Wikipedia edits traced to CIA, Vatican AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE - SAN FRANCISCO — A hacker's homemade program to pinpoint origins of Wikipedia edits indicates that alterations to the popular online encyclopedia have come from the CIA and the Vatican.

Virgil Griffith's "Wikiscanner" points to CIA computers as the sources of nearly 300 edits to subjects including Iran's president, the Argentine navy and China's nuclear arsenal.

A CIA computer was the source of a whiny "Wahhhhhh!" inserted in a paragraph about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plans for the office.

"While I cannot confirm whether any changes were made from CIA computers, the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly," CIA spokesman George Little said in response to an AFP inquiry.

Wikipedia is a communally refined Internet encyclopedia that taps into the "wisdom of the masses" by letting anyone make changes.

Mr. Griffith, a graduate student and self-described hacker, said his software matches unique "IP" addresses of computers with Wikipedia records regarding which machines are used to make online edits.

"I came up with the idea when I heard about congressmen getting caught for whitewashing their Wikipedia pages," he explains on his Web site.

Most edits listed at Wikiscanner involve minor changes such as spelling. Some alterations involve removing unflattering information, adding facts or inserting insults.

Wikiscanner's roster indicates a Vatican computer was used to remove references to evidence linking Ireland's Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to a decades-old double homicide.

Someone at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee changed a description of conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh to replace "comedian" with "bigot" and dub his listeners "legally retarded."

"We don't condone these sorts of activities, and we take every precaution to ensure our network is used in a responsible manner," committee spokesman Doug Thornell told AFP.

A Republican Party computer purportedly was used after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to change "occupying forces" to "liberating forces" in a Ba'ath Party entry.

Someone using a Senate computer altered a profile of veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas to complain she "interrupts" and is annoying.

A computer belonging to Reuters news service is listed as adding "mass murderer" to a Wikipedia description of President Bush.

But Mr. Griffith still considers the Wikipedia model to be reliable.

"Overall — especially for non-controversial topics — Wikipedia already works," he said.

"For controversial topics, Wikipedia can be made more reliable through techniques like this one ... to counteract vandalism and disinformation," Mr. Griffith said.

 http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070819/NATION/108190047/1002 

By Matthew Philips
Newsweek

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation." But beyond the irony lies China's true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/

Take a birth date of Dec 16, 1955.

12 = 1 + 2 = 3

16 = 1 = 6 = 7

1955 = 1 + 9  + 5 + 5 =  20 = 2

So that person's lucky 3-digit number is 372.  

That's all there is to it.

(This is an absolute disgrace, read on):
__________________________________

       How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits

Jon Town has spent the last few years fighting two battles, one against his body, the other against the US Army. Both began in October 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq. He was standing in the doorway of his battalion's headquarters when a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head. The impact punched a piano-sized hole in the concrete facade, sparked a huge fireball and tossed the 25-year-old Army specialist to the floor, where he lay blacked out among the rubble.

"The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground." Men from his unit had gathered around his body and were screaming his name. "They started shaking me. But I was numb all over," he says. "And it's weird because... because for a few minutes you feel like you're not really there. I could see them, but I couldn't hear them. I couldn't hear anything. I started shaking because I thought I was dead."

Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town's neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town's wounds were actually caused by a "personality disorder." Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.

Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits. The conditions of their discharge have infuriated many in the military community, including the injured soldiers and their families, veterans' rights groups, even military officials required to process these dismissals.

They say the military is purposely misdiagnosing soldiers like Town and that it's doing so for one reason: to cheat them out of a lifetime of disability and medical benefits, thereby saving billions in expenses.
Continues: (lengthy)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070409/kors
   

Planetary Society Offers $50,000 Prize for Asteroid Tagging Designs

San Francisco , CA, —Today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, The Planetary Society announced the launch of their Apophis Mission Design Competition, which invites participants to submit designs for a mission to rendezvous with and “tag” a potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid. Tagging may be necessary to track an asteroid accurately enough to determine whether it will impact Earth, and thus help facilitate the decision whether to mount a deflection mission to alter its orbit. The Planetary Society is offering $50,000 in prize money for the competition.

Apophis is an approximately 400 meter near-Earth object (NEO), which will come closer to Earth in 2029 than the orbit of our geostationary satellites. On that pass, the asteroid will be gravitationally perturbed to an unknown orbit, one that could cause it to hit Earth in 2036.

"While the odds are very slim that this particular asteroid will hit Earth in 30 years, they are not zero, and Apophis and other NEOs represent threats that need to be addressed," said Rusty Schweickart, Apollo astronaut, head of the Association for Space Explorers NEO committee.

