Word: minerly
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...good thing Professor Miner likes to teach only small classes; this restricts the number of students receiving misinformation from him. Anyone who has read anything on evolutionary theory published in the last 20 to 30 years knows better than to make such remarks about the saber-toothed cats. Thirty-five million years ago, during Oligocene time, the saber-toothed cat pattern was essentially frozen. In some cats, the length of the saber was proportionately as great as or greater than that of the culminating species in the ice age. Thirty-five million years is a pretty fair length of time...
Later-Life Influence. At Columbia, Historian Dwight Miner, 61, carries with zest and buoyancy the weighty responsibility of teaching that college's long-famed course in contemporary civilization, following the tracks of such illustrious predecessors as Rexford Guy Tugwell and Jacques Barzun. Creeping, leaping, lolling his head like a cow, he tries to span everything from the Magna Carta to World...
When he hits Darwin and mutations, Miner yanks at his front teeth. "The saber-toothed tiger," he says, "was noted for its eyeteeth. They grew and grew, giving the tiger a tremendous bite. They could just WHANG on that prey." He claps his hands together. "But this mutation kept recurring and the eyeteeth grew longer and longer, till they came down like this"?he drapes his forefingers down over his lower jaw?"and then what happened? They couldn't get a bite. So now there are no more saber-toothed tigers...
...Miner gets a kick out of such lectures, but confesses that he prefers to teach a colloquium around a table where "fellows are not looking at the backs of one another's necks." He seeks "an electric exchange" with students, is "tremendously pleased" when invited to a student dinner or fraternity house. His loftiest aim for his C.C. course, in fact, is to furnish ideas for the kids to kick around in bull sessions. "The bull session is a very important aspect of education," he contends. As the hours grow late, students "express what they are really thinking about?they...
...Miner gets grateful letters from former students and, though an erratic typist, pecks out warm answers. He says he is amazed and happy when some company president, for example, quotes something Miner said that changed his outlook on life?"but of course I never remember saying...