Quotes from Deborah Blum

We think of kindness as an emotional quality, but it's also an act of imagination, of extending yourself beyond yourself, of feeling what you do not feel innately by invoking it.

Other mysteries have been untangled. Redheads are known to feel pain especially acutely. This confused researchers until someone realized that the same genetic mutation that causes red hair also increases sensitivity to pain. One study found that redheaded patients require about 20 percent more general anesthesia than brunettes.

In Washington, D.C., where the Volstead Act—which provided for enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment—had been militantly approved, the police reported nearly a ten-fold increase in drunk driving arrests since the legislation was enacted.

From almost every standpoint ethyl alcohol must be regarded as the most important poison with which medical men and jurists have to deal," Gettler wrote in a paper, listing a seemingly endless record of fatalities. "No other poison causes so many deaths or leads to or intensifies so many diseases, both physical and mental, as does [this] alcohol in the many forms in which it is taken.

We drove through the Old Dominion University campus, where a small permanent lake has formed in the back corner of a huge parking lot. "You can't pave under water," he noted dryly, "so this obviously wasn't under water when this parking lot was paved.

Bettinger bought his first genetic test in 2003. A few years later he launched a blog—The Genetic Genealogist—with the aim of explaining the science behind the tests in simple language.

Even the help wanted ads in the back of Science or Nature can give you a clue as to what technology is hot.

were spoiling

The nature of love is about paying attention to the people who matter, about still giving when you are too tired to give. Be a mother who listens, a father who cuddles, a friend who calls back, a helping neighbor, a loving child.

The Prohibition era had been a great source of material for building an excellent science of alcohol intoxication

Every inappropriate prescription and insufficient dose given in medicine would kill weak bacteria but let the strong survive.

There are many persons driving automobiles in this city who ought not to drive.

That is the bane of speakeasy life. You ring up your friend the next morning to find out whether he is still alive.

automation, for all its benefits, can take a toll on the performance and talents of those who rely on it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

even if a perfect system could be designed, it would still have to operate in an imperfect world.

the best instructional programs help students master a subject by encouraging attentiveness, demanding hard work, and reinforcing learned skills through repetition.

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.

Learning requires inefficiency.

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.

Although traditional weapons killed far more people in the Great War, poison gas gave a new nightmare edge to the fighting.