GRE Critical Reasoning
Contrary to the assumption that modern technology allows us to improve on nature, it is clear that any major technologically induced changes in a natural system are likely to be detrimental to that system. If you were to open the back of your watch, close your eyes, and poke a pencil into the exposed works, the almost certain result would be damage to the watch. Living organisms too, when subjected to technological alteration, will almost certainly be damaged rather than improved.
#1
The plant called the scarlet gilia can have either red or white flowers. It had long been thought that hummingbirds, which forage by day, pollinate its red flowers and that hawkmoths, which forage at night, pollinate its white flowers. To try to show that this pattern of pollination by colors exists, scientists recently covered some scarlet gilia flowers only at night and others only by day: plants with red flowers covered at night became pollinated; plants with white flowers covered by day became pollinated.
#2
The chief executive officer of one of the country’s most successful steel manufacturing firms is amused at the publicity her management practices have attracted. She thinks managers get too much of the credit for upswings in their businesses. “A fickle public assumes too easily that managers are brilliant when demand is strong and idiotic when it is weak,” she asserts.
#3
To many environmentalists, the extinction of plants—accompanied by the increasing genetic uniformity of species of food crops—is the single most serious environmental problem. Something must be done to prevent the loss of wild food plants or no longer-cultivated food plants. Otherwise, the lack of genetic diversity could allow a significant portion of a major crop to be destroyed overnight. In 1970, for example, southern leaf blight destroyed approximately 20 percent of the United States corn crop, leaving very few varieties of corn unaffected in the areas over which the disease had spread.
#4
Many pregnant women suffer from vitamin deficiency, but this is frequently not due to vitamin deficiency in their diets; most often it is because they have higher requirements for vitamins than do the rest of the population.
#5
Whenever the sun is shining and the windchill factor is below zero, Susan wears her parka. Whenever it is raining and the windchill factor is above zero, Susan wears her raincoat. Sometimes it rains when the sun is shining.
