunch tea with them. He says roll them paper thin. I found them better a bit thicker. Next time I will add a flavor to the dough, maybe orange or vanilla. Very good with tea; not on a list of healthy foods for sure.

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  14. Morning–

    Well, backing down has it’s time and place… I can’t always get my way (God knows I try– But some people just have no common sense!) but it’s not worth getting worked up over. Just breath deep and walk away and let it go; Not my problem (or ‘NMP’ as my friend and I say) “Serenity Now!” according to Frank Costanza….

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    1. There is a difference, Ben, between backing down on a core value and being agreeable when working in a collaborative enterprise. It doesn’t necessarily sound to me like you back down. You cooperate. Hard to work in your area without that!

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  15. A favorite method of mine when I really don’t want to back down (which I am capable of, but don’t always like it) is to offer an alternative, preferably one I know the other party won’t like. As in, “sure, I can to that for you by Friday, but if I do, this other important thing won’t get finished.” This worked swimmingly when a director I was working with asked for a set change 3 days before opening night that involved moving a wall…a wall with a door that she had been working with for 2 weeks…seriously? Really? Okey dokey. I’ll move your wall and your door so that those three seat, which never get sat in, have good sight lines (I had told her about the sight line problem before I even started building). But if I do that, here is the laundry list of things that won’t get done: final coat of paint and toning wash on the walls, wood grain on the trim, some set dressing…Director agreed to leave the door and wall where it was. Then went and had a good rant with the costumer. The costumer (a good friend) was impressed that I didn’t yell (or reach for a big hammer to whack the director). Another director, who I liked better, at the same college said something along the lines of, “Anna got mad?…oh…is (director’s name) still alive?…” when informed by the costumer what had transpired.

    Same tactic works on Daughter when she is being demanding. Well, sure sweetie, you can do that. But here are the things we can’t do (or you can’t have or…fill in the blank) if that is your choice. It’s backing down without backing down. 🙂

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    1. That is called “Love and Logic”, a parenting program that can really help take the anger and conflict out of parent-child relationships.

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      1. Renee Something that has fascinated me recently is the art of arguing. I know a trick or two for having a heated discussion with someone without having the thing go ballistic. That makes me wonder how well this has been studied academically. It could be called “fighting fair” or something like that. Do we know much about how to do that? Is that knowledge well known to therapists? I can imagine a book about this (not my book, alas).

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      3. Steve, if there is a body of literature about it, I am unaware of it. I think we used to know how to do it as a culture, but the political climate recently has demonstrated that we have lost the ability. I think what it comes down to is making sure you maintain a level of mutual respect during your debate or argument. We have lost our respect for those whose ideas differ from ours, and that is a tragedy. I also wonder if fewer kids are getting involved in debate programs? That would be an interesting statistic.

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      4. Renee Thanks, but I’m shocked. This could be studied academically, and I’m not sure there are many more important topics to be explored.

        Here’s one little example. In the 1970s there was a brilliant group in U of Michigan working on “game theory.” Anatoly Rappaport and Kenneth Boulding and others. One intriguing principal they developed for minimizing conflict during arms negotiations between hostile countries is that the debate cannot start until each side has presented the basic position of the other side, presenting it in unloaded language that the other side will accept as an accurate rendition of their basic thinking.

        When people debate, they often skew the argument so that they are fighting a false version of the position of the other. People do that both intentionally and unintentionally. But this simple technique can force both sides to acknowledge and understand the true position of the other. I’ve used this. It can work.

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      5. all my children are still alive. they should count themselves lucky, they don’t back down either. kids not backing down really ticks me off, but they say the same thing about dads

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    2. That works really well when you are dealing with a rational being like say, a 6-year-old. Very Important Directors (or Divas, take your pick), need not fuss themselves about the laws of physics, time or space, nor the limitations of mere mortals like you and I.

      If you cannot do it all (for very little cash), you, dear friend, are clearly Inadequate and a Blot Upon Your Profession-I finally had enough of that, and said fine, hire someone who CAN work your minor miracles, I am done.

      That was about a year ago-Bert and Ernie are still my friends, but sorry dear Baboon who predicted a fabulous award-winning costume for my 2011, it is unlikely to happen any time soon.

      I miss costuming, but not enough to keep putting up with that sort of thing.

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      2. I started to give up when I worked with a director who decided that the costumer on that show (not someone I knew or had ever worked with) was the person to talk to about what I was doing with the set and how it was being painted. Walked in on ’em discussing how they were going to “fix” my paint job (never mind that I wasn’t even close to done yet…grr….)

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      3. my situation was that I could see that there was absolutely no way I was possibly going to make this woman look as thin and young as she imagined she was or the director wanted her to look- I could not see how laying down and being repeatedly run over by a Sherpa was going to improve the situation for them, and was going to do me not one bit of good.

        And Anna, completely different theatre, different group of people altogether-I was there when the costume designer attended opening night and saw clothes neither she nor the shop had ever seen before on stage. I think she was done then too.

        It’s all about who owns the field.

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  16. My problem with arguing is that I lived near the Iron Range and with several Iron Rangers, who consider arguing a contact sport. I was once in a discussion group in Eveleth in which a very typical Iron Range male for a moment thought that maybe Rangers were sort of full of themselves and needed to be more cooperative. The other Rangers quickly convinced him that he was wrong because Rangers just were superior (they were not kidding).

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  17. Ooh, will have to read the rest later. Good topic, Dale!

    I’m often the one to back down, as the outcome usually doesn’t make a difference. But I did compromise with the Neighbor from Hell when she wanted my cat to be kept inside, even though we’d determined it was not Dear Slush who had dug up her plants. I put my cats on leashes in the back yard until said Neighbors moved.

    With our son, I figured out, as some mentioned above, how to say no in an acceptable way — told him when it would be ok. “I’m taking that, but you can have it back when….” Sometimes it worked…

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  18. Somehow this fits in, not sure how: my wife received a late Christmas card this week from a young woman whom I hardly know but to whom she is quite attached. The card said how sorry she was for me having to watch my wife deteriorate away. Even that my wife let just slip by as a human foible to be laughed at and ignored.

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  19. We are wandering off the topic here, but it is fun wandering. Question: which groups have you seen where fairness in arguing would be a goofy idea because the real piont of conflict is to establish a dominance order. I think theater probably has fights about dominance, where people make an art form of dissing each other. Some business settings encourage fighting where nobody gives a damn about truth; the whole point is winning. I wonder if Renee or anyone has guidance to offer for that kind of fight. The whole concept of fighting fair only applies to settings where people care about each other and care about the truth of the issue they are disputing. But that is many situations.

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    1. I think as in traffic conflict, it again comes to “who owns the field” or in the case of our avian friend, who has the bigger club.

      Musically speaking, “if a rock falls on an egg, too bad, too bad for the egg-if an egg falls on a rock, too bad for the egg”. OR “sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug”

      Right and wrong don’t even come into it. I was a scientist in my first life and physics and biology would both lead me to these conclusions.

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  20. Oh my golly! The time I most remember backing down was when I told a colleague that the Bible contradicts itself. This woman was a BAPTIST who didn’t believe in dancing and she hissed, “NEVER!” I couldn’t argue with her because I wasn’t very familiar with the Bible so instead I exited the teachers’ lounge doing the Hoochie coochie.

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  21. OT: I do not know if I so much want this woman’s job as her title:
    Catherine Conley, NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer
    But I bet Outer Space Connelly wants it more.

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