You will never know where you’ll get new information. Me, I got some new ones from watching those educational shows from KBS World. Yes, a Korean channel.

Well, it’s not bad, since they have subtitles.

Anyway, I got to see this TV show entitled Sponge earlier. The concept is simple. The show asks the viewers to send in interesting but not-well-known factoids. The TV show then verifies if the information is true. If true, here is where the TV show shines. Instead of presenting the fact in a straightforward manner, they make a game out of it. They get several famous Korean personalities as contestants, and they ask these contestants to guess the answer to a question or to complete a statement. After the personalities have answered the question, a video clip about the correct answer is shown. Afterwards, the factoid is rated, and if it gets 5 stars, the sender wins US$1000.

So, today I have learned that sheep avoids wolf poop at all costs. Yes, these meek animals are so afraid of wolves that they are also afraid of wolf poop. The show did three experiments to prove the factoid. First, they place food near wolf poop, and several animals were released in the cage. All animals ate the food except the sheep.

Then, they placed a pair of food and poop in a green patch of land where sheep roams. They placed poop of tiger, bear, leopard, and wolf. The sheep clearly stayed away from the food besides the wolf poop.

In the third experiment, they have a box with a partition. They placed wolf poop on the other side and covered it (the cover is almost air tight), and food on the other. So they placed the box on a field, and the sheep munched on the food. But when the other partition was opened, the sheep fled.

Ok, did you know there is a kind of sand that will never get wet? Yes, there is such a sand, and they call it magic sand. They put the sand on a series of tests, including immersing it in water, and pouring magic sand on water. It seems that to make magic sand, you coat the sand with hydrophobic substances, making it water-proof.

Well, yeah, they get to receive absurd factoids, and they have a segment called – what else – Absurd Sponge, to present these useless factoids in a funny way.

Now, how I wish the giant networks produce shows like these instead of the usual crap out there.