Then again, the Beatles' experimentation did blow rock music wide open. In fact, for better or worse, they may have invented "rock music." Before that, it was just rock 'n' roll. So whatever.

Decloak? Oops. Well, everyone knows who MrSelectiveQuote is. Say the word and I'll email you the password. (It used to be public until some turdmunch pissed all over it.)

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"Blow me." --Mother Teresa

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Then again, the Beatles' experimentation did blow rock music wide open. In fact, for better or worse, they may have invented "rock music." Before that, it was just rock 'n' roll. So whatever.

Decloak? Oops. Well, everyone knows who MrSelectiveQuote is. Say the word and I'll email you the password. (It used to be public until some turdmunch pissed all over it.)

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Take that back, or I swear to God I'll bury this stapler in your fucking head.

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What others say about boorite!

The beatles may of invented rock moosic but its been transmogrified and morfed alot into different types and styles. I would go for Sum 41 and Blink 182 but not the insane lunatic mad fucked up Slipknot style.

People who follow this belief need to be shot,
in the face,
twice,
with bullets (not cum).

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Dad was flammable

I agree that science, like art, is largely derivative. However, there was a kernel of genius in Newton's work that was wholly non-derivative. If Newton's 3 Laws of Motion were a trip around the world, then derivation might have got him from New York to Moscow, but insight brought his ass back home.

If there is an afterlife and the souls there watch us down here (or up here, or to the left), I would like to apologize to Leonardo DaVinci. I didn't snub you, but simply forgot you, pal. If I would have remembered him, he would have been #2.

That comic is actually based on a true story of a roommate of mine. The only reason that's is only 'based' on a true story instead of the true story itself is that my friend didn't think the 'what an asshole' line, but said it out loud. Also, he wasn't a bunny. (at the time)

This word's going in my vocabulary right between titty and turret. Come to think of it, if we transmogrified the world's turrets into titties, even if war didn't end, it would be more fun to watch on CNN.

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I ate a hooker half a bottle of knife.

Has anyone mentioned Joan of Arc yet? The only personal of either gender to lead a nation to victory over an occupying force at the age of 16.

But mostly I go with a collection of the above.

And Gandhi... and Buddha... And Rudolph Steiner... and Chief Joseph... and for my Bohemian roots, Vaclav Havel (the old letch).

And Mel Blanc and Chuck Jones and Tex Avry.

Did someone say Mark Twain? He's in there with Kurt V. And whoever did Shakespear's stuff.

And the Myan that discovered zero.

And my Gandpa for leaving the candybars on top of his porno collection when I ws growning up.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Some of my heros...

Patton
Bruce Lee
Hesus Christo(JC)
Shawn Fanning
Lance Cottrell
Nathan Hale

The concept of zero as a number is a Persian/Arabic invention. Our whole number system has been borrowed from theirs, which is why you may have heard the term "Arabic numerals".

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Numbers aren't a concept or an invention, but a discovery. Just as someone didn't invent the stars, or a rock, or gabe's loose loose godawful loose mother.

This is readily apparent for whole numbers (1 apple, 2 apple, 3 apple). And, though less apparent, true for all numbers. For decimals for instance, some smart sloped-forehead caveman, after dismounting gabe's great * 10^3 grandmother, figured out that a vine the length of a circle's diameter went into that circle's circumference 3.14159265... times. Pi. Even imaginary numbers' name is misleading. Imaginary numbers (denoted by i - square root of -1) perfectly represent the natural phenomenon of osciallation - such as an AC current or an orbiting object.

When we meet Stan Starman from Alpha Centauri, we won't have to teach each other our numbering system. We'll have to know each others unit conversions (how many ziplogs in a mile) just like we have to do now when comparing metric and English units, but one is universally one, two is universally two...

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I ate a hooker half a bottle of knife.

Yes, but the number 5551212 was invented in order that you could discover gabe's mother's number.

Go figure.

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

Well... that's the thing... zero is not a thing - it is the absence of a thing. A numerical system in which the lack of units of a certain power can be place-held by a character that means "there is nothing here" really was an extraordinary achievement in modern thinking. Such a system is an invention in my mind, not a discovery.

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You're both right. The root of "invent" means "to discover." Originally, there was probably little distinction between the two, and then the concept of "inventor" was invented.

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What others say about boorite!

But just because the root of a word has the same meaning as the other word in this case, doesn't mean that it's the same thing.
The word "invent" could have had same meaning as "discover" in its origional form, but today it means something entirely different...

Invent offers distinction to an individual that preforms this feat, and usualy conveys the image that it couldn't have been done without them. It was non-existing, but a posible concept. To discover it, however, means that its been there all along and that anyone could have done the same thing.

