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a80f3b2 Harlow's results showed that a mother's reassuring gentle touch --what Harlow called "contact comfort"--is a more important factor in an infant's world than food. The journalist Deborah Blum, in her excellent biography of Harlow, Love at Goon Park, summarizes his initial findings: that for a baby primate, "food is sustenance but a good hug is life itself." Andrew Westoll
3225d3f Even the help wanted ads in the back of Science or Nature can give you a clue as to what technology is hot. Deborah Blum
687955a The Prohibition era had been a great source of material for building an excellent science of alcohol intoxication irony prohibition science Deborah Blum
eeeaee6 I can't say that exhaustive research and reporting will guarantee a great story, but I've never been able to pull one off without it. Deborah Blum
9473079 Harry was so exasperated by his frog experiments that one day he began venting to anyone who would listen. He even told his undergraduate class that he had spent countless hours just to prove that frogs were stupid. One of the students happened to be a reporter for the student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, and the next day, Harry was in print: "Professor Harlow says that the frog is the dumbest of all animals.... Professor Harlow's experim.. Deborah Blum
74b5993 did you know that way back in the 1980s some scientists proposed an ambitious effort called the Human Protein Project to map all human proteins? It never happened. Instead, the NIH backed the Human Genome Project for one big reason: Proteins were tough to study, while genes were far easier to sequence. The tools dictate the science. Deborah Blum
3fd1f5f In 1847 three English children fell seriously ill after eating birthday cake decorated with arsenic-tinted green leaves. Deborah Blum
168f95d Plus, truthfully, he was bored by a job that consisted of little besides paperwork, meeting with other government officials, and harassing the mayor. Deborah Blum
b86d9b6 The U.S. government spends billions of dollars on disasters after they happen, but it pinches pennies when it comes to preparing for them. Deborah Blum
e871e20 SCIENTISTS HAD KNOWN since the late nineteenth century that tobacco smoke contains carbon monoxide. Victorian scientists had even been able to calculate the amount of gas in the smoke: up to 4 percent in cigarette smoke, and in Gettler's own choice of tobacco, the cigar, between 6 and 8 percent. Gettler's latest work theorized that chain smokers might suffer from low-level carbon monoxide poisoning. He speculated in a 1933 report that "head.. Deborah Blum
b118b12 automation, for all its benefits, can take a toll on the performance and talents of those who rely on it. Deborah Blum
5cd4376 The choices we make, or fail to make, about which tasks we hand off to machines shape our lives and the place we make for ourselves in the world. Deborah Blum
167f11c A labor-saving device doesn't just provide a substitute for some isolated component of a job or other activity. It alters the character of the entire task, including the roles, attitudes, and skills of the people taking part. Deborah Blum
71fe450 It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed. Augustine of Hippo
3fe502d Automation turns us from actors into observers. Instead of manipulating the yoke, we watch the screen. That shift may make our lives easier, but it can also inhibit the development of expertise. Deborah Blum
9517215 even if a perfect system could be designed, it would still have to operate in an imperfect world. Deborah Blum
4186690 the best instructional programs help students master a subject by encouraging attentiveness, demanding hard work, and reinforcing learned skills through repetition. Deborah Blum
8d39902 a cloudy cocktail called Smoke, made by mixing water and fuel alcohol. Smoke joints were tucked into the back of paint stores, drugstores, and markets, among the dry goods and the stacked cans. Deborah Blum
61a9c3f Learning requires inefficiency. Deborah Blum
a95f876 Does our essence still lie in what we know, or are we now content to be defined by what we want? If we don't grapple with that question ourselves, our gadgets will be happy to answer it for us. Deborah Blum
159a257 Although traditional weapons killed far more people in the Great War, poison gas gave a new nightmare edge to the fighting. Deborah Blum
1a7b4ab TV's influence on gender attitudes, social advancement, and fertility rates was equivalent to the impact of an extra five years of female education. Deborah Blum
