Zika: Heaven or Hell

Is the zika virus the signal of doom for mankind. Is this quickly mounting threat, posed by a simple predatory insect – a mosquito, destined to halt the millions of evolutionary years of homosapien as earth’s dominant species.
We’re still learning the full spectrum of this thing and while the CDC is quietly shouting the alarm, it is clear that we don’t yet know the full ramifications of microencephalitis, the brain disorder affecting children cradled in the womb of zika infected women. There is some evidence that the disease can also be transmitted ironically as an STD. Our most beloved charter to GOD’s plan, being fruitful and multiplying, the very act of insemination may have to be curtailed until we know more.
What if once bitten, a woman is scarred and carries the horrifying trace of the potential heartbreaking results for life. Perhaps future mates might also pass the horror on to her during the precious act of lovemaking. Will we have to get out in front of this thing by ordering mass sterilization, at least in the short and hopefully temporary term.
But that way leads to certain doom for homosapien-erectus – mankind. We may be forced to count on test tube procreation.

I realize the fatal tenor of these suppositions, but by my own narcissism am I overlooking another, less fatalistic outcome. Are we because of our very arrogance, failing to embrace another possibility?

Rome, they say was not built in a day and neither did the human genome arrive at it present splendour overnight. Homo-erectus was not always so high of brow, and while Rome ended as ash, the world around it has continued.

Suspend all belief, just for a moment and let us venture down a quick virtual alternative narrative. We must currently accept the idea that we have no real idea where the Zika Virus will ultimately take us. We have in the past beaten back the Plague and Ebola and while we are learning to live, at least for a while with HIV and Cancer – what of Zika. The long term effects of the resulting microencephalitis are largely unknown, because the pool of victims is yet somewhat small, and their fatality rate is uncertain. In fact their expected quality of life is truly not yet measured.

Now, I am rushing to the end, before ye of short attention span click onwards to less convoluted thought. Bottom line: humor me and suppose that the Zika mosquitos are a part of GOD’s plan (that’s twice that I have interjected a higher power into a theoretically scientific spiel). Suppose this virus that is pulling our attention away from the 24 hour Donald Trump news cycle is actually a nudge by mother nature herself, to push us away from our presumed perfect selves. Since the victims of Zika are falling to head trama and the brain is suffering…

I stopped there because we don’t really know they’re long term assessment, do we? It occurs to me that these children just may be something different – a mutation, joining us here on earth. Smaller heads? Perhaps nature has decided that either we were not using all of that addition brain power, or perhaps we will no longer be needing it. What if after all of these years of development, the species is about to enter a phase of being that will depend less on all of the heroic cranial gymnastics that we have come to admire. Perhaps their evolved brain function finds them able to communicate already, using a rudimentary but effective, nonverbal telepathy.

Scared you, huh?

 

The People -vrs- Apple

Its all starting to unravel, just as I said that it would. All of the back and forth concerning the encryption of the San Bernardino terrorist has been overblown hype. Apple has dug in on a position that makes no sense, due to the fact that someone will break the encryption with or without their help. For years there have been revisions to software and operating systems, breaches in security protocols, and updates to updates. This is the nature of technology. Hackers have jobs to do, too.

Knowing this, Apple was only putting on a PR Show, designed to make it appear that they’re customers could rest easy because the encryption was unbreakable even with the considerable pressure of the Federal Government. But for that pressure, in all likelihood, Apple would have sent down a security update as a plug to some unknown, unstated issue that their engineers would have discovered and eliminated the vulnerability. So even as the FBI is working to crack the code, Apple is working to make it a moving target -as they should be. Most likely the suspect phone is offline and frozen in the past, unable to receive any new updates.

It was never that the Feds couldn’t get in, they only wanted Apple to lower the bar, and inhibit the prohibition that limited the number of attempts to “guess” the password. No doubt they have located a hack that has found a way around that molehill, and they just need time to test it on a number of like products, because they’re potential guesses on the suspect phone have already peaked, and they dare not be wrong. If the next attempt wipes the phone, they will be forced to waterboard some Apple execs in order to recover from that mistake.

UPDATE
So now what?
The Feds are reporting that they have broken into the suspect phone and bypassed Apple’s encryption without their assistance – just as I said it would. Now that their much heralded security encryption has been embarrassingly hacked by outside forces, how does Apple convince their customers to trust the total security of their operating system.

In all likelihood Apple’s black ops engineers have been busy trying to crack their own encryption since day one. Whatever chinks they find in the armour will be quietly patched and updated through normal system updates with little to no fanfare.

Everything has changed except our way of thinking.

LAPD vrs Body Cam Technology

Why is LAPD trying to salt the game on body cameras by claiming that the system will require a bunch of sworn officers to monitor body cams.

What they want to do is muddy the waters. They are being forced to wear body cams, and they don’t like it. But since they can’t stop it, they have to give lip service to the idea and even pretend to be in support of it. Knowing that the town is facing some tough economics, they are inflating the numbers of “sworn” personnel required to monitor the cameras and study the data being recorded. Their hope is that they can brow beat us into backing off of body cameras due to the weight of the expense. If that’s not enough, they are talking about how many officers (over one hundred they speculate or perhaps exaggerate) will have to come in off of the street, where they are actively protecting the public in order to spend their time peering at monitor screens.

Lies. That is all a bunch of cynical and dishonest bovine secretion. The tactic proposes that the public is too stupid to count numbers on our fingers and toes. I would suggest that at the very least the budget might be relieved, simply because the city would be depleting far less of their budget paying off police brutality settlements. True, monitoring the audio/video data could tax the finances and the personnel resources of our police agencies – if we use sworn officers as monitors.

First of all, we don’t need and nor do we want LAPD playing the role of the wolf guarding the camera hen house. The code of silence would certainly be transmitted straight from the body cam into the monitoring (and editing) room. What cop can be expected to shed light on the misdeeds of his fellow officers, whether it be on video or something as simple as writing a truthful end of shift DAR. The cops on the beat would be backed up by the cops in the directors seat, and the public will never see the things that they don’t want us to see. Even that would end up saving the city money when it comes to settlements. Right? So the budget considerations still become a non-starter, though a ridicules way of achieving justice and creating a fair and responsive police force.

Camera monitoring should be contracted out to a well trained militia of old, nosey ass biddies. My granny Mae, GOD rest her soul, would have been a great monitor, and LAPD wouldn’t be getting away with shat if she was on the job. As a matter of fact my kid’s granny is retired. She could flip through the cameras with a remote control on her internet enabled TV, for far less money than we would have to pay a sworn officer – and I assure that she cannot – will not be bought. Of course as a paid police, confidential informant, her identity would have to be guarded, because if she sees it she’s going to tell it, and there could be resistance.

All jokes aside, we could easily afford to pay unsworn but trained monitors, and editors without infringing upon the confidentiality and “rights” of officers (which I’m sure would be the next road block fielded by the police.) A couple of years into the program, the bad cops will be weeded out, and the bad actors and criminals will also be forced out of the shadows and into prison cells. They wont be able to cry about police abuse, and police abusers wont be able to cry about having acted out of fear for their life.

Body Cams must be implemented. Do not LAPD change the subject and derail the technology. They want to watch us, but don’t like the thought of us watching back. In my real life, I work with a team of technicians that are under the glare of security cameras all day every day because of the sensitive nature of the machines that we install, maintain and repair. Cameras keep my team honest, and protects my team from any false accusations. We love them, and would not work without them. when I see LAPD resisting the same level of scrutiny, it gives me pause. and concern.