Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond
Jared Mason Diamondis an American scientist and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee; Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse; and The World Until Yesterday. Originally trained in physiology, Diamond is known for drawing from a variety of fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography and evolutionary biology. As of 2013, he is a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles...
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth10 September 1937
CityBoston, MA
stars ice design
We can't manipulate some stars while maintaining other stars as controls; we can't start and stop ice ages, and we can't experiment with designing and evolving dinosaurs.
native-american gun steel
It invites a search for ultimate causes: why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?
evil mind injustice
We study the injustices of history for the same reason that we study genocide, and for the same reason that psychologists study the minds of murderers and rapists... to understand how those evil things came about.
improvement invention made
All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.
years acting pessimistic
Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there's no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies are acting remarkably cleanly. And in some cases, although not all cases, the CEOs are the driving forces behind that.
differences history different
History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves
country coffee effort
Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure.
face helpless oil people public says selling wood
People are not helpless in the face of big business. It's up to the public to say what it wants. Only when the public bans single-hulled oil tankers from American waters, only when the public says no more selling wood logged from old-growth forests, will companies... come up with other solutions.
collapse drag environmental friendly itself problems runs societies trade
If one of those friendly societies itself runs into environmental problems and collapses for environmental reasons, that collapse may then drag down their trade partners.
acre american-author animals calories far per plants species wild yield
Domesticated plants and animals yield far more calories per acre than do wild habitats, in which most species are inedible to humans.
depended europeans form outcome partly reached technology
How is it that Pizarro and Cortes reached the New World at all, before Aztec and Inca conquistadors could reach Europe? That outcome depended partly on technology in the form of oceangoing ships. Europeans had such ships, while the Aztecs and Incas did not.
alarm cost false hawaii tsunami
I read that a false alarm of a tsunami in Hawaii would cost about $68 million.
easter island isolated metaphor ocean pacific people planet ruin whom
The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island, isolated in the Pacific Ocean ù once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own (world) we won't be able to get help.
agonizing allow case certainly deal eat faces fish held hunt seals similar states sustained ultimately united values
The Norse held values that would not allow them to deal with... pagans and certainly would not let them eat fish and hunt ringed seals the way these pagans did. So here is a case where the values that sustained them for 450 years ultimately killed them. The United States faces similar agonizing reappraisals today.