The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018 Quotes

“Today, it is the strangest of things: absolutely predictable and astoundingly rare.”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018

“People in Siberia still stumble on frozen mammoth remains with flesh and fur intact.”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018

“The other conclusion we can draw from the evidence, Scott says, is that there is a crucial, direct link between the cultivation of cereal crops and the birth of the first states. It’s not that cereal grains were humankind’s only staples; it’s just that they were the only ones that encouraged the formation of states. “History records no cassava states, no sago, yam, taro, plantain, breadfruit or sweet potato states,” he writes. What was so special about grains? The answer will make sense to anyone who has ever filled out a Form 1040: grain, unlike other crops, is easy to tax. Some crops (potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava) are buried and so can be hidden from the tax collector, and, even if discovered, they must be dug up individually and laboriously. Other crops (notably, legumes) ripen at different intervals, or yield harvests throughout a growing season rather than along a fixed trajectory of unripe to ripe—in other words, the taxman can’t come once and get his proper due. Only grains are, in Scott’s words, “visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable.’” Other crops have some of these advantages, but only cereal grains have them all, and so grain became “the main food starch, the unit of taxation in kind, and the basis for a hegemonic agrarian calendar.” The taxman can come, assess the fields, set a level of tax, then come back and make sure he’s got his share of the harvest.”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018

“Ecological Footprint Is Mostly Determined by Wealth”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018

“Common species are quite nice bellwethers of the systematic, insidious, and often unrecognized changes and detriments that we’re making to the environment,” Gaston said.”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018

“The state of being common is rare.” While any given common species is made up of many individuals, only a small fraction of species are common.”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018

“In a paper evaluating the case for trophic cascades in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, Peterson, Vucetich, and Douglas Smith, who trained on Isle Royale and now is a project leader for the Wolf Restoration Project at Yellowstone, argue that ecosystems are too complex to trace neat relationships, particularly in Yellowstone where grizzly bears, black bears, cougars, and wolves eat bison, deer, and elk. They also point out that, when you follow the threads of prey fluctuations, you often find at the source not wild-animal predators but human beings.”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018

“Evidence suggested, for example, that most men with prostate cancer would never experience metastasis.”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018

“If you were an anthropologist specializing in human ecological relationships, you might well conclude that one of our distinguishing features as a species is an inability to coexist peacefully with elephants.”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018

“Fire is the difference between eating lunch and being lunch.”
― Sam Kean, The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2018