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Who discovered the theory of gravitational force? 1. Bhaskarachārya (1114 - c. 1185) 2. Sir Isaac Newton 500 years later. Who was the father of Atomic Theory? 1. John Dalton 2. Acharya Kanad over two thousand years earlier Who was the first truly comprehensive economist and political scientist? 1. Chanakya 2. Machiavelli two thousand years later

Just as a note, experimental philosophy of today is very little like that of Isaac Newton's Day.

Sounds like many of the late night coffeehouse discussions I used to have in college about 50 years ago.

On 11/10/2018 at 8:06 PM, moraldilemma said: Right on. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the help. "Oh! Damn! I forgot to congratulate you on your advancement. Sounds like you have been doing some serious work at getting yourself on a functional path." ---- Marblehead I second that. You are kicking serious ass. Congratulations, well-deserved.

I find that deep breathing meditations, Yoga Kriyas and tai chi seems to hit the spot. So, yes, mixing and matching can be useful. We are after all individuals with individual needs. Having said that, there should be a foundation laid at the very beginning, to establish discipline, develop certain habits, pick up basic skills and ideas, etc.

I too am largely against political correctness, I have never posed as a suppressed minority and I asked you " what of your understandings do you feel that I think is incorrect?" Do you realize how much you project? How about this? Whatever paradigm you have created here concerning this topic and me, you are right, I am wrong. You win, I lose. There, is that better.

" he prefers to play the culturally suppressed underdog." LOL, I am a white Anglo-Saxon living in the USA. I can't begin to tell you how much you just made me laugh. BTW, what of your understandings do you feel that I think is incorrect? Please read that last sentence two or three times.

Agreed, and I believe that some of that factionalism is damaging the Daobums. That is why I have been positioning myself, in a certain way, with certain members. A basic Tai Chi principle. Go soft against hardness.

Thank you for that. You are singing to the choir.

Abbot and Costello did it best.

Excellent! You can learn things without it being a contest.

I have no idea what your are talking about. we are just having a discussion here. If you read everything again, I have taken no sides other than I have mentioned some remarkable things some Indians have done and it was done a long time ago. I am not saying one is better than the other. For some reason you seem to take this personally and I have no idea why you care that much.

You, of course, play no favorites. I suspect that certain aspects of other cultures and ideas were more wide-spread than you think. For instance-Leonardo Da Vinci was obsessed by the nutritional ideas handed down by Hindu scholars. He mentioned it several times in his notebooks. Also, what zenpig said above about Newton. BTW, I have no ax to grind. I just like to explore and exploration is usually more fruitful when bounced off of others.

Spoilarium by Juan Luna

Archaeologists, in a cave deep in the jungles of Borneo, found the oldest figurative art in the world: the image above of a spindly-legged animal, drawn in reddish ocher, more than 40,000 years old. The discovery suggests ancient humans seem to have made an important change in how they saw the world at roughly the same time in regions thousands of miles apart.

And now: Who was the first truly comprehensive economist and political scientist? 1. Chanakya 2. Machiavelli two thousand years later Oh, if only Shakespeare had written a play about Chanakya. His gift for politics and intrigue my have been unparalleled.

I very much appreciate the feedback above. It was exactly what I hoped for. One of the reasons I love good Science fiction is how they come up with ideas that are often proven later and created. But, it is the genius of those original ideas that give a direction to be followed. So, Where is the greater genius? The one that comes up with a novel idea or those who prove that idea later?

Bhaskaracharya rightly calculated in his treatise Surya Siddhanta the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. His calculations were - Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: ( 5th century ) 365.258756484 days. Today’s accepted measurement is 365.2564 days. Therefore, assuming that today’s figures are correct, it means that Bhaskaracharya was off by only 0.0002%. So, I am thinking the answer to your question is no.

