Unfortunately, reasonable might find it even more repellent than the arachnophobes find my spider photos, so I’ll have to tuck it below the fold. Trigger warning!
All these routine genetic testing services are having an interesting consequence: people are discovering genetic connections with all kinds of strangers. For instance, I was contacted by a woman who is about my age because 23andMe said she was my second cousin — she’d been given up for adoption as a baby, and so was looking for information on her biological family. I passed the word on to my mother, who asked around a little bit, but it was awkward. You can’t very well press your elderly uncles & aunts & great-uncles & great-aunts if they knew which of our relatives was secretly pregnant in 1958 and traveled to southern California to give birth. I learned nothing. But I’ve got more relatives submitting DNA samples for these tests, and maybe somewhere along the line some embarrassing history will be revealed. I feel for all parties involved.
But what if you innocently submitted a sample and then discovered that you had 50 or more half-brothers and -sisters? That’s what happened to a group of people, mostly in Indiana, who discovered they all shared the same father, a man named Donald Cline, who was (you probably won’t be surprised) a fertility clinic doctor. The secret to his success was that he used fresh sperm for insemination — really fresh sperm. Apparently he’d masturbate in his office and then come into the examining room where his patient was exposed in the stirrups, and he’d have in his hand a still-warm vial of his secret sauce.
This, it turns out, is not illegal in Indiana. They have no laws regulating ethical insemination policies, so there was nothing he could be charged with, except obstruction of justice. He’d lied to investigators, initially claiming he’d used med student sperm, then that it was only a few patients, and then as the numbers racked up, he was rather flexible in claiming that he’d only done this as many times as there were offspring with evidence in hand. So they couldn’t get him on abuse of his responsibilities as a doctor, but only on the charge of lying about it. Oh, Indiana.
Wanton insemination of multiple women in a community has other consequences.
The donor children have begun cataloging the ways their own paths have crossed, too. White went to Purdue at the same time as one of his half brothers. One sibling sold another a wagon at a garage sale. Two of them lived on the same street. Two had kids on the same softball team. They’re worried that their children are getting old enough to date soon. “Did you not consider we all live in a relatively close area?” one sister said she has wondered about Cline. “Did you really think … that we wouldn’t meet? That we wouldn’t maybe date? That we wouldn’t have kids who might date? Did you never consider that?” Cline now looms over their kids’ every innocent crush, their every prom date.
Yeah, those kids might want to demand genetic testing of potential spouses before they marry.
But Lyin’ Donald Cline has a defense. It’s religion, of course.
What particularly galled some of the siblings was how Cline used his faith as deflection. By all accounts, he is a very religious man—for his sentencing, several elders from his evangelical church wrote letters attesting to his character. After the restaurant meeting, Cline called Ballard to say her digging up the past was destroying his marriage: His wife considered his actions adultery. In the call, which Ballard recorded, Cline told her he regretted what he’d done—though he admitted to using his own sperm only nine or 10 times—and quoted Jeremiah 1:5, in which God lays out his plan for the prophet: “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb, I knew you.” Again, Ballard felt he was using her faith to try to manipulate her.
His actions tell me all that I need to know about his character. His words now only tell me that he is a liar and a coward. I have more respect for his wife, though, and one way he might get punished is if his wife divorces him, using the voluminous physical evidence that he was a serial adulterer, and takes him for everything she can. Followed by civil suits from his victims that clean out the rest.
Wow. He gets around. Phillip Blair is the bozo who was preaching on a Sydney subway, but there’s more! Here’s a video of Mr Blair railing at passers-by on the street — everyone is avoiding him. He has a limited repertoire, simply assuring everybody that he loves them at the top of his lungs, telling them about his past as a businessman and marine, yelling at them that they can be saved by Jesus Christ…but this is not a religion, oh no, it’s a personal relationship with god. The low point comes when he chastises a man in a wheelchair, telling him that Jesus could help him, but he’s too bitter to ask.
The funny thing is that it is Blair who is posting these embarrassing videos to his own YouTube channel, where we also learn that he hates evolution.
Does anyone think these obnoxious tactics work?
When I lived in Philadelphia, one of the miseries of taking the subway was the abusive street preachers who’d board and start haranguing everyone. There was one woman I remember vividly who’d wear a sandwich board covered with an incoherent salad of bible verses and condemnation and fire up with a well-practiced gospel singers vocal chords and tell us all about how we were going to burn in a lake of fire. Philly residents are generally blunt and outspoken, but no sir, we all just shut up, shoved our faces in the Daily News sports page, and hoped no one would say a word, because they would start gabbling and howling even louder if you did. I hated it. I’m kind of an outspoken atheist myself, but I knew that protesting would be futile, and would just alienate the other riders because no one wanted to hear any of this crap at 7am, before the start of a long day, or at 5pm, when we all just wanted to get home.