In my opinion, for this case, all numbers exist and there are infinate ways they are inter-related and you can tie them together. This is one of the reasons they dont give nobel prizes to mathematicians; once a breakthough is reached, theres no stop to the sentance- you can go on and on elaborating on the concepts you've discovered and not reach an end anytime soon. In fact you just create more problems.

I'd think that the concept of 0 is just a reference point for other thought- the absence of something has always existed[outer space(or is outer space empty gah!)], and 0 is nothing more than a way to describe that. It's like a new word to describe a particular instance or property that everyone knows about... I.E. Doh!

Huh?

Name me one scientific discipline where there are no unanswered questions left and there is no room for more elaboration.

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"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

Well I'm just saying that they don't recognize that for other nobel sciences....

That's just what I've heard about why there would be no prize for math... but I'm not sure. Anyone know?

And don't tell us the stories about the women.

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But just because the root of a word has the same meaning as the other word in this case, doesn't mean that it's the same thing.
The word "invent" could have had same meaning as "discover" in its origional form, but today it means something entirely different...

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Invent offers distinction to an individual that preforms this feat, and usualy conveys the image that it couldn't have been done without them. It was non-existing, but a posible concept. To discover it, however, means that its been there all along and that anyone could have done the same thing.

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But just because the root of a word has the same meaning as the other word in this case, doesn't mean that it's the same thing.
The word "invent" could have had same meaning as "discover" in its origional form, but today it means something entirely different...

Invent offers distinction to an individual that preforms this feat, and usualy conveys the image that it couldn't have been done without them. It was non-existing, but a posible concept. To discover it, however, means that its been there all along and that anyone could have done the same thing.

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My mom is crying now. I hope you're all happy.

I was listening to NPR the other day and they had an interesting story about the guy who invented television. I'd never heard of him, and apparently no one else really had either. He was some hick who happened to be particularly bright.

It sounds as though he got dicked out of a lot of moolah.

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/story085.htm

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100 pounds of shit in a 25 pound sack.

Except that it reveals a crucial fact: In this case, the "thing" described is a social concept assembled from preexisting "things" at some point in history. An author isn't a "thing" in quite the sense that a ball or a rock is. It's a concept, an invention, a social construction, and it's worth considering when and why and for whom the distinction was introduced.

In fact, "invention" isn't a thing at all, but a nominalization of a process of "inventing," and a whole series of judgements about what the "inventor" is doing (summed up well by Nate, above).

Anyhow, it's about the most relevant issue I can think of.

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What others say about boorite!

Oh. I think I get the distinction now (sheepish grin)

I guess it flows with philosophy (as many things do). Is everything that is possible already exist somewhere and is simply waiting to be defined in our own terms? Or do we *actually* create things of our own invention? Christians believe that god created the world... do we rise to God's level by creating a computer? I think that the majesty of creation is not only that it is out of nothing(in God's case) but the complexities of it. I think it'd will take eons to fully define every property of every thing in the universe( and to figure out what else there might be.

As for the idea of 0 as a number being a new concept and could be invented, I agree with DexX. But I also get what you're saying now, boorite, that the term can mean the same thing in these case.

Another thought to consider is that, perhaps its not that we're inventing or discovering anything but merely duplicating everything that already exists(the case of the computer for example). Numbers would follow this as they'd just be a representation of data in a very simple form. Like kaufman said "Mathematicians *invent* ways to organize and view things." We're just organizing things that already work a certain way to now fit with a new task that also can be solved theoretically but is being practically done with these things(technology).

I'm not sure where I'm going now and I've lost my train of thought so I'll just shut up.

This reminds me of an old doonsbury from the 80's where duke is talking to zonker and he says, "The most extraordinary chain of events can be set in motion by the most banal incident!"

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My mom is crying now. I hope you're all happy.

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Think about the internal combustion engine. While chemical combustion is a natural process that nobody invented, the idea of using a series of small explosions, locked inside a metal box, to drive a motor, and then building such a machine... I don't see how this could be viewed as a "discovery" - last time I checked, turbo twin cam v8 engines don't exist in nature. I think that inventions in this category show quite clearly the semantic difference between the two words.

That said, the two are inextricably mingled. Generally speaking, invention naturall follows discovery, and it can be difficult to tell them apart. Somebody discovers magnetism, someone else discovers the magnetic properties of the earth, and somebody puts these two ideas together and invents the compass. Somebody discovers that potato cooked in oil gets very crunchy, someone else discovers that the thinner you slice it, the crunchier it gets, so someone else invents crunchy potato chips.

The way I see it, some things fall cleanly into either "discovery" or "invention", but some sit in a fuzzy area in between, especially things like polymers, which are the result of natural chemical reactions, but would rarely occur in nature.

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