I’ll Take Potpourri for $200

How many countries are there in the world? The answer is 196. Or 193, or 195 or maybe 206. It depends on whether you trust the U.N., the State Department or Wikipedia. The fact remains that defining countries is not easy and, to complicate matters even further, every so often new states are born and added to the list. And with Europe fielding separatist movements, Africa seeing regions striving for independence, and the Middle East and Asia claiming home to multiple wannabe states, there’s a good chance that list will continue to grow.

We live in a scary world and that’s why every country needs a military. Or does it? In reality, more than 20 nations survive without a single soldier on their payroll. They include wealthy European states like Andorra and Liechtenstein, Central American nations like Costa Rica and tiny islands like Samoa, Nauru and Kiribati. Armies can be useful but, judging by this list, they’re not always a necessity.

Nearly 12 million people around the globe are without a nationality — even though Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says every human being must have one. Persons without citizenship live on the margins of society, lacking basic protections. The causes of statelessness can include simple administrative errors, legal disputes between countries, or states ceasing to exist altogether. Whatever the cause, the predicament is rarely temporary. Luckily some nations are making progress to combat the problem.

Germans are worriers. It even has a name: “German angst.” Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt spoke about this angst in 2011: “The Germans have a tendency to be afraid. This has been part of their consciousness since the end of the Nazi period and the war.” Germany regularly ranks among the most anxious nations in the Unisys Security Index, based on a biannual survey of national, financial, internet and personal security.

According to one survey, 27% of French men say they sometimes wear their underwear several times before washing it. And 4% say they wear a pair of underwear six times or more before tossing it in the wash. This is despite the fact that 96% of French households have a washing machine, and men are gradually doing more of their fair share of the laundry. Meanwhile, 91% of French women always wear clean underwear.

Parisians use coffee to perk up late-night conversation. In London and New York, coffee is the oil in a full-throttle lifestyle. But in terms of actual coffee consumption, nobody sips more java than the people of Finland. Almost every meeting there, whether for business or pleasure and no matter what time of day, starts with an offer of coffee. According to the International Coffee Organization, Finns consume nearly 27 pounds of coffee per person per year, or nearly three and a half cups each and every day.

Our past is embedded in the words we speak and in the stories we tell and sometimes write down. Many linguistic traditions, though, are at risk of vanishing. UNESCO estimates that half of the 6,000 languages spoken on the planet today could be gone by the end of this century. While extinction is a natural phenomenon, one expert says today’s rate of language loss is unprecedented. Preservationists are fighting back in some places.

Many modern, everyday Chinese idioms have their roots in ancient poetry. These idioms, each of which consists of four Chinese characters, are unique to the language. Chinese has about 20,000 such idioms, of which one or two thousand see common use. Chinese school kids recite them in class. And if you’re trying to understand the world's other superpower, learning some of these idioms might help.

The French are a proud bunch, especially when it comes to their mother tongue. So it must have been hard for them to take a backseat and watch English become the lingua franca of the 21st century. But revenge could be on the horizon: The language beloved by Russian aristocrats and pretentious grad students is set to reclaim its title as the world’s most commonly spoken language by the year 2050, according to a study by investment bank Natixis.

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A recent study found that nearly four-fifths of Americans are lying about their voting record in order to make it seem like they vote more often than they do. That sense of civic duty — or at least the desire to appear to have a sense of civic duty — is inspiring get-out-the-vote efforts to use social pressure (and shame) to get people into the voting booth.

More parents are keeping screens away from impressionable young eyes. And one survey found a shocking number of parents — about 60% — are ashamed of using their own cell phones around their kids. Moreover, 36% of parents had been told off by their children for spending too much time on their phones.

Following a much-publicized water shortage, Cape Town has clawed back to some semblance of normalcy. But life in the South African city has forever changed: Car washes are empty, artificial lawns are on the rise and taking a shower without saving the water is something you’d never admit to your neighbors. While having Mr. and Mrs. Next Door judging your water usage might seem invasive, it might also save Cape Town from worse disasters. Water-shaming tactics have helped the city reduce its daily water consumption by 48% within three years.

Which one is worse and why: not voting, overusing phones or overusing water?

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