Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

A figure of between 100 and 200 acquaintances is similar to the number of people with whom a human being can maintain a meaningful social relationship — a value known as Dunbar's number, after Robin Dunbar, the psychologist who proposed it. Dunbar's number for people is about 150.

This has encouraged a notion that the nominees are as bad as each other — Hillary and Trump are Coke and Pepsi, both bad for you.

The proportion of Britons telling pollsters that they almost never trust the government has risen from one in ten in 1986 to one in three today.

A more open, accessible imperial family has transformed the monarchy's appeal after the aloofness of Hirohito — even if it will be a while yet before the royals bicycle to the supermarket like Scandinavian ones.

Imagine an American election in which two-thirds of the senators and three-quarters of the state governors up for re-election are defeated. It would be a landside to end all landslides.

The whole purpose of having a drawbridge is that one can raise or lower it as necessary depending upon the situation at hand. A proper castle requires a sensible fellow at the controls.

Donald Rumsfeld, a former American defence secretary, once delight­ed policy wonks everywhere by distinguishing between "known un­knowns" — things we know we don't know — and "unknown unknowns". China's political system is a known unknown.

"When the end of the world is nigh," Otto von Bismarck allegedly said, "I will move to Mecklenburg, because everything happens 50 years later there." Even locals agree that the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg — West Pomerania will always be a back­water. But backwaters can also be bellwethers.

It feels as if Britain has been visited by a battalion of sorrows.

When Richard Nixon got cross with Gough Whitlam, the inde­pendent-minded Australian prime minister at the time, he put Australia on his "shit list".

There is a saying in Japan that a monkey that falls from a tree is still a monkey, but a member of parliament who falls is a nobody.

Some legal scholars have, rather valiantly, cited as precedent Benjamin Franklin's seeking Congress's approval before accept­ing a jewel-encrusted snuffbox from the king of France as a re­tirement gift.

America already spends $19bn a year on immigration enforcement, more than on the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Drug Enforcement Agency and Secret Service combined.

The farther you live from a railway station, the more you are like­ly to vote FN (National Front).

Governments that were digitally blind when the internet first took off in the mid-1990s now have both a telescope and a microscope.

Multiplying parties can allow politicians to hide the fact that what matters is patronage. Voters may be bewildered when con­fronted with the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front — or with National Liberals, Democratic Liberals and Li­beral Reformists, as they were in Romania in 2014.

The US prison system that, after decades of relentless growth, holds over 20% of the world's prisoners, though America is home to less than 5% of the global population. Every year, 600,000 people are released from American prisons. More than half of all prisoners have mental health problems, while about two-thirds did not complete high school. Once out, ex-cons join about 70m Americans with criminal records, a status which in several states will deny them public housing and the right to vote, and legally bar them from occupations which require a licence, such as hair-cutting or plumbing.

During the 20th century, a ghastly illness was almost a presidential prerequisite. Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in his second term that his doctors concealed; Franklin Roosevelt's heart problems killed him while in office; John F. Kennedy's ailments could have filled an entire medical textbook, had they been disclosed. Richard Nixon's anguish during Watergate placed a large nuclear arsenal in the hands of a president who may temporarily have been of un­sound mind. For the combination of sheer agony and high secrecy, though, it is hard to beat the unfortunate Grover Cleveland. For four days at the beginning of his second term, notes Robert Dallek of Stanford University's outpost in Washington, DC, he disappeared to a yacht, where six surgeons cut out a portion of his cancerous upper jaw. The offending bits were removed through his mouth so as not to damage his moustache, which might alert the public.

Frederick the Great of Prussia declared: "No woman should ever be al­lowed to govern anything."

As Queen Elizabeth nears 90 after 64 years as its titular head, some wonder if the Commonwealth club will survive when she goes. Few knew much about it; a quarter of Jamaicans thought its head was Barack Obama.

Roughly one adult Chinese in every 13 is a member of the Communist Party, yet identifying such people can be difficult.