The bracket so far

Thanks to the Excel stylings of Paul Davidson:

Bracket

Our competition is (approximately) 1/4 done!

And I’ve been thinking about possible categories for next year’s tourney:

New Jersey politicians
Articulate athletes
Plagiarists
People named Greg or Gregg
Vladimir Nabokov and people connected to him
. . .

Ummm, we need 3 more categories. Any suggestions? Real people only, please. In some future year we can have an all-fictional category.

14 thoughts on “The bracket so far

  1. I’ll repost what I said in a different thread:

    Maybe we could have a “skeptics and magicians” category, with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins, Michael Sheermer, The Amazing Randi, Penn Jillette and Harry Houdini.

  2. Infielders (Pete Rose, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Joe Morgan, Brooks Robison, Ozzie Smith, Cal Ripken Jr, Allen Trammel, Pee Wee Reese, and Rogers Hornsby; I’ll let you pick 8 and seed them)

    Teen Idols, Male (Davy Jones, Shaun Cassidy, Fabian, Donny Osmond, Someone from the Bay City Rollers, Michael Jackson [early], Scott Baio, someone from One Direction, someone from Jonas Brothers, and one of the Backstreet Boys)

    Teen Idols, Female (Annette Funicello, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Debbie Gibson, one of the Spice Girls, a K-pop star, Marie Osmon, ???)

    Celebrity Chefs (Emeril, Julia Child, Tom Colicchio, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Alain Ducasse, Careme, Jacque Pepin, Escoffier, Ferran Adria, Yan of Yan Can Cook, the Galloping Gourmet).

    Seriously, though, we need more women. The current bracket’s a bit one-sided.

    People with one name: Dr. Ruth, Judge Judy, Madonna, Prince [we already have Bono, but seriously, Prince would rock if we gave him a guitar and room to move], …

    Fighters for equal rights: Harriets Beecher-Stowe and Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, …

    Any category that includes Ada Lovelace.

    • Bob:

      I included the Articulate Athletes category because I’m afraid that regular athletes, no matter how skilled and thoughtful they are, might not be good seminar speakers.

      “People with one name” is a good one; maybe “Modern people with one name,” as having one name was no big deal in the olden days (Plato, Homer, etc).

  3. Famous Belgians (though this might need to have some fictional entries)
    Explorers / adventurers (mountaineers are all mad as far as I can tell and would have some great stories)
    Polymaths through history
    Famous for no obvious reason (I don’t want to see their seminar, just point out how ridiculous they are)
    Heads of intelligence agencies

  4. Why not musical composers who can make so many things music to our ears. Some of them can speak in plain discourse, I imagine. Think of it.
    Beethoven, who did not need to listen to the rest of us.
    Mozart (“Too many notes, my dear Mozart, too many notes”)
    John Cage (I’m listening, John. Where are the notes?)
    Paul Anka (wrote >4000 songs. Name that tune!)
    Frances Scott Key (one song–only the lyric, really. Plagiarized tune)
    Bob Dylan (reprise of S.F. Key “The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.)
    Carly Simon (famous, but I do not know why)

  5. Defunct Economists (Adam Smith, JB Say, J.S. Mill, Karl Marx, Ricardo, von Mises, Hayek, Keynes, Friedman)
    – because “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”, and so clearly a good stomping ground for seminar speakers

    Inherited wealth (Paris Hilton, both Koch brothers as separate entries, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, Barbara Hutton, Gloria Vanderbilt, Jamie Johnson)
    – perhaps inheriting a lot of money gives one unique insight for seminars.

    I second composers.

    Drug users (William S Burroughs, S.T. Coleridge, Tim Leary, P.S. Hoffman, Hunter S. Thompson, Steve Jobs, Jim Morrison, Aldous Huxley)
    – either drugs or the suffering they induce might lead to an interesting seminar.

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