Fun with Wikipedia, from "stoner metal" to "California Institute of Technology"

Bored at work? Here's a fun and edifying diversion.

Wikipedia has become easily one of the top ten most useful websites on the Internet, and it now has just about anything you'd want to know about anything ever. Plus it seems very reliable, which is surprising since anybody can edit anything however they want.

If, like me, you like(d) to read encyclopedias or dictionaries, Wikipedia is a dream come true. One thing I always loved to do is to randomly pick an encyclopedia article, read it, and then move on to a "Related Article" found at the bottom, and continue in that way on a fantastic voyage through human knowledge. Wikipedia takes it to the next level. On the home page there's a link to a random article. I use that to start, and move from page to page by clicking random links. I select the random link by either a) coin-flipping or b) holding down the Tab key with my eyes closed. It's not only fun to learn about random interesting stuff, but it's just as fun just seeing where this process takes you.

Here's an example itinerary I did recently:

Stoner metal
Monster Magnet
Metallica
    Lineups
        Early Lineups
Ride the Lightning
Minute
Angle
    Angles in astronomy
Stars
List of Stars
Andromeda (constellation)
    Notable deep sky objects
Milky Way (1)
    The galactic neighborhood
Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy
Dark Matter
    Alternative explanations
Modified Newtonian Dynamics
    Consistence with the observations
Astrophysics
    Astrophysicists
Timeline of gravitational physics and relativity
Robert H. Dicke
List of Astrophysicists
David Schramm
California Institute of Technology