Vatican Launches YouTube channel

The Vatican has launched a YouTube channel to bring the catholic churches views to the masses. According to the YouTube blog "for regular updates on the Pope and the Catholic Church's take on the major problems facing the world today, subscribe to the Vatican on YouTube."

I followed YouTube's link to an introduction by Father Federico Lombardi, S.I., Director of Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Centre and the Holy See Press Office, which unfortunately was entirely in Italian so I can't really comment on what was said. However I do have a question. What are those guys at the Vatican watching? Check out the monitor on the left of Father Lombardi at about the 1:14 mark... it's for research... right?

CIA and Vatican amoungst Wikipedia editors

In my post yesterday, "WikiScanner keeping things real" I pointed to a story about a new website that allows you to see who is editing what on Wikipedia. In this story from Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, CIA and Vatican IP addresses are cited as the sources of edits to pages with obvious self serving intents. The CIA computers are linked to "nearly 300 edits to subjects including Iran's president, the Argentine navy, and China's nuclear arsenal." while an IP address belonging to the Vatican is said to have been used "to remove references to evidence linking Ireland's Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to a decades-old double murder." In a perfect world such measures would not be required to make Wikipedia an open and reliable tool. If nothing else perhaps those with intent to mislead will be a little more careful of where they are making their edits from.