100 Things We Didn't Know Last Year

gollum123 writes "The BBC news magazine is running a compilation of the interesting and sometimes downright unexpected facts that we did not know last year, but now know. some examples — There are 200 million blogs which are no longer being updated, say technology analysts. Urban birds have developed a short, fast 'rap style' of singing, different from their rural counterparts. The lion costume in the film 'Wizard of Oz' was made from real lions. Online shoppers will only wait an average of four seconds for an internet page to load before giving up. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles. For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality. Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs is the term for people who fear the number 666. The egg came first."

Comments

One thing I _hope_ we know now...

[localman]

I've suspected this for a long time, but I hope it soon becomes common wisdom:

In certain situations, no amount of military might can force peace.

I'm not going to try and make it any more specific or broad than that. But I really hope that somewhere in the collective pscyhe we let go this idea that enough force can make everyone behave. It can't. If a people are really burned up about something, you'd have to kill them all to control them.

But all hope is not lost -- the alternative is to understand the underlying causes and use military might where appropriate, and negotiation and even *gasp* appeasement where it is not. There is no simple answer to all the conflict in the world. Military might is just one tool in the kit, and a highly overrated one than that.

Cheers.