Report Card: Last Year's List
Taking stock of the risks and rewards of Brave Thinking
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Sarah Wilson Ron Paul: The Tea Party’s Brain
One way to measure the surprising rightward political lurch of the past two years and rise of the Tea Party is to chart the relative position of Ron Paul, who has never flinched from his beliefs. He’s not alone anymore.
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Ben Baker/Redux Dan Choi
Fed up with waiting for Congress and the president to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Lieutenant Dan Choi marched in uniform to the White House and handcuffed himself to the fence. In July, he was discharged from the military for publicly acknowledging that he is gay.
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John Hantz
The entrepreneur John Hantz wants to invest $30 million in a plan to reimagine Detroit. He's prepping vast swaths of abandoned land for what he hopes will become the world's largest urban farm—as well as an economic shot in the arm for one of America's most blighted cities.
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Carol Ball
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Sakena Yacoobi
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Kevin Costner
Oil Spill Cleanup Expert
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Jack Weinstein
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Robert Sarver
On May 5, as the Phoenix Suns were preparing for an NBA playoff game, a national debate was raging over a newly passed Arizona law requiring police to more forcefully pursue illegal immigrants. To protest the measure, Robert Sarver, the team's owner, came up with the idea of having the team take the court in jerseys bearing the moniker “Los Suns”—an unusually explicit political statement by a major sports franchise.
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Michael T. Flynn
Major General, United States Army
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Ben Baker/Redux Elon Musk
CEO of SpaceX; CEO of Tesla Motors; Chairman of SolarCity
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Robyn Twomey/Redux Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science
Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors—to a striking extent—still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science.
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Ben Baker/Redux Shooting for the Sun
From his childhood in segregated Mobile, Alabama, to his run-ins with a nay-saying scientific establishment, the engineer Lonnie Johnson has never paid much heed to those who told him what he could and couldn’t accomplish. Best known for creating the state-of-the-art Super Soaker squirt gun, Johnson believes he now holds the key to affordable solar power.
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Stephen Voss Smuggler, Forger, Writer, Spy
Anas Aremeyaw Anas is a Ghanaian investigative journalist with many disguises—from addict to imam—and one overriding mission: to force Ghana’s government to act against the lawbreakers he exposes.
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Ben Baker/Redux Elizabeth Warren
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Tom Sullivan
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David Cameron
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Ben Baker/Redux Deborah Gist
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Guillermo Zuloaga
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Diane Ravitch
