Comment New Years EVE (Score 1) 256
As of this year, I'll be undocking a Drake in Jita to unload enough Festival Launcher fireworks to fry someone's GPU.
Because sprites are connected to lightning, and lightning plays a key role in many theories concerning how life first developed on Earth, it stands to reason that the existence of sprites on other planets (both in our own solar system and others) may be something to look out for when searching for signs of alien life, according to Dubrovin.
Mysterious, photographed by ISS and no mention of aliens. I am disappoint.
Actually, TFA does mention aliens:
ANALYSIS: Otherworldly Sprites May Signal Alien Life
Paine argues that foreign insect pests have been deliberately introduced in the Golden State, in hopes of decimating the state's population of eucalyptus
Timothy Paine seems awfully knowledgeable of these terrorists' specific goal of removing 1/10 of the population of Eucalyptus trees.
Near miss? Near hit, rather....
In this context, the word "near" is not being used to mean "almost" but "close in proximity." It would be nice if the use of "near miss" would stop on the grounds that it's ambiguous (rather than necessarily wrong, which it isn't).
I came across a an article this morning that suggests that the Nook and the Kindle have changed things in such a way that schools are becoming obsolete.
Agreed; soon there will be absolutely no need for a an education!
You discover something that already existed but you, and perhaps others, did not know about. You invent something that did not actually exist. It can be solid like a jet engine or conceptual like an algorithm. Someone can no more invent radioactivity than a new exoplanet.
That is indeed the difference between "discover" and "invent" which most English speakers would probably agree on being the correct one. Etymologically, however, the word "invent" originates from the Latin verb invenire, which literally means "to find" or "to discover". That particular meaning, once incorporated into English, remains in certain authoritative dictionaries and thesauruses, such as the aforementioned Oxford Thesaurus of English:
invent
verb
1. originate, create, innovate, design, device, contrive, formulate, develop
2. conceive, think up, come up with, hit on, mastermind, pioneer
3. discover, find
4. coin, mint
I do think that what constitutes a language should largely be determined by common use if there are already perfectly cromulent replacements for certain words. Still, I would still be hard-pressed to call anyone wrong even if they made a crazy-sounding claim like "Christopher Columbus invented the Americas in 1492" as long as I know that they have the means to point and laugh at me for appearing oblivious to how their slightly obscure use of English is correct.
Hopefully, the "invent" => "discover" semantic implication will soon become archaic, so that I will never under any circumstances be tempted to drag discussions off topic like this again.
(It's actually a semantic logical equivalence. Did you know that the Wright brothers discovered the first powered airplane in 1903?)
No. He discovered/named it. It existed long before him. He invented the scientific idea.
You are missing my point. Henri Becquerel invented radioactivity itself (not just the scientific theory of it), despite radioactive decay taking place before he or anyone else we know of knew about it. If he had somehow given rise to the existence of radioactive decay in the universe, he could also have been said to have invented radioactivity, but "invented" no longer directly conveys the semantics of "discovered" in that case.
Firstly, nobody "invented" radioactivity.
Actually, Henri Becquerel invented it. A good thesaurus (such as Oxford Thesaurus of English) will show you that invent is, annoyingly, synonymous with discover.
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach
