johnridley | Holy crap, really?

Apparently Americans on average spend FIVE HOURS A DAY watching TV?

Wow. I feel kind of guilty about wasting otherwise productive time when I spend more than an hour, though I do that many nights after getting home from work; to watch a new Mythbusters episode or a NatGeo or History show for instance. I've started to be selective even about what documentaries I watch, since so many of them are repetitive (when I start realizing that almost every bit of footage in a history channel special is stuff I've seen before, and I've heard the text before too, it's time to move on). Having to fill 24 hours a day with history leads to repetition, and competing for ratings leads even the best-intentioned networks like History or Discovery to air garbage a significant portion of the time.

Once in a while I'll do a marathon and watch 3 or 4 hours of Red Dwarf or something on the weekend.

Five hours? I think my brain would turn to jello in just a few days of that.

As a friend has said before, people are amazed that I don't know who (name some TV star here) is, but they also wonder where I find the time to learn what I've learned. Folks, spend 5 hours a day trying to learn something. Hell, spend ONE. You'll be "smart" before you know it.