Democratize the brains trust: Vote for your favourite intellectual from a list of 100!

Here's the list of the top 100 public intellectuals, according to Foreign Policy Magazine.

I guess a public intellectual is famous for being famous for being an intellectual?

It's interesting how many of them are garden variety materialists whose yawner views are easy for everyone except the legacy media to ignore. You know, Peter Singer (animal rights trump children's rights), Lee Smolin (a zillion universes compete, Darwin-style), Steve Pinker, Daniel Dennett, and VS Ramachandran (the mind is an illusion - nonetheless, you should heed our ideas), Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson (defending Darwin, the Enron of biology), and Christopher Hitchens (anti-God - so what else is new?).

That said, it was encouraging to see environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg and ex-Harvard president Larry Summers on the list, because they are not politically correct. It was also nice to see James Lovelock, he of the Gaia hypothesis, there. He may be a fruitcake, but he is a far more interesting and less toxic fruitcake than Peter Singer.

Benedict XVI is on the list, which surprised me because he is so much more influential in real life than any of them that he makes the rest of the list look foolish.

You can vote for the five top picks, but only once, and before May 15. Write in and tell me how you voted and why. I'd like to hear.