greatest countries of all time?

here's an article whose title is a bit too grand, but answer the question below before you open the link:

the 10 greatest countries in the history of the world

Now, seriously, just by looking at the title, what do you think is the merit of the article?
a) bullshit
b) bullshit
c) bullshit
d) all of the above

now, you may proceed and read the article above.

what the hell do people think? i mean, how can you compile a list of ten, yes ten countries, and call them the greatest in all of history, without branding yourself stupid? there can be no such thing. the best anyone can hope to do is to define a whole bunch of parameters to replace the word 'greatest', say for example, "the 10 countries that have most been bombed by the united states in the last 20 minutes" - now that would be a much less contentious topic to discuss, right? and placing so many restrictions doesn't even prevent the size of the list from exploding, does it?

this is the exact kind of article that can spark off major fire-spitting sessions. however, i must say that the comments here are waaaaaaaaay cleaner than i expected them to be. either they're being moderated well, or this is a relatively new article and not many people have read it yet. i could think of a third option - that people have realized that it's probably not worth wasting time arguing about such things - but ruled it out after 2.7 micro seconds when i realized that people always have time to waste. yep - me being one of them.

-w