Top 10 List
This list is entirely my opinion. These are the top 10 people of 2008, and the only thing I have to base it on is my own opinion. Anything that they have in common is purely coincidental.
10. Neil Patrick Harris consistently steals scenes in How I Met Your Mother, not to mention a little Internet video thing from last month called Proposition 8, the Musical. Whenever he shows up, he comes across as charming, even when he's playing a character completely devoid of morals. It never fails that on Tuesday morning, we're repeating a Barney line from the night before. This year, he really added a new dimension to his character, and gives you hope that the womanizing Barney Stinson has room in his heart for true love. All that and he was nominated for an Emmy.
I also was apparently the last person to find out that he's gay, and it's really nice to see an openly gay actor play the role of a heterosexual man, and noone think anything of it. If a straight actor plays a homosexual character, oh, it's so avant-garde. Give me a break, an actor's ability has nothing to do with his sexual orientation, and I appreciate that so many articles about Neil Patrick Harris don't mention his orientation, because frankly, it shouldn't matter. The fact that I mentioned it makes me a little sad for myself.
9. Myron Rolle is one of the key players on the Florida State Seminoles. On Saturday, November 22, the Seminoles were scheduled to play at Maryland in a very pivotal game. The only problem Myron had was that he had an interview scheduled for that day in Birmingham for the prestigious Rhodes scholarship. Rolle graduated in two and half years from Florida State with a 3.75 GPA in pre-med. What's a football player to do? Rolle went to the interview, got one of the 32 scholarships given each year to American students, and then flew to Maryland and played in the game. The Seminoles won.
If you're not familiar with the Rhodes scholarship, it has been won by people like George Stephanopoulos, Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, Gen. Wesley Clark, Bill Bradley, Rachel Maddow, Kris Kristofferson, Dick Lugar, and Edwin Hubble.
This, boys and girls, is what is meant by a student athlete, and this is a role model.
8. Keith Olbermann has one of the best political shows on cable TV, provided you're a liberal. He seems to genuinely have fun labasting the right wing of American politics. The show has great comedic moments from time to time, and his worst people list gets serious from time to time, but most often is a great platform to highlight the ridiculousness that spews forth from conservative talk radio and Fox News.
I watched an interview he gave to Bill Moyers and I was convinced that his heart is in the right place, and it's stored right next to his journalistic ethics and his love of sports.
7. Lori Lipman Brown is a Washington lobbyist, and thus one of the most evil, crooked people on Earth, except that she is the lobbyist that protects the first amendment.She doesn't fight for the part that says you can speak your mind. she fights for the part that says that our government can't sponsor a religion. We're not a Christian nation, we're secular. The government belongs to all of us, and anytime a law is proposed that tries to impose someone's religious beliefs on everyone, she's on the front lines to stop it. She works to stop it in Washington, but it's up to us to stop it in our home towns.
For most of her career, she's fought alone, but just this year, she got a part-time assistant in her lobbying efforts.I discovered her this year through some really great podcasts. She also appeared on the Colbert Report, and was great on it.
6. James Randi is the man that doesn't believe what you're saying, especially if what you're saying is complete and utter bullshit. Randi continues to work for the James Randi Educational Foundation that works to expose people using the paranormal to defraud people out of their money and lead them away from scientific expalanation and solutions that can help much more than unfettered blind belief.
Homeopathy is bunk. TV Psychics are liars.Ghosts don't exist. Bigfoot was not found in the North Georgia mountains.
James Randi is one of the reasons that I and alot of skeptics like me are skeptics. A lot of people take different paths into the accepting of reality, but all of those paths go through James Randi. I hope that I can meet him before either he or I die, whichever comes first. I'm not terriblbly convinced that he's entirely human, as one human being cannot possibly hold this much awesome.
5. The Man From Earth isn't actually a person, but it sounds like it is, so I put it on the list. This movie was officially released in November of 2007, but in 2008, through file-sharing, became a cult smash. It's a science fiction movie with no special effects budget. There are a handful of characters and the entire movie takes place in and just outside of a small house in the middle of nowhere.
If you're a Christian and easilly offended by anything that criticizes your faith, it's probably not for you, but this is the best scifi movie I've seen in a long time.
4. The Voice of the Republic is technically three people, but if I can put a movie in there, I can throw three guys cussing like sailors about Star Wars on a podcast in here as well. I've known Joel longer than anybody, and through him I met Eda few years ago, and Mike, albeit briefly as they were starting the podcast.