I understand and largely agree. But, there is a reason why I am generalizing a little. Please tell me what you think: Bhaskara II or Bhaskarachārya (1114 - c. 1185) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer who extended Brahmagupta's work on number systems. Born in Vijjadit (Jalgaon) in Maharastra, Bhaskaracharya's mathematical works called "Lilavati" and "Bijaganita" are considered to be unparalleled. In his treatise "Siddhant Shiromani" he writes on planetary positions, eclipses, cosmography, mathematical techniques and astronomical equipment. The credit of discovering Earth’s gravitational force is usually given to Isaac Newton. However, that gravitational force was already written about by Bhaskaracharya thousands of years ago. In the "Surya Siddhant" he makes a note on the force of gravity: "Objects fall on earth due to a force of attraction by the earth. Therefore, the earth, planets, constellations, moon, and sun are held in orbit due to this attraction."

There are only 19 “fully democratic” countries in the world and the US is not one of them.--The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Democracy Index.

My apologies. I take a five day retreat twice a year. This time it was the Olympic National Park. I leave all electronics behind. I am not going to do nit-picking point by point trivial time-wasting arguing here because it is a useless waste of time that never gets anyone anywhere. What I will do is list some of the freedoms that I believe are a lot less than thirty years ago. 1. We no longer have the right to personal time. Most developed nations recognize that the right to the "pursuit of happiness” includes the ability to enjoy leisure time – in the evenings, on weekends, and on vacation. But each of these rights is being lost to the systematic reversal of gains that Americans first started making in the 19th century.The US is one of the few developed nations that doesn't require employers to offer paid vacation time to their employees. Employees are increasingly unable to take the vacation time they've been promised. 2. . Our American liberties end at the workplace door. If you have a job, the Freedom Train stops at the workplace door. More employees are hired on a part-time or temporary basis to deny them rights and benefits. Many of your privacy rights are gone. Free speech? You can be fired for expressing political views online, even when you're not at work. As employment lawyer Mark Trapp told Bloomberg Business Week, the“freedom to speak your mind doesn’t really exist in work spaces.” Or, in some cases, outside it. 3.The attacking of Medicare, one of our most popular government programs, and defending one of our nation's least popular institutions, HMOs. In fighting for Medicare Advantage's HMO subsidies and resisting wider access to public health insurance, Americans are being robbed of the freedom to make their own medical decisions. 4.We're losing the ability to rise up, earn a decent living, or work in the career of our choice mainly due to an over-concentration of money going to about 1% of the population. The USA had a decent middle class, but, that is being rapidly eroded. 5. We've lost our right to privacy. The CEOs of Facebook and Google have both said essentially the same thing: The age of privacy has ended. Get over it. Privacy is supposed to be an essential right. Yet Americans who claim they'd defend it to the death cheerfully sacrifice it every day to play Mafia Wars. Or to search for a celebrity. Or to connect with high school classmates they never really liked anyway. Internet companies sell our personal data for profit, often by using cookies on our computers to track our activity. Facebook sold users' video rental records. Google pulled Americans' personal information via WiFi when it created Street View. Apple iPhones were tracking and storing their owners' movements. The government is already using corporate data, sometimes without subpoenas. Corporations have voluntarily allowed the government to use their technology to spy on citizens, included one reported case where the government placed a spy server at an ATT location to track the activities of its subscribers. There's a lot more that we don't know. We were taught that a person' home is his or her castle. But our electronic devices have breached the castle walls, and have placed spies in our living rooms, dens … and bedrooms. Americans, especially conservatives, should be demanding that corporations give us back our privacy rights. 6. We're losing the right to representative democracy. On issue after issue, the wishes of most Americans are ignored or marginalized by the nation's political and media elite. Views that are held by most Republicans – and in some cases even by most Tea Party members – are dismissed as “extreme” inside the Beltway. While 75 percent of most Americans and 76 percent of Tea Party supporters opposed Social Security cuts to balance the budget, leaders in both political parties were meeting to negotiate those cuts. (They were scuttled by a fallout between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner; similar cuts were being negotiated between Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton when the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted.) Most Americans want tighter control on US banks, and that's considered politically impossible. They want much higher taxes for millionaires, which is also dismissed. Meanwhile, the nation continues to pursue policies that benefit the most unpopular institutions in the nation, according to that Gallup poll: big corporations, HMOs, and Wall Street banks. The only thing on on Gallup's list that's more unpopular than these three institutions? Congress. In the words of Corey Robin, “It’s long past time for us to start talking and arguing about ... the principle of freedom.”

