Read the manual...dur.

I'm selling my copy of the Merck Index. It was a gift from the Merck Corp. after I did a summer student research thingy sponsored by them (extracting a kairomone from an aquatic insect larva, which meant a lot of fiddling around with bowls full of water and bugs and a lot more fiddling around with glassware, some of which I broke). It was sort of nice to have for college, but I only used it twice or thrice, and if I go to vet or graduate school, I'll be able to use school copies anyway. So I was looking at the Amazon.com listing, and it's only rated 4 out of 5 stars. Why? Because this one moron, posting anonymously as "A reader", gave it 1 star and wrote:

personally, I think that this index has the most innacurate information available. It never has what most people need and it's too hard to use.

Of course it doesn't have what most people need, you donkey. It's a reference for "chemists, biochemists, pharmacologists, pharmacists, and related professionals", who do not comprise "most people" by a long stretch. What the crap were you looking for, a way to synthesize cheap meth? Well, it's actually in there, if you know how to find your way through the incredibly arcane system of listing chemicals - they're in alphabetic order, imbecile...

Oh yes, and he/she spelled 'inaccurate' inaccurately. Picking on minor spelling errors is something I don't often do, but that was a particularly unfortunate one, especially when you're complaining about a major scientific reference.

So, if you're looking for a copy of the Index, I'm selling a nice new one (13th ed., the current one) on both Amazon and Half.com. The seller name is megabigblur on both sites. Buy mine!

Amazon finally got around to adding a "Log Out" button to their "My Account" page after having a page explaining why they didn't have a "Log Out" button for ages. Stupid. Ever occur to them that quite a lot of folks don't have an Internet connection at home and might need to buy and sell from public computers?