What I Learned From the Internets

Here is a random and incomplete list of facts I learned from the Internets this week:

Alex Trebek is not a mindless automaton, but a bored-with-life-potty-mouthed TV host.



"Man vs. Wild" is largely staged.



"Mr. Show," the greatest sketch-comedy program since "Monty Python's Flying Circus," has been diced up and placed on Youtube.



"Fonejacker" is one of those popular British programs that was remade in America but sucks here because the U.S. version featured puppets instead of crude animation and clever cut scenes.



Comedic shock band Gwar once appeared on the ill-fated "Joan Rivers Show" terrifying mothers across the nation thus ruining the childhoods of millions.



There are still great "MST 3K" episodes floating around which have yet to make it to DVD.



Army suicide rates are the highest in 26 years

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general, told a Pentagon press conference that the primary reason for suicide is "failed intimate relationships, failed marriages."

She said that although the military is worried about the stress caused by repeat deployments and tours of duty that have been stretched to 15 months, it has not found a direct relationship between suicides and combat or deployments.

Link to full story

Just about everyone, including the CIA and Fox News edits Wikipedia to create revisionist history.

From Wired:

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

Link to full story

An alarming number of people who buy high-definition televisions and video game consoles have no clue what high definition is or how to access it.

From 1up:

If so few are even aware of the HD functions, how many who are in-the-know are even taking advantage of it? Speaking anecdotally, my Dad picked up an HDTV a few years ago from Costco and every time I'm home, he's watching everything in SD because he doesn't know better. To him, he's watching TV on the "HDTV" and actually switching to a HD-capable channel doesn't cross his mind -- it's the illusion of having the HDTV feature that makes him think he's actually watching a better picture. In fact, he's making standard definition look worse!

Link to full story