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Deborah Blum QUOTES

Deborah Blum QUOTES

1 " In a best-selling book, 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs (reprinted nine times by 1935), a pair of consumer-advocate authors complained that American citizens had become test animals for chemical industries that were indifferent to their customers' well-being. The government, they added bitterly, was complicit. "

― Deborah Blum , The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

2 " There was the Bennett Cocktail (gin, lime juice, bitters), the Bee’s Knees (gin, honey, lemon juice), the Gin Fizz (gin, lemon juice, sugar, seltzer water), and the Southside (lemon juice, sugar syrup, mint leaves, gin, seltzer water). "

― Deborah Blum , The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

3 " Two years ago, when leaders in neighboring Mathews County broached the subject of sea-level rise, Tea Partiers packed meetings, warning of an environmentalist plot to “put nature above man.” They linked a proposal to build dikes to a United Nations sustainability plan known as Agenda 21, which has inspired a number of conspiracy theories among far-right activists. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

4 " In his examination of the young dial painters, he’d discovered a fact that was impossible to dismiss. The women were exhaling radon gas. "

― Deborah Blum , The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

5 " Nicotine had been isolated and synthesized in the nineteenth century. In pure form, it took an ounce at most to kill the average adult. "

― Deborah Blum , The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

6 " Our own ways of mourning may be unique, but the human capacity to grieve deeply is something we share with other animals. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

7 " The name explains the structure: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen bond into a ring-shaped structure called a cresol (also found in creosote), and phosphorus hangs on to the ring like an exhausted swimmer gripping a life preserver. "

― Deborah Blum , The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

8 " 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 and loving relationships. "

― Deborah Blum , Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection

9 " I see poisoners—so calculating, so cold-blooded—as most like the villains of our horror stories. They’re closer to that lurking monster in the closet than some drug-impaired crazy with a gun. I don’t mean to dismiss the latter—both can achieve the same awful results. But the scarier killer is the one who thoughtfully plans his murder ahead, tricks a friend, wife, lover into swallowing something that will dissolve tissue, blister skin, twist the muscles with convulsions, knows all that will happen and does it anyway. "

― Deborah Blum , The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

10 " And it wasn’t just one warning. Eight years before the Panel on Climate Change’s report, an assessment of global warming’s impacts in New York City had also cautioned of potential flooding. “Basically pretty much everything that we projected happened,” says Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the cochair of the Panel on Climate Change and coauthor of that 2001 report. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

11 " But with sea levels rising along the East Coast—a natural phenomenon accelerated by climate change—scientists project that in our lifetimes what was once considered a hundred-year flood will happen every three to twenty years. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

12 " Even in the heyday of frozen concentrate, the popularity of orange juice rested largely on its image as the ultimate natural beverage, fresh squeezed from a primordial fruit. But the reality is that human intervention has modified the orange for millenniums, as it has almost everything people eat. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

13 " He confessed to stalking, torturing, and assaulting 400 children while traveling the country. "

― Deborah Blum , Angel Killer: A True Story of Cannibalism Crime Fighting and Insanity in New York City

14 " Henry Adams: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

15 " Torcida told me a creation story of his people and why they consider Mount Gorongosa sacred. In early times, he said, God lived with his people on the mountain. Humans were giants then and not afraid to ask God for special favors. In a drought they would say, Bring us water. The Creator, growing tired of their constant importuning, moved his residence up to heaven. Still the giant people persisted, reaching up from the mountain. At last, to put them in their place, God decided to make them small. Thereafter life became a great deal more difficult—and so it has been to this day. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

16 " We typically think of stress as being a risk factor for disease,” said Cole. “And it is, somewhat. But if you actually measure stress, using our best available instruments, it can’t hold a candle to social isolation. Social isolation is the best-established, most robust social or psychological risk factor for disease out there. Nothing can compete. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

17 " Standard Oil issued a cool response: “These men probably went insane because they worked too hard,” according to the building manager. And those who didn’t survive had merely worked themselves to death. Other than that, the company didn’t see a problem. "

― Deborah Blum , The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

18 " 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. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

19 " 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. "

― Deborah Blum , The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

20 " 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. "

― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014