

Curiosity Finds Iron Meteorite on Mars - shankysingh
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/?ImageID=6433

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JoeAltmaier
Looks huge; but there's no scale. So many pictures from Mars lack context like
that.

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shankysingh
That reminded of this article, [http://petapixel.com/2012/09/13/1909-lincoln-
penny-used-to-c...](http://petapixel.com/2012/09/13/1909-lincoln-penny-used-
to-calibrate-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-camera-on-mars/) "Coin" being used for
camera calibration on rovers. Not sure if they can be used to show scale too.

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kevinwang
Funny that they chose the penny because it's classically used in geology to
combat the issue of scale in photographs, which it seems is