Jeremy Lin is one of the 100 most influential people on the planet!

TIME Magazine said so! They just ran their annual project in which they meet, assess, and rank all 9 billion people (6 billion plus 3 billion unaccounted Arctic seafolk) on the planet based on their "influence", then make other people write articles about the top 100. I was ranked #4,058,200,506, which I guess is all right. I feel like I could have cracked the top 4 billion if I'd participated in one of the "Occupy" protests or something. Maybe next year. How'd you guys do?

Anyway, I (and most of you, I'd imagine) didn't make it to the top 100, but our beloved point guard sensation Jeremy Lin did. Arne Duncan(!) wrote his little profile thing. Here's a bit of it:

Jeremy Lin's story is a great lesson for kids everywhere because it debunks and defangs so many of the prejudices and stereotypes that unfairly hold children back. He's dispelled the idea that Asian-American guards somehow couldn't hack it in the NBA — and that being a world-class athlete on the court is somehow at odds with being an excellent student off the court.

Cool. Obviously, the methodology/sanctity of this entire endeavor is questionable, and the part in Duncan's profile about "bling" and celebrating "the individual" kind of bugs me (1. Careful. 2. I get the team-first thing, but one of the best parts about Jeremy's game is that he's a talented one-on-one player and occasionally rather flashy.), but all that aside, Lin genuinely did influence/inspire a lot of people this past year (and has before, and will surely continue to do so), and I'm proud of him and thrilled to be a fan of his team. You're pretty great, Jeremy Lin.

This is you next year, Jerome Jordan.

(Oh, and Jeremy himself wrote Tim Tebow's thing. Yeah.)