Here We Go

It's morning, and the milling around is beginning to die down. There are more suits in the front of the room today than yesterday: the journalists are here, and are going to talk to us about how to communicate complex issues to the public. To my right, two economists are talking about plagiarism in their field. I can hear a fragment of a conversation on my left ... "twelve dollars a pound off the boat...." There's a convivial hum in the room, and stragglers are arriving and shaking out their raincoats to hang on the back of their chairs. It's dreary outside, but there's coffee and chocolate fish in this room....