Apes or cetaceans. We have the longest history of understanding them as 'human adjacent'. A bit counterintuitive, but I think it will be cetaceans first because of the awful racist connotations used in our history, even though apes are our closest relative.

I agree, no to the paraplegic, yes to the knowing everything. Though, honestly, I would like to see Oliver notice her because geek girls are where it's at. But his romantic future is set in comics sans.

I would love it if they took that route for her. No stupid pining for large muscle man.

Who's Oracle?

I think she might be my favorite thing about 'Arrow.' That's why I'm not a huge fan of the romance angle. From what I understand from internet chatter there is a very specific character that is Oliver's 'Lois Lane.' So having Felicity crush on him seems belittling to this awesome, independent, loyal, and freakin'…

What would you like to know? I spent way too much of my life reading about Yersinia pestis, so ask away!

So, comic fans, is Felicity from the comics? I adore her but am not loving the weird unrequited love aspect of her relationship with Oliver. What's her deal from the original narrative? Thank you, io9ers!

Oh, it totally was. It's the same disease, just targets a different area of the body. They have to travel together because Bubonic is the only one that can go long distances, courtesy the rat. But once their in a large human population, Pnuemonic takes over. Nasty, freaky disease.

Some historians believe that it was Pnuemonic Plague and not Bubonic that killed most of the 1/3-1/2 of the population of Europe. Bubonic is fatal ~60% of the time and isn't contagious from person to person. But Pnuemonic is fatal ~90% of the time and is airborne, thus you can get it from an infected person. There is…

Gotchya. Sorry for not getting it. I enjoy io9 immensely, you've built a real community here. Thank you.

Waaaaaaaah? I have a feeling that once we have dismantled patriarchy completely (which will also take down the extreme right) and we're all allowed to just be people, this sort of thing will happen much less frequently.

I was having trouble with that as well. I'm wondering if I just didn't understand the what Annalee meant? There are a whole bunch o' verbs in these examples, so I'm wondering if she meant adverbs?

This reminds me of my mother's reaction when my father complained about her cooking for the third time. She stopped cooking and never started again. He cleaned.

As long as he's helping out equally on the weekends and evenings that seems equitable to me.

I agree with everything you've written. Every argument I hear against a female doctor sounds like it lands somewhere on the "girls confuse me and make me uncomfortable ——-> I'm a sexist blowhard" scale.

I was a sobbing wreck when I first saw that episode. Data was always my favorite, as his character did exactly what it was meant to, show us our humanity through his journey. And this particular sojourn was utterly devastating.

My grandfather was in the Pacific Theater (American) and was on submarines. His went down and he was one of only a handful of survivors. The World War period was one of those ages in history that will echo through time for centuries, I think.

That's the question, isn't it? There are a few white folks out there who are actively trying to spread this message, that it's up to white people to clean our own damned house. I like the work of Tim Wise, he recently did a documentary on this: http://www.mediaed.org/whitelikeme/in…

Yup. Racism ends when white people stop tolerating it. I do not understand why some (most?) white people get defensive when the history of white people wreaking havoc on other societies is referenced. It happened, there's no changing it. Not talking about it just makes a person seem complicit, you know? Like if you…

You don't expect him to have a relationship with a Black girl, now do you?