Thanksgiving Diner Invites - Only The Living

Friday morning NPR ran a story where a reviewer of classical music listed the classical composers he would invite to Thanksgiving dinner if he could.  The premise is it could be anyone from history. He chose to go with all dead composers.  A friend and I have had similar conversations in the past.  Sometimes we'd discuss it in the "any body, ever" scenario.  Sometimes we'd limit it to certain categories.  We usually ran a list of ten.  I'm going to play with this for the next few days until Thanksgiving.  For now I'm going to keep myself to a limit of five people. I think I'll do one grand invite in the "any body, ever" category to end this run.

We won't have to cross the streams because today we dine only with people that are still alive.  It turns out this was a tough category.  I think it has a lot to do with how broad the category is.  There's 7 billion people out there sucking up oxygen at this very moment.  Choose only 5 of them. I dare you.  I'm also a little disappointed in myself because my list ended up being so U.S. centric.  If there were more days before Thanksgiving I'd do some research and come up with 5 people for each continent / region and have a separate dinner for each group.

1. Barak Obama - Do I really have to explain wanting the current president of the USA at my table? OK, how about this. I've donated a few hundred dollars to him over the years. He owes me. :)  I'm also going to break my 5 person rule and have Michelle come as well.
2. Paul Krugman - Paul is a Nobel winning economist and, in my mind, has called the economy correctly for a long time.
3. Angelina Jolie - A creative type and a social activist. Plus, you know, hawt!
4. Phil Plait - Astronomer and the creator of Bad Astronomy blog.  Let's bring some more science.
5. Sir Richard Branson - Billionaire businessman and adventurer.  Our one non USA representative today.

As I implied above the potential alternate list is huge.  Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, Felipe Calderon, or the leader of just about any country.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  The current head of intelligence from Israel or Saudi Arabia.

I read probably a dozen bloggers each week and would love to have all of them.  I'd start that list with John Cole and Ta-Nehisi Coates followed by all the bloggers at Discover Magazine not just Phil Plait.