| @shakescene: Well all lists like these are dumb but I'd like to defend this one against a couple of the suggestions you make. First off, though, I agree that Stalin is a huge omission and I can only assume that the list's compilers somehow thought they couldn't have three Soviet leaders (even though they have four US presidents plus two of their wives — buh?). But I think Che over Castro is a reasonable choice: Che is an icon and was an inspiration to a whole movement; Castro's `just' the leader of Cuba. Speaking as a big fan of Shostakovich, I have to say that Stravinsky is the more worthy addition to this list. He had a massive influence on C20th `classical' music and is fairly widely-known to the public, whereas Shostakovich was, essentially, continuing the C19th tradition and his experimental music was pretty dire (second symphony, anyone?) and had little lasting influence. As for Gates vs Jobs, look at the number of people who use Windows versus the number who use Macs. Remember that this is way pre-iPod so you can't count that as a Jobs achievement for the purposes of this quiz. |
