That’s just how capitalism works

You didn’t think it was to benefit citizens, did you? It’s to enrich the already wealthy.

If you wear glasses, you might have noticed that they’ve been getting steadily more expensive in recent years, no matter which brand you buy and no matter where you shop.

That’s because a giant-but-obscure company called Luxottica bought out Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters, then used their dominance over the retail side of glasses to force virtually every eyewear brand to sell to them (Luxxotica owns or licenses Armani, Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Chanel, Coach, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Polo Ralph Lauren, Ray-Ban, Tiffany, Valentino, Vogue and Versace); and used that to buy out all the other eyewear retailers of any note (Luxottica owns Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut and Target Optical) and then also bought out insurers like Eyemed Vision Care and Essilor, the leading prescription lens/contact lens manufacturer.

Controlling the labs, insurers, frame makers, and all the major retail outlets has allowed Luxottica to squeeze suppliers — frames are cheaper than ever to make, thanks to monopsony buying power with Prada-grade designer frames costing $15 to manufacture — while raising prices as much as 1000% relative to pre-acquisition pricing.

It’s even worse for lenses: a pair of prescription lenses that cost $1.50 to make sell for $800 in the USA.

That’s why I bought my last couple of pairs of glasses through Zenni Optical.

There is this utopian dream that with more automation, workers will be required to work fewer and fewer hours while maintaining the same productivity, eventually leading to a paradise where only a few hours of routine work will be required of every person, allowing them to pursue their own muse and be creatively productive. We know now this is not going to happen. Instead, the capitalist class will reap all the benefits, will use their power to arbitrarily demand greater profits for themselves and themselves alone, and will keep the working classes in their thrall with a) economic desperation, b) racism & division to keep them fighting among themselves, and c) cheap entertainment, like reality TV.

We’re doomed, aren’t we?

Donald Cline, criminal serial inseminator

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.

The further adventures of Phillip Blair, ranting evangelist!

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?

Australia’s got the attytood

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.

What could be more British than a mutual sense of despondency?

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.

Hey, @carinbondar and Olivia Judson!

@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.