Bruce Betts, The Planetary Society's Director of Projects said, "With this competition, we hope not only to generate creative thinking about tagging Apophis, but also to stimulate greater awareness of the broader near-Earth object threat."

Very precise tracking may be needed to determine the probability of a collision in 2036. Such precise tracking may require “tagging” the asteroid, perhaps with a beacon -- a transponder or reflector -- or some other method. Exactly how an asteroid could best be tagged is not yet known, nor is it obvious. “Learning how to do this is the point of the competition,” added Betts.

The Planetary Society is "betting" $50,000 that someone will devise an innovative solution to the problem. The prize money was contributed and competition made possible by Dan Geraci, a member of The Planetary Society Board of Directors, together with donations from Planetary Society members around the world. Geraci stated, “The time scale may be unknown, but the danger of a near-Earth object impact is very real. We need to spur the space community and indeed all people into thinking about technical solutions.”

(A lot more info):
http://www.planetary.org/about/press/relea...0000_Prize.html

Competition Rules and Update:
http://planetary.org/programs/projects/apophis_competition/

 

From our local news tonight ( 6-6-07)

New house-jacked details
By: Kathy Sweeney

SIKESTON, Mo. - There's new details on property owners in the Heartland having their homes stolen right out from under them.

As the criminal investigation continues, more and more homeowners are coming forward, claiming they've fallen victim to this house-jacking scam.

Sikeston attorney Jim Robison tells Heartland News he's taken countless calls since our first house-jacked report aired.

All his clients make the same claim, that someone forged their name on a deed in order to sell their property right out from under them.

While this may be new to us, it's not a new scam.

In fact, Robison has tracked cases as close as Kansas City, Missouri and as far away as Chicago.

In the Kansas City cases, federal investigators broke up a scheme involving 300 fraudulent loans worth nearly $20 million.

In the Heartland, we're following the investigation closely and we'll bring you new details as soon as the story breaks.

http://www.kfvs12.com/Global/story.asp?S=6623191 

And this:

Tips to protect your house
By: Heartland News

If you own property, there's a deed on file for it at your county recorder's office. 

To check if your deed is authentic you can go into your recorder's office (located in the county seat of your home county) and request to see the most recent deed filed on your property.  Check it with the documents you have. 

If you find paperwork that you did not sign or did not know was filed, you may want to seek legal assistance.

http://www.kfvs12.com/Global/story.asp?S=6621976 

 (Pac, this one's for you):

Planet-hunters find bonanza of new solar systems

                       POSTED: 12:56 p.m. EDT, May 29, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Planet-seekers who have spotted 28 new planets orbiting other stars in the past year say Earth's solar system is far from unique and there could be billions of habitable planets.

Reuters, continued:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/05/29/space.exoplanets.reut/index.html?eref=rss_topstories 

Skeptic June 2007 issue

 
The (Other) Secret The inverse square law trumps the law of attraction

By Michael Shermer

del.icio.usdel.icio.us digg reddit newsvine

 
An old yarn about a classic marketing con game on the secret of wealth instructs you to write a book about how to make a lot of money and sell it through the mail. When your marks receive the book, they discover the secret--write a book about how to make a lot of money and sell it through the mail. A confidence scheme similar to this can be found in The Secret (Simon & Schuster, 2006), a book and DVD by Rhonda Byrne and a cadre of self-help gurus that, thanks to Oprah Winfrey's endorsement, have now sold more than three million copies combined. The secret is the so-called law of attraction. Like attracts like. Positive thoughts sally forth from your body as magnetic energy, then return in the form of whatever it was you were thinking about. Such as money. "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts," we are told. Damn those poor Kenyans. If only they weren't such pessimistic sourpusses. The film's promotional trailer is filled with such vainglorious money mantras as "Everything I touch turns to gold," "I am a money magnet," and, my favorite, "There is more money being printed for me right now." Where? Kinko's? ADVERTISEMENT (article continues below) A pantheon of shiny, happy people assures viewers that The Secret is grounded in science: "It has been proven scientifically that a positive thought is hundreds of times more powerful than a negative thought." No, it hasn't. "Our physiology creates disease to give us feedback, to let us know we have an imbalanced perspective, and we're not loving and we're not grateful." Those ungrateful cancer patients. "You've got enough power in your body to illuminate a whole city for nearly a week." Sure, if you convert your body's hydrogen into energy through nuclear fission. "Thoughts are sending out that magnetic signal that is drawing the parallel back to you." But in magnets, opposites attract--positive is attracted to negative. "Every thought has a frequency.... If you are thinking that thought over and over again you are emitting that frequency." A pantheon of shiny happy people assures viewers that The Secret is ground in science.

