Did you know?

I thought everyone learns the basic colour wheel in primary school but even at Foundation Art and Design level we had to go over colour theory… and many people weren’t sure what primary colours make what secondary colours. Also, our teacher insisted that opposite colours make grey. THEY DON’T, but they do make interesting neutral shades of one or the other colour. Which makes sense as opposite colours make brown in the right amount… which is the most neutral non-grey colour you can get… I mean, who’s ever heard of bright brown? Bright neon brown? Naaaaah.
ANYWAY. There are a lot of things in life that we really ought to know a lot earlier than we tend to find them out. I have a friend who’s been living on his own for a year who doesn’t know how to switch on a grill. My dad broke his kettle the other day trying to scrub out the scale because he doesn’t know the trick of boiling up vinegar in a kettle and leaving it overnight. Isn’t it supposed to be our parents who teach us all these things? What happens if they don’t know about them themselves?
How about a book, or a website, full of things we all need to know, not just household tips like 101 uses of vinegar but things like how to tell if a mole is getting unhealthy or things not to say when breaking up with someone. Just small but very necessary things… I have a book that tells you things like how to survive quicksand or how to battle a shark and I don’t think those things are entirely important to know unless you’re going someplace risky… although the “What to do if someone takes a gun out on the street” section might be handy for me as I live in East London…
So I looked around for a website that could offer such a service but the most promising looking site was didyouknow.com, which, unfortunately, I could not investigate as the site is down for maintenance. Or was, at the very least, at the time of me writing this here blog. Maybe the makers just couldn’t handle the pressure of such a task! … if the site in question did actually serve the function that I was looking for.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a task for one person, or even a few people. How about a website where viewers of the site contribute their own hints and tips, entering their ideas into various sections of the ever growing databases, with users rating or confirming the entries of others?
Well, that’s kind of the point of Google, isn’t it? But no one cruises Google just reading random tips to store up for use later in their life, there has to be more of a lure, something that makes people WANT to read all of these very useful facts, so no father will ever break a kettle again!
Well, once a huge database is constructed of every thing a person really ought to know if they’re going to competently take care of themselves, a book or series thereof… perhaps a magazine? … could be published, making for a far nicer reading experience than a Yahoo Answers type website of random facts about living.

So, yes, that’s something I’d like to see, anyone know something like that they can recommend to me? If not, does anyone want to go do that? Well, just make sure you give me some royalties for coming up with the idea, yes? *goes to bed*