Science Education during the Covid Shutdown: The Barack and Joe Comedy Hour

Like most colleges and universities, Southeastern Oklahoma State University is shut down, while classes continue online. Those of us who were teaching entirely face-to-face (F2F, in educator jargonese) have had to scramble to figure out what to do.

One of the biggest hurdles is what to do in place of exams. Exams require security and supervision. “Online exams” are an invitation to cheating. There are all kinds of technological ways to help reduce this problem: “lockdown,” in which a student cannot browse the internet on the same computer while taking an exam; and video monitors to make sure they are not looking at answers within the range of the video monitor. Of course, students could always look things up on their phones, which they can keep out of video range.

A few students would cheat. I could already tell you their names. But I would have to impose measures on all of the students to keep a few of them from cheating. This would make the good students feel that I did not respect them. Instead, I decided to assign essay questions to the students in place of the exams. These are questions that are not easily copied from the internet (and if they try, I will catch them with the help of Dr. Google). In fact, in a few cases, I invite them to search online. For example, on the topic of pseudogenes in my general biology class, most and maybe all information online (even on YouTube) is very technical. I want them to give short, clear answers.

Each student will receive a subset of my master list of essay questions. That way, it is very unlikely for any two students to work together. Also, since they will not be on campus, they would be unlikely to work together. Or if they do, and they don’t use the same words in their answers, I know that their minds were activated.

In my general botany class, I had already assigned projects for them to do online, for (1) their carbon footprints, and how many trees it would take to compensate for that footprint, and (2) how much transpiration a tree carries out, and how much air-conditioning electricity it would take to equal the cooling power of a tree. These assignments will go on as scheduled.

In my systematic botany course, the students have to know how to recognize and distinguish Oklahoma plant species. Since I cannot do this in an exam situation, I will send them images from my own collection of trees, shrubs, vines, etc. that they need to identify, partial credit if they get close. If I show them an image of a slippery elm, and they write American elm, they get most of the credit; winged elm, maybe half credit or a little less; if they write sycamore (a mistake that has actually been made), no credit. This is how I will assess the recognition part.

(Do you know what tree this is?)

I wrote essay questions for the systematic botany students. But I decided to make it fun. I decided to use the Barack and Joe Comedy Hour approach, with special guest stars Mitch McConnell, Jimmy Carter, Elizabeth Warren, George W. Bush, the Cherokee chief, and the man every farmer (and botanist) loves to hate, Michael Bloomberg. I wanted to share a few of them with you.

