In the year 1999, amid millennial fears of Armageddon and the designed obsolescence of popular computer programs, Time Magazine™ undertook to enhance their annual advertising gimmick “Person (formerly “Man”) of the Year” by choosing instead (not ‘in addition to’ – there was no ‘person of the year’ for 2000) a “Person of the Century.” It’s interesting to note that there was no ”Person (or “Man”) of the Century” in 1900, nor is it likely that Time™ will be around in 2100, so they basically had one shot at this scam; and they blew it.

There were an amazing assortment of individuals from whom the Time Magazine™ staff might have chosen a “Person of the Century,” running the gamut from statesmen and scientists to space explorers and media icons; here are but a few:

JFK, and Jacquie too, MLK, Amelia Earhart, Robert A. Heinlein, Walter E. Disney, Brigitte Bardot, Walter Cronkite, Hugh Heffner, Yuri Gagarin, Valentina Terashkova, Neil Armstrong, Pope John-Paul I, Hellen Kellar, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, a whole host of other ‘rock-stars’ assassinated by the CIA, Winnie the Churchill, Marie Curie, Bhagwan Rashneesh, Captain Jaques Yves Cousteau, Max Plank*… even Hitler’s pikelbaum was tossed into the ring.

Considering whom was finally chosen, they might as well have chosen Hitler; the ‘person’ they did choose was the megalomaniacal mass murderer Albert Einstein.

When the Nobel Prize Committee decided to start handing out awards for physical science between the World Wars, the committee chose Einstein as the initial recipient. Graciously, he turned them down and insisted that Max Plank should receive the honor instead, because all of Einstein’s work was based upon Plank’s Laws of Thermodynamics; Einstein received the second Nobel Prize for physics. No doubt the selection committee for Time Magazine’s™ “Person of the Year” knew about that incident, but it may very well have been Albert Einstein’s last selfless act.

To the masses, Einstein may best be remembered for his special theory of relativity, which has never been anything more than a mere theory, has never been proven, and, in time, may well turn out to have been wrong all along.

Convenience aside, how did the editors of the erstwhile periodical overlook the fact that their choice for “Person of the Century” was responsible for the two greatest atrocities in human history, or that without his having meddled in world affairs there would never have been a Cold War?

Here are some facts the folks @ Time Magazine™ may have overlooked: Einstein tried selling Hitler on the idea of building an atomic ‘super-bomb,’ but der Fuhrer wouldn’t go for it. Einstein then ‘defected’ to the United States, where he convinced FDR that Hitler was building an atomic bomb. FDR baited the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor so that the U.S.A. could have an excuse to build a bomb of their own. The Manhattan Project eventually culminated in mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet Union followed suit and, voila; the Cold War diverted virtually all scientific endeavor for the remainder of the century to military purposes!

Did the editors of Time™ think that Einstein was, perhaps, the smartest man alive in the twentieth century? Not so. On the Stanford Binet intelligence test, Einstein scored a paltry 160 – in the middle of the ‘Genius’ range – there are quite a number of persons running around whom have scored into the Super-Genius category on the very same test.

So, WtF? Why Albert Einstein? Hasn’t anyone read The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Heinlein’s sequel to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (& prequel to To Sail Beyond the Sunset)?

Captain Cousteau did more for science than Albert Einstein, more for humankind, and more for the planet! In addition to opening up ‘the Silent World’ by inventing the aqualung, he almost single-handedly began the whole environmental movement in the 1940’s; therefore, as far as a “Person of the Century,” - I demand a god-damned re-count!