Their podcast is a true sense of what these guys are like to hang out with. They're passionate about Star Wars, but not blind to it's faults. The best episode of the year, in my opinion was about Sexuality in Star Wars. Check it out.
3. Phil Plait has a blog called Bad Astronomy and is a genuinely entertaining astronomer. He had a a book come out this year called Death From The Skies, which explains potential end of the world scenarios involving the universe outside of our orbit. He laso became the new president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, and wants to stress the Educational part of the name and getcritical thinking taught in schools, because that's the basis to help peoplee defend themselves from quackery, trickery, hoaxes, and liars.
Phil is also the reason that when I go outside and look up at the stars and the planets, I realize that the universe is much more interesting than a world poulated with ghosts, monsters, and superstitions.
2. Barack Obama is probably going to be on a lot of Top 10 lists this year, but for Pete's sake, he won the presidency! He also won the presidency by being intelligent, optimistic and calm. After being let down by the realities of the Clinton administration, I never thought I could be optimistic about a White House, but now I am.
His choices for his cabinet have impressed me as well, especially Steven Chu for the Secretary of Energy. Given that in the next few years we're going to need to form an energy policy that is more than lighting stuff on fire, a physicist in charge of that Department is a great choice.
January 20 can't come fast enough.
1. Rachel Maddow got very successful in 2008, with maintaining her Air America radio show, answering the constant calls to comment of various political talk shows, pinch-hitting for Keith Olbermann when he went on vacation and finally getting her own show on MSNBC, following Olbermann in a manner that accents both his style and hers. Rachel Maddow has a great sense of humor, seems very friendly with people like Pat Buchanan that she disagress with, and at the same time is extremely knowledgable about what she talks about. Oh, and she reads comic books.
I first really took notice of Ms. Maddow in a on-air debate with Pat Buchanan where she countered his blustering spouting of inaccurate sound bytes with clear, concise facts. She did it all while smiling, and managed to carry all of that into her guest stint on Countdown. I listen to the audio version of her new MSNBC show along with her radio show, and I'm continually impressed. Recently, she had a guest on who had a vested interest in the government bailouts she was talking in favor of, and this was undisclosed to Rachel, who found out in the next 24 hours and promptly apologized, on air. That's journalistic class.
So have a Happy New Year, people!
10. Neil Patrick Harris consistently steals scenes in How I Met Your Mother, not to mention a little Internet video thing from last month called Proposition 8, the Musical. Whenever he shows up, he comes across as charming, even when he's playing a character completely devoid of morals. It never fails that on Tuesday morning, we're repeating a Barney line from the night before. This year, he really added a new dimension to his character, and gives you hope that the womanizing Barney Stinson has room in his heart for true love. All that and he was nominated for an Emmy.
I also was apparently the last person to find out that he's gay, and it's really nice to see an openly gay actor play the role of a heterosexual man, and noone think anything of it. If a straight actor plays a homosexual character, oh, it's so avant-garde. Give me a break, an actor's ability has nothing to do with his sexual orientation, and I appreciate that so many articles about Neil Patrick Harris don't mention his orientation, because frankly, it shouldn't matter. The fact that I mentioned it makes me a little sad for myself.
9. Myron Rolle is one of the key players on the Florida State Seminoles. On Saturday, November 22, the Seminoles were scheduled to play at Maryland in a very pivotal game. The only problem Myron had was that he had an interview scheduled for that day in Birmingham for the prestigious Rhodes scholarship. Rolle graduated in two and half years from Florida State with a 3.75 GPA in pre-med. What's a football player to do? Rolle went to the interview, got one of the 32 scholarships given each year to American students, and then flew to Maryland and played in the game. The Seminoles won.
If you're not familiar with the Rhodes scholarship, it has been won by people like George Stephanopoulos, Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, Gen. Wesley Clark, Bill Bradley, Rachel Maddow, Kris Kristofferson, Dick Lugar, and Edwin Hubble.
This, boys and girls, is what is meant by a student athlete, and this is a role model.
8. Keith Olbermann has one of the best political shows on cable TV, provided you're a liberal. He seems to genuinely have fun labasting the right wing of American politics. The show has great comedic moments from time to time, and his worst people list gets serious from time to time, but most often is a great platform to highlight the ridiculousness that spews forth from conservative talk radio and Fox News.
I watched an interview he gave to Bill Moyers and I was convinced that his heart is in the right place, and it's stored right next to his journalistic ethics and his love of sports.
