Bathing is important for removing germs from one's skin as well as washing away odors from sweat and dirt.

CNN: Is bathing just once a week healthy?

While such numbers make the eyes spin like, well, washing machines, some people still find it hard to consider laundering as a problem in its own right.

ECONOMIST: Cleaning up dirty money

This covers bathing and washing water, well over the amount I actually imbibe.

FORBES: Apple's Profits, Apple's Taxes, Are Near Irrelevant: A Response To Robert Reich

As for that alleged disdain for soap, the statistics ignore the savon de Marseille, an unscented household soap used by many French people, especially southerners, for washing bodies as well as clothes.

ECONOMIST: France��s bathroom blues

At the same time, it would seem the open-source wave is actually washing over vendor solutions as well.

FORBES: Red Hat's Formula for an Open Cloud

Popular items include gherkins from the Spree forest and sausages from Thuringia, as well as Rot-Weiss toothpaste, Spee washing powder and chicken-shaped plastic egg cups in various colours.

ECONOMIST: A wild repackaging of German history

The Vikings who settled Iceland smoked, dried, salted or pickled just about anything to get them through the long Arctic winter and their descendents still occasionally indulge in the delicacies of their ancestors, washing it all down with Black Death, a caraway-flavored liquor that apparently goes well with rancid shark.

NPR: Whole Foods to Sell Exclusive Icelandic Delights