The wonderful diversity here has piqued my insatiable curiosity, this time for the interesting but trivial...

Scenario: you are going out to dinner and you get to choose any non-fictional person to join you, one on one, for an evening of stimulating conversation and tasty comestibles.   The person can be living or dead, from any point in history to the present day.

Who would you be most interested in dinner & conversation with and why?

Hard choice between Tom Jefferson or Ben Franklin.

Quote from: tekla on August 03, 2009, 10:43:51 AM
Hard choice between Tom Jefferson or Ben Franklin.

I will take Thomas Paine on that note.

Einstein or arthur clarke or ian fleming or outhor of sherlock holmes books or piers anthony, so many choices.......

Oh my!

Of the top of my head....

Jesus Christ (duh)
Buck O'Neil (to talk baseball)
Robert A. Heinlien
Will Rogers
Kate Hepburn (she seemd to have an opinion on everything)
Bill Shatner (seems a fun guy)
Thomas Jefferson (and others of the founders)
C.S. Lewis
Joss Weadon (guy actually talks like he writes, it would have to be a riot)


I'm sure there are a great many more...
Many I'll end up "amening" in this thread I know

oh wow... how can I be expected to choose?

From all the world's greatest philosophers, all the worlds great visual and musical artists, to great political thinkers and men who changed history through simple ideas of other kinds. Authors of incredible works of literature which truly stirred the waters of their day. Poets, explorers, treasure hunters, etc, etc, etc,..
In the end, I suppose I'd end up choosing Descartés, or Salvador Dali, or Einstein... or maybe... *trails off*

Probably Mark Twain.  We're similar brands of smart-ass. 

Christine Jorgensen.  She was the first transwoman I read about.  I would love to hear her transition in her own words.


Janet

Alfred Hitchcock.

Great answers folks! (Extra portion of garlic bread to Nichole's table for the excellent answer to the "why" part).

It's easy to think of some, hard to whittle that down to just one!

Einstein would be interesting.  At the tail end of his life, he said that his "universal constant", which was a deliberate fudge to try and make reality conform with his vision, was the worst mistake of his life.  I'd love to see his face when we talk about the current "dark energy" conundrum!

My shortlist would probably be Chalmers, Kant, Feynman, Ramachandran or Wittgenstein.

Chalmers for a good dualist vs materialist argument over consciousness.

Kant for his brilliant insight into straddling empiricism and realism.

Feyman because his work on quantum electrodynamics was a total stroke of genius and I'd love to know how that popped into his head.

Ramachandran for his amazing work on the mind & brain (would also have the consciousness conversation with him too).  His 2003 Reith lectures and book "Phantoms in the Brain" were inspired.

Wittgenstein...well, it ties in because of his work on metaphysics, the existence and properties of entities without observers or experience, etc..

Choice: probably Chalmers or Ramachandran, as I'm nowhere near bright enough to keep up with any of the others.  They'd get bored talking down to my level.  (Sorry Steve/Rama)

Copernicus...... I'd really like to pick his brain to discover how he figured it all out.  His book is fascinating stuff by the way.... even if it is a bit dry to read.

Cindi

I may break it into eras, I'd start with Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, probabley for a pizza .

If we didn't invent something, at least we'd have a darn good painting of it.

World War II. Stalin, Hitler, Churchill. To ask them why? Might have to be finger food.

Modern era: Edward Tufte and Bill Gates to discuss how to create a microsoft presentation package that didn't make you ill looking at the result. Bill can leave the tip.

Cindy

Feyman would be great because after dinner we could play bongos and then go to the strip club, both of which he was very fond of.

I'd like to meet with Robert Fripp to discuss just how to coax those sounds from a guitar. But knowing what I do of Fripp, it might be easier to have that same discussion with Adrian Belew. Fripp seems almost like the Yngwie of avant-garde, if that genre is the right one.

Oh no, Fripp is the very model of an English Gentleman, and he can (I've seen him lecture) explain very well what he is doing and how he does it.  Its very, very technical to be sure, but what he does is very, very technical, so it kind of fits.  But his manners, poise and ability to conduct a conversation is so amazing its hard to even think of him as a musician sometimes.

Well, that's cool to know about Fripp.

If I could have dinner with anyone then I would pick God.

No, not really. I got that from one of Fox's 500 days of Summer movies called Whip It.

My father. I miss him terribly.

i'd like to have dinner with a troll.  i'd like to ask them a few questions:

--how do you pick the forums you troll?

--do you really think this is going to help the fact you have no friends and no life?

--do your imaginary friends get upset when you ignore them for so long?

--why do you need this kind of attention?  did you not get enough hugs?

--do you, by any chance, like the movie 'the matrix'?

Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox," or Bernard "Monty" Montgomery, two of the greatest, and most honorable tacticians of WW2.

Patrick Henry Pearse, James Connolly, or any of the leaders of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916.  I'd like to pick their brains just to know how brave they were, risking everything to fight for the independence of Ireland.

I'm a history buff, what can I say? 

Quote from: Janet Lynn on August 03, 2009, 07:31:49 PM
Christine Jorgensen.  She was the first transwoman I read about.  I would love to hear her transition in her own words.


Janet

Very cool choice, Janet!

For me this is automatic...I would choose Emily Dickinson. I feel such an affinity with her.