Unfortunately, some of us have to.

I'm a med student, and many of my lectures are viewed and reviewed at home via MediaSite, a Silverlight-based lecture management system from Sonicfoundry. While our lectures do play in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome with the Silverlight plugin, advanced features (such as the ability to play the lecture at whatever speed you wish) are only available in Internet Explorer. The crippling of Silverlight in competing browsers has forced me to return to IE.

I agree with every other point you made but felt that this needed addressing.

E.C. Dodds and W. Lawson stumbled upon BPA’s estrogenic activity while conducting a study of estrogenic structures in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Dodds and Lawson compared estrogenic activity in rats of various organic compounds, by subcutaneous injection - a lot of subcutaneous injection. It's been a little while since I've read the article in question (Dodds, EC., & Lawson, W. (1936). Synthetic Å’strogenic agents without the phenanthrene nucleus. Nature, 137, 996-996.), and I'm at home at the moment so I don't have access to my University's database, but I believe that the amount they injected was half a liter of BPA solution.

Dodds and Lawson's account was the sole study on BPA's in vivo effects until the 1960s and 70s, when a few, mostly allergenic, studies were done on BPA in response to its expanded use. So for over 20 years, the only evidence that BPA had any ill effects at all was a study in which half a liter of the stuff was injected into a lab rat - it's hard to imagine a substance that wouldn't be harmful in such amounts. As a matter of fact, it wasn't until 1997 that low-dose effects of BPA were identified by the laboratory of FS vom Saal. All this to say that I don't think it's fair to attribute the widespread use of BPA to willful ignorance of "another inconvenient, profit-reducing fact", as you suggest.

That said, I'll reiterate that I do agree with the rest of what you wrote. Having worked with BPA for a year, I've seen its effects in lab animals first hand. I am encouraged by recent steps taken by the FDA (stated plans to reevaluate its toxicity in June 2009), EPA (announced ongoing evaluation for the development of "action steps" in Septemper 2009) and other organizations (Nalgene no longer uses BPA in its products) to evaluate, inform, and protect.

I opened up this article just to see what witty comments you had written about your namesake.

One post. Barely two lines. That's it? C'mon, you're giving the German Killers more "love" than the C64!

Needless to say, I am disappointed.

If you care about what the person who told the joke thinks about you, yes.

If someone tells me a joke, and I like it, I'll almost always ask "Do you mind if I use that?" before passing the joke along. Reason being that I don't want my friends thinking of me as a joke thief - the guy who always uses other people's jokes. Granted, that person may have gotten that joke from someplace else, and they'll usually tell me where it came from if they can remember. Then when I tell the joke to other people, I'll source my material, either before or after. This all sounds complicated, but it really only takes 10 or 15 seconds - well worth it for a good, honest laugh.

If you don't think that joke stealing is a big deal, just look up "carlos mencia steals" in Google, and check out the response that you get. His reputation has been ruined (in most, not all, circles) because of the material he's stolen.

Sharing may not be selfish, but taking sure is.

http://journals.lww.com/jrnldbp/Abstract/1990/04000/36__and_48_Month_Neurobehavioral_Follow_up_of.3.aspx

Took me 5 minutes on Google Scholar. Maybe not what you're looking for, but it meets the criteria you've outlined. If I wasn't supposed to be studying Biochem right now I'd try to find you a better one.

The "40,000 stolen song" argument is weak. I have never seen an iPod filled to capacity, and those that are anywhere near close have always had a significant amount of video content on them. The maximum capacity of a device is a poor means of implying criminal activity. To put it another way: Just because your work computer has a 250gb hard drive, that doesn't mean that you must have 250,000 images of porn on it.

I don't own an iPod Classic, but if I did it would be 10% full with 100% legitimate music. The remaining 90% is why I would never buy/need an iPod Classic.