Slashdot Mirror
Ancient Planes and Other Claims Spark Controversy at Indian Science Congress
An anonymous reader writes A paper presented at the 102nd Indian Science Congress on Sunday claims that Indians had mastered aviation thousands of years before the Wright brothers. India's science and technology minister Mr. Harsh Vardhan who was present at the conference claimed that ancient Indian mathematicians discovered the Pythagorean theorem but that the Greeks got the credit. These startling claims come just a few days after prime minister Narendra Modi had called Lord Ganesha who is part elephant and part human, a product of ancient India's knowledge of plastic surgery.
And the ancient planes also had the ability to fly between planets too. Don't think that these claims will stand up to review.
Ancient peoples were just as smart as us, but you need time to build the necessary tech. base in order to make advanced equipment so that you can discover advanced scientific theories and engineering disciplines.
It's an interesting phenomenon and you see the same thing in Russian science. There are an awful lot of brilliant scientists in both India and Russia doing amazing things. But it's like there's no filter. The unadulterated garbage rises just as much to the top as the actual great scientific work. I can't help but wonder if it's related to the same sort of corruption and patronage systems that you see a lot in the business and political world as well.
It's also interesting that even on things that they innovate on (and there have been a lot), you don't see much commercialization actually within their respective countries. You see a lot more when they leave and move to Europe or the US or whatnot.
If you play a Ke$ha song backwards, you hear messages from Satan. Even worse, if you play it forwards you hear Ke$ha.
It's an interesting phenomenon and you see the same thing in Russian science. There are an awful lot of brilliant scientists in both India and Russia doing amazing things. But it's like there's no filter. The unadulterated garbage rises just as much to the top as the actual great scientific work.
It's a good thing this sort of quackery is limited to India and Russia. I'd be pretty embarrassed if we had some of our people claiming that the world was only a few thousand years old, that climate change doesn't exist, and that we didn't evolve over time but were all designed by a supernatural entity.
And how is India different?
In India idiots are recognized as idiots.
Slashdot is haven for people who prefer an evidence based approach, and despise you idiots who need to boil everything down to "left" and "right" since both sides of the spectrum as seen by the US are full of hypocrisy.
If you blindly think the left is all good or the right is all good ... you're a fucking moron who is driven by ideology and not intellect.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And landed men on the moon, sent the first probes to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Invented the transistor and IC, created Unix and C and managed to turn Japan in to democratic nation and kept Europe for burning to the the ground...
And we have nukes.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It also seems like our American politicians that land on the side of the quackery don't actually believe it most of the time, they're using a population that's too stupid to see that their patron only wants their votes. The politician almost always stops short of fully committing to the quackery cause.
These reports make it clear that many politicians in other countries either are much less cautious, or actually do support these crazy notions.
Granted, we could just be seeing the crazy part, as crap rises to the top and makes for good press, regardless of how fringe it is.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.