The Shining Source

What's the best thing that's ever been invented?

I say it's the tea bag.

The Toilet!

Sliced Bread

Fire.


I think some of my favourite inventions of modern times would have to be: fridge, washing machine, woman.

Gamegear... With out it my life would be meaningless

Sex.

What ?

Some of these things were discoveries, not inventions. Also, it has been scientifically proven that anyone on the Internet saying sex is good is a fraud and a liar and most certainly a virgin.

Best invention ever is sticky tape. Or controversy.

Hey if controversy (love the 2nd syllable emphasis you blokes put on it over there in england) is an invention, fire is too.

Ok let's play a game.  Find the line between invention and discovery.  Like two items that are very very similar, but one is only a discovery and the other an invention.

Let us peruse the definitions to give us some ideas.
Discover:
1.  To notice or learn, especially by making an effort.
2.
   A. To be the first, or the first of one's group or kind, to find, learn of, or observe.
   B. To learn about for the first time in one's experience.
3. To learn something about.
4. To identify (a person) as a potentially prominent performer.
5. Archaic. To reveal or expose.

Invent:
1  To produce or contrive (something previously unknown) by the use of ingenuity or imagination.
2 To make up; fabricate


In this instance, would making fire with the old stick on another stick routine(or whatever came first, i don't know.. banging two rocks together which happened to be flint and metal?) be a discovery or an invention.

I suppose fire itself would not be much of an invention, but the sticks or rocks and the name for them and their process.
In this way, would sliced bread be not as much of an invention as the bread slicer is?

Bread was around before it was sliced, surely.  Then surely it was sliced by means other than that which we colloquially name "sliced bread" - just with the old knife.  It was the bread slicer then that was the great invention you refer to, and not as much the bread itself.

What about the thing that made the sliced bread maker though?
The sliced bread maker maker?  The tools which made each part?

As you become more and more complex, you become simpler and simpler, until you come full circle to fire.

Most inventions are partially discovery in the definition.

SO LETS PLAY THE GAME OF WHERE THE LINE IS.
Whoever can come up with the closest two items where one is most definitely more a discovery than an invention and the other is more an invention than a discovery gets points.

yay points!

Meanwhile, on another comparison subject I did use the same system to figure out the difference between erotic and kinky.  Erotic is using a feather.  Kinky is using the whole chicken.

Hmm... water and distilled water?
Is that what you were looking for?

Good call, Elv - I acknowledge your point and retract my poorly thought-through statements. My main point was the Internet-sex-virgin paradox, which I should have made more clear.

I didn't mean it as an attack on your point Newts, I only like games of label refining nature.  

As for the water and distilled water, that's a very good one and I think you may have found a winner first off.

Anyone want to challenge this with something else?
Perhaps Ty saw all of this coming(in his infinite wisdom), with tea and the tea bag.

No no no, I tricked some woman to love me for awhile. That was the only moment in my life that I was truely happy. Now I'm emo.

*gets knife*