Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
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Hello, all. I've been around for a few days but haven't yet made an #introduction post. So here we go.
I'm a #bioinformatics consultant with [The Bioinformatics CRO](https://www.bioinformaticscro.com/) working on a variety of small and large projects ranging from fundamental genomics to clinical decision support. Before that, for several years I was a postdoc and ORISE fellow specializing in high-altitude medicine and physiology at the University of Colorado Altitude Research Center. My academic background is a nearly even mix of #biostatistics, machine learning, and biology.
The ARC* has been sadly moribund for a few years, but thanks to collaborations with other groups, we're [starting to get more active again](https://harcsummit.org/). Hopefully I will have more to say about that in the future. Meanwhile, feel free to ask me anything about #altitude medicine---I think I still remember most of it.
Years before _that_, I was an Air Force #medic (after a brief stint as an Army infantryman) followed by a couple of years as a civilian EMT. My time in patient care informs my approach to science: the numbers I crunch represent human lives.
Otherwise, I'm an armchair #paleontologist hoping to be able to call myself an _amateur_ paleontologist again one of these days---by which I mean actually spending some time in the field and/or the prep lab---a too-occasional science fiction writer, and chronically sleep deprived. Also, my life is the internet: it's cats all the way down.
*Fellow #Primeval fans may recognize the jacket in the picture. My wonderful fiancée found it for me when I was hired at the ARC, for exactly the reason you think.
On "real Christians."
This is a lightly edited version of a post I first made several years ago on Facebook. Sadly, it never seems to stop being relevant.
===
Every time I hear #Christians saying "they're not real Christians" or "this isn't real #Christianity," about other Christians doing something that brings discredit on the ##religion, my skin crawls.
Because if they're not Christians ... well, neither was Constantine. Neither were the generations of #monarchs who followed, invoking the divine right of kings. Neither were the #popes and #bishops and #priests—and note that I'm not just talking about #Catholics here—who almost universally supported and legitimized the idea that #God had put our leaders in place, and to oppose them was #blasphemy.
Neither were the #Crusaders, the #Inquisitors, the #witch-burners. Neither were the soldiers who fought generations of #religious #wars within #Christendom, including the Thirty Years' War that wrought devastation equal to both World Wars. Neither for that matter were the politicians who gave us what we *call* the First World War, in which most of the major combatants on both sides proudly claimed the Christian label, and in several cases were still official theocracies.
Neither were the Christians who rounded up their #Jewish neighbors in the Second for delivery to the camps—and if you claim that was the work of a #neopagan cult that maybe a few thousand people total ever took seriously, I'll laugh in your face before cutting you out of my life. (But I'll remember who and what you are, believe me.) Neither were the people who used Christianity to justify #conquest and #slavery and #genocide and #segregation, for centuries, and in many cases still do.
In short, if you say these people aren't Christians, you're saying most Christians throughout the *entire history of the religion* weren't Christians. You can die on that hill if you really want to. But you'll die alone, and most likely at the hands of your fellow believers.
Christians are, as a rule, no worse than other people. But you're no better, either. Do you *want* to be better? Great, that's what everyone else wants too.
So prove it. Stop making excuses. Own these people, and *then* confront them. Admit that they're yours, and then expunge them. Scourge the heretics with fire and sword, and send them wailing into the outer darkness tearing their hair and gnashing their teeth. Cast them into the lake of fire.
If you do this, if you have first the moral and then the physical courage to face this monstrosity in your midst unflinchingly and with full knowledge of what it is, then you'll have plenty of help. #Jews and #Muslims and #Hindus and #Wiccans and #atheists and all the rest won't just cheer you on. We'll be right there by your side.
And while there are in the US still more Christians than all of us put together, there aren't more of *this kind* of Christian than all decent human beings put together. We can't fight them alone. Neither can you. Together we can—as long as you're honest about what that means.
If you don't? We'll be right back to #Torquemada, with a high-tech gloss. You might live a little longer than the rest of us, but not by much, and you'll go to the rack and the stake and the oven with the words of your own holy writ shouted in your ears.
Those are the only two options. Your choice.
===
Addendum:
I have a great many friends who grew up Christian, and left the religion at some point. Despite having made the choice to walk away from their childhood faith, they often feel the reflexive need to defend the people they were, and in most cases their families still are.
Those who are still Christians, of whom I trust I also have a fair number left, may feel the same impulse—although interestingly, it seems to me they're less reflexive on the whole than the former believers.
We're all made of our #history. The people we were are still the people we are, in some corner of our brains. And there are complexities about being on the inside of any group that outsiders can never quite grasp. It's similar to the way I am about the #military, which is practically a religion in its own right.
Okay. Stipulated, as lawyers say on TV and maybe in real life too. I get it. Now please get this:
Unless you *grew up* as a member of a religious minority, you will most likely never understand, on a gut level, the terror the majority religion inflicts by its very existence.
This isn't unique to Christianity, to be clear. Every majority religion, in every time and place, has unconsciously (and often consciously as well, to be sure) been casually brutal to infidels and heretics. Nature of the beast. But here in the US, that beast invariably carries a cross, so there's the focus of my attention.
