Let's make sure we know the difference between oxidation and oxygenation. Oxidation is responsible for the alcohol in your beer! Starches (from whatever grain with which you're brewing) are (long story short) oxidized into carbon dioxide (bubbles) and ethanol (drunk). Oxygenation is the infusion of gaseous oxygen into a medium. Granted, an excess of dissolved diatomic oxygen in your beer may speed up oxidation a little bit, it's nowhere near the rate of enzymatic oxidation that occurs during the fermenting process. Especially if the beer is kept cold enough (as it should be anyway) during and after oxygenation, free oxygen isn't going to mess up your brew.

You claim that most *physicians* are not properly trained to test for brain death, and then you back it up with an anecdote about *technicians* that weren't able to properly identify real brain death.

The difference between a technician and a physician? 6-12 years of top-level education and experience. Don't confuse the two.

This is misleading, and upon second reading, it is some overly-philosophical hand-waving.

Yes, prions do not reproduce through the conventional genetic mechanisms. From my understanding, they encourage, through some direct protein-protein interaction, other polypeptides to fold incorrectly.

Think of it this way. HIV and other genetic disorders propagate through normal reproductive means. Like, if a person with an extraordinary innate musical ability has a child, that child will probably possess a natural ability for music.

However, if a talented musician adopts a child and then teaches him how to read music and how to play instruments, he will probably grow up to be equally talented.

Prions are similar to the latter case. They are encouraging other proteins, who don't in themselves possess any malicious function, the fold in such a way to attack the host.

This isn't reproduction. The "parent" prions are not in anyway responsible for the actual formation of the "child" prions. They are just responsible for causing them to become malicious, making them more role-model proteins than actual parents.

Personally, I've never understood any of this.

Not once in my 15+ years of using web browsers have I thought to myself "Man, this *browser* sure is slow." I've definitely said things like "Geez, this server sure is slow," and I've said "Golly, this flash movie is boggin' down my computer." Is the speed of the browser really making that big of a difference in actual use? I'm seeing some benchmarks in the post previews for this article, and they don't look like applicable numbers.

Simply put, answer me this question. On identical computers, on identical connections, exactly how much quicker or slower than Firefox would Opera be in returning a Google image search for "Cosplay Cammy Big Butt"?

Remember, it takes three events for a cell to become cancerous. 1. It must mutate to be able to express appreciable amounts of telomerase. 2. It must mutate in such a way that it circumvents its apoptosis (self-destruction) checkpoints. 3. It must mutate in such a way to allow constitutive, amplified replication. True, there are probably a gazillion different combinations of different mutations that can cause allow all of these things to happen, but I'm pretty sure it can't be caused by ONE mutation. But it's just my first post, so don't take my word for it.