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Most significant Americans

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by tochatihu, Nov 23, 2014.

  1. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Smithsonian lists 100 (110) as a subset from a book you can buy

    Meet the 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time | smithsonianmag.com | Smithsonian

    Any such list can stimulate differences of opinion; please nominate your choices here. For me, it is hard to place Madonna, Hulk Hogan, a dn L. Ron Hubbard ahead of American Jazz figures other than Louis Armstrong. Samuel Barber also for music. Levi Strauss for blue jeans?

    No doubt that Secretariat was a fast horse (Sea Biscuit?), but the movie industry = Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe & Mary Pickford? Oh puhleeze.

    America has produced a few significant scientists other than Edison...

    This being Prius Chat, we might have looked for Tesla. Ovshinsky. Anyway, who do you think was missed and who to delete?

    Goddard designed a few rockets, not to detract from Neil Armstrongs' piloting skills.

    Recent significant American science may be said to concentrate in geology, astronomy and biology (genetics in particular). Some vaccines, perhaps? The details of photosynthesis. I'll spare you the ecologists, that being a niche market :)

    But, dang.
     
  2. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    • Orville Wright
    • Wilbur Wright
    • Kelly Johnson
    • W. Edwards Deming
    Bob Wilson
     
  3. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    dan quail...
     
  4. ursle

    ursle Gas miser

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    All that's significant is that the Smithsonian is raising money, any way it can.

    Oswald made the list, I thought he was an alien.
     
  5. JimboPalmer

    JimboPalmer Tsar of all the Rushers

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    Albert Einstein
    Richard Feynman
    Robert Oppenheimer

    Philo Farnsworth

    Rosa Parks
    Cesar Chavez

    Sitting Bull
    Sacajawea
    Geronimo
     
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  6. The Electric Me

    The Electric Me Go Speed Go!

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    Stimulating debate and difference of opinion I think is the whole point of creating such a list.

    I really think it's pretty good. And I like the idea of grouping them is sub-categories. And NOT applying any arbitrary blanket rank.

    "Significance" within each nominations personal realm of influence is going to be subjective to each individual evaluating. So a lot is going to come down to what you consider significant. That is going to be pretty tied to what you PERSONALLY find interesting or important.

    Smithsonian even admits it's an impossible list to really compile. It's certainly a list that is going to fail to please everyone.

    I honestly think the list is pretty damn good.

    My only thought, is that I would of created a sub-category specifically for "writers". Even though Mark Twain made the list as a "Pop Icon" I think he more correctly belongs as a "author/writer".

    In doing so I would nominate Henry David Thoreau. And one of my PERSONAL significant favorites Kurt Vonnegut.

    My "Controversial" nomination would be Stephen King. Popular, Successful, but a writer that within his own lifetime has created work that has become part of the social subconscious of our culture. Call a barking dog behind a chain linked fence "Cujo" and everyone knows what you are talking about.

    I think his enormous world wide success has often unfairly discounted his creative brilliance. In the realm of things that go bump in the night? He has had significance.
     
  7. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    I think it would be much easier to create a list of 11,000 than 110. We are to buy the book.

    In it we could look for the fundamental irony present in the Smiths.article. The whole thing was based on Google methods and wikipedia sources. So, what about Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger? Buy the book from Jeff Bezos? Who's he?

    Agree that categories make the task more tractable. But these 10 are far from the categories I'd define...

    In general terms, artists/writers/photographers/moviemakers influence the way we feel about things. 'Pure' scientists look for, well, that stuff. Applied scientists/techmologists/ inventors turn some of those ideas into objects. Businessfolk make money by making those objects. Investors shift money around. Government establishes the (more or less) acceptable framework where all that happens.

    Architects are technologists, but the best are also artists. so it gets complicated. Because I don't know where to put religion and philosophy does not mean they don't exist ;)

    USA transition from "it's awful far away but we can cut trees there to make mainsail masts" to superpower was paved by a list of people. But something feels missing. Could be described in terms of the education system, entrepreneurship, or maybe other things. The ways people interact to get ideas, and to put them into practice. Lacking that, a large country with substantial mineral resources and agricultural system well suited* to human slavery (well, it was...) might not have made the transition. It may not be big-name universities per se, but it's something along those lines.

    Wright Brothers. Right. But wing warping is just too biological. Glenn Curtiss wouldn't have it. With ailerons you can build birds out of metal. Then they can go fast. Then you get Kelly Johnson..

    Even Smithsonian would tell you that the 20th century happened because of crude oil, refrigeration, and 'real' medicine. So, any names?

    While we might not celebrate warfare, it's a thing. Names. At least, a WWII general who became a 2-term president.

    Quayle before Joe McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover? I don't think so.



    *yeah, I know. What agricultural system isn't well suited to human slavery? Anyway.
     
  8. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    Oswald was born in New Orleans.
    One could make a case either way about his defection to the Soviet Union, but the US held that he "never formally renounced his citizenship" and he was awarded a 'repatriation loan' and allowed to import a Soviet bride.

    It's Smithsonian's list to defend.
     
  9. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    No Buckminster Fuller? Seems like an omission to me.
     
  10. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    He certainly had a significant impact on my career, but I'm not sure how many others recognize the name.
     
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