You don't have to understand it. Just accept that it exists, and it leaves scars. I can live with those scars, and so can nearly everyone else who bears them. That *stigma*, if you will.
But if you cut us, we still bleed. We'll heal from those wounds too, and add new scars to the old. Long after the bleeding stops, we'll remember who gave them to us.
Here I stand; I can do no other. How about you?
Getting published in #Chest was one of the prouder moments of my #research career. (The journal title did provoke some snickers among friends not in the biz, yes.) #MAGAts want to run it and every other #scientific source into the ground. Objective reality is anathema to ideologues. 
My main hope for the future of my country is that people this stupid can't hold on to power forever.
The F-35 is probably a better #fighter, on the whole, than the current version of the JAS 39. The F-47 will probably be better than the next version. But the best plane is the one you can get in the air.
Export restrictions, maintenance requirements, and the possibility of a "kill switch" make any US-built military aircraft a terrible bet for most customers. If Saab can find an alternate engine (the current powerplant is built by General Electric) then the #Gripen becomes a clearly better choice.
Saab claims its #ECM capabilities can be upgraded to make it the equal of any "stealth fighter." I don't know enough to evaluate this claim. I do know that if I were in charge of defense acquisitions for anywhere outside the US, I'd be willing to toss a coin to find out.
https://www.eurasiantimes.com/saab-offers-full-capability-jas-39-gripens-amid/
On Facebook this got a bunch of comments saying things like "#Denver used to be #cool X years ago!" but nobody can agree on what X is. So far I've seen 10, 15-20, and 25. Do I hear 30 ... 30 ... going for 30 ... do I hear 35 ...
https://www.westword.com/news/denver-named-one-of-the-coolest-us-cities-heres-why-24175783
I've lived in Denver most of my life. Ten years ago people were talking about how cool it was ten years before that. Fifteen years ago they were talking about how cool it was fifteen years before that. Twenty years ago, well, you get the idea.
So I'll stake my claim: Denver was coolest when I was young and had a cheap apartment and no adult responsibilities and could stay up all night and still function the next day. Just like it was for everyone else.
Sumdood on Facebook is insisting the #Missouri #River is "#navigable" all the way into #Montana because Lewis and Clark got #canoes up it.
Words mean things. Those meanings are not always obvious. Google is free.
93% of young male #Triceratops think they could beat a full-grown #Tyrannosaurus in a fight. 48% think they could beat two at once. 
I'm so tired of thinking about #politics.
This isn't me saying "I don't care about politics," because of course I do. It isn't "LOL nothing matters," because everything matters. And it sure isn't "who cares who's in office, it won't change my life," because I know better. Politics matters to me at least as much as ever, and that's a lot.
But I used to be able to go hours, sometimes maybe even days, without thinking about it—because for the most part, it just *worked*. Yeah, there was always some awful bill or executive order or court decision. The machinery that led to those outcomes, as bad as they could be, kept grinding along.
Now that machine, which like most clunky old machines requires constant maintenance, is instead being sabotaged. "Need an oil change? Try sand and hydrochloric acid instead!" And if you think the machine does bad things when it works ... wait until you see what happens when it doesn't.
My worry won't do anything to keep it going, of course. Like I've said many times since November 5th, and especially since January 20th, the *only* thing I can do that will have any effect is to keep my personal machine running. Take care of me and mine.
Yeah, I'm trying really hard to do that. It's not working.
I hate the saboteurs for more reasons than I can count. I hate their cruelty, and their bigotry, and their pettiness, and their murderous willful ignorance. Always have, always will.
Right now, I think I hate them for pulling me away from taking care of those I love more than anything. Which is a really high bar.
Also, #Carney should really hire Trump as his #campaign manager: https://338canada.com/federal.htm
For the first time since the start of his second term, #Trump hit 50% #disapproval in #VoteHub's #polling #aggregation today. https://votehub.com/polls/
Presidents have come back from this. #Reagan bottomed out at something like 30% early in his first term, and then of course won re-election in a landslide. But Trump doesn't have that kind of political acumen.
If we have anything resembling a fair #election, 2026 will be a bloodbath, and I'm willing to bet 2028 as well. If we don't, well, it will be a bloodbath of a different kind.
Comment on a post about #tariffs and the possibility of #smuggling from #Canada: "without Crown Royal, we'll run into a national shortage of #dice bags."
I know I should just block #spambots and delete their comments, but sometimes I can’t resist.
Yuge #protests. Amazing protests. People come up to me with tears in their eyes, and they say, "Sir"—they always call me "Sir"—"Sir, how do you have such beautiful protests?" And I tell them, "No one knows how to make a deal for protests like your favorite President, #Trump!" The best protests. Bigly.
In principle, I’d prefer to live in a world where private political views aren’t grounds for denying people housing. But I’d also prefer to live in a world where Trump’s brand of politics is the province of a despised lunatic fringe, not half the country. Since we don’t live in the second kind of world, we’re under no obligation to live in the first.
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
