Good things to learn

Paul Reynolds, a correspondent for the BBC, has some early lessons for geopoliticians:
"Although the fighting over South Ossetia is not over, and fighting for another Georgian enclave, Abkhazia, looks like developing, it is perhaps not too early to learn some tentative lessons from the crisis.
1. Do not punch a bear on the nose unless it is tied down.
2. Russia is in a determined mood, to say the least.
3. Remember Kosovo.
4. Georgia is unlikely to join NATO anytime soon.
5. Vladmir Putin is still in charge.
6. Do not allow a cuckoo to police the nest.
7. The West still does not know how to deal with Russia.
8. Are borders in Europe to be sacrosanct forever?
9. August is good month in which to reflect on alliances.

Rico says another amazement of the internet is that the BBC presents its news in multiple languages; not that that's so surprising, but one of them is Shqip, the Albanian language. Rico had a friend who was of Albanian descent, and who had his grandfather's Shqip-to-English dictionary; that was the first time Rico ever heard the word Shqip.