State of Emergency

    President Trump is usurping the power of Congress when he decides to circumvent the latest budget appropriation which did not include full funding of a wall on the Mexican border.  If it was an emergency, why was there so much time to debate the issue in Congress.  An emergency is when there is no time for a  debate.  Trump is acting like a spoiled child  trying to get his way.  And worse for the country, he is acting like he was the absolute law and can ignore the Constitution.

 I am for secure borders and legal immigration.  A wall is symbolic of insularity, hostility and prejudice.  I much prefer the symbol of the last century the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor.

The only thing I fear more than our puffed up, strutting, reality tv star president is the opposition which has gone off the charts of all reality based thinking. 

Hey! Where's the Beef?

2/10/2019

Everything in biology is done with statistical analysis.  If you want to know if something is true you begin by gathering data and then analyzing the data to determine if what you have indicates something that could not happen by chance.  For example, if a gene seems to be associated with a particular disease an attempt will be made to take the observed correlation and subject it to a statistical test in order to determine the probability that the correlation could occur by chance.  Generally a probability of 5% or less of the numbers occurring by chance is required to be relatively certain of causality. 

I wonder if any aspect of hypothesis testing has ever been applied to a functional gene arising by chance even given millions of years, or to the spontaneous creation of life in a sea of chemicals, or of a functional gene or proto-gene appearing by chance in one individual, surviving and spreading through the population, or the probability that the gaps in the fossil record are simply a factor of having overlooked them.  If  there are, I have not heard of them.  The theory of evolution is the one area of biology exempt from genuine statistical analysis.

What color are People?

I object to the term 'people of color'.  In my youth 'colored people' were African Americans.  It is not a very good term. People of color is the same term but with an air of elitism attached to it.  In the victim mentality that promotes this term, it is assumed that dark skin color puts you in the oppressed class automatically and white skin puts you in the oppressor class.  The old communist doctrine of an oppressor class and an oppressed class has been transformed from a purely economic one to a purely racial one which groups people into two groups, white people, that is people of European descent, and every other kind of people, based solely on skin color.