This means I get to vote Hitler for the first time, again, later! OK.
I switch to Paul of Tarsus.
If we’re allowed to game the system, I’ll change my no-vote to Paul H. Tarsus. This should enable me to vote for Mohammed H. Prophet in the second round, just like last time.
Can we add write-in candidates? If so, I’d like to choose Perez Hilton.
What’s the point of voting off write-in candidates? They’re already not in the running…
No. We have to select from the list. Otherwise, geez, I’d be adding cripes only knows how many goldarn people.
I too am changing my vote to Perez Hilton, unless this is not allowed, in which case I am leaving my vote Jesus Christ.
I’ll switch from Jesus to Paul.
You describe Mr. Christ as “Son of God, Saviour of Mankind” and now vote to eliminate Mohammed in the first round?
I’m no pro-jihadist myself, but would it be fair to speculate that your position on the World’s Two Greatest Religions™ is less than fully objective?
While we’re waiting, can I take a moment to express surprise at seeing J.S. Bach on the list? Nice though it is to see the musical arts represented, and as great a composer as Bach was in his own right, he was not really very influential musically or otherwise. In fact, he was seen as been hopelessly old-fashioned along before his death in 1750. His main actual influence was through his sons JC and CPE, who did both have a measurable influence on musical style of the late 18th century, and through appreciation by composers subsequent to his musical revival (for which Mendelssohn gets most of the credit).
Beethoven makes perfect sense on that list, and one could easily have added Dufay, Dunstable, Josquin, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Pergolesi, Haydn (especially Haydn), Rossini, Wagner, Schoenberg and many others as being crucially influential. But Bach? Nope.
I haven’t read Hart’s book in quite a while, but as I recall, his argument was that Bach was the first big celebrity musician. Prior to him, musicians were mostly anonymous.
He’s wrong that Bush was a celebrity musician. Among his contemporaries, Handel was far more famous, and one could easily make a case for Vivaldi, Rameau, and Telemann being far more well-known and influential at the time, Rameau in particular although you’d only know that if you studied the history of music theory (Rameau is probably the single composer/theorist most responsible for the notion that chords have roots and inversions.)
However, Bach came to be revered in the late 18th to early 19th centuries; Bach’s work is now regarded as the foundation of common-practice harmony.
Other celebrity musicians earlier than Bach would include Monteverdi, John Dunstable, Josquin de Prez, Johannes Ockeghem, and Guillaume Dufay.
In short, Hart’s knowledge of music history is clearly abominable, in that he picked Bach for something he really wasn’t (a major musical celebrity in his time, and certainly wouldn’t have been the first, either) and ignored what Bach really is, a composer who came to be justly and widely revered only long after his death.
I realize you were reacting to another’s post, Knorf, but this is yet another of several posts which have misrepresented Hart’s biographies. I have Hart’s book open to the biography of Bach as I type this message and he very clearly states that he ranks Bach highly for precisely the reason you say he “ignores” (and because Bach was “technically the best craftsman” among major composers). Moreover, Hart stresses that Bach was not particularly famous during his own lifetime and was “half forgotten during the fifty years following his death.”
I’m sure there’s much fault to be found in Hart’s book. But I’ve seen a few posts already that completely misrepresent his thinking.
Well, he was briefly popular with that “Glycerine” song, so it could be argued that he was a celebrity muscision, but he was far from the first.
I did say I was working from memory.
And a late vote for Hitler.
No, not at all. The Americas were discovered for a second time, independently of Columbus’s voyage, only eight years after his trip. If Columbus had never existed, the Americas would have been discovered all the same at about the same time. The main difference would have been that Spain probably would not have been in the forefront of their colonization.
Pedro Alvares Cabral of Portugal, who was attempting to round Africa on his way to India, was blown off course and landed on the coast of Brazil in 1500. Because of the prevailing winds, it was typical by then for ships attempting to sail around Africa to take a course well offshore. Given the number of ships making the voyage, and the closeness of Africa and Brazil, it was pretty much inevitable for the Americas to have been discovered within only a few years of when they actually were.
Columbus was largely irrelevant to the fact that the Americas were discovered. He affected the details of their colonization, but not the timing.
I accept the criticism.
Bush? How the heck did I type that rather than Bach?!
I forget which notable British scientist it was who wrote (I’m paraphrasing here), “We should be broadcasting Bach night and day out into the cosmos so that intelligent aliens will know he was from here. It would be bragging, of course, but first impressions can be quite important, after all.”
According to Douglas Adams, Bach never even actually existed, and was retconned into reality so that the theme of the universe could exist here on earth.
Love me some Bach.
Wednesday has come and gone. It appears we lost Curtis. I guess he was able to take people voting to kill Jesus but then you guys had to insult George Bush as well.
Anyway, here’s the votes, assuming I counted right:
Jesus Christ 19
Paul of Tarsus 5
Adolf Hitler 6
Mohammed 2
Isabella 1
Mani 1
Urban 1
the Wright brothers 1
So Jesus, Paul, and Hitler are out.
Let’s start Round 2.
Mohammed - Founder of Islam
Isaac Newton - British Scientist, Theory of Universal Gravitation and Motion
Buddha - Founder of Buddhism
Confucius - Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Confucianism
Ts’ai Lun - Scientist, Inventor of Paper
Johann Gutenberg - Scientist, Inventor of Printing Press
Christopher Columbus - Explorer, Discoverer of America
Albert Einstein - Scientist, Physicist, Theory of Relativity
Louis Pasteur - Scientist, Pasteurization
Galileo Galilei - Scientist, Advocated Heliocentricity
Aristotle - Greek Philosopher
Euclid - Greek Mathematician
Moses - Jewish Prophet
Charles Darwin - British Scientist, Theory of Evolution
Shi Huang Di - Chinese Emperor, United China
Augustus Caesar - Roman Princep, Founded Roman Empire
Nicolas Copernicus - Scientist, Theory of Heliocentricity
Antonine Laurent Lavoisier - French Scientist, Advanced Chemistry
Constantine the Great - Roman Emperor, Promoted Christianity
James Watt - British Scientist, Invented Steam Engine
Michael Faraday - British Scientist, Discovered Magneto-Electricity
James Clerk Marxwell - Scientist, Electromagnetic Spectrum
Martin Luther - Theologian, Started Protestantism and Reformation
George Washington - American Statesman and General
Karl Marx - Economist, Founder of Communism
Orville and Wilbur Wright - Scientists, Inventor of Airplane
Genghis Khan - Mongol Ruler, Founded Mongol Empire
Adam Smith - Economist, Advocated Capitalism
William Shakespeare - English Playwright
John Dalton - Scientist, Atomic Theory
Alexander the Great, Macedonian Ruler, Formed Macedonian Empire
Napoleon Bonaparte - French Emperor, Waged Napoleonic Wars
Thomas Edison - American Scientist and inventor
Antony van Leeuwenhoek - Scientist, Inventor of Microscope
William TG Morton - Scientist, Invented Anaesthesia
Gugilemo Marconi - Scientist, Invented Radio
Plato - Greek Philosopher, Developed Platonism
Oliver Cromwell - British Ruler
Alexander Graham Bell - Scientist, Invented Telephone
Alexander Fleming - Scientist, Invented Penicillin
John Locke - British Philosopher, Developed Democratic Ideas
Ludwig von Beethoven - Composer
Werner Heisenberg - Scientist, Developed Quantum Physics
Louis Dagurre - Scientist, Invented Photography
Simon Bolivar - Latin American General and Statesman
Rene Descrates - French Philosopher
Michelangelo - Artist, Sculptor
Pope Urban II - Pope of Roman Catholic Church, Called For Crusades
‘Umar ibn al - Khattab - Muslim Caliph, Expanded the Caliphate
Asoka - Indian Emperor, Spread Buddhism
St. Augustine - Christian Theologian
William Harvey - Scientist, Developed Theories of Blood Circulation
Ernest Rutherford - Scientist, Developed Subatomic Physics
John Calvin - Christian Theologian, Developed Calvinism
Gregor Mendel - Priest and Scientist, Advanced Genetics
Max Planck - Scientist, Developed Therodynamics
Joseph Lister - Scientist, Developed Antiseptic Methods
Nikolaus August Otto - Scientist, Developed Internal Combustion Engine
Francisco Pizarro - Spanish Adventurer, Conquered Inca Empire
Hernando Cortes - Spanish Adventurer, Conquered Aztec Empire
Thomas Jefferson - American Statesman
Queen Isabella I - Queen of Spain, Sponsored Columbus’ Expeditions
Josef Stalin - Dictator of USSR, Expanded Communism
Julius Caesar - Roman General, Ended Roman Civil Wars
William the Conquerer - Norman Duke and English King
Sigmund Freud - Psychologist, Developed Freudian Psychology
Edward Jenner - Scientist, Developed Vaccination for Smallpox
William Conrad Roentgen - Scientist, Invented X-Ray
Johann Sebastian Bach - Composer
Lao Tzu - Chinese Philosopher, Founded Taoism
Voltaire - French Philosopher
Johannes Kepler - Scientist, Developed Theories of Planetary Motion
Enrico Fermi - Scientist, Developed Atomic Bomb
Leonhard Euler - Mathematician
Jean - Jacques Rosseau - French Philosopher and Writer
Nicoli Machiavelli - Political Theorist
Thomas Malthus - Economist, Developed Malthusian Theory
John F. Kennedy - American President, Originated Manned Mission to Moon
Gregory Pincus - Scientist, Invented Birth-Control Pill
Mani - Founder of Manichaeism
V.I. Lenin - Russian Leader, Founded Communism in Russia
Sui Wen Ti - Chinese Emperor, Reunited China
Vasco de Gama - Explorer, Discovered Cape of Good Hope
Cyrus the Great - Persian Emperor, Founded Persian Emperor
Peter the Great - Russian Emperor, Modernized Russia
Mao Zedong - Chinese Dictator, Established Communism in China
Francis Bacon - Philosopher, Developed Scientific Method
Henry Ford - American Industrialist, Developed Mass-Production Techniques
Mencius - Chinese Philosopher, Expanded Confucianism
Zoraster - Founder of Zorasterianism
Queen Elizabeth I - Queen of England, Made England a Naval Power
Mikhail Gorbachev - Soviet Leader, Liberalized and Helped Break Up USSR
Menes - Egyptian Pharaoh, United Egypt
Charlemagne - Frankish Monarch, Founder of Holy Roman Empire
Homer - Greek Poet, Writer of Epics
Justinian I - Byzantine Emperor, Recovered Much of Roman Empire
Mahavira - Founder of Jainism
I’m voting for Stalin.