I'm guessing that passengers flying in groups won't cooperate with being separated, especially families with kids. Obviously the airlines could try to force it, but if half the passengers try to insist on boarding with their spouse/kids, arguing with them isn't saving any time.

I also wonder if airline WiFi is already enough for a voice conversation over Skype or Google Voice if someone really wants to do it. It's not as if voice requires a lot.

During the era of regulated flight, standard tickets cost as much (adjusted for inflation) as First Class does now. So for the money, the experience has probably improved. At least, I'm pretty sure modern First Class is better than 1970 standard, though I grant I don't really have experience of either— aside from…

Thinking of that image would certainly put the kibosh on being carried away by the moment.

I am really curious to hear Tuan's story. If he was actually a boat person who came to the US as a kid, there's got to be a story in how he wound up a Communist recruit.

Is there an article you can point to re the intentionally poor grain exports? That's not something I'd heard about before.

I actually like poor Mr. Morozov, and will hate to see his inevitable doom. Though given that he called his son "Pavlik" this episode, he should really see it coming.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one who got a serious sense of foreboding from that.

I didn't know we knew much about that side of things for her in the USSR, other than her training and the assault by her superior. Am I forgetting something?

She might. On the other hand, Russian use of abortion remained higher and use of contraceptives lower well after the Soviet era, presumably in part as a result of cultural expectations.

Using/not using condoms would largely be at the discretion of their partners, and those weren't very popular between the advent of the Pill and the AIDS crisis. They will certainly have had quite a bit of what would later be called unsafe sex over the course of their careers, whether Elizabeth is on the Pill or not.

IIRC, the Soviets tended to use abortion as primary birth control, contraceptives like other consumer goods tending to be in short and unreliable supply. Elizabeth may simply be expecting Paige to do likewise.

Interestingly, this suggests P&E are giving Paige more privacy than many parents whose style I'm familiar with give their kids.

But it's probably where Lucas got "Lucas".

My memory of Riley is his admiring Buffy's strength and power. E.g., in "A New Man":

Stormtroopers get kind of a bum rap. The only time they were ineffective in the original Star Wars was when they were deliberately letting the good guys go so they could follow them to the Rebel base (even taking casualties to make it look good). In Empire, they're inexorable in their approach on Hoth, Luke's taking…

I can't speak to his talent, but Uslan at least has a genuine love for the material. I wouldn't have believed that I'd ever see the Legion of Super-Pets namechecked on national television, till I saw him interviewed on TCM.

A friend likes to say "there are no unmixed motives". Of course there's a longstanding tension in philosophy and religion between deeds and reasons for doing them. But there's a real danger in dismissing doing the right thing when it has a selfish component, because humans being human there'll pretty much always be…

Yeah— the Initiative seemed surprisingly competent right up to the point that Buffy found out about them.

here is really no logical answer to the question, "why can't the government hunt down and destroy vampires with napalm, water cannons spraying holy water, specialty grenades full of wooden shrapnel, etc.?"