This is a bit of a tricky question because the answer depends on how one defines countries. Sovereign states only? Territories recognised by others as countries only? Or are dependent territories such as Guam and Taiwan included? Parameters, people, parameters!

Being a little less anal though, I will hazard a guess at the answer. Last time I checked there were 192 member states of the UN (with, I believe, the status of Kosovo undecided). Of course, I now cannot for the life of me remember whether that figure includes Serbia and Montenegro as one or seperate states. But I know there are at least 193 sovereign states regardless, because Vatican City/the Holy See is not a member state of the UN.

So I'm going with 193 or 194 sovereign states, but I have read somewhere that there are over 200 countries in the world (although I don't know what criteria they are using when determining that).

And I probably just spent too much time answering this one Writer's Block question, but I like to be precise, dammit!


Edited to add: DAMMIT! I forgot South Sudan. I knew there was a more recent country than Montenegro, but I couldn't remember what it was. Argh. And I'm the international relations scholar. I read so many articles on the referendum and split this year!

But that makes it at least 194 sovereign states.

This is, of course, a subjective answer to a subjective question that is open to a wide range of interpretations. I personally believe that Queen is the greatest (rock) band of all time, so that is who I answered.

Strangely, I still often say that U2 is my favourite band, but it's probably really Queen. I do love U2, but I think Queen will last through the ages better. Plus, in a frontman battle between Freddie Mercury and Bono, Freddie would clearly be the winner. I know there are some people that say Mick Jagger is the best frontman of all time, and I agree that he's very charismatic and can be quite mesmerising to watch perform, but I think Freddie Mercury is absolutely amazing and really connects with the crowd. My abosolute favourite live performance by anyone ever is Queen's Live Aid performance. I truly believe that no one could watch that performance and not think it was amazing (even if they don't like Queen or think another front man is better than Freddie - it's still awesome by objective standards).

I don't know if there will ever be world peace, but I would like there to be. Imagine how much good we could do for issues like hunger and extreme poverty and health and education and the environment and global warming if practically every country in the world wasn't spending so much money of defence and security and weapons. And that's not even taking into account the loss of life and environmental destruction.

Sadly, as much as I would like there to be world peace and despite all the benefits it would bring, I can't see it happening anytime soon. History is littered with wars and battles and terrorism and I can't see anything about our current world that is different enough to make a change in the near future. Sometimes I think that the view of "the others" and the culture of fear and violence that stems from that is even stronger today than it was in the past. And our weapons are so much more destructive now.

I hate being so pessimistic about this because I am very much an optimist, but sometimes I have to look at the facts as they are presented to me and make a logical conclusion. If we can't have world peace, then I would at least like us to reduce extreme poverty and hunger and improve health and education for everyone in the world, not just those privileged few in the West (of which I know I am one). I study international relations and development and international law and I want to work in area related to all this. I want to make a difference (to be completely honest, I want to save the world, but I'll stick with small goals to start off with).

And even though it sounds cliched and straight out of a movie beauty pagent, if I was told I could have any one wish I asked for, I would wish for world peace. Because, really, there is so much that could be gained from it.