And to let him in on all the shit that people say about him nowadays. Lol.

Socrates and Jesus are both options I mulled over after seeing your initial post. Good choices (from my perspective, anyway).
I'd like to have dinner with Aldous Huxley so I could ask him if modern society is anything at all like he imagined it might be.

I would like to meet my grandfather, he died when my mom was 8. I heard he travelled a lot, being a german soldier in WW2, he visited Russia and Italy were he surrender. Then he visited the USA as a war prisoner.
But anyway I would be so glad to have dinner with any of my ancesters.

Albert Einstein.

My father-in-law. From what my wife and mother-in-law say, he and I were very similar. So for totally selfish reasons (and selfless cause I would have my wife and mother-in-law there too), I'd want to meet him.

Now, if we have to stick with famous dead people, beyond Jesus I would like to have dinner with Edgar Allan Poe.

Cleopatra :)

Carl Sagan for sure. Just to hear him say billions and billions.

Nikola Tesla
To find out what was lost in that fire. To thank him for his contributions to progress. To ask him about what he thought of Edison, Marconi, and Carl von Linde, and his finally getting credit for some things after he was dead.

I saw Tesla's urn in the Tesla museum in Belgrade. I said hi.

General George S. Patton. He would have some very good stories.

Jesus isn't dead.

I do, of course, realize that Gunfighter. But in so far as the secular world is concerned, he is and as we can't sit down and have dinner with him in a physical sense, he may as well be for the purposes of this thread.

Agreed with Putin...Tesla. Probably the single most influential individual in history of mankind....and totally underrated.

Ben Franklin

He was involved in so many things (politics, science, publishing, lady chasing,...) we'd have a lot of things to talk about. Also, I'd be interested to see what he thought about the modern-day post office.

Darwyn: Tesla is the single most influential individual in the history of mankind? Really? Going a bit far there, eh?

My grandmother. who passed away on February 28. Because as her body was progressively failing the last 20 years, it became harder to converse with her, and that woman was really something else. I'd just like to hear some of her stories one last time.

Her husband died suddenly of a heart attack when she had 6 kids under 16, and a seventh in her womb. She never remarried. She took charge of the family farm (which, previously, my grandfather did wholly by himself), made sure all her kids graduated high school (and four college), became the largest landholder in the county, and essentially, in the words of my sister's friend, became a legendary matriarch. Oh, she also took in her father who had become paraplegic, which wouldn't be notable except that he had previously abandoned her mother and their four children (including her) without leaving them any support.

After a week of serious illness (the terminal states of the cancer and diabetes that ravaged her body), she passed away. Her last week of journal entries, which were usually a paragraph, all read, "Sick today," until the last one.

"When the Lord is ready for me, he'll let me know."

I can read a book or shop around the internet and find out plenty about most famous people. Tesla would talk so far above my head it wouldn't be worth it. But one last dinner with grandma would be awesome.

me from 25 years ago. :-) not that I'm dead... but the me of 25 years ago is effectively dead... and meeting that person might be a great exercise in self-reflection. I have changed so much that both versions of me would probably be a bit irritated and disappointed in the other version... at least at first. Perhaps I would come to some higher truths about myself and my views on life. Another one: my wife 25 years ago... that would also be very interesting. One more: my parents when I was young. I think I like the last one the best... after all, I never got to see my parents at that age as an adult - whereas at least with the first two I did.

Very interesting response, SD. Makes me feel like meeting your grandma, too.
Joan of Arc, and I'd learn medieval French to do it. Just to find out what she was really like, ask her what of all the mixed up histories is true, see why (and how) she did what she did. Though she probably would just say what she already did.
King Arthur is tempting too, as is Alexander Hamilton, to ask him what he thinks of our current mess, and just because he was freakin' awesome.

SD's grandmother definately sounds worth meeting, but if I had to have dinner with anyone it would have to be Mrs Beeton, I don't know much about her but apparently she was a fine cook so at least we can enjoy the meal.

@semck - Arthur Rex, if he existed as an individual, would have been far different from King Arthur the legend. There is even some debate as to whether he actually existed or was a conglomeration of several kings' best qualities.

@Draug

Um, did you just use the Greek word for "king" to try to sound more knowledgeable on the subject? : )

No, I've always enjoyed the Berger's take on Arthur as well as T.H. White's and Malory's. So, the name being so cool, I enjoy using it when referring to the potential real man and using King when referring to the legendary figure, even though they mean the same thing.

@Draug, yes, I'm very well aware that there is debate about the real existence of King Arthur, though there are some tantalizing (but not certainly reliable) early accounts of the Battle of Mons Badonicus that make his existence at least plausible. So, I didn't specify since he wasn't my main choice, but here are the reasons I'd want to meet him:
(a) Find out if anybody showed up to dinner.
(b) Find out just who the heck he was (and when/where/etc.) so we could all stop wondering.
(c) Find out what parts of the legends had ANY basis in _his_ reality. (Many parts obviously don't, of course, being clear second-millenium accretions).
(d) See if he got a kick out of what a big deal he'd become.
(e) Find out where the BoMB was.
You'll note that nothing in my original post implies that I thought he would be anything like the legends.

(Nevertheless -- _just in case_ -- I would certainly insist that the dinner be at Round Table Pizza).

I would have suggested The Excalibur Resort and Casino...

"Jesus isn't dead."

ohhhhhhh boy.

let's just pass that little comment over shall we?

lol.

yeah i was tempted to choose one of my ancestors but knowing which without meeting them would be hard. if i could know some presently unknowable things ahead of time, like all their names and short bios then i just might choose one of them but as it stands doing so would be a shot in the dark.

there are always the ones i have already met and as nice as it would be to temporarily resurrect one of my relatives i think it would be fairer to me and to them to meet someone new.

