Thought of the day: Mendel! Peas! Aaagh!

Mendel and his derned peas. Mendelian inheritance is so important to understanding inheritance in general, but gosh, peas are boring. As are most normal discreet traits in people - by normal, I mean stuff like attached earlobes and sticky earwax, cleft chin, tongue-rolling, and the ever popular PTC tasting. (Sorry to those who are tasters! Anthro is not usually about torturing students with nasty tasting paper, really! )
But what I think is cool about Mendel is how he figured out inheritance without seeing chromosomes, or seeing meiosis in action. And how he wowed everyone with statistics. Basic stats to us now, but way above most scientists' heads at the time.
Maybe next time I'll forgo talking about peas altogether and talk only about human traits, and do Punnett squares related to the normal traits and also the interesting diseases, like albinism, Tay-Sachs, and such. But it's like denying 7 years of undergrad and grad training to skip the peas!

but maybe it's time for a new leaf (pun intended).
Pass the peas, please.
Let's talk disease!

Thoughts?

Worms and Evolution

Here is a well written post by a science blogger about the importance of worms in evolution.
John Hawks has already posted on this, but in case you missed it the post begins with this question:
Quick - What was Darwin's most popular book?
Click below to find out - you'll probably be surprised!
http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/01/in_the_mud_1.php#more

Welcome~

Hello - I'm Erika, an adjunct professor of Anthropology. I am starting this blog as a way to communicate with my students in an informal way outside of the classroom. I'll be posting links to sites of interest, my reactions and opinions to news from the world of anthropology, and some stuff I find fun or cool (which may or may not be anthropological).
This is a bit of an experiment in connectivism. One of my interests is how technology impacts our social lives, sometimes for the worse, and sometimes for the better. I'd like for this blog to enhance the student-teacher relationship by creating a way for us to explore topics together outside of the classroom, but in a less formal way than through Blackboard. You'll find out more about my interests, likes, dislikes, etc., and hopefully you students will be better able to relate to me in class and outside of class. Through your feedback, I hope to become a better professor as well.

But mostly, I hope to have fun with this, and I hope you do too!