h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gooday everyone.

If you could host a dinner, and invite anyone at all from any time in recorded history as a guest, who would you invite? There is you, and EIGHT guests. To kick the conversation off, these (I think) are my eight: Homer, Aristotle, Jesus Christ, Galileo, Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Napoleon. Since it is my idea, I am allowed to nominate a 'reserve' in case one of the original eight can't make it. So it would be Robert de Vere.

Walter.

Faced with that sexist list, I have to go away and think of eight more interesting women

I have to agree with Wandrin' gurustar.

How about:
Cleopatra, the model for the Mona Lisa, Elizabeth the first, Marie Curie,Jane Austen, Germaine Greer, Madonna....

Oops, that's ony seven..... oh and of course Walter so he can be re-educated after his sexist list.

Sorry, Walter, but apart from being a tadge sexist, I think your varied mix of guests might not 'gel' too well. Furthermore, with all those different nationalities, might there not be a serious language problem resulting in small talk in pigeon english.

Gooday Wandrin'star,

You know, I had this feeling that we would catch up again here. In a sense it is sad that you and Jezery think my list is sexist but I guess you call it as you see it. This harmless (?) exercise permits me to indulge myself and my fantasy without any inhibitions or adherence to someone else's notion of gender balance or correctness. Am I to replace Christ with Madonna, Shakespeare with Austen, or Leonardo with Curie merely on account of my list lacking women? You can't be entirely serious. What worries me is how close you might actually be to entirely serious.

Walter.

A tadge sexist? Et tu Brute Slug!!

For the purpose of the exercise, it can be assumed that (a) all guests gel exceptionally well and (b) each guest has a babel fish inserted upon arrival (except Christ who may well not need one) and (c) that real time is suspended in order that no guest is caught short of sufficient time to say what you want the guest to say.

Walter.

Jesus of Nazerath, Gilgamesh, Akenaten, Mohammed, a neanderthal, Siddartha Gautama (the first buddha, I think), Hasan ibn al-Sabbah (The Old Man of the Mountains, the leader of the assassins), my great-grandfather.
BCNU - Crescent

The trouble with not being able to see one's interlocutor's face is that you can never tell how serious anyone is. If I'm posting anywhere you can assume there's quite a lot of teasing involved (I am astounded that anyone could think I meant the English _hate_ the French for example)as h2g2 is one of my recreations, largely used for teasing my son and his friends. If I have really deeply held convictions, they usually go elsewhere. Practical advice that I offer is meant, especially anything to do with English teaching.
However, I would invite no known non-drinkers. Neither would I invite any religious leaders. Victorians forbade talking about sex, religion or politics at dinner and I rather wish that convention hadn't died out. I also wish I could cut out divorced people as they did, but....
So I have cut off Julian of Norwich and the Queen of Sheba,Stephen Hawking and Sarah Ferguson who might otherwise have made the list.
Elisabeth I, Mary Kingsley (the explorer) Mary Wesley (the novelist) Florence Nightingale, Sappho,Kiri te Kanawa,Margot Fonteyn,and my grandfather's sister whose first name I don't know. She left Cornwall when she was 18 and travelled to Canada alone. She couldn't afford a place in a wagon, so rode a horse all the way across to a place called Peace River where she died the week before her hundredth birthday having painted the kitchen ceiling for the celebration to which her by then very large family was invited (but none of the English branch, of course)

If you knock out all those, Wanderin', you are missing out on the most interesting peeps in history, the ones who changed views, shaped history......
BCNU - Crescent

Yes, but I wouldn't want them to dinner! I'd go to a lecture/seminar/religious retreat/debate etc
We could still talk about art and science and love and enjoy the wine and the music and have a lorra' laughs.

1) Alfred Einstein
2) Heisenburg (can't remember first name, quantum physist)
3) Descartes
4) Fredich Neitzche
5) Gandi
6) Jonh Lennon
7) Bill Hicks
8) Peter Ustinov
9) Alexander the Great

Yes, I know that there is no women in my list either and I will apologise for that. It was not deliberate.