"Darwyn: Tesla is the single most influential individual in the history of mankind? Really? Going a bit far there, eh? "

Indeed I am. But the dude has done things that NO ONE can replicate to this day because no one has the capacity to understand them. Most good scientists nowadays fully understand and can replicate Einstein or others theories and experiments and even expand on them. But you can't do that with Tesla. He didn't even need to write shit down.

Oh and.... if I can just toss in like... one more honorable mention... I know I'm going overboard.

Captain Tobias Hume. Look this guy up. He fascinates the hell out of me. I'd love to talk to him.

Also there are some Roman legionnaires who supposedly were captured at the battle of Carrhae in __ BC and sent to Parthia's eastern front (bordering Han China), and some theorize they were engaged in battle with the Chinese, captured, and settled a village in present day Sichuan province.

if these men are real I should like to meet their leader or just any one of them. if they aren't real, then an explorer such as marco polo, columbus or cabral would tickle my fancy.

Hmmm... Can't be replicated... Not written down... No peer review and no replication. Wait a minute! Tesla's science is a religion!

lol...he powered an entire town wirelessly. That happened and no one has been able to do it since.

The problem is, Darwyn, I would say that makes him incredibly brilliant, but (tragically) NOT as influential as we might hope.
If we're allowed to keep throwing out people, how about The Author of the Voynich Manuscript?

@Darwyn

Are you sure it's "we can't do it" or "we don't want to give everyone cancer by transmitting that much power wirelessly"?

if we could just fucking cure cancer we would be able to do so much awesome shit.

Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, and pretty much the only one of the colonial founders to not be a total douche.

Morton Aberwachy

Was William Penn, Stukus?
I'm just asking. I don't know much about him.

Penn worked with the Indians and treated them better than most, but he also mistreated several tribes in deals. Relatively he wasn't as big of a douche. (As any of my students would tell you Miles Stanfish was the biggest douche of them all)

"worked with the Indians"

heh, heh ...

I would want to talk to someone who knew what really happened in the Bronze Age Collapse (the biggest unsolved mystery in all of human history). Unfortunately, I have a feeling no one at the time really understood everything that was going on.

As for Tesla, wireless electrical transmission is a reality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer
There is no disputing Tesla's genius, but I believe nearly everything he demonstrated is known, understood, and duplicated today (unless the military found stuff in his secret files we don't know about).

@Tolstoy - I have always been fascinated about that collapse and subsequent "dark age" as well

Hitler fo sho

hmm, this is a tricky one. I would say Alexander Hamilton. Being an econ and business major, i would love to know how he'd react to all of the global financial markets of today. I also just finished a biography of Pierre L'Enfant and want to know more about their relationship. Hamilton was just so influential on so many level, I'd love to pick his brain.

Next in line? Jefferson lol

I'd love to see a Hamilton-Jefferson Celebrity Deathmatch.

Actually, now that I think about it, Hamilton had one in real life. It didn't turn out too well for him.

Ahh, but that was Hamilton-Burr. I think Hamilton-Jefferson would have turned out better for him. Hell, Burr tried to set up a separate country in Louisiana lol

In Hamilton-Burr, Hamilton deliberately did not shoot. It's conceivable that in Hamilton-Jefferson, neither would (though they did loathe each other), which would have made for a boring duel.

I'd have champagne and a cigar with Winston Churchill. He'd have war stories, stories of intrigue and I would imagine quite a few ribald stories.

Question: do I have to able to understand their language?

If so: William Shakespeare

But my first choice would be Friedrich Nietzsche, if he could speak English/I could speak German, at least for the duration of the meal.

I admire them equally, and Milton's become the #3 man for me over the course of this year with his poetry, especially "Pardise Lost"--if you haven't read it GO DO SO NOW, it doesn't matter who you are, there's something that will attract you with that epic, it doesn't matter if you love Christianity, hate it, anything in between, AMAZING!

But Milton was a mysoginst, at least to an extent, and if I only get one choice, he's not my first authorial choice, so that's that, as great as he is...

And really--what would I talk to Shakespeare about? His plays? I get the feeling that'd be rather annoying for him, to have to talk about Hamlet forever while trying to enjoy the miracles of modern pasta or something... ;) Plus not much is known for sure about Shakespeare's life, so I like hom mainly via his plays; with Nietzsche...well, I like Shakespeare's works over his, but in terms of the whole package, person and works, Nietzsche'd win here.)




I'd want to hear his opinion on today, just what he thinks (and I'd be curious how much we agree and disagree.)

I'd want to hear if he had any regrets writing what he did when he did, or if he had any new ideas.

I'd want to hear a straight-from-the-man-himself explanation of what he thionks of life and humanity and just anything in general, really.

And jsut out of curioisty, I'd want to know what he thinks about football...anyone else get the feeling Nietzsche might have enjoyed it, even just a bit, maybe not the overly-hyped-up commercial enterprise, but the game itself? (WHO'D HE ROOTED FOR?)

Plus--given the fact he came to despise Wagner, and came to enjoy tragedy, if nothing else, we'd be able to share musical and literary tastes.

;)

Was that long?

Yes, probably, but only because...

THE SEMESTER'S OVER!!!!! NO MORE PAPERS!

Except, of course, the ones I now get to write here as I obi-ize all summer once more. ;)

They have to be dead, and we have to have dinner?

I'm not that much into eating brain.