In fact, I was dreaming of a carefree game of duck-duck-goose when I awoke at the lodge to the happy clink of the coffee tray outside my door.

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As I sat with that despondent Thiokol engineer in his home in Utah, my colleague Daniel Zwerdling stood outside a hotel room door in Huntsville, Alabama.

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Later that night rain pounds fiercely on the wide leaves of the palms outside my window and lightning flashes perilously close to the Buddhist temple next door.

BBC: Cambodia: Silenced by a brutal past

Indeed, being focused on odors -- which themselves require air to move, or a surface to light on -- means that for my dogs, the street outside our apartment building is different each time we step out the door.

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