Gone are the days when we simply teach kids how to admire and emulate inventors and discoverers. I used to be so impressed with Madame Curie’s brilliance and her sacrifices in the field of radioactivity. But now, I sometimes wonder why anyone would go through all the trouble of exposing one’s self to radiation – or dying at that -- in order to discover the properties of certain elements and chemicals. And knowing such things are so dangerous, why do people in the know not try to keep them from being used or spread as if they were merely laundry-water thrown into rivers and lakes or fart happily released into the atmosphere? I think I know the answer: Gold can only be extracted using mercury. Money often comes with a little or a lot of poison.
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