In light of this past Columbus day

[JohnDG]

Most people celebrate Columbus day and although everyone gets a free day off I cannot bring my self to be excited about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcxynCMN4Yk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k9M1od6GyI

[Anomalocaris]

Were it not for Columbus, the whole of the world would probably still have been similar to what it had been in 1450.

Compare to that, I am glad of columbus.

[Cato]

Most people celebrate Columbus day and although everyone gets a free day off I cannot bring my self to be excited about it.

Bullshit! Only government emplyees and bankers took the day off. Celebrate, my ass. I'll take your Columbus Day and raise you a St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo.

[Minimalist]

Friggin' indians whine a lot. You lost - get over it. Be happy we let you run casinos.

[Cato]

I seriously would not bitch half as much as I do if I had a monopoly on gambling in a restricted geographical area. I swear. No shit.

[JohnDG]

You can be grateful for Columbus coming to america and creating the future in which we live in, by why continue to lie about how great a guy he was? Why not teach it to your children at school that he wasn't and such actions should never be allowed to happen? I suppose modern america still can't accept it being a dark part of history. So we will be teaching our kids about how great he was.

[Tino]

Most people celebrate Columbus day and although everyone gets a free day off I cannot bring my self to be excited about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcxynCMN4Yk

I believe that Columbus' violence was typical of the day, and was no different than what native americans tribes did to each other when conflict arose. Columbus is celebrated not for the violence, but in spite of the violence, for risking life and limb to go explore and his success in doing it. I'm fine with celebrating him. Also, nice rack on the reporter, starting around 2:00.

[Anomalocaris]

You can be grateful for Columbus coming to america and creating the future in which we live in, by why continue to lie about how great a guy he was? Why not teach it to your children at school that he wasn't and such actions should never be allowed to happen? I suppose modern america still can't accept it being a dark part of history. So we will be teaching our kids about how great he was.

The romantic lie about Columbus is balanced by the romantic lies about the Indians.

Such action should not be allowed to happen within a civil society in civil times. Those were not civil times, the societies were not civil. MIT was not within one society. So "should" is inapplicable.

[Brian37]

Were it not for Columbus, the whole of the world would probably still have been similar to what it had been in 1450.

Compare to that, I am glad of columbus.

Yea that may be true but I hate how Christianity has hijacked his exploration and lie calling it a "discovery". No he put the Americas on the map, yes. But he did not "discover" shit. Humans were already in the Americas. Not to mention European Christians INVADED the Americas in the centuries to come.

He should not be valued in the fact that he started an invasion. He should only be valued as a map maker. We cannot treat real history as all childrens books. While there was benefit from it, there was tons of harm to the natives because of it.

[Anomalocaris]

No, even if he is valued for absolutely nothing else, he should still be valued for precisely the much maligned "invasion". Putting America on the map doesn't mean jack shit without the invasion. The invasion of America by Europe is the seminal event in human history that made modernity possible.

You can't make omelets without breaking eggs. Thanks to columbus, the world had the opportunity to break the eggs. So we now have omelets.

The alternative inevitably meant by the course dear to revisionists is it is good to have useless knowledge that a few, theoretically nice in some head in cloud romantic sense but essentially untouchable, eggs exist, while the world, figuratively speaking, starves.

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The essential fact is Columbus was a skilled seat of the pants navigator but hopeless cartographer. If he had good cartographic skills he would not have made the huge mistake in his estimate of the size of the earth to start with. So were it not for this cartographic ineptitude, he wouldn't have ever embarked on his voyages of discover. China would have been seen, entirely correctly, to lie way too far to the west to be reached by sailing ships of the era.