Ranking of America. Number one?

Daily Kos :: America is Number One.

The link above provides and interesting compilation of various ranking results, where America is compared to Europe, Asia and other developed and not even developed countries. Makes you wonder what the "best" stands for in "the best country in the world"?

Some peculiar examples:

# The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
# The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).

# Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).

# "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.

The actual list is much longer. Please make sure to check it.