Ashton Eaton

You see somebody on a football field make a great, athletic 70-yard run, but the athleticism is immeasurable. It's undoubtedly athletic, but compared to somebody else who did something else, how do you compare it? That's the great part of track and field. It's a test, but with results that you can compare to others.

Consider: The human genome consists of about 3.3 billion base pairs. Since there are only four types of pair, that amounts to 0.8 gigabytes of information, or about what you can fit on a CD. With a microwave radio transmitter, you could beam that amount of information into space in a few minutes, and have it travel to anyone at light speed.

I doubt very much that the chief executives of any of the Fortune 500 corporations can name five edible plants, five native grasses, or five migratory birds within walking distance of their homes, or name the soil series upon which their house sits. And I would contend that if you don't know where you are, you are in fact nowhere at all.