• “Look at this cottonwood tree,” said Barack. “That isn’t a cottonwood,” said Joe. “But, it’s by a river and it has triangular leaves!” said Barack. “But look at the bark,” said Joe. What did Joe notice that Barack did not? (Don’t answer, “The bark, you idiot.” Tell me about the bark.)
• I received a letter from Barack, which said, “Dear Dr. Rice. I am going through south central Oklahoma on a vacation trip. I heard there was a rare species of tree that grows along the Blue River. Could you kindly tell me what it is, where to find it, and what it looks like. Please give me enough detail so that I can tell it apart from all the other trees.” What should I tell him?
• Barack and Joe were walking along the creek in Beavers Bend State Park. Being afraid of marijuana trip lines, they stayed on the trail. “I’m having trouble telling hornbeam from hophornbeam,” said Joe. “They’re so easy to tell apart, even a politician can do it!” said Barack. “How?” asked Joe. “You can tell them apart by their fruits and by their bark,” said the man who is retired and no longer needs to worry about leading the free world to the man who still wants to lead the free world. “How?” asked Joe. What answer did Barack give?
• You’ve never seen a fight like two politicians arguing about how to tell a sweetgum from a sycamore. Joe told Barack three ways to tell them apart. What were they? Answer for each species. (There are actually more than three ways.)
• “You’re standing in poison ivy,” Joe said to Barack. “Am not,” said Barack. “But it has three leaflets,” said Joe. “True,” said Barack, “but this is box elder.” “But box elder is a tree!” said Joe. “But these are little box elder saplings,” said Barack. How did Barack know they were box elder saplings and not poison ivy? He had at least two ways.
• “Whar I come from,” said Mitch McConnell, “we know how to reckonize a southern red oak tree.” “But, Mitch,” said Joe, “that’s a northern red oak tree.” “Whah, one look at the lobes, bases, and undersides of the leaves and you can tell it’s a southern red oak,” said Mitch. How did Mitch know the tree was a southern red oak?
• In retirement, former president George W. Bush decided he would get rich by planting a big plantation of persimmon trees. It was easy; just find some wild trees, dig up the clones growing around them, and plant the clones in an orchard. George waited twelve years, from 2008 to 2020, watching his trees grow. But they never produced fruits. Can you think of a reason for this? (The answer is not just “yes.” Explain.)
• Former president Jimmy Carter smiled really big as he explained to Joe, “This here tree is a white ash.” “No,” said Joe. “It’s a hickory.” “No,” said Jimmy. “Look at the arrangement of the leaf scars on the stem. Not only that, but the leaf scars themselves look distinctive.” Jimmy smiled even bigger. What two items of information did he give to Joe?
• “It doesn’t take any brains to be a botanist,” said Michael Bloomberg. “Any more than it does to be a farmer. All oak trees are alike.” He didn’t really say this, but if he had, I would have told him a thing or two. I would have controlled my anger, then told him how and where to find and recognize two rare and unusual oaks found in Oklahoma: Quercus incana, and Quercus durandii. What would I tell him?
• “My grandpappy ruined his saw tryin’ to cut down this here bois-d’arc tree,” said the man. Joe, coming through Oklahoma on a campaign tour, said, “Oh, I thought that was a white mulberry tree.” “They is at least four ways you kin tell that this is a bois-d’arc and not a mulberry.” Indicate four ways. You have more than four to choose from.
• “My ancestors were Cherokees,” said Elizabeth Warren. “Oh, really?” asked Chuck Hoskin, Jr., the new Cherokee chief. “Then maybe you know how to mix up the black drink that the warriors used before going to battle. But first, you have to know how to recognize a yaupon holly. Incidentally, there is a reason that scientists named it Ilex vomitoria.” He then told her how to recognize the shrub, and how it was different from other kinds of holly. How?
• Your supervisor asks you how to tell a saltcedar from a red cedar. “It don’t matter,” you tell her. “We got to cut both of them down.” “But I still want you to know the difference,” she says. You are now on the spot. How do you answer?
• Your task, to help prepare for the Cherokee National Holiday, is to go out in the forest and find some muscadine grape vines (Vitis rotundifolia) so the cooks can make some grape dumplings (http://globaltableadventure.com/recipe/cherokee-grape-dumplings-medicine-for-happy-hearts/). Instead, you found some Vitis mustangensis by mistake. How could you have distinguished these two species and avoided this mistake?
• Feather is a young woman who works with the Ethnobotany office of the Cherokee Nation. (No kidding, there is one.) She is passionate about restoring rivercane to its original habitats in Oklahoma. It has many cultural uses, not the least of which is making blowguns for darts. She has to know the difference between the native Arundinaria gigantea and the invasive Arundo donax. How can she tell the difference?
• “I think the economy needs a great new fruit tree,” said Joe. “Something that grows in Oklahoma, is not already a domesticated tree, and tastes good. It would create a lot of jobs to grow them, harvest them, process them, sell them. Think of how many jobs could be created in Oklahoma!” “Joe,” said Barack, “Can’t you forget for just a minute that you are campaigning for president?” Which species (at least four to choose from) was Joe talking about? Would you invest in such an orchard? Why or why not?
• A thief thought he dug up a bunch of Echinacea rootstocks from a protected native prairie. But when he got them back to the barn, his accomplice told him, “You idiot! These aren’t Echinacea! They’re Symphiotrichum!” What did the thieves want to do with the Echinacea, and how did the second man know it was Symphiotrichum instead?
• “What a pretty fern,” said Bernie. “We have them in the great state of Vermont.” “We have them in Oklahoma, too,” said Tulsa mayor G. T. Bynum. “And it’s not a fern—it is Achillea millaefolium.” How can you tell Achillea is not a fern, even before the flowers (which ferns do not have) open?

 Hope you enjoy these examples. Creativity to the rescue during the pandemic.