ee947da If your brain does not receive sufficient stimulus, it might find something else to do--it daydreams, it wanders, it thinks about itself. If this goes on too long, it can affect your mind's normal functioning. Chronic boredom correlates with depression and attention deficits. Deborah Blum
60a0d17 That same January the city government had released a report declaring that thanks to ill-informed, corrupt, and occasionally drunken coroners, murderers in New York were escaping justice in record numbers. Deborah Blum
d5af7c4 Social isolation is the best-established, most robust social or psychological risk factor for disease out there. Nothing can compete. Deborah Blum
5d1336d At Stone's direction, Harry removed ovaries, blinded the female rats, and removed their olfactory bulbs. Sightless, hormone-deprived--it didn't matter. The mother rats crawled determinedly toward the baby rats. They were slower, maybe, but the homing instinct was magnetic, needle to the north. Deborah Blum
16f0546 Your experiences today will influence the molecular composition of your body for the next two to three months," he tells his audience, "or, perhaps, for the rest of your life. Plan your day accordingly." Deborah Blum
d6cbee1 At the end, in Harry's handiwork, there's nothing sentimental about love, no sunlit clouds and glory notes - it's a substantial, earthbound connection, grounded in effort, kindness and decency. Learning to love, Harry liked to say, is really about learning to live. Perhaps everyday affection seems a small facet of love. Perhaps, though, it is the modest, steady responses that see us through day after day, that stretch into a life of close a.. love Deborah Blum
27ee54b Choosing not to feel pain is choosing a sort of death, a withering away of the expansive self. Deborah Blum
a6d864d Up close, aggressive measures are required to be impervious to suffering; you have to convince yourself that people deserve what they're getting, that their suffering has nothing to do with you. Our capacity for empathy is why the reality of war is usually kept from us or delivered in measured, manipulative doses--our wounded, perhaps, but not theirs, or those of our wounded who make for uplifting stories, but not those who are severely mut.. Deborah Blum
7d376e1 were spoiling Deborah Blum
c88c8e9 In the early twentieth century it had been used to remove the hair of children with scalp infections, such as ringworm, so that doctors could see and treat the fungus. But that practice had been abandoned when too many of the toddlers died. Deborah Blum
d2e23a4 We and all the others and everyone--regardless of the lives we'd led, and more than anything else, and beyond the agonies and dangers that attend every act and action of ours in this life, we all wanted to live. And that desire, if not the result, is something to think about. Deborah Blum
53d99ef Imagination enlarges us--as though our nervous systems could be made vast and at home in the world, if not at ease with its cruelties and losses. Comfort is dangerous. You can be overwhelmed by suffering, as relief workers sometimes are, and your ability to imagine and engage is finite--as anyone who deletes all those e-mails urging us to act for prisoners or polar bears or disaster victims knows. Deborah Blum
8d91047 At the present time I am spending nearly $300 a month from my own personal funds for work which in my opinion has absolutely to be done to keep up the work of the office, Deborah Blum
8a63001 Human life must be cheap to the one who can place the dollar above it" -John Ruston" poison science Deborah Blum
a8aa787 It is forbidden to walk on the grass. It is not forbidden to fly over the grass. Augusto Boal
7802feb To resist, it is not enough to say No - it is necessary to desire! Augusto Boal
360f9f8 Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young. Augustus
54b5612 There are lots of ways to be superhuman. You can trick others into thinking that unless they do what you tell them, they won't eat. You can cajole people into doing what you want by making them fear god or the cops, or making them feel guilty or angry. "The best way to be superhuman is to do things that you love with other people who love them, too. The only way to do that is to admit you're doing it because you love it and if you do more t.. Cory Doctorow
5065c49 Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit. Augustus
4069b2c I came to see a king, not a row of corpses. Augustus
45646f4 There was a whole subculture of mentalists who spent their nights breaking into boarded-up tube stations, forgotten sewers, abandoned buildings, and other places you just aren't meant to be. Cory Doctorow
2437a11 yjb 'n nkwn qd t`lWmn mr@ wHd@ wl~ l'bd 'n lqdr sytqlWb kthyran qbl 'n ySl l~ mkn José Saramago