The collaborative online encyclopedia Wikipedia has banned the from editing the site. The Register reports Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, or ArbCom, voted 10 to 0 in favor of the ban, which takes effect immediately.

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[According to one Wikipedia contributor involved in the arbitration:] “The edits coming out of Church of Scientology servers were of the sort that made their organization look better.  Up to a point that’s justifiable, when it comes to correcting inaccuracies or removing poorly sourced negative information. There were times when they went beyond that and deleted well sourced information that was unflattering, and there were times when they insulted other editors in a manner that would reflect poorly upon any religion.”

On a related subject, I have never understood why Scientology has ever been considered a religion at all. I don’t claim to know a lot about it — I’ve never read Dianetics and, from what I understand,  the “church” keeps much of its doctrine secret even from its adherents, who are gradually allowed to learn more as they advance toward their ultimate state. When I’ve seen celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta promote it, they do so usually by describing only its benefits, not what it is.

But this, I know: I have never heard a single scientology outlet — not a celebrity, not a man on the street, not someone at the scientology booth at a street fair, no scientology pamphlet, no scientology print advertisement, no scientology billboard — mention God.

So how, exactly, is it a religion?

Voice to text conversion using your in-car hands-free system so that you can both post to Twitter, and hear what is going on with your friends. Kind of crazy when you first think about it, but after a few minutes, you can start to imagine some cool uses. You can voice-tweet something like “I’m headed to downtown Seattle, where can I find the best slice of pizza?” You can then listen for responses, and when you hear one, have OnStar direct you to that location. Or you can just, you know, mess around on Twitter while driving without trying to juggle your iPhone and the steering wheel.

Kind of crazy when you first think about it? Are there really people on Twitter watching the incoming tweets from the 7,000 people they’re following (yes, I’ve seen numbers that high) just waiting to respond to inquiries about the best pizza in Seattle?

I swear to God I thought the post was a joke, until I saw this TechCrunch story cross-posted at WaPo:

All you Twitter addicts stuck in traffic, some good news. You might not have to risk your life any longer sending out one-handed Tweets on your Blackberry or iPhone, while trying to hide the fact that you are doing so under the dashboard. If you have OnStar in your car, you may soon be able to send and receive hands-free Tweets through OnStar’s voice-activated calling system. Andru Edwards at Gear Livediscovered the potential feature. Your voice messages will be converted into text and sent to all of your Twitter followers. (Don’t worry if the translation is not perfect, everyone will think you are just using Twitter’s abbreviated style). It is not clear, however, whether or not the system tells you if you are over the 140-character limit.

So get ready for this while driving:

I’m thinking Twitter rage is inevitable.

Obama!  So hip!  So modern!  So tech-savvy!  First president to carry a Blackberry!  So . . . 1984?

Seems a little retro for so modern a messiah president, but I’m talking about George Orwell’s novel 1984, not the actual year.  The main character, Winston Smith, worked in the Ministry of Truth, where his job was to scour news archives and change them so the past fit whatever the government’s latest version of it was.

So you can see why I thought of it as soon as I read at CNET that “The White House has silently tripled the number of Web pages that it forbids Google and other search engines from accessing.“  The CNET writer doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal, nor do the commenters on the article (most of them, anyway) but JammieWearingFool is not convinced:

Can’t have those nasty searches of the White House web sites now, can we? There has already been so many instances of the Obama cult scrubbing websites when embarrassing items are discovered or things disappearing when his actions don’t meet his words, so this shouldn’t be that big a surprise to those who have been chronicling these acts.

Can’t blame him, in light of the history of disappearing web pages and blog postings over the years.  But this news has to be given time to percolate until we can figure out what it really means.

If it is as nefarious as JWF seems to think, however, don’t expect any MSM coverage.

H/T: The Jawa Report.