Oh goody, now we get to talk about mens' tiny swim trunks? ;-)
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Stefanie Galgon lab/message: (520) 523-7735
Department of Biology
Northern Arizona University smg4 at dana.ucc.nau.edu
"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death"
Auntie Mame
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On Fri, 16 Jul 1999, David W. Kramer wrote:
> David Hershey wrote:
>> I always thought
> >the whole monocot versus dicot comparison was given too much emphasis.
> >It's easy to ask students exam questions on monocot versus dicot but of
> >what value is that information in the real world? I've never heard even
> >the most dedicated gardener say "My your monocots look lovely today."
> >The few practical aspects of knowing the difference between monocots and
> >dicots, such as grafting, aren't usually emphasized.
> >
> >David Hershey
> >dh321 at excite.com>> I confess to introducing these FACTS not because they have any practical
> application or to provide easy test questions but because it is one way of
> illustrating how evolution works. By emphasizing that both are flowering
> plants and then pointing out the differences between them that have
> accumulated over millions of years of evolution, students [hopefully ;-) ]
> can get a sense of how reproductive isolation can result in new forms that
> can then accumulate mutations that make them more different and less
> similar while still retaining some important features (angiospermy) from
> their common past. It also illustrates that there is often more than one
> solution to a problem, e.g., are parallel veins better than reticulate
> veins? are three petals better than 4 or 5? etc.
>> What has happened to the concept of knowing just to know? Must everything
> we learn have an application? No one has yet attacked the traditional
> "fruit lab" where students examine various fruits and classify them as
> simple/multiple/aggregate then classify the simple fruits as fleshy/dry,
> etc.!! When we eat a peach, is it important to know that it is a drupe?
> that an apple is a pome? I think not, BUT the really important lesson in
> this is that not everything is what it may seem. Certainly applies to
> politics! and advertising! To know that a sunflower "seed" is really a
> fruit and a cherry "seed" is really a stone may help me realize that if I
> were to put on those tiny swim trunks I see in the GQ ads, I would not have
> the same sex appeal as the model!!! OK, maybe not a good analogy but there
> needs to be some levity in this discussion.
> *********************
> David W. Kramer, Ph.D.
> Asst. Prof. of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology
> Ohio State University at Mansfield
> 1680 University Drive
> Mansfield, OH 44906-1547
> Phone: (419) 755-4344 FAX: (419) 755-4367
> e-mail: kramer.8 at osu.edu>>
