JJ was the classic flawed private detective from noir with a drinking problem and severe guilt in her past. Most of her characters find a home inspired by noir, from her ethically compromised lawyer to the femme fatale she is trying to save from the criminal mastermind.

I’d have cast four or five different people as the Ancient One, with the throwaway line, “this is how my incarnation appears in this reflection of reality at this time“.

The switch to the car is because the artist/writer, Felipe Smith, is a car nut and likes the late 70s muscle car aesthetic of the Charger and the Camaro. When he got the chance to create a new Ghost Rider, he was totally pumped by the idea of putting this inCARnation into a car instead of the same old bike. Remember,…

Further corrections: Lance is a professor of entomology, NOT etymology.

Dark Horse Comics property already.

You fight with honor - but you always fight. I was a skinny kid who bullies thought would be an easy target in my younger years. You can’t go to adults for help, because the administration was frequently sympathetic to a troubled kid who they saw in their office all the time rather than the straight-A student. I…

Yes. You can patent “naturally” occurring mutations or classical hybrids or new varieties of plants, and have been able to do so for over a century. Most of the commercial seed available en masse to farmers already carries these sorts of legal rules requiring that they not use the seed produced to start a second…

Your confusion is understandable. “Race” and “ethnicity” are socially defined constructs without any real functional or quantifiable basis. Recall the furor over whether President Obama was “black enough” to be considered “African American”? He is a mixed-race child who was fortunate enough to enjoy a life of relative…

Thatwas really powerful and articulated my dissatisfaction with the Snyder Superman films in a way I had not yet actualized. Thank you. I think that the world can still have an optimistic Superman who is realistic but has not succumbed to cynicism; the kind of guy who would stand at Ground Zero on 9/11, and say, “I…

Hey, if you follow the Ghostbusters expanded universe (and the recent videogame with the key four voices returning and writing), Ernie Hudson’s character went on to become Dr. Zeddmore after earning a PhD in folklore.

Aw, man. I thought that they were trying. At least it seemed to be going somewhere, and the characters/actors began to develop a sense of chemistry as the series went along. It was no Firefly, but it still held some promise, and was better than a lot of other things that were on regular network television at the time.

“Eight months of baby ending with one day of abortion.”

Hah! I didn’t know that it had gone that far. Good to see that they’ve kept the production company in the family, as it were!

I think this is one of those situations where you both may be right. Monoculture without rotation can result in soil denitrification. Even a resting period can help unless you are adding fertilizer to the soul.

The problem is that the vector, Diaphorina citri, likes to feed on a lot of things in the family Rutaceae - and most of the genera studied so far appear to be susceptible to the Liberibacter vectored by the psyllid.

For an unpleasant change of pace, this isn’t about monoculture. Citrus is a reasonably diverse crop with a large number of varieties and species. Liberibacter doesn’t seem to care. It is wiping out a whole bunch of different genera in the family of Rutaceae.

Okay, this is important: the vector for the bacterium, Diaphorina citri, showed up in Florida back in 1998. They were probably hot for the bacterium, but at low quantities - not quite detectable with the molecular methods we had available to us at the time. Once a citrus is innoculated with the Liberibacter, it takes…

The Japanese missed their primary targets, the carriers and their escorts that were conveniently late sailing into harbour. Because the harbour was so shallow and most of the damage did not compromise the superstructure, most of the battleships sunk at Pearl were actually raised and back in action in three months to a…

Welcome to America. We like to think we’re the greatest country on Earth. Honestly, there are a lot of good things that we do, but we are positively terrible about things if we can’t find a way to make a buck.

May the Force be with you - always.