The male anglerfish loses its digestive system as an adult. So, to stay alive, it seeks out a female and latches on with its teeth. It then secretes an enzyme that dissolves the flesh of its own mouth and the female’s body, fusing itself to the female permanently.

The male then, like some sort of sick Cheshire Cat, disappears, leaving only a pair of gonads. When the female releases eggs, they release sperm.

I love this from Wikipedia:

When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were females. These individuals were a few inches in size and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these “parasites” were the remains of male ceratioids.

Analogies are at your own peril.

I would not have been at all surprised to find that the Bush administration tried to suppress NASA scientists who were writing about climate change. They have a long and storied history of being vehemently anti-science. But the official NASA report on the issue is a bit more complicated.

From the executive summary:

Our investigation found that during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public through those particular media over which the Office of Public Affairs had control (i.e., news releases and media access).

A-ha! you say — just as I thought! (In fact, that was exactly what I thought as I read that.) But then you go a bit further:

We also concluded that the climate change editorial decisions were localized within the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs; we found no credible evidence suggesting that senior NASA or Administration officials directed the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs to minimize information relating to climate change.

So that’s a little better. Whether the OPA officials tried to suppress that information because it went against their personal views, or because they thought they were doing the administration a favor, or because they thought it helped their career paths… well, we may never know.

I hope, though, that the people who did that aren’t able to work in any kind of science-related field. Maybe the yokels at the creationism museum are hiring.