Herpetology
by Jeff
Image text: Birds are Aves, which is part of the clade Theropoda, which is in Saurischia, which is in Dinosauria. Those birds outside our windows are dinosaurs. We can clear out the rest of our brains because we now have the best fact.
Ornithology is the branch of zoology that studies birds. In the ornithology conference, they think that reptiles should be folded in under the ornithology umbrella as well.
Herpetology is the branch of zoology that studies amphibians. Rather than strike back with their own reptiles chart, they strike back with an "Assholes" chart to insult Ornithologists.
In the image text, birds are class Aves which is a subset of the claude Theropoda which is a subset of the order Saurischia and the taxon Dinosauria. This is obviously an oversimplification, but interesting fact none the less. I wouldn't suggest clearing out the rest of your brain as you will be running from birds for the rest of your days.
Genetic Analysis
by Jeff
Image text: There's still a chance you were conceived via IVF. But we've checked your mom's college yearbook photos, and whether or not she and your father had sex, it's clear that ... listen, I know this is hard for you.
This one is pretty straight forward, especially with the proliferation of genetic analysis websites around these days which all you have to do is send in a vial of your spit to get tested. Plus, no one likes to hear about the possibility of their parents having sex, yuck!
In the image text, IVF is In vitro fertilization, in which sex is not required because eggs are fertilized by sperm manually outside the body and then inserted.
The Economic Argument
by Jeff
Image text: Not to be confused with 'making money selling this stuff to OTHER people who think it works', which corporate accountants and actuaries have zero problems with.
Ok, let's see if I can get this one right.
1) Some people are arguing that the crazy phenomenon on the left exist.
Remote viewing - the ability to see far away things by the use of paranormal activity.
Dowsing - a type of divination that is used to find water, metals or gems underground.
Auras - the reading of some persons aura which gives some indication of his or her ailment or health based on the color, shape and clarity.
Homeopathy - the practice of diluting medicine for increased effect. There was a previous xkcd that made fun of this theory as well.
Remote prayer - the practice of lots of people getting together to pray for a person far away.
Astrology - the act of reading the stars and planets to predict the future.
Taurot - the act of reading cards to predict the future.
Crystal Energy - this is based on the theory that crystals produced energy when compressed.
Curses and hexes and relativity are pretty straightfoward, so I'm going to skip those two.
Quantum Electrodynamics - describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity is achieved.
2) If all the things on the right actually do exist, then capitalism is not totally ruthless because they are not taking advantage of all these potential money-making opportunities.
3) Some people are making money selling the things on the left, but not major corporations in America and abroad except where the box on the right is checked.
This begs a question if all the phenomenon on the left do not exist, then is capitalism is ruthless with all the things on the left that do actually exist?
Date
by Mike
Image Text: Well, the kid's definitely getting the biology geek phenotype.
Punnett squares are simple diagrams used to determine the odds of a particular offspring genotype (genetic make up) given the genotypes of the parents. The phenotype is the physical manifestation of the genes in the organism and doesn't always correlated directly to strict genotypes. Some genetic characteristics (like color blindness and eye color) can be easily traced using Punnett squares because they are the result of one clearly dominant gene and one clearly recessive. Other traits like height are a blend of multiple genes.
An interesting thing to note:
The male's parents were both colorblind but that is a recessive gene on the X chromosome. For his mother to be colorblind she must have had two copies of the gene. This man now carries the gene on his X chromosome so he will only pass it on to his daughter. She will be a carrier but will have normal color vision so long as this woman is not colorblind.