* New Cell Phone Connection To Cops
* Fox Producer Punks MSNBC
* Step Toward Human Cloning

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These are the stories that interest me this morning, along with my take on why I think they matter for nonprofits and community organizations:

• New software allows emergency victims to connect their cell phone directly to police. University of Maryland researchers have created MyeVyu software, which connects cell-phone users directly to campus police, alerting emergency personnel to a student’s identity and location. Police then can access the cell phone’s audio and video signals as grab the stream from the closest surveillance camera.
  • My take: Another step in all-connected-all-the-time. The millennial generation (at college now) is far less suspicious of The Man than its predecessors in Generation X. This can allow for new connecting technology to be more quickly adopted and go mainstream.
• A Fox News producer for Bill O’Reilly infiltrated a GE shareholder meeting. Jesse Waters, a producer known for a confrontational interview style, snuck into the GE shareholders’ meeting where a number of shareholders complained about what they saw as MSNBC’s leftward tilt. Waters asked a question too, without identifying himself as a Fox employee.
  • My take: The silliest of stunts, the silliest of controversies. While each network’s news gathering is by the book, the news-and-talk outlets’ overall slant is readily apparent to all and, in fact, is baked into their brands. Fox complaining of bias is, of course, the pot calling the kettle black. But that’s not the point. The point is that people increasingly want opinionated brands.
• A scientist says he has cloned humans.

  

  Panayiotis Zavos said that he had cloned 14 human embryos, and transferred 11 to the wombs of four women who were prepared to give birth. “There is absolutely no doubt about it, and I may not be the one that does it, but the cloned child is coming. There is absolutely no way that it will not happen,” said the scientist in an interview with the UK’s Independent. Transferring cloned embroyos to a human womb is illegal in many countries and Zavos is operating in an undisclosed location. He also claims to have cloned dead people from frozen genetic material, including a 10 year old girl. None of the clones has been viable thus far and Zavos says he is trying to create healthy babies, not do anything ethically suspect. Zavos is the subject of a Discovery Channel documentary tonight, which includes footage of his cloning attempts dating back to 2003.

  • My take: Zavos has been making claims for years and other scientists dispute their validity, but he does have a point that human cloning — while it creates a host of ethical problems — is on some level inevitable. Another example of technology leveraging ethics. The same thing happens on a smaller scale in the face of any new technology or capability.

Thanks for reading,

Brad