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Dinner Party Of The Dead
February 10, 2015 at 6:54 pm
(This post was last modified: February 10, 2015 at 6:54 pm by BrianSoddingBoru4.)
Here's yet another time-travel thread.
Assume you have a one-way time transporter - you cannot travel though time, but you can bring people back from the past. What ten dead people (or eight or fifteen, whatever you like) would you have to a dinner party? They can be famous, infamous, unknown, long dead, recently dead, anything you like. The only stipulations are that they must be historic figures (no fictional people, please) and they must be dead. Here are mine, paired up for lively conversations.
-Christopher Hitchens
-Mother Theresa
-Vlad Tepes
-St Francis of Assisi
-Mark Twain
-William Jennings Bryan
-George Carlin
-Pope Alexander VI
-Bishop Ussher
-T.H. Huxley
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
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RE: Dinner Party Of The Dead
February 10, 2015 at 7:11 pm
Can they speak English?
There's not much point in bringing Genghis Khan to the present if I can't speak his tongue.
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RE: Dinner Party Of The Dead
February 10, 2015 at 7:24 pm
Love your list, Brian. :p
Have to add - Isaac Newton & Robert Hooke
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RE: Dinner Party Of The Dead
February 10, 2015 at 7:28 pm
I'd bring back the founding fathers just because they would actually get something done.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization join today.
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RE: Dinner Party Of The Dead
February 10, 2015 at 7:34 pm
Screw it - I'll just assume that everyone at my dinner party can speak fluent English and communicate flawlessly with each other by some means of magical/scientific time travel blah blah blah ....
My list would very likely include:
Galileo Galilei - Because I'd want to blow his mind with what we now know about his theories, etc.
Edgar Allen Poe - because he's was probably a really weird dude who would talk about really weird stuff.
Emperor Constantine - Because I want to ask him how he REALLY felt about Christianity
Jesus - So me and Constantine could smack him in the mouth and make him eat at the kiddy table with Muhammad and Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler and Muhammad - to hassle the dirty hippy, Jesus
Albert Einstein - I don't know. He just always looked like an interesting fellow.
Napoleon - Common, arguably the greatest conqueror who ever lived. That's worth a dinner chat.
Plato - I sorta want to play devil's advocate to some lively debate he cooks up.
Joan of Arc - Because every dinner conversation should have a fiery chick. (sorry, bad pun)
Benjamin Franklin - because every party needs a bad-ass party animal!
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RE: Dinner Party Of The Dead
February 10, 2015 at 7:35 pm
I was just doing this the other day on FB. I think maybe at Atheist Republic. Anyhow, this is fun, and bears redoing probably daily (plus, on FB, they could be live).
Van Gogh (painter)
Jeff Smith (frugal gourmet)
Carl Sagan (the dude!)
Tchaikovsky (composer)
Lem Tucker (CBS newsreader)
William E. Boeing (aviation pioneer)
Alexander Gorsky (early Nutcracker choreographer)
George Ellery Hale (astronomer)
Hilary Grivich (gymnast)
Eva Markvoort (subject of 65 Red Roses movie).
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
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RE: Dinner Party Of The Dead
February 10, 2015 at 7:38 pm
I would just bring women from different time periods and create a harem.
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RE: Dinner Party Of The Dead
February 10, 2015 at 7:45 pm
(February 10, 2015 at 7:11 pm)Cinjin Wrote: Can they speak English?
There's not much point in bringing Genghis Khan to the present if I can't speak his tongue.
My badski - I clearly forgot to mention the well known linguistic side effect of time-dilative corporeal extraction.
No, they will not speak English. However, you - as the operator of the machine - will be able to understand everything said to you by the people you bring forward. A further side effect that I just made up is that ALL your guests will be able to understand you as well as each other.
Good catch.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
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