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Next They're Going To Tell Us There's No Santa
A man in Denver has admitted to perpetrating a hoax upon much of the world. He had supposedly set up a web site which enabled visitors to click his Christmas lights on and off. Newspapers from around the world carried the story. At one point, a local TV station's helicopter even hovered overhead to provide live coverage to its viewers of the lights going off and on.

One small problem: It wasn't for real. The man had set up a series of photos of his house, some with the lights on and some with them off. As visitors--desperate to give meaning to their obviously boring lives--to the site clicked the switch, the photos would alternate to make it appear they were actually controlling the lights. Oh, and the thing with the helicopter? The guy's wife was in the house manually flicking the light switch. Pretty high tech, eh?

Apparently the man has technically broken no laws with his deception since he wasn't charging a fee. However, he has shattered the faith of millions of web surfers who had thus far considered the credibility of the internet to be beyond question.

What's next? Someone revealing that Saddam's blog isn't really written by Saddam?