Have We Evolved Beyond Racism?

No.

First, consider the biological reason. The brain physiology underlying our minds has not evolved appreciably since the stone age. Not only every race but every tribe considered itself chosen by God to kill the others. There has not been enough time for our brains to have undergone significant biological evolution. We have their stone age brains.

Second, the cultural reason. Surely we have evolved beyond ancient mindsets by cultural evolution? I am afraid that the answer here, also, is no. Certainly, we have made progress in the past 150 years. But we have not left racism behind. Instead we have just pushed it into our subconscious minds. It still calls the shots in many cases, and often determines what we do, but we may not be aware of it.

The major example of which we Americans, and observers from around the world, are aware is the utter determination of the Republican Party (which is disproportionately white compared to the American population) to destroy Barack Obama. They were confident that Mitt Romney would win the 2012 election. When Obama won re-election, the Republicans went to Plan B: destroy Obama. I consider their subconscious motivation to be racism. Here’s why.

Obama is a lame duck. There is no political need to destroy Obama; if Republicans succeed, they will have President Joe Biden. (Similarly, Democrats held back from impeaching George W. Bush, not wishing to have President Dick Cheney.) If there is no political reason to destroy him, then there must be a personal reason.

How do we know that the Republican attacks on Obama are not merely politically motivated? We know this because we can scientifically test this hypothesis: If the Republican hatred of Barack Obama were politically motivated, then they would hate him less than they hated Bill Clinton. But, as it turns out, they hate him much much more.

And the evidence for this? There are, as I see it, three differences between Bill Clinton (while he was president) and Barack Obama. They are as follows.

First, Barack Obama has high ethical standards than Bill Clinton did as president. Instead of having a Monica Lewinsky hanging around him, Obama is a morally upright husband and father. The Obama family is the picture-perfect American family. (In this way Obama also compares favorably to John F. Kennedy.) This should be a reason that Republicans, who claim to be God’s representatives of purity and morality upon the face of this sordid planet, would like Obama better than Clinton. Therefore the ethical difference between Clinton and Obama cannot be the reason for Republican hatred of Obama.

Second, Barack Obama is more politically and fiscally conservative than Clinton. Republicans decry Obamacare as socialist, but it is much, much less socialist, and incorporates more market forces, than did the ill-fated 1993 health care plan proposed by Bill Clinton. Republicans reacted strongly against the Clinton plan, but not with the ferocity of their attack on Obama. Obama’s comparative fiscal conservativeness should be a reason that Republicans would like Obama better than they liked Clinton. Therefore the political difference between Clinton and Obama cannot be the reason for Republican hatred of Obama.

A third difference is race. Clinton is white and Obama is black (actually, biracial, but he identifies with his black heritage). This is the only reason that I can think of that would make Republicans hate Obama worse than they hated Clinton. And it is clearly a personal, intense hatred.

Of course, Republicans forced a government shutdown during the first Clinton Administration also. The federal government shut down all but emergency services twice: from November 14 through November 19, 1995 and from December 16, 1995 to January 6, 1996, a total of 28 days. As of tomorrow, the 2013 government shutdown will have reached the same number of days as the first shutdown, in November of 1995. Republicans appear resolved to continue the shutdown even if it means defaulting on contractual funds on October 17. And this time, we have all seen evidence of the extreme antipathy that Republicans have showed toward Obama. They have shown him the kind of disdain that slavery advocates—from the Union states, the confederate states having seceded—showed Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

As further evidence that Republican antipathy is not merely political, consider that the Republicans could achieve their aims in a constitutional manner. They could pass a bill repealing Obamacare in both the house and senate, and have the president sign it. He won’t, because he won re-election in 2012 largely on the issue of Obamacare. The constitutional way for Republicans to have their way would have been to win the 2012 election. Instead, they pass laws creating programs then refuse to fund those same programs.

I believe that in the long run American history will evaluate Obama the same way as it depicts Lincoln. At the time, many strong voices attacked Lincoln as a dictator who wanted to ruin the United States by giving black people the rights of citizenship. Today, those voices are buried in the dustbin of history under a patina of disgust. Similarly, I believe, the Republican voices of our day will be derided in the same way as are the 1865 voices in support of slavery. The party of angry old white men, and a few angry young white men, and a very very small number of angry Latinos and blacks, will dwindle into an insignificance from which their stockpiles of guns cannot resurrect them.

