Things We Learned This Year

Via Slashdot, a list of 100 things we didn't know this year from the BBC. Each item is linked to an article with more information.

Some of what we learned this year:

- 200 million blogs aren't being updated. A whole lot of people started blogs and quit. Daryl Plummer, a technology analyst said, "Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it." I would suggest that's fairly judgmental and overbroad, and there may be many other reasons, but I'm not a technology analyst so, moving on... edited to acknowledge that I do often analyze technology, and therefore am a technology analyst, I just don't have that nifty title. Therefore I have retained my amateur status, which might prove handy should the analysis of technological information become an Olympic sport. More importantly at the moment, I think I have the authority to say: Plummer's statement seems judgmental and overbroad.

- In ancient Rome, prostitutes charged the equivalent of eight glasses of red wine.

- In Brazil, alcohol is used to fuel 2 million cars and trucks.

- "Time" is "the most common noun in the English language". (Take that, O.K.!)

- Plants can be grown from seeds that are over 200 years old.

- The egg came before the chicken.

Can scarcely wait to discover what burning questions are settled in 2007 (until someone announces the previously-announced answers were wrong).

Delays - Given Time (available on You See Colours)

Lightning Seeds - Ready Or Not (available on Dizzy Heights)