7. Lori Lipman Brown is a Washington lobbyist, and thus one of the most evil, crooked people on Earth, except that she is the lobbyist that protects the first amendment.She doesn't fight for the part that says you can speak your mind. she fights for the part that says that our government can't sponsor a religion. We're not a Christian nation, we're secular. The government belongs to all of us, and anytime a law is proposed that tries to impose someone's religious beliefs on everyone, she's on the front lines to stop it. She works to stop it in Washington, but it's up to us to stop it in our home towns.
For most of her career, she's fought alone, but just this year, she got a part-time assistant in her lobbying efforts.I discovered her this year through some really great podcasts. She also appeared on the Colbert Report, and was great on it.
6. James Randi is the man that doesn't believe what you're saying, especially if what you're saying is complete and utter bullshit. Randi continues to work for the James Randi Educational Foundation that works to expose people using the paranormal to defraud people out of their money and lead them away from scientific expalanation and solutions that can help much more than unfettered blind belief.
Homeopathy is bunk. TV Psychics are liars.Ghosts don't exist. Bigfoot was not found in the North Georgia mountains.
James Randi is one of the reasons that I and alot of skeptics like me are skeptics. A lot of people take different paths into the accepting of reality, but all of those paths go through James Randi. I hope that I can meet him before either he or I die, whichever comes first. I'm not terriblbly convinced that he's entirely human, as one human being cannot possibly hold this much awesome.
5. The Man From Earth isn't actually a person, but it sounds like it is, so I put it on the list. This movie was officially released in November of 2007, but in 2008, through file-sharing, became a cult smash. It's a science fiction movie with no special effects budget. There are a handful of characters and the entire movie takes place in and just outside of a small house in the middle of nowhere.
If you're a Christian and easilly offended by anything that criticizes your faith, it's probably not for you, but this is the best scifi movie I've seen in a long time.
4. The Voice of the Republic is technically three people, but if I can put a movie in there, I can throw three guys cussing like sailors about Star Wars on a podcast in here as well. I've known Joel longer than anybody, and through him I met Eda few years ago, and Mike, albeit briefly as they were starting the podcast.
Their podcast is a true sense of what these guys are like to hang out with. They're passionate about Star Wars, but not blind to it's faults. The best episode of the year, in my opinion was about Sexuality in Star Wars. Check it out.
3. Phil Plait has a blog called Bad Astronomy and is a genuinely entertaining astronomer. He had a a book come out this year called Death From The Skies, which explains potential end of the world scenarios involving the universe outside of our orbit. He laso became the new president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, and wants to stress the Educational part of the name and getcritical thinking taught in schools, because that's the basis to help peoplee defend themselves from quackery, trickery, hoaxes, and liars.
Phil is also the reason that when I go outside and look up at the stars and the planets, I realize that the universe is much more interesting than a world poulated with ghosts, monsters, and superstitions.
2. Barack Obama is probably going to be on a lot of Top 10 lists this year, but for Pete's sake, he won the presidency! He also won the presidency by being intelligent, optimistic and calm. After being let down by the realities of the Clinton administration, I never thought I could be optimistic about a White House, but now I am.
His choices for his cabinet have impressed me as well, especially Steven Chu for the Secretary of Energy. Given that in the next few years we're going to need to form an energy policy that is more than lighting stuff on fire, a physicist in charge of that Department is a great choice.
January 20 can't come fast enough.
1. Rachel Maddow got very successful in 2008, with maintaining her Air America radio show, answering the constant calls to comment of various political talk shows, pinch-hitting for Keith Olbermann when he went on vacation and finally getting her own show on MSNBC, following Olbermann in a manner that accents both his style and hers. Rachel Maddow has a great sense of humor, seems very friendly with people like Pat Buchanan that she disagress with, and at the same time is extremely knowledgable about what she talks about. Oh, and she reads comic books.
I first really took notice of Ms. Maddow in a on-air debate with Pat Buchanan where she countered his blustering spouting of inaccurate sound bytes with clear, concise facts. She did it all while smiling, and managed to carry all of that into her guest stint on Countdown. I listen to the audio version of her new MSNBC show along with her radio show, and I'm continually impressed. Recently, she had a guest on who had a vested interest in the government bailouts she was talking in favor of, and this was undisclosed to Rachel, who found out in the next 24 hours and promptly apologized, on air. That's journalistic class.
So have a Happy New Year, people!