The brain does produce electrical activity from the ion currents flowing among neurons during synaptic transmission, and in accordance with Maxwell's equations any electric current produces a magnetic field. But as neuroscientist Russell A. Poldrack of the University of California, Los Angeles, explained to me, these fields are minuscule and can be measured only by using an extremely sensitive superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) in a room heavily shielded against outside magnetic sources. Plus, remember the inverse square law: the intensity of an energy wave radiating from a source is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from that source. An object twice as far away from the source of energy as another object of the same size receives only one-fourth the energy that the closer object receives. The brain's magnetic field of 10 15 tesla quickly dissipates from the skull and is promptly swamped by other magnetic sources, not to mention the earth's magnetic field of 105 tesla, which overpowers it by 10 orders of magnitude!

Ceteris paribus, it is undoubtedly better to think positive thoughts than negative ones. But in the real world, all other things are never equal, no matter how sanguine your outlook. Just ask the survivors of Auschwitz. If the law of attraction is true, then the Jews--along with the butchered Turkish-Armenians, the raped Nanking Chinese, the massacred Native Americans and the enslaved African-Americans--had it coming. The latter exemplar is especially poignant given Oprah's backing of The Secret on her Web site: "The energy you put into the world--both good and bad--is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day." Africans created the circumstances for Europeans to enslave them?

Oprah, please, withdraw your support of this risible twaddle--as you did when you discovered that James Frey's memoir was a million little lies--and tell your vast following that prosperity comes from a good dollop of hard work and creative thinking, the way you did it.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId=sa013&articleId=72C0E84D-E7F2-99DF-3D281803B61E675C&modsrc=most_popular 

Santa Fe Police Department looking into hiring Mexican nationals (10 a.m.)
By The Associated Press
Article Launched: 05/16/2007 09:56:10 AM MDT

SANTA FE (AP) — The Santa Fe Police Department is considering the possibility of recruiting Mexican nationals to fill vacant police jobs.

Sgts. Gillian Alessio and Marvin Paulk, who are in charge of the department's recruiting and training, said Tuesday they are considering alternative approaches to fill 20 vacancies on the city's 155-person police force.

But Police Chief Eric Johnson said New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy regulations prohibit non-citizens from serving as police officers.

Alessio said the Santa Fe police force, like others around the country, is vying to recruit the same 21- to 30-year-olds as the U.S. military, whose need for recruits is taking a toll on the police department.

"Every day, we get approached by young men and women from Mexico who are in the country legally but are not naturalized," Alessio said.

"There is a huge pool of people who are dedicated, hardworking and trying to become citizens of this country. They would like nothing better than to devote their time to protecting the communities that they live in," she said.

The United States speeds up naturalization for foreigners who enlist in the U.S. military, and Alessio asked, "Why can't we do that with law enforcement?"
http://www.lcsun-news.com/latest/ci_5909340N
                

This is from News of the Weird:

Found 20 light years away: the New Earth

It's got the same climate as Earth, plus water and gravity. A newly discovered planet is the most stunning evidence that life - just like us - might be out there.

Above a calm, dark ocean, a huge, bloated red sun rises in the sky - a full ten times the size of our Sun as seen from Earth. Small waves lap at a sandy shore and on the beach, something stirs...

This is the scene - or may be the scene - on what is possibly the most extraordinary world to have been discovered by astronomers: the first truly Earth-like planet to have been found outside our Solar System.

The discovery was announced today by a team of European astronomers, using a telescope in La Silla in the Chilean Andes. If forced bookies to slash odds on the existence of alien beings.

The Earth-like planet that could be covered in oceans and may support life is 20.5 light years away, and has the right temperature to allow liquid water on its surface.

This remarkable discovery appears to confirm the suspicions of most astronomers that the universe is swarming with Earth-like worlds.

We don't yet know much about this planet, but scientists believe that it may be the best candidate so far for supporting extraterrestrial life.

The new planet, which orbits a small, red star called Gliese 581, is about one-and-a-half times the diameter of the Earth.

It probably has a substantial atmosphere and may be covered with large amounts of water - necessary for life to evolve - and, most importantly, temperatures are very similar to those on our world.

It is the first exoplanet (a planet orbiting a star other than our own Sun) that is anything like our Earth.

Of the 220 or so exoplanets found to date, most have either been too big, made of gas rather than solid material, far too hot, or far too cold for life to survive.

"On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X," says Xavier Delfosse, one of the scientists who discovered the planet.

"Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life."

Gliese 581 is among the closest stars to us, just 20.5 light years away (about 120 trillion miles) in the constellation Libra. It is so dim it can be seen only with a good telescope.

Because all planets are relatively so small and the light they give off so faint compared to their sun, finding exoplanets is extremely difficult unless they are huge.

