Word: human
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Brandeis' early battles in Boston, one central conviction of his that became increasingly clear was what his appraising critics have since defined as an almost pathological "fear of bigness." Actually Brandeis' fear of bigness is a rooted but reasonable distrust in human infallibility. Brandeis objected to financial pyramids, huge monopolies and interminable leases not so much because of size as because he felt and feels that human administrative capacity has grave limits. In 1915, appearing before a Congressional committee with a new bill aimed at monopoly, he quoted a German proverb: "Care is taken that the trees...
Late in the 19th Century a Russian named Iwanowski demonstrated the existence of an infectious something smaller than bacteria by passing a solution from diseased tobacco plants through a Chamberland filter. In time it was found that many animal and human diseases were also due to such viruses: rabies, distemper, foot-and-mouth disease, encephalitis, poliomyelitis, measles, yellow fever, certain tumors, common colds. At Princeton Dr. Stanley grew acres of tobacco plants, infected them with the disease known as tobacco mosaic, ground up their wizened leaves, extracted their juices. This liquid was highly infectious to normal plants. But the deadly...
Perhaps the most interesting teacher I have is Professor Langer from whom I am auditing modern European History. He has a penchant for making all the great events in history very human and loves to deflate the notables of the past century...
Except for shivering, a human being has no protection against cold. When a newshawk asked Dr. Hardy if "goose pimples" were not a protection, the scientist replied that those protuberances were a relic of the days when the ancestors of men were covered by thick hair. The gooseflesh served to fluff the body hair into a more efficient heat-insulating covering...
...pudding is seasoned with everything that ever came out of Author Rice's cupboard: courtroom atmosphere (On Trial, Counsellor-at-Law), social indignation (We, the People), personal pique (letters to the New York Times), alternately satirical and glamorous treatment of artists, writers and the theatre (The Left Bank), human interest, melodramatic enthusiasm for New York generally. In fact, about the only ingredient the book lacks is good novel-writing...