There are best movie lists, the Time person of the year (featuring guys like Stalin in the past), best actors, politicians get a popular vote each November, Oslo awards a peace prize, and you have been wonderful with your various social media and green people of the year. But Madam Arianna, you are missing the most important category of all: goodness. Who pursued goodness in the world this year?
We focus on men, so here is our list of guys. How about you, as a prominent female with an influential platform, do the same for women? Which women not only caught our attention, influenced us, made us laugh, but did real good in the world this year?
Feel free to make up your own list of good men, too... this is just what a few fellows up in Boston came up with.
In 2010, we saw challenges that required a fool's readiness to undertake Sisyphean tasks. We faced the biggest oil spill in our country's history, the grim prospect that our jobs weren't coming back (at least not for a while), and a cantankerous political climate that stifled progress.
Which is why for this, our inaugural Good Men of the Year list, we're not celebrating memorable personalities, newly-minted pop culture icons, or 15-minute men. This was a year of unprecedented challenges, and it cried out for good men.
These were men who inspired us to do better, men who wouldn't settle for incremental improvements -- and who were willing to make sacrifices for bona fide progress, men who embraced failure as a necessary ingredient in their success, men who would rather be called an asshole than ineffectual.
This year, it wasn't just our ideas that mattered, but how we shared them. Our networks -- an online community of innovators, educators on neglected blocks in Harlem, a civilization 2,000 feet underground -- became catalysts for change.
We learned that the smallest germ of an idea could grow contagious and develop into a viral phenomenon. So we rolled up our sleeves, opened our computers, and started to think.
What follows are just 10 of the many men who made their world a better place in 2010. So tell us, who would be on your top 10 list?
Follow the links below for a profile on each man and why we think he is good.
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