Those that have so far been detected have mostly been massive, Jupiter-like balls of gas that almost certainly cannot be home to life.

This new planet - known for the time being as Gliese 581c - is a midget in comparison, being about 12,000 miles across (Earth is a little under 8,000 pole-to-pole).

It has a mass five times that of Earth, probably made of the same sort of rock as makes up our world and with enough gravity to hold a substantial atmosphere.

Astrobiologists - scientists who study the possibility of alien life - refer to a climate known as the Goldilocks Zone, where it is not so cold that water freezes and not so hot that it boils, but where it can lie on the planet's surface as a liquid.

In our solar system, only one planet - Earth -lies in the Goldilocks Zone. Venus is far too hot and Mars is just too cold. This new planet lies bang in the middle of the zone, with average surface temperatures estimated to be between zero and 40c (32-102f). Lakes, rivers and even oceans are possible.

It is not clear what this planet is made of. If it is rock, like the Earth, then its surface may be land, or a combination of land and ocean.

Another possibility is that Gliese 581c was formed mostly from ice far from the star (ice is a very common substance in the Universe), and moved to the close orbit it inhabits today.

In which case its entire surface will have melted to form a giant, planet-wide ocean with no land, save perhaps a few rocky islands or icebergs.

The surface gravity is probably around twice that of the Earth and the atmosphere could be similar to ours.

Although the new planet is in itself very Earth-like, its solar system is about as alien as could be imagined. The star at the centre - Gliese 581 - is small and dim, only about a third the size of our Sun and about 50 times cooler.

The two other planets are huge, Neptune-sized worlds called Gliese 581b and d (there is no "a", to avoid confusion with the star itself).

The Earth-like planet orbits its sun at a distance of only six million miles or so (our Sun is 93 million miles away), travelling so fast that its "year" only lasts 13 of our days.

The parent star would dominate the view from the surface - a huge red ball of fire that must be a spectacular sight.

It is difficult to speculate what - if any - life there is on the planet. If there is life there it would have to cope with the higher gravity and solar radiation from its sun.

Just because Gliese 581c is habitable does not mean that it is inhabited, but we do know its sun is an ancient star - in fact, it is one of the oldest stars in the galaxy, and extremely stable. If there is life, it has had many billions of years to evolve.

This makes this planet a prime target in the search for life. According to Seth Shostak, of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in California, the Gliese system is now a prime target for a radio search. 'We had actually looked at this system before but only for a few minutes. We heard nothing, but now we must look again.'

By 2020 at least one space telescope should be in orbit, with the capability of detecting signs of life on planets orbiting nearby stars. If oxygen or methane (tell-tale biological gases) are found in Gliese 581c's atmosphere, this would be good circumstantial evidence for life.

Dr Malcolm Fridlund, a European Space Agency scientist, said the discovery of Gliese 581c was "an important step" on the road to finding life.

"If this is a rocky planet, it's very likely it will have liquid water on its surface, which means there may also be life."

The real importance is not so much the discovery of this planet itself, but the fact that it shows that Earth-like planets are probably extremely common in the Universe.

There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy alone and many astronomers believe most of these stars have planets.

The fact that almost as soon as we have built a telescope capable of detecting small, earth-like worlds, one turns up right on our cosmic doorstep, shows that statistically, there are probably billions of earths out there.

As Seth Shostak says: "We've never found one close to being like the Earth until now. We are finding that Earth is not such an unusual puppy in the litter of planets."

But are these alien Earths home to life? No one knows. We don't understand how life began on our world, let alone how it could arise anywhere else. There may be an awful lot of bugs and bacteria out there, and only a few worlds with what we would recognise as plants and animals. Or, of course, there may be nothing.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute uses radio telescopes to try to pick up messages sent by alien civilisations.

Interestingly, Gliese 581c is so close to the Earth that if its putative inhabitants only had our level of technology, they could - just about - pick up some of our radio signals, such as the most powerful military transmitters. Quite what would happen if we for our part did receive a signal is unclear.

"There is a protocol, buried away in the United Nations," says Dr Shostak. "The President would be told first, after the signal was confirmed by other observatories. But we couldn't keep such a discovery secret."

It may be some time before we detect any such signals, but it is just possible that today we are closer than ever to finding life in the stars.

William Hill said it had shortened the odds on proving the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence from 1,000-1 to 100-1.

Spokesman Graham Sharpe said: "We would face a possible eight-figure payout if it were to be confirmed that intelligent life of extra-terrestrial origin exists. We felt we had to react to the news that an earth-like planet which could support intelligent life had been discovered - after all, we don't know for sure that intelligent extraterrestrial life has not already been discovered."

The new planet, so far unnamed, is 20.5 light years away and orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese 581.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=450467&in_page_id=1965