Oh I see, you got the story from the Wikipedia page. I never check Wikipedia for chemistry stuff... Anyway that's just an anecdote and I think my point still stands.

I only verbally heard about this from my colleagues, but I heard that it happened at one of the smaller startup biotech companies in Oregon and not at a college. So maybe we're talking about two different incidences? Having said that, since I only heard this verbally, I'm sure some of the details I heard or remember could be wrong.

Here's another piece of misinformation: elemental mercury is more dangerous than organic mercury compounds.

For instance, diethyl mercury is known to be one of the most dangerous neurotoxin known to mankind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethylmercury). The consensus on the mechanism of action for this compound is that it's the oxidation state II mercury itself that is neurotoxic, but it's the alkyl groups that help it go across the blood-brain barrier. Look up the structure of thiomersal. It is an organic mercury compound that has an alkyl group directly on mercury, thereby giving access to the brain directly.

Similar compound, dimethyl mercury is also very notorious for its neurotoxicity. I do research in organic chemistry for living and a fellow organic chemist one time accidentally dropped a drop of Dimethyl mercury on her hand. It went through the gloves that she was wearing and onto her skin. Within several hours she was dead from what the doctors described in layman terms as "her brain melted". It is scary stuff. Some things about chemicals you don't necessarily have to do human clinical trial to predict that it'd be dangerous. If you have trained eyes you can just look at the chemical strcuture and predict its toxicity. However, as the good Book says, the love of money is a root of all evil. Once a big pharma company starts liking using a compound, they'll push for research that says it's safe even if it's not. That's just the way it is sadly.

I was wondering the same thing....

Yeah. in fact, I'd get rid of all the depts except for depts of State, Treasury, HHS, Defense, VA, and Transportation. I doubt that we'd notice any difference in our daily life without the other depts.

I am an organic chemist whose salary comes entirely from federal research grants (mainly from NIH). However, the same kind of money can come from many different federal depts. I do development of new cancer drugs. Believe it or not, I could get money for that from DoD (don't ask me why DoD have grant money for cancer drugs), NFS, or the state and not just from NIH. There are so much redundancy in the fed govt that just because DoE goes, it doesn't mean all of the research activities done through them will cease. Stuff done through USGS, etc could be done through DoD or other depts in place.

Less redundancy will mean less bureaucracy and less money wasted. Also it will mean that researches won't have to submit different forms of grant applications to different depts (this sucks up so much time!) and their research may become more efficient! These are the important details that average nay-sayers won't understand. Go Ron Paul!

This would be great! The OpenOffice document reader on Android currently ignores most of the formatting that I need to be able to read documents correctly. So it's not usable except when I'm desperate

What applications do you need? Do you need some special programs like CAD, etc? That's an importance of piece of info we need before we can recommend either way. For that matter, what are the main uses of your computer?

Christian-haters Tactics 101

1. Insult the stupid Christian

I have a PhD in organic chemistry from UCSD. Do you consider that education? What higher degree could I have gotten?

2. Make a broad statement via the "begging the question" methodology

We were discussing about whether the content of the Bible had been altered and whether any of the content have been proven wrong. So let's just use the desired conclusion as the starting point for the discussion: logical fallacy (beg the question).

3. Use lies when useful

All of the modern translations of the Bible (I only can testify about English and Japanese translations) were translated directly from Greek manuscripts for NT (possibly with an excpetion of parts of Matthew, which may have been written in Aramaic) and directly from Hebrew manuscripts for OT. I do keep hearing from skeptics that the Bible was translated many times successively, which is not true. I suspect that they get this idea from the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate. If the modern English translations come from those only, that accusation is partially true, but they don't. Besides, as I've stated, many Bible teachers consult the original Greek manuscripts before teaching so that any misguided English translation will not get in the way of teaching the Bible, and modern translations are very rarely off.

4. Switch the subject if you don't know the answer

For starters, archeological evidence:
-Joshua in Egypt, Israel in wilderness, Jericho, king David, Solomon and their descendants who were kings, king Xerxes, king Cyrus, Babylonian conquer of Judah, Herod(s), Pilate, Mary & Martha, Churches mentioned in Acts.... I can't list them all

Scientific evidence
Although the Bible doesn't address scientific issues, there are somethings that are mentioned that we didn't know from science until the last few centuries: currents in the ocean, the earth being a sphere, water cycle in climate, mountain formations, origin of fossils, the earth suspended in space, material made of invisible particles, etc etc
There are tons more that I don't have time for. These are evidences in support of the authenticity of the Bible. Not proofs.
So, what part of the Bible has been PROVEN wrong? Especially the historical stuff. I'd love to know! Don't switch the Q!

If you plant to hate stupid Christians, these lessons in logical fallacy tactics should be helpful to you :)