My apologies. I take a five day retreat twice a year. This time it was the Olympic National Park. I leave all electronics behind. I am not going to do nit-picking point by point trivial time-wasting arguing here because it is a useless waste of time that never gets anyone anywhere. What I will do is list some of the freedoms that I believe are a lot less than thirty years ago. 1. We no longer have the right to personal time. Most developed nations recognize that the right to the "pursuit of happiness” includes the ability to enjoy leisure time – in the evenings, on weekends, and on vacation. But each of these rights is being lost to the systematic reversal of gains that Americans first started making in the 19th century.The US is one of the few developed nations that doesn't require employers to offer paid vacation time to their employees. Employees are increasingly unable to take the vacation time they've been promised. 2. . Our American liberties end at the workplace door. If you have a job, the Freedom Train stops at the workplace door. More employees are hired on a part-time or temporary basis to deny them rights and benefits. Many of your privacy rights are gone. Free speech? You can be fired for expressing political views online, even when you're not at work. As employment lawyer Mark Trapp told Bloomberg Business Week, the“freedom to speak your mind doesn’t really exist in work spaces.” Or, in some cases, outside it. 3.The attacking of Medicare, one of our most popular government programs, and defending one of our nation's least popular institutions, HMOs. In fighting for Medicare Advantage's HMO subsidies and resisting wider access to public health insurance, Americans are being robbed of the freedom to make their own medical decisions. 4.We're losing the ability to rise up, earn a decent living, or work in the career of our choice mainly due to an over-concentration of money going to about 1% of the population. The USA had a decent middle class, but, that is being rapidly eroded. 5.We've lost our right to privacy. The CEOs of Facebook and Google have both said essentially the same thing: The age of privacy has ended. Get over it. Privacy is supposed to be an essential right. Yet Americans who claim they'd defend it to the death cheerfully sacrifice it every day to play Mafia Wars. Or to search for a celebrity. Or to connect with high school classmates they never really liked anyway. Internet companies sell our personal data for profit, often by using cookies on our computers to track our activity. Facebook sold users' video rental records. Google pulled Americans' personal information via WiFi when it created Street View. Apple iPhones were tracking and storing their owners' movements. The government is already using corporate data, sometimes without subpoenas. Corporations have voluntarily allowed the government to use their technology to spy on citizens, included one reported case where the government placed a spy server at an ATT location to track the activities of its subscribers. There's a lot more that we don't know. We were taught that a person' home is his or her castle. But our electronic devices have breached the castle walls, and have placed spies in our living rooms, dens … and bedrooms. Americans, especially conservatives, should be demanding that corporations give us back our privacy rights. 6. We're losing the right to representative democracy. On issue after issue, the wishes of most Americans are ignored or marginalized by the nation's political and media elite. Views that are held by most Republicans – and in some cases even by most Tea Party members – are dismissed as “extreme” inside the Beltway. While 75 percent of most Americans and 76 percent of Tea Party supporters opposed Social Security cuts to balance the budget, leaders in both political parties were meeting to negotiate those cuts. (They were scuttled by a fallout between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner; similar cuts were being negotiated between Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton when the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted.) Most Americans want tighter control on US banks, and that's considered politically impossible. They want much higher taxes for millionaires, which is also dismissed. Meanwhile, the nation continues to pursue policies that benefit the most unpopular institutions in the nation, according to that Gallup poll: big corporations, HMOs, and Wall Street banks. The only thing on on Gallup's list that's more unpopular than these three institutions? Congress. In the words of Corey Robin, “It’s long past time for us to start talking and arguing about ... the principle of freedom.”

Once rated the freest country in the world, the USA is now rated dead last, of all first world countries, by most freedom watch organizations.

Read it again, I never said the whole world. I am not anti-anything. Jumping to conclusions and putting words in peoples mouths seem to be the norm here. Truly an enlightened group.

You jump to many false conclusions. I am not enraged and I am not ignoring your quest for a give and take on freedoms. I just believe that the argument that, I have enough freedoms so my government legitimizing unconstitutional and immoral actions is okay, is not worth contributing any time to.