They have a different response in Australia. An evangelical loudmouth (and an American asshole, too–how embarrassing) boarded a Sydney subway train and started witnessing to the other passengers. He seems a bit nonplussed because no one is respecting his piety.
“Yeah, shut up,” another passenger chimes in. Phillip struggles along for a bit longer, as the pissed off legends who frequent Sydney Trains turn around, block their ears, and ignore everything he’s saying.
“Mate, if you ask for our time, we have the right to say no, we’re not giving it to you,” one passenger points out.
Why are you so triggered, my friend?Phillip asks.
Whoa. That’s a tell-tale phrase only a right-winger would use.
“Why won’t you just shut up?” the passenger responds. “Speak quietly to someone who wants to listen.”
At this point, the train reaches a station, and almost everyone seizes the opportunity to get as far as possible away from this guy. He keeps trying to yell things, but it’s a bit hard to hear him as people shoulder through him to get to the Opal gates.
I’m here because I care about you — one more stop and I’m leaving!he pleads, trying to get a single person to hear him.“Oh, thank god,” someone responds.
I care about you,he tries again.“Apparently not about our opinions, because we’d like you to shut up.”
“No one wants to hear it, bro,” another passenger adds.
I’ve been in prisons in El Salvador, I’ve been in the slums of India, I’ve –“Nobody cares, okay?” the first angry passenger explodes. “I don’t care if you love me. I don’t know you!” Half the carriage is laughing at this stage, and cheering every time someone gets the preacher to shut up.
“You’re the selfish one because you won’t shut up! Can you not see that? You’re forcing your opinion on everyone in this train. We are asking you to shut the fuck up. And do you? No! How selfish is that?”
At this stage, the guy finally, finally shuts up. Salvation is close. Heaven, in the form of a quiet peak hour train carriage, looms. And then another passenger begins to speak.
Well, let me give my testimony,he says.I used to be a Buddhist, for 27 years of my life, but I became a Christian, um,“Oh no,” someone sighs. The guy closest to the ex-Buddhist shakes his head and puts his headphones on. “Nobody asked,” someone else groans. “Shut up, you sound like such a dickhead.”
I learned a few things from that story.
It’s worth it to make evangelicals squirm when they inflict their hokey religion on the public.
They’ll still keep trying to talk, so you won’t get immediate relief, but maybe they’ll eventually learn appropriate behavior.
Australians are like Philadelphians, only more so.
Just how long has Britain been suffering under Theresa May’s dithering leadership? This video is almost two years old and it’s like it could have been made yesterday! Either Tracey Ullman is a prophet with supernatural powers, or the UK is afflicted with a horrible case of chronic stasis.
The DUP wants a “bowl of M&Ms with all the homosexual ones removed” — at least that one’s easy, hand them an empty bowl, because everyone knows all M&Ms are gay.
Tucker Carlson just gets worse and worse.
Tucker Carlson: "How did we wind up with a country in which feminists do science?" pic.twitter.com/e9R10EYdNA
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) April 5, 2019
@RD_Denton will be using your books this summer!
Also, hey students, this looks like fun.
This course will be an broad introduction to Biology (genetics, evolution, development, ecology, behavior) through the lens of sexual reproduction. The students will be reading two great books aimed at general audiences (Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice for All Creation by Olivia Judson and Wild Sex by Carin Bondar), taking part in classroom discussions/activities, and video-chatting with multiple scientists who study reproductive biology and evolution.
The statue of liberty looks fabulous in a kilt.
The anti-vaxxers aren’t my usual beat, but this guy was so egregiously ignorant I couldn’t sit quietly. Jon Del Arroz, “the leading Hispanic voice in science fiction” (we’ve encountered him on these pages before) believes that vaccines are population control and makes some very silly arguments.
Rockland County has in effect declared Martial Law on its citizens because of the measles. The media is calling it an “unprecedented move” as it’s banning children from public places.
Something smells fishy here.
Those are two useful words, “in effect”. No, Rockland County did not declare martial law. They declared a state of emergency because they’ve had a constant stream of measles cases for six month, and they’ve only banned infected children from public spaces. They are trying to break the chain of transmission by telling people you can’t stage involuntary pox parties and infect other people’s children.
Misrepresenting the situation is not a promising start.
First, if vaccines worked so well and they made us all immune, why should we be panicked about someone having it?
Because not everyone has been vaccinated. Babies typically are vaccinated against measles at 12-15 months…so my baby granddaughter, for instance, is still vulnerable. Why does Jon Del Arroz want to make babies sick? Does he just hate children?
Also some people are immuno-comprised and more susceptible. Then there are all the dangerous fools who think vaccines are bad and have avoided them for themselves and their children — and while it might seem just that they should suffer from a life-threatening disease and remove themselves from the gene pool, it is not what a humane society should do.
