I'm going to have to go with pareidolia for some of these.

One thing you have to look out for: people telling you what you're supposed to see. The power of suggestion is very strong.

I agree with the second part of your comment, ARAM, but I think it's wrong to say all medical knowledge is trial and error. Many recent advances in medical science have been because we know A about the body and B about a certain compound, and someone put those things together to get treatment C. That we submit them to experiments is to eliminate the possibility that that someone was horribly wrong, but it's nothing like the groping about in the darkness that stone age medicine likely was.

Sola, I don't know that we can legislate the "for the right reasons" part. A system which will inevitably see abuse needs to be approached carefully, but I don't disagree with you in principle.

Tertium Squid, who said they weren't human beings? Some of us just have deep reservations about what "they" do.

I think it has more to do with the fact that the industry looks like a boy's club than that geeks are gross. I can attest to the nervousness I feel in the presence of a group of men. The more men, the more sexist their behavior. I've watched otherwise progressive men devolve into games of placing women in categories based on physical attractiveness and laugh at the ones they wouldn't go to bed with just because there were a few frat boys in the group and they felt the need to keep up. It's extremely alienating, even if they're not doing it to you, because you realise that they would if you weren't listening. I think that eventually, as more and more women enter these fields, it won't seem like such a hostile environment to prospective female students.

Of course, I'm sure I should just lighten up, am I right? Crazy chicks and their insecurities.

Haha, you crack me up, Jazz.

Also, why would I care that you're a chick?

Well thank goodness, D Bozko! It's much better for genetic diversity this way.

Sailor Moon totally nailed it.

I second Felix's comment. These kinds of articles drive me up the wall.

Yeah, I hate to say it because I was an early fan of the aquatic ape hypothesis, but the evidence just doesn't support it.

It's too bad no one saw fit to write it down.

Wow. Those names are more strained than a fifteen-year-old's LoTR fan character.

I agree with G.Park for the most part, but I'd like to point out that while Atheism is not a religion, it is a valid "religious affiliation." It describes one's relationship with religion. The others you list are mostly social philosophies.

The last time I checked, one could be a vegan feminist and a christian at the same time.

When I was a kid, we had a cat named shadow for this very reason. He was a black and white with a black mask on his face and what looked like the shadow of another cat on his back.

Pshhh... so pretentious. @?

Pfff... prayer and homeopathy could have done that.

Angstrom: name recognition. Riding on the coat tails of a respected author is a cynically calculated move to get his fans into the theatre and lend a patina of literary legitimacy to the film for everyone else ("PKD?! I've heard good things about him!").