There are other ways in which Republican positions have racist effects. Global warming is caused by carbon emissions from human activity, for which white industrial nations are largely responsible. But most of the burden of famine and disease will be borne by nations dominated by people of color, especially in Africa. Republicans, I assume, do not hold their global warming denialism with racist intent. But subconsciously they might be thinking, who cares about a bunch of Africans?

Of course, Republicans will claim they are not racists. And they may honestly believe they are not. But I conclude for the above reasons that racism is operating in their subconscious minds. We are all cavemen in modern clothes, some of us more than others.

It’s Official: Republicans Reject Altruism

I must interrupt my Evotour series (one entry remains to be posted) to bring you late-breaking news about altruism. (By late-breaking I mean less than a week old. I usually get month or year old news to you.)

President Barack Obama made a statement that sounds like a completely non-controversial, common sense description of altruism as it plays out in our communities and in our nation. Here is the original quote. Obama was talking to small business owners: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

I cannot imagine that anyone would object to this. Businesses do not teach their employees how to read and write and add and subtract. Some businesses build their own private roads, but those roads connect to highways that are built by counties, states, and the federal government. If you’ve got a business, you did not build the schools and roads. (I plan to operate a small business myself soon, so I can say soon that Obama’s statement reflects the common sense beliefs of a small business owner.) Businesses and families can thrive only within stable communities, bound together by altruism, which is facilitated by reasonable regulations and reasonable taxes.

Altruism, as I have written several times previously, is doing well by doing good. One animal (such as a human) does good things to and for another animal of the same species, and both of the animals prosper as a result. There are innumerable examples of altruism, confirmed by observation and (thanks to people like Martin Nowak) mathematics. It is one of the clearest components of evolutionary theory. And it is intuitively obvious to all of us.

Mitt Romney, however, had to attack Barack Obama for this statement. Obama clarified that he meant that if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build the schools, roads, and bridges. On August 13, Romney attacked even more vigorously, saying that this context was even worse than the original statement. Perhaps Romney, and therefore the mainstream of the Republican Party, envision a future in which America consists of individuals who do not help one another out but just fight and struggle with one another for dominance. Gated communities that are entirely self-contained? I cannot believe that Republicans are stupid enough to believe this. I suspect that Romney simply attacks anything Obama says without even thinking about it. If Obama said the sky is blue, Romney would say that this is Obama’s Democratic bias, and that the sky is really Republican red. Long ago John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself,” and until now pretty much everyone accepted this as true. Welcome to the Republican vision of what America should be like. Or not; as I said, I think Mitt spoke without thinking.

Mitt Romney is not the only one to speak without thinking. When Joe Biden said, this week, that the Republicans want to put people (he was speaking to a largely black audience) back in chains, he easily won the Stupidest Statement Award. Where did Obama find this clown anyway? Biden is the same one who emailed all of Obama’s supporters and said that if Obama did not win the election it was their fault for not giving more money. As one of those followers, I emailed my response: that this was an offensive statement. But while Joe Biden is destroying altruism by clownish incompetence, it appears that Republicans are destroying it deliberately.

If Mitt Romney makes a big deal about attacking Obama on the issue (previously, non-issue) of altruism, I can only wonder if he has any ideas of his own. Perhaps American businesses can prosper by investing their money in overseas banks the way he does? If Romney makes the rich richer, will this automatically lift up the middle class? The rich have been getting richer, and the middle class has been getting poorer (especially by debt burden). Raising up the rich has not raised up the middle class in recent years, and there is no reason to expect that it would in the future.

This is just one more example of Republicans taking on what should be a non-partisan topic—something confirmed by science—and attacking it. Evolution, global warming, stem cells, and now altruism. As a biology instructor, what can I do? Do I need to ask the Republican Party whether carbon atoms really exist before I teach about molecular structure? The Bible does not, after all, say that carbon atoms exist. I can only hope that this example is extreme; but I would never have guessed that altruism would be treated as a dangerous theory either.

Good luck to all of you altruists.