The whole claim is that this ends the disease and we have to therefore inject tons of dead viruses into our body in order to have a healthy society. It seems counterintuitive that we should then be scared of the same disease we were told we eradicated.
Measles was eradicated from the Americas by diligent vaccination efforts. However, it’s still prevalent worldwide, and almost 100,000 people die of measles every year. It’s staging a comeback here in the US because we’ve accumulated a vulnerable sub-population who refuse vaccination for specious reasons. We’d rather reduce that population which acts as a breeding ground for disease by vaccinating them, than by allowing them to die.
The truth is, most outbreaks of measles and mumps happen to VACCINATED people. So it appears whatever vaccine is being used is not all that effective. For outbreaks to be a big problem, this would have to be the case, and it means all the shutting down discussion on any vaccine topic by shaming anyone trying to discuss it seems to have a deeper purpose.
This is flatly false. People who have been vaccinated are safe from measles outbreaks, according to the CDC. However, roughly 10% of the American population has not been vaccinated against measles. Those are the people we’re concerned about.
10% of the US population is about 32 million people. Why do you hate your fellow Americans, Jon Del Arroz?
Second, how many people constitutes an “outbreak?” We’re told it’s only 150 cases in the last year or so. How many people have it now? 154 over an entire year spread out could mean as little as 4-5 people have the disease.
And yet they declared martial law.
It’s not martial law.
The disease was declared eradicated in the US because the chain of transmission was broken by the relatively high rate of vaccination — you were unlikely to encounter someone with the disease, so even if you were susceptible, it wasn’t likely that you’d meet someone who was infected. In local areas like Rockland County, where the number of infected individuals has risen, that’s no longer true — susceptible people, like little babies, have a good chance of randomly encountering a measles carrier. That’s the purpose of the state of emergency, to get people to stop risking other peoples lives and health by bringing the measles virus into public spaces.
It’s very similar to government overreach in New Zealand based on one shooting–they’re grabbing all of the populace’s guns.
Oh god. One track minds.
It’s more like telling people they aren’t allowed to fire their guns randomly into public spaces. You believe in responsible gun ownership, don’t you, Jon Del Arroz? Why do you think people should be allowed to spew infectious snot into crowds?
On the vaccine end, the discussions need to be had. Is every vaccine effective? Is putting them all together in a cocktail healthy for children? Or is there something else at play? Are these used for something else, like creating a populace who ARE chronically diseased all the time and further dependent on the government healthcare?
These discussions have been had. Where were you? You can find discussions of vaccine policy in the scientific literature and at places like the CDC.
Different vaccines have different degrees of effectiveness, because infectious organisms and viruses evolve. Influenza varies frequently, for instance. The measles vaccine is effective and safe.
The vaccine schedule has been empirically evaluated and determined to be safe, much safer than the diseases they prevent.
Vaccines do not make you chronically diseased. They prevent disease states. You will need less healthcare, government or otherwise, if you don’t catch a disease than if you catch one. Your conspiracy theories are bogus.
Our own president said it: “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!”
I’ve yet to see him be wrong.
Vaccines do not cause autism. It’s been tested over and over again. Your own president was wrong.
He has also made claims about Puerto Rico that were factually wrong. He was wrong about Mexico. Do you also believe that wind turbines cause cancer?
Jon Del Arroz is a science fiction author, emphasis on the fiction part. I prefer that my SF authors have at least a passing acquaintance with how science works. Jeez, at least learn how to look the facts up.
It’s an unboxing video! I hear those are popular. Only what I’m unboxing is a pair of spider egg cases.
Spoiler: I don’t find any spiderlings inside. I find evidence of them being there, in bits of molted cuticles, but nothing was moving. I’ll let them warm up for a few days and look again.
If you want to know more about how spiders overwinter, here’s a source:
Tanaka K (1997) Evolutionary Relationship between Diapause and Cold Hardiness in the House Spider, Achaearanea tepidariorum (Araneae: Theridiidae). Journal of Insect Physiology 43(3):271-274.
The relationship between diapause and cold hardiness of the house spider, Achaearanea tepidariorum, differed geographically. In a cool-temperate population, enhanced chilling tolerance and supercooling ability were observed in diapause individuals, whereas a subtropical population showed only chilling tolerance. Because this spider is considered to be of tropical origin, it would follow that the ancestral diapause of this spider was equipped with chilling tolerance, but not with an increased supercooling ability. It seems that the ability to lower the supercooling point evolved through natural selection in the course of expansion of this species to the northern climates.
Now I have an excuse to visit Florida on a collecting trip, to gather representatives of southern populations. Maybe I should go in, like, February.
One other thought I had about the barrenness of these egg cases: it’s like the Donner expedition. Maybe one of the ways spiderlings survive the long cold winter is by eating their siblings, and this winter was particularly harsh.
