All of the criticisms of Cristobal Colon (and other renderings of his name) offered here are absolutely accurate, and I could throw in a few more that were missed.

But it is all beside the point. The reason that we celebrate the Voyage of Columbus is not for any sterling virtues of the man, it is that the voyage he organized directly changed the history of the entire world. Once he made the voyage, European contact with the New World never ended and only grew with time, and triggered long range voyages in all directions as a routine matter. Within 25 years European ships were sailing directly to China. 70 years after Columbus the Emperor of China was dependent on New World silver for currency stability, tobacco had become a vice in Mongolia, and European guns were shaping Japanese history.

No similar change in world affairs had ever occurred in so short a time, and this one was not at all transient.

Worse than that for the Wintel duopoly - they are suppressing sales of new machines. I have a home Windows computer which I keep to run Windows-only apps for my family that I would like to upgrade, but no way am I buying a system with Windows 8. I could buy a system with Windows 7 still, but I have to pay extra for a limited selection - basically a "business system", when all I want is a cheap little box.

So that old system still limps along, waiting for the day when I can get a replacement that the family won't loathe, meanwhile Wintel are throwing away a sale.

Can you cite a single manned space mission that conducted science that a similarly equipped robot mission could not?

Or are you just doing wishful thinking?

I wouldn't say "merely". Having better sensory equipment pretty much guarantees it will be better at spotting the 'unusual'

The Mars Science Laboratory mission (which included the Curiosity rover) cost $2.5 billion. The most optimistic plausible manned Mars scientific mission cost and timeline I have seen is $100 billion and 20 years. A large scale robotic scientific 'attack' on Mars could reduce the incremental cost of robot missions significantly, so in that same time frame 50 or more robotic missions could be mounted, each of which would have an expected operating life on Mars of a decade or so (based on current experience). The human mission might land 4 people on the planet for 18 months.

I submit that 500 years of operation of 50 sophisticated intrument platforms that never sleep, located all over Mars, would put the accomplishments of 6 man-years at one location to shame.

Right you are, but you are just scratching the surface.

The real problem with the English colonialists was that they were a group of English playboy-aristocrats and their man-servants arriving without any supplies or equipment. Seriously. These people had no relevant skills or equipment to survive. The fate of the colony was decided before they left port in England.

The Spanish, with their crews of illiterate seamen, did better - when they weren't abusing the natives to attack and kill them and deny them supplies.

The only colonization on Earth that remotely compares to the colonization of Mars is the colonization of the South Pole. There all supplies have to be flown in, you are entirely dependent on an enclosed base for survival, and if it is the wrong time of year, and you get sick, you might just die for lack of appropriate treatment.

Because unless they subjugate Tibetans, imprison and torture them, and try to eliminate their culture the water won't flow into China anymore?

Imperialists (and their apologists) always have these "reasons", even when they are tissue thin fig leaves.

China could pull of Tibet entirely, and they would still get their water. If the Tibetans tried to cut it off in some way, for some god-knows-why reason, China could shut the project down with one short military operation, and make the Tibetans regret ever trying it.

No need for maintaining a brutal occupation.

What have got against the "y" and the "o" in "you"?

The overall US tax burden (all taxes, all levels of government), as a fraction of the GDP has shown no growth over the last 33 years. It has been 35% of the GDP, with ups and downs, but oscillating around this fixed line.

Sorry, but no matter how many times you repeat the "ever growing taxes" lie, it does not become true.

Oops! Make that reference to Libertarian juvenile fiction to bolster case.

All of the talking points seem to be there:

• "... the people who created my job. The latter have my thanks..." = You should be grateful the Job Creators even gave you a job.
• "Shark Tank shows that business is alive and well. We don't have to work for them - we can compete with them..." = Or you should be a Job Creator yourself, reality TV proves there is nothing to it!
• "If you can't compete with the company, and you can't compete with the indentured servant, then you must defend this question: In what way other than to the investor class are you valuable?" = You can't dethrone a corporation by yourself, and don't like having you wages depressed by admitted servitude, then you are worthless...
• "I specifically reference Heinlein's "Time for the stars", where the irreplaceable are specifically replaceable. " = reference to Libertarian fiction to bolster case.

We have "Schizo-Affective Disorder" in which we get to claim that the various "schizophrenias" and the various mood disorders are just one big unhappy diagnosis!

Makes things easy for the diagnostician - just one diagnosis, and you can prescribe lithium and anti-psychotics to everyone. And then you can pile on more drugs to treat the side-effects from the drug combinations you started with. And then of course, there are the side-effects of the side-effect treating drugs. Eventually you can work your way up to one or two dozen drugs at once.

Seriously - I have relatives that have suffered from this sort of diagnostic abuse.

Ah, the false premise fallacy. Sorry, there was no "global cooling" consensus in the 1970s. Just one of many falsehoods trotted out by climate deniers.

The Wikipedia page on this exposes the lie nicely. But you will just keep repeating it won't you?

Your point with Piltdown Man certainly does not demonstrate "Consensus is often wrong, and glaringly so", it simply show that glaring error is possible, especially in immature fields of study. If all you've go is Piltdown, then your evidence is that such error is quite rare.

This notion of utility ("usefulness") has nothing to do with science, which requires nothing of the sort. Funding might, but not science.

And notice that is is only after you taken those years of chemistry study that you are in a position to weigh-in on complex topics in chemistry, or the evaluate them at a serious level. But you can understand the basic facts of complex chemical issues at more elementary level with lesser degrees of learning, but only if you have applied yourself and learned.

The fundamental sub-disciplines of physics, chemistry, and statistics that go into the climate science all have readily available layman's textbooks (as you concede yourself). The IPCC report is an excellent place to understand the scientific evidence for AGM, it provides a comprehensive and accessible survey of the science of the field. If you haven't read it then you only have yourself to blame. If you have read it and you fail to understand by reason of ignorance (not hitting those layman's textbooks) you have only yourself to blame. If you read it and simply reject what it says because... why? You don't like its conclusions? Then again, you have only yourself to blame.

Really? Who "pointed this out"? Passing along scientific findings to "the masses" is what we call education. Interesting that you detest that. It explains a lot about your post.

Thanks for tipping your hand - your mind is closed, and you blame others for your ignorance.

It really is hard to believe, yes. For example, let's say it is the inclination of the pilot to day "we're okay" let's just forget about it. Does he know the airplane suffered no damage at all? How? When the plane goes in for maintenance are there going to the mysterious fragment holes in the tail or wings? These might endanger plane safety, and even if not the unreported incident that created them would end his career. Is he and the copilor going to bet that the plane really is unscathed?

What about the passengers? A warhead detonating nearby would be noticed by them. What happened to their reports/complaints?