Maintaining Neutrality

Being a cynic and, therefore, a natural skeptic is tough at times.  Essentially you are stuck in a perpetual Catch-22 scenario.  This is especially true when it comes to conspiracy theories.  Sometimes you hear one and say to yourself, “hmm, that sounds like it could be valid.”  Much of them involve large corporations doing things just for themselves to the detriment of everyone else.  As a cynics you may think to yourself, “this sound valid.  Sure, corporation would only think about themselves and just think about the bottom line and I bet they would sacrifice their own grandmother if it would improve their bottom line.”  You may even have first hand experience with this concept.  However, just as you think that you have to think, “at the same time the conspiracy theorists are wanting to get everyone on their side to justify their existence and so, of course, they are must present a compelling argument to do so.  Therefore, their evidence must be suspect.”  In general this creates a kind of situation where you are perpetually stuck between two opposing forces convinced everyone is a jerk and no one wants to do anything good for anyone. 

So, it is with this in mind that I came across this idea of “Internet Neutrality.”  As it turns out, it’s something that has been brought up on shows like “The Daily Show.”  Of course “The Daily Show” also has a pronounced liberal/libertarian bent so you have to keep that in mind as well.  I will attempt to explain what this in case you are like me and coming a little late to this particular party. 

Apparently the best way to explain it is to think of the internet like a pipeline between the computer and the Net.  Supposedly, the way things are arranged now every website has the same chance as any other website to become popular or not become popular because they should, in theory, be able to get to your computer when you go there as fast as any other website.  This, to me, seems like a over-simplification and patently untrue, but this seems to be the argument those who are pro-neutrality are trying to use in their favor.  Because each website can use the same tools as any other and can be downloaded at the same rate as any other this achieves some kind of internet utopia.  It creates “Net Neutrality.”   

According to those who are pro-neutrality the big internet service providers are trying to set up a second pipeline.  Essentially this second pipeline will be for various partner who would pay the internet service providers large amounts of money for their sites to show up more and download faster than the regular schlubs out there who don’t pay those fees.  As you might imagine this creates a caste system on the internet with the wealthy on the surface and the lower-end folks slaving away in the mines and the machines beneath the city (for a clearer idea of this analogy please see the silent film “Metropolis.”) 

Now, here is where the cynic in me starts to debate.  OK, it seems perfectly logical to me that huge, unthinking and uncaring corporations who are always looking for a way to screw someone over to make an extra dime would want to find a way to charge huge fees for people to use their services and make their websites more noticeable or to download faster.  On the other hand, I also believe in free enterprise and have an idea that there are a lot of people out there who truly do believe every corporation really is truly evil and has no place in the world.  I believe that corporations, as a whole, are usually evil but I do know that they tend to have some caring and compassionate people working for them. 

I also use the internet.  I have a website.  I try to sell my books on this thing.  I certainly want to have the same chance as someone who has a ton of money and a major publisher behind him or her to market their books.  I can currently delude myself into believing that the only reason I have not started a groundswell of support for my books is because I just haven’t spent enough time marketing and not because my website has anything wrong with it. 

So, in the end, I guess I support the idea of Net Neutrality.  I like the free-wheeling feel of the internet as it stands these days.  In a lot of ways the internet is like the ole west.  You have to be tough to walk the streets of the net.  You have to be able and willing to defend yourself at a moment’s notice.   Yes, I am being overly melodramatic but I also feel there is some truth to the idea.  It is a true open marketplace.  I have to wonder, though, are the big internet service providers really ganging up on the little guys?  According to some websites there have been measures defeated in Congress to try to create that second pipeline.  Of course, just because it was defeated in the
U.S. what would stop some company from doing the same thing in another country? 

If you have an interest in this you might want to check out www.savetheinternet.com.  Of course, this is the site that is pro-neutrality and has that liberal spin to it.  While I am a cynic I am also, generally speaking, liberal about a lot of things so my tendency is to take the liberal stance over the conservative one.  I am also on record here many times talking about how heartless and soulless big companies are.   

I think the internet should just sort itself out.  Those who are determined and want to sick with it will, I think, eventually find some success.  That bubble that burst in the 90s sorted out a lot of the useless junk and people who didn’t have a clear plan.  I know because I worked for a large number of them at the time.  In each case I entered an office full of hope and excitement but no clear idea of how to make money or how to move forward.  So, what you had was a company running all over the country and spending thousands and thousands of dollars in travel expenses alone with no clear idea how more money was going to come in.  I even worked for one company that had big ideas about stock options that ended up being worth a few pennies when things went sour.   

Such things are destined to happen when you set out in a new frontier.  The people who ran out into the west looking for gold most of the time came back empty-handed.  Those who had an actual plan and did some research and had just a little bit of luck and determination usually found a way to make it.  Maybe they didn’t find gold but they found out you could make a lot of money selling gold mining supplies to nuts looking for gold. 

In short, I think internet neutrality is a good thing.  You can send off an e-mail to your congress-persons on that website.  It doesn’t take long to do.  It’s nice to say hello to those people anyway.  Sometimes they need a reminder of who they really look for.  Of course, I am rather cynical about all of that anyway. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format on his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

Did Science Bring About AIDS?

I have written about conspiracy theorists and people who believe in them before.  Heck, I have made fun of them, let’s be honest.  However, there are times when you hear something and look at what is being said and part of you just has to wonder.  There are merits to what people are saying and suddenly you have to sit up and take notice and, perhaps, acknowledge that there is something there and you might want to take another look.  

I recently watched remarkable documentary on the Sundance channel called “The Origin of AIDS” and it really made me sit up and take notice and really made the hairs on the back of my neck and my arms stand up.  I am not saying that this documentary is the truth.  No, doing that is just looking at one side of a story.  You cannot look really at any documentary and take it as gospel.  You really cannot filter the biases of the filmmakers out of documentaries.  It’s not the same thing as a news story.  Of course, even news stories often show an unintentional (or sometimes intentional) bias.  When people are involve in anything then you have to wonder about bias. 

Still, the issues brought up in the documentary are worth exploring further.  Of course, this was also a very scientific documentary.  That means they used a lot of big words that I don’t understand.  However, I will do the best I can with my limited knowledge of virology and immunization to convey the possibilities expressed in this film. 

Essentially much of the medical community says the first cases of what is known now as AIDS appeared in about 1959 in the area of Africa known as the
Congo.  It took quite a bit of time before that virus made it to the
United States and, therefore, apparently warranted any notice by anyone.  The fact that is struck drug users and homosexuals first probably also contributed to the spread of the disease.   

At that same time the world was trying to combat another terrible virus known as polio.  The virus had been killing and crippling children for years and perhaps centuries.  A man named Jonas Saulk discovered the vaccine by using dead versions of the virus and injecting that vaccine into children.  Essentially Jonas helped wipe out the entire virus from this planet.  It is considered by much of the medical community and the world at large to be the greatest medical achievement of the twentieth century. 

There is an interesting thing about how you make a vaccine.  When you want to create a vaccine you need to take tissue and chop it up really fine.  You then mix various other serums and place the tissue in those serums and you encourage the virus to grow on the tissue cultures.  If you want to create a vaccine using a dead virus, which is the kind you inject, then you kill the virus using chemicals and then you bottle it up and start injecting.  If you want to create a vaccine that people can take orally you need to keep the virus alive and then use a serum also made from tissue of the animal you got the original tissue from and encourage the virus to grow. 

The way scientists have been doing this is by using the issue from monkeys.  Monkeys are killed and their kidneys removed and chopped up and used to make tissue cultures.  So, all of those polios vaccines that were given out back in the 50s were made from monkey kidneys.  Generally what are called “lower” monkeys are used.  These are green monkeys and other monkeys that are not chimpanzees.  As it turns out, chimps don’t make very good test subjects for vaccines despite their similarity to humans. 

So, when Jonas created his injected vaccine there were other guys trying to create an oral vaccine.  There were also people trying to test their vaccines using children in
Africa.  This was not entirely ethical but in certain parts of the world, like the Congo for example, there were ways to get around it because back then the Congo was very well organized and had an excellent universal health care method that made it perfect for testing. 

Meanwhile it turns out chimps have been known to contract a virus known as SIV.  This is the simian version of the HIV virus.  For years the theory has been thrown around that a hunter with a cut on his body killed a chimp and got the chimp’s infected blood all over him and into his cut and this was how HIV made the transition from a primate disease to one in humans.  You see viruses have this nasty habit of mutating once they get into a new host.  This is the concern most have about bird flu these days. 

There were a few folks who wanted to test their oral vaccine.  They also decided, for reasons that are still not clear, to start doing tests with chimps and then they started making vaccine cultures with chimp tissue.  They used live samples and used kidneys and blood to make these cultures.  Then they sprayed this vaccine into over one million children in the
Congo during the late 1950s.  Lo and behold, in the nearly the same location the first cases of this mysterious disease that destroyed the immune system began to appear. 

So, you see, it wasn’t God sending some kind of punishment to the homosexuals.  No, it wasn’t mystical beings wreaking havoc upon the world and it wasn’t sinister agents injecting people with this virus.  It may simply have been science.  It may simply have been that from the greatest medical achievement of the twentieth century that wiped out one of the greatest scourges the world has ever known ended up unleashing something even more terrible and deadly instead.   

Much of the medical community has done what it can to debunk this.  They may be right.  It may be that those chimps were never used to make virus cultures and never turned into vaccine.  This is just one documentary with a certain point of view.  What does seem to be happening is that the medical community is attacking the theory so viciously that no one dares come forward with an idea about how to explore this further.   

Science may not be the answer to everything.  Given the way pharmaceutical companies continue to push forward with less control than every before and test in less economically prominent parts of the world who knows what may come next.  Science without morality and science without governing is science that can run amok.  It may be that AIDS is the price to pay and, perhaps, it should be the final price. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format on his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

Conspiracy Month

November is the month that seems to pull the conspiracy nuts out of the woodwork.  Of course, this month seems destined to bring them out more than even a normal November.  The first reason this month always brings them out is because John F. Kennedy was assassinated toward the end of this month.  Nothing makes the average conspiracy nut salivate more than mention of Dealey Plaza, the Texas School Book Depository or Lee Harvey Oswald.  If you want to make them really get upset and possibly injure you I dare you to bring up the Warren Commission as well.  God forbid you even hint at the idea you might believe what the commissions said in their findings.  This month is also supposed to see the release of the movie “Bobby” which is about the last hours of Bobby Kennedy’s life. 

I have talked about conspiracy nuts before.  I can speak about them with some kind of authority because I can freely admit that I was one.  When you want to find out about sin you need to go out and ask a sinner.  If you want to find out what being a conspiracy nut is like you need to seek one out.  How bad was I?  Well, I was into UFOs and I thought an entire committee was hidden behind the fence on Dealey Plaza and shot Kennedy, Connelly, four policemen, a dog and somehow were responsible for the Paris Hilton sex tape.  I was pretty out there. 

The thing about it was that it was just cool to believe you had some kind of secret that no one else should have.  Of course you forget the fact that there are about six million other people who also believe aliens are dissecting cows and multiple people shot Kennedy.  The thing was that there was always an aura of danger around the whole thing.  I remember having ambitions of wanting to discover some great nugget that would prove the government had killed Kennedy and then being on the run from the government myself. On that day in November Kennedy was supposed to be visiting Dallas because there had been a lot of political turmoil in the area at the time.  Nixon had been there and been pummeled by protestors.  In fact, a lot of people forget that Kennedy was not particularly popular when he was killed.  In fact a lot of the glow of his office had worn off at the time.  The Cuban Missile Crisis was a great moment for him but much of what happened during has handling of the crisis would not even be known for decades.  By sheer force of will he and his cabinet managed to keep the Soviets away from Cuba. 

It was an idea to make his entire parade there as public as possible.  A lot people say that the infamous “bubbletop” should have been on the limousine and that it was left off deliberately because they wanted him killed.  It had been raining the day before his visit and all that morning.  Actually the idea was to keep him in an open car so people could see him.  It was hoped that seeing Jack and Jackie would provide some good will to a place that had turned so hostile to politicians recently.  The only way that damn bubbletop was going to be used was if it was still raining.  Also, apparently the bubbletop was made out of plexiglass and wasn’t even bulletproof.   There are those who say it was impossible for Oswald to have made those shots with just three bullets.  They always point to the supposed “magic bullet” and say this is the proof.  What a lot of people forget is that the Zapruder film was not the only film taken during the event.  In fact there were other film cameras in operation on the plaza that day.  Also there were a lot of people there all taking pictures as the car went along.  That’s what was put together during this special I recently saw on the Discovery Channel. 

They assembled the pictures, analyzed the scene from every angle and started to put together the crime scene.  They used ballistics gel and these fake bodies that had actual bones and fake muscle tissue to as closely approximate bodies as it is possible to do without shooting actual people.  They then lifted a basket using a crane and hired a sharp-shooter to take shots at it.  They positioned the bodies in the exact way they had been positioned when that supposed “magic bullet” was fired.  What happened?  Well, it was pretty amazing. Turns out that the bullet did start to tumble as it passed through Kennedy’s neck so that it was cart wheeling in the air when it exited.  This meant it hit Connelly sideways and ripped open a good-sized wound in his back.  All of that tumbling caused it to continue to do so through his body.  Essentially when the bullet came out it hit what would have been the guy’s wrist and ended up in almost the exact area where Connelly’s thigh would have been.  By that time the bullet didn’t have quite enough momentum left for it to come out the other side.  Also, the type of bullet used was meant to actually go through people and do maximum damage as it did so.  So the excellent condition of the bullet might have been possible. 

Now, I am not saying this is definite proof of Oswald acting alone.  He may have had people handling him.  There may have been others involved.  For all I know the people who actually killed him put together this documentary, I am just saying it was pretty cool watching a guy in a crane shooting ballistics gel, really…that’s all. No one wants to believe that someone who carried so much hope was taken so randomly.  I can understand that too.  A lot of people project hopes and dreams onto Kenney without having a clue whether or not he would have really done.  They say he would have pulled us out of Vietnam.  Considering his moves put our advisors there it’s hard to say he would have just immediately pulled out.  Would the world have changed and would we all be flying around in jet packs in perfect harmony had he lived?  Who knows?  Maybe his flings with Marilyn Monroe and others would have just been too tempting for too many reporters and he would have ended up ending his Presidency in disgrace.   

The same can be said for his brother Bobby.  There are almost as many rumors and theories about his death as there area about JFK.  Bobby seemed even more full of hope and since so many people were heartbroken over the death of his brother they projected their hopes about him onto Bobby.  Who knows what actually happened in that hotel kitchen?  Did Sirhan act alone?  There seems to have been a lot of bullets fired judging from the holes they always show in the pictures.  I have this feeling Bobby might have been shot by an over-anxious bodyguard rather than any conspiracy.  In the end, it is impossible to know.  We do live in a world where our heroes can be killed stupidly.  Look at the death of John Lennon for a prime example.  It is sad, but it’s true.  So, all this month, listen with an open mind, but think with a skeptical brain. Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available for sale at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.