Spike Milligan,
Joan of Arc,
Sir Winston and Lady Clementine Churchill,
John Merrick,
John Peel,
Albert Einstein,
Rosalind Franklin.

Joyce Grenfell, Dorothy Parker, David Niven, Brian May, Queen Elizabeth the 1st, Isaac Asimov, Taliesin the Welsh bard, Richard Feyneman & Lennox Lewis.

Can I have SWH to do the cooking?

Gooday everyone,

Yes, Crescent ACE, that's the way I approached it, people who have had profound effects on the way we think and act, and/or have shaped history. On that basis, my mother should get a guernsey, and my beloved, and my daughter and sisters, but for my selection I kept the nominations to "famous" people.

Niz and Hoversnail, it was very difficult to leave Einstein off my list. Elizabeth I gets a few mentions, and she is a favourite of mine, but I can't really say that she met my self-imposed criteria. Dame Kiri is an inspired choice, but I had to make the cut somewhere and so chose the man who composed most of her best arias.

And Wandrin'star, your grandfather's sister whose first name you don't know sounds an ideal choice to sit across from my grandfather who I never knew who sailed to Canada in the 1870s and spent years in the wilderness there before returning to a little village called Countess Cross to father my father. But for very special people such as they, we should perhaps lay a different table at some other time.

Thought about Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kemp, and my favourite Christina Mirabilis, but why anyone would actually want one of these disruptive, loud, bizarre, mad as hatter mystics at a dinner table is a little beyond me. Jesus, of course, is in an entirely different (and singularly exclusive) category.

Walter.

Well, well, well. A h2g2 dinner and no invite for DNA???

I am ashamed of you all!!

DNA
Isaac Asimov
Carl Sagan
Marie Curie
Joyce Grenfell
Spike Milligan
Leonardo da Vinci
Archimedes

(With Stephen Hawking as reserve)

That's my choice!!

'G'

OK ....

Alfred the Great (king of Wessex 871-899)
Charlemagne (in his later years)
Aldfrith (king of Northumbria 685-704)
Adomnan of Iona (St Columba's hagiographer)
The Venerable Bede
Gildas
Hildegard of Bingen
Ambrosius Aurelianus (maybe the prototype Arthur)
(Emperor Marcus Aurelius as my spare)

A fairly obscure list I admit, but its mine ... so there! Hildegard chosen not as the token female (that would be too PC - shudder), but as the first woman in the medieval period as far as I am aware whose writings have survived. Before that, women don't seem to have been invented!
Cheers
Bran.
P.S. No snide remarks from you Walter.

Gooday Bran,

Gee, you wish!! Not a terribly eclectic lot, is it? But as someone once said, 'a humble thing but mine own'. The Venerable Bede is nice. That was interesting about Hildegard: to save me looking it up, when did she write? No probs with Charles the Great, but wasn't he a bit flyblown in his later years? Although you are THE expert in early medieval history, so perhaps I should go quietly while there's still room for the other foot to fit in my mouth.

Walter.

FIrst a salutation, which some of you tend to forget
Good day and good meal to all of you

I would invite, given the chance
Galileo
Winston Churchill
Mary, Queen of Scots
Shakespeare
Jerry Garcia
James Dean
Marie Curie
Alexander Flemming
and (as a back up) the inventor of the wheel

Catch you later,
Ivana D.

Gooday Ivana,

Good one. Especially taken with the inventor of the wheel. Churchill and Curie are obviously not without support. Take care,

Walter.

Hiya Walter
Not eclectic at all ... a very precise lot of people who I'd love to pump for information. Hildegard lived 1098-1179 and wrote on music, literature, and science (such as it was), and was also well-known as a healer (which meant at the time that she probably washed her hands).
Cheerio
Bran.