How exactly does the presence of sublethal levels of antibiotics in the environment lead to selective pressure on E. coli to take up a shiga-toxin gene? Current research I have seen indicates the toxin provides an advantage in persistent carriage in livestock and has nothing to do with surviving antibiotics in animal feeds.
I strongly agree with the sentiment that antibiotics in agriculture are severely overused, but I do not think this is a valid example.

I work at a non-profit that gets Gates money (though I am about as far down the food chain as you can be and still get paid). Love or hate Microsoft (I do a little of both) the things the Gates foundation are doing are pretty amazing... there is a combination of resources and vision that is unfortunately all too rare.

In the end I think Bill will be remembered in a way that Alfred Nobel is remembered... few people know that he invented dynamite but everyone knows about the Nobel Prize. In a similar fashion people in a hundred years will remember Gates for the good works in education, public health etc. and not for Windows. Heck, we'll all be using Linux by then anyway (the year of the Linux desktop will get here eventually).

Good of you to bring up the Miller-Urey experiments. Those experiments and subsequent ones with different atmospheric conditions have demonstrated how easy it is to create complex organic molecules under fairly common conditions (common in a cosmic sense).

Uracil is not an amino acid, it is a pyrimidine. Very necessary for RNA and life, but not an amino acid.