> > Columbus' theory about sailing west to reach the East was good in theory, but in actual practice, it stunk.
>
> The idea of sailing west to reach the East is implicit in the world being a sphere, a fact known to all educated men since about 2,000 BC. Aristotle even managed to come up with a measurement within 0.1% of the currently accepted circumference. The only original original idea that Columbus came up with was to arbitarilly reduce the circumference until the sailing ships of the day could make the crossing.
>
> His theory was "The world is only half the size all these educated people claim. I will prove it by sailing 3,000 west miles from Portugal and arriving in China".
>
> It was an abysmal theory, wrong on every level, and the practice didn't kill him and his crew only because of the happy accident of the Americas being about as far from Europe as he expected Asia to be.
>
> winter"Columbus was an idiot"mute

Orson Scott Card puts this stupidity to good use in his novel _Pastwatch_, in which Columbus intentionally and wittingly ignores the better calculations because he believes he is acting on direct instructions from God to make that voyage. If you don't mind the way Card's characters agonize endlessly over ethical dilemmas, it's a pretty fun novel to read.

Iss "futuristic dystopias r0x0r" achar