From ignorance to slightly less ignorance

One of the things about the various demonstrations, revolutions, brutal crackdowns, and civila wars going on in the so-called Middle East is that I am finally emerging a tiny bit from the muck of absolute ignorance: I've begun to be able to separate not just the geographical countries from one another, but also the types of government, a sense of who is Sunni and who is Shiite, where there is a large technologically savvy population, who is less strict about women's veiling, etc. etc. We have been-- okay, I have been-- woefully ignorant, and now I'm beginning to distinguish a few things.