Things I did not know

From an excellent article in the New Yorker about the global water shortage:

Yet at least since the cities of ancient Sumeria went to war over control of their rivers—long before tales of Moses parting the Red Sea or the Flood described in the Bible—water has been a principal source of conflict. (The word “rivals” even has it roots in fights over water, coming from the Latin rivalis, for “one taking from the same stream as another.”)

If you get the suspicion that your mood is, well, just too damn good then read the whole thing.