It seems to me that most "German Americans" whose ancestors came over during the 18th century probably wouldn't identify as "German Americans" today. I know I don't. (I have Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry through my paternal grandfather--the surname is a corruption of "Giesi" or "Gysi".) 
 
My impression is that the similarity of cultures (including the ease of anglicizing names) has led to it being very easy for descendants of German immigrants (the founders of all those "Germantowns") to assimilate into the general Anglo-based culture--with the notable exception of those (Amish, etc.) who have strenuously resisted assimilation.

Neuroskeptic: Seeing as Avatar has been in development for about a decade (or more?), I don't think either of those can account for it. (The othes, maybe.)

Actually, Solaris (both versions) has a very alien alien -- although it still manifests in human semblance, and neither movie shows the full extent of the weirdness described in the book. 
 
District 9 made a passable attempt, and still had aliens that we can identify with. Of course, they had very human eyes and a similar bauplan.... 
 
I know things have to be anthropomorphized a bit, but I'm still weirded out when nonhuman characters have human teeth.

If you count Gollum and various other LotR creatures, we're already there. 
 
Still waiting for aliens that actually look alien. These things have human dentition, for crying out loud!

Politicians doing biology ... gotta love it. See also the expansion of Cannabis sativa to include Cannabis indica, and the decision that Sikhs are not Caucasian. 
 
As I understand it, these are different species of siluriform, a sound biological clade. So, yeah ... they're all catfish.

Nice summary. 
 
A couple of minor points: 
 
If anything, the problem has become more difficult since Darwin's time, when it was generally believed (e.g. by Haeckel) that there were only six or seven distinct phyla. Now over thirty phyla are generally recognised, and the relationships between them (e.g. between vertebrates and echinoderms), are far from clear. 
The question of how many metazoan phyla there are is a nomenclatural one, not a scientific one. And, unless I've missed something (which is entirely possible), the relationship between echinoderms and vertebrates, as two major subclades of Deuterostomia, is fairly stable. Far less stable are the positions of other deuterostomes and especially the arrangement of "protostomes", i.e., putative clades like Lophotrochozoa, Ecdysozoa, etc. 
 
That said, your larger point, that the picture is more complex and tangled now than in Darwin's day, is certainly true!

Fascinating conclusion. 
 
There seems to be one error, though: "Great Britan [sic]" has two entries.

Ah, I see. Well, cool!

"I[t] looks like there's some foundation to optimism here...."That's assuming that people retain the same beliefs their entire life. Many people get more religious as they get older. (The reverse is true for others, but I'm not sure if it's enough to cancel it out.) 
 
The question is, are we seeing a difference between generations, or between young and old? (Probably some of both, but how much?)

I have a totally unrelated question: why are your post titles usually statements that end in a question mark?

Monogamy seems to have been doing pretty well.

Google Docs, of course.

(I remind you, Christianity never said women were made in the image of "God"). 
 
Actually, Genesis does say that humans, both male and female, were created in the image of "'Elohim". "'Elohim" is almost always translated as "God" (even though the word was originally plural, indicating a class of gods led by the chief god 'El -- Yahweh ["LORD"] was a latter-day addition to this pantheon).