Tuesday, May 17, 2005

One shouldn't let total imbeciles compile lists.


Over at Two Glasses, Toast takes exception to the Discovery Channel's list of 100 greatest Americans. All right, so, of the 100 greatest Americans, four of them happen to be named "Bush". What's your problem, Toast? And why do you hate America?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suppose I should feel grateful that Jenna and Barbara The Younger didn't make the cut.

Anonymous said...

And yet the baked bean people are nowhere to be found. Sad.

M@ said...

As I commented on Toast's site, it's a shame that anyone would think of this as a good list when so many great American thinkers and doers were left off.

Sorry, but Katherine Hepburn may have been a great lady and a great actress, but Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of TV, was a far more important person in world history.

Steve Jobs invented the modern computer interface and bully for him. But William Shockley invented the freakin' transistor.

And putting Joseph Smith Jr. on there and leaving James Watson off just shows how much religion is valued in the USA compared to, say, figuring out how all life works.

It gets hard, sometimes, to keep down the feeling of complete and utter contempt one gets when one starts talking about the USA...

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but Katherine Hepburn may have been a great lady and a great actress, but Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of TV, was a far more important person in world history.

Well, the way I approached grading it -- and this is, of course a classic YMMV case -- is I figured you had to expect a mix of people from all walks of life. We weren't going to get the top 100 American Geniuses, much as they might deserve it. But, having established that, the people in each group really should be top notch.

So, Katherine Hepburn and Elvis I'm not going to bitch about, but Tom Cruise? That's just insane.

Steve Jobs invented the modern computer interface and bully for him.

Truth be told, the anonymous geeks at Xerox PARC had a lot to do with that, but Jobs saw the potential and went to town with it.

putting Joseph Smith Jr. on there and leaving James Watson off just shows how much religion is valued in the USA compared to, say, figuring out how all life works.

Why figure stuff out when your invisible friend has already given you all the answers in his sacred book? ;-)