From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Jan 06 2002 - 21:01:25 MST
[Hermit]Mermaid, unless you really wish to place your great faith and
anti-occidental prejudices, on display, your posts have now descended to the
ridiculous. I repeat. If you are allowed to select the "keys" to decode a
supposed steganographic message, then <em>anything</em> can be found in
<em>any</em> text.
[ETC...WILL ADDRESS THE TIRADE LATER]
[Mermaid]I have one question for you, Hermit. Have you READ the book that
Yash referenced? Do you have any idea what it contains in substance or
content from first hand knowledge? Please answer this before we can
continue.
===
Desperate? Yes. I generally hate to see the owner of a good mind not use it.
When I know the person it makes it worse.
re "Vedic Mathematics". I was asked to look at the maths syllabus at MUM for
a friend (Tbilisi State University Math ABD PhD) who had been invited here
to teach maths, and as "Vedic Maths" forms the basis for the school maths
courses at the Maharishi school I waded through the introduction to a
completely spurious "Vedic History," got to the "key interpolation" bit and
did not complete it - as I could answer the questions without doing so - it
is self-evidently unadulterated horseshit. As Sanskrit is a late invention
(i.e. it's grammar was developed at least 1000 years and more likely 1500
years after the Harrapans) the insanity of the idea that the alleged
steganographic content was placed with intent by the originators of the work
can be seen in all its naked splendor. All that "Vedic Mathematics" consists
of is a lot of phony history, invalid appeals to antiquity and a few
"mental" calculation tricks - nothing that strikes me as "unique" (for the
period or the region) - the Sumerians were way ahead in time, the
Babylonians and Chinese in technique - and all of the key claims are
inferred through "interpretation" rather than literally. As an aside, I
compared the book to both the Oxford University Press and Maharishi's
translations of the Sutras and it matched neither. So even the Sanskrit
scholarship seems phony.
Finally, read up on the company that Tirthaji kept. Eastern "mystics"
separating western fools from their money one and all. While this is not a
new game, it is not a particularly convincing background for a person
attempting to undertake a major shift in historic understanding either.
In my opinion this book doesn't make it to the starting blocks, never mind
off them.
Hermit
PS The friend who asked me to look into it understood these issues and chose
to teach real maths at the University of New Hampshire instead. So I know
that it is possible for an intelligent person to grasp what I am saying. And
as I said, I know you are not irredeemably stupid. Wake up and smell the
air, the scent is not attar of roses but an equestrian byproduct.
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