If you could invite exactly ten guests from any time period and from any place for a once in a lifetime evening with you where you may ask or talk about anything you please (assume you have universal translators), who would they be?
Here’s my list in no particular order:
Ludwig von Mises
Albert Einstein
Stephen Hawking
Jesus of Nazareth
Siddhartha Guatama
James Randi
James Burke
Thomas Jefferson
Charles Darwin
Ayn Rand
Boy, this is harder than it looks… I must have changed this list a dozen times…
I would assume, since I’m the one giving the party, that it’s 10 guests plus myself.
Here’s my list:
Jane Austen
Mark Twain
Jimmy Stewart
Thomas Jefferson
Henry David Thoreau
Douglas Adams
Annie Oakley
Franklin Roosevelt
Benjamin Franklin
Sophocles
But if I get one more, someone doesn’t have a dinner partner! Look at that list. Who do you figure goes stag out of that group?
Josephine Baker 1925 - 1975 American expatriate showgirl, singer, dancer, spy, writer, rights activist, and one woman social whirlwind of Paris, before, during, and after World War II. I figure her as a natural dinner partner for either Gandhi, or Jefferson. Not that I would turn down her company myself, mind you.
Albert Einstein
Matt Groening
Alexander the Great
Cleopatra
Jerry O’Connell
Margaret Weis
Tracy Hickman
Hank Azaria
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Sir Isaac Newton
Hmm…half of my list is made up of entertainers, and another three are scientists, and two world leaders. If I could combine their powers, I could do anything!
1)Miyamoto Musashi, famous Japanese swordsman. Bested over 60 opponents in single combat.
2)J. Robert Oppenheimer. I can’t believe Bouv picked this before me. Called the Father of the Atomic Bomb.
3)Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest physicist/mathematicians ever.
4)Genghis Khan, conqueror.
5)David Halberstam, journalist.
6)Sir Francis Walsingham. Spymaster for Elizabeth I.
7)Malcom X. Militant civil rights activist.
8)George Bernard Shaw, playwright.
9)Amadeus Mozart, composer.
10)Benjamin Franklin, inventor. Statesman.
My wife picks
1)Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen.
2)Mary, Queen of Scots.
3)Jane Austen, author.
4)Jesus of Nazareth
5)Stephen King, author.
6)Peter Sellers, actor.
7)Julius Caesar.
8)Malcom X.
9)Mary Shelley. Author of Frankenstein.
10)Stevie Wonder.
[li] Isaac Asimov[/li][li] Francis Bacon[/li][li] Thomas Jefferson[/li][li] Catherine the Great[/li][li] Che Guevara[/li][li] Marie Curie[/li][li] Albrecht Duerer[/li][li] Michael J. Fox[/li][li] Sappho[/li][li] Charles Darwin[/li]
But at least you know the wine would match every course and you wouldn’t run out of dinner rolls.
D. W. Griffith (silent movie director)
Buster Keaton (silent movie comic actor)
Bill Mauldin (cartoonist and author)
James Thurber (humorist and cartoonist)
Edgar Allan Poe (author)
Edie Sedgwick (Pop Sixties superchick)
Thomas Sully (Early American portrait artist)
John L. Sullivan (turn-of-the-century boxer)
Bugsy Siegel (gangster)
Mary Todd Lincoln (theater-goer)
Good to see Franklin and Jefferson on so many lists already.
For me:
[ul]
[li]Benjamin Franklin[/li][li]Thomas Jefferson[/li][li]John von Neumann[/li][li]Charles Darwin[/li][li]Samuel Johnson[/li][li]Geoffrey Chaucer[/li][li]Leonardo da Vinci[/li][li]Galileo Galilei[/li][li]Maimonides[/li][li]William Calvin[/li][/ul]