Accused serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein isn’t just a fan of underage girls; he’s also, apparently, a big fan of eugenics — and like most of those into the crackpot science, he believes that he’s packing some superior DNA that needs to be spread far and wide.
In the New York Times today, James B. Stewart reports that Epstein “hoped to seed the human race with his DNA by impregnating women at his vast New Mexico ranch.”
Stewart describes how Epstein used his charm and his money — well, maybe mostly his money — to “insinuate his way into an elite scientific community, thus allowing him to pursue his interests in eugenics and other fringe fields like cryogenics.”
As Stewart notes,
He dangled financing for their pet projects. Some of the scientists said that the prospect of financing blinded them to the seriousness of his sexual transgressions, and even led them to give credence to some of Mr. Epstein’s half-baked scientific musings.
Epstein loved to regale his new friends — including Nobel prize winners and such well-known names as Stephen Hawking and Oliver Sacks — with his crackpot ramblings on such subjects as “atoms [that] behaved like investors in a marketplace” and “a mysterious particle that might trigger the feeling that someone is watching you.”
Gosh, I wonder why he might have been worried about people watching him?
One of Epstein’s favorite topics, apparently, was his idea for a vast baby ranch designed to pump out countless baby Epsteins.
On multiple occasions starting in the early 2000s, Mr. Epstein [reportedly] told scientists and businessmen about his ambitions to use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies … .
According to an attendee at one of his dinners,
Mr. Epstein’s goal was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in a tiny town outside Santa Fe.
Virtual-reality guru Jaron Lanier told Stewart that Epstein seemed to be
using the dinner parties — where some guests were attractive women with impressive academic credentials — to screen candidates to bear [his] children.
So many layers of creepiness here. The last thing this world needs is more Jeffrey Epsteins.
–David Futrelle
Brand New Ugly highlights stories that are emblematic of the political and social ugliness of Trump’s America. Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
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@Cat Mara
Have you read any of the Burren Mystery series? Historical fiction starring Mara, Brehon of Burren, as she investigates mysteries and hands down judgements according to the traditional laws. Verywell researched and written.
Money blinds a whole lotta people, including those who should know better. This creeper sees even women with superior iqs (certainly superior to his, anyway) as livestock. Goes right along with his seeing girls as sex toys. Epstein is one big yuck, and I’m glad his DNA’s out of circulation. Too bad so many people tolerated him for such a long time.
I am imagining this hundred year old robot now with Epstein’s head in a jar like Nixon in Futurama, and his withered mummified rotting stump of a penis like the bit that fell off Tutankhamen… gonna have nightmares tonight :p
@Virgin Mary
Darn it, now that image is in my head too.
Head in one jar, penis in a different jar, where he can see it but never use it.
@Cat Mara
¹
Thanks for the info on Shockley. Wikipedia has this to say:
Who would have guessed that a eugenicist would piss off so many people!
My first thought about the penile freezing came straight from Yzma:
Brilliant, brilliant, BRILLIANT, I tell you! Genius, I say!
@ObSidJag
Marilyn Monroe was definitely smarter than people gave her credit for. She started her own production company, intensely studied her craft, and was the main architect of her famous “dumb blonde” persona. She was also a voracious reader and, having dropped out of high school, was something of an autodidact.
@ Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
The picture seems, for the most part, to have omitted the woad war paint. I understand it wasn’t just for decorative or intimidatory purposes (though even now it brings to mind the disturbing image of a giant naked Smurf with a sword,) but that the woad stain on the skin could disinfect minor wounds.
@ Everyone
Anybody know of any ancient medical writers that were aware of cloth fibres driven into a wound being foci of infection ? That knowledge would be a practical reason for going into battle naked. I also suspect that it would have an ‘I am big, I am hard, I am scary’ effect on their opponents.
Not nearly as disturbing as a giant Feegle, naked or not.
@Dalillama: No, I haven’t. I must keep an eye out for them, they sound interesting!
@Virgin Mary:
I really want the jar to be labelled “21st Century Dickhead.”
The irony is that Epstein could have put his fortune to work doing something to actually benefit humanity, like, f’rinstance, combating climate change. Human civilization may not last another 100 years, and when the lights go out, Epstein’s frozen body parts will be rotten meat.
I’m thankful this idiotic plan to spread his seed never came to fruition. The human race doesn’t need any more blackmailing, child trafficking, megalomaniacal DNA. Really sick of these billionaires who amass power over others, mostly through a combination of luck and the willingness to step on other people, become convinced of their superiority, and want to turn themselves into immortal demigods.
@Kevin
The woad is a myth; you can’t use it as body paint, it’s too runny, and also tends to leave a rash. What ancient Celts may have painted (or tattooed, sources are unclear) themselves with is unknown at present.
@Buttercup:
Death seed, blind man’s greed
Poets starving, children bleed
Nothing he’s got he really needs
21st century dickhead man
@Talonknife
That’s not the effects of politics so much as it is a byproduct of its Silicon Valley heritage. The place has always had an unswerving belief in the power of technology to solve all of humanity’s problems (including the ones specifically caused by technology)- and an equally strong disregard for the role that the human element plays in said problems. Odds are most of them think the easiest way to address climate change is to modify our genes until we start growing gills.
@Moggie:
@anonymous
Nope, they don’t care about climate change because they are going to terraform Mars and populate it with the master race. That’s the real plan.
@Virgin Mary:
Unlikely. Even if we could do it, optimistic estimates suggest it would take a thousand years. We don’t have that long.
@Cat Mara
So instead of “Intel Inside”, it could have been “Incel Inside”?
@Nikki the Bluth Wannabe:
Re Marilyn Monroe:
oohh, excellent to know! Thanks for sharing the info. I’d known some of it (her being mainly the architect of her “dumb blonde” persona for 1).
But not the rest of it, certainly not the part about her starting her own production company and being a voracious reader–that’s outstanding.
@ObSidJag:
Do an image search for “Marilyn Monroe book” or “Marilyn Monroe reading,” and then count how many photos you have to go through before the book’s the same one.
@Gabriel Ratchet:
Re: the Walt Disney thing. I was involved in a Shadowrun campaign once where our team of runners was hired at one point to break into a tissue storage unit at the University of Miami and steal one particular sample. When the sample number read off started with ‘WED’ I (the player) just fell over laughing. And then had to explain it to most of the other players.
@Moon_custafer, ObSidJag:
Re: Marilyn Monroe & Albert Einstein:
That idea was played with a bit in the film Insignificance, in which ‘The Actress’ shows up and does a little demonstration of the ideas of special relativity to ‘The Professor’ to show she’s not just a dumb blonde before saying she’d love to sleep with him. Nobody in that movie was ever referred to by name: the main characters were ‘The Actress’ (Marilyn Monroe), ‘The Professor’ (Albert Einstein), ‘The Ballplayer’ (Joe diMaggio, who was married to Monroe), and ‘The Senator’ (Joe McCarthy). There’s even a baseball card that just says ‘The Ballplayer’ at one point.
A lot of the film is kind of a discussion of fame, and the difference between public and private personas, especially for people who are famous.
According to the Wikipedia page, the core idea came to the original playwright when he heard that an autographed photo of Einstein had been found in Marilyn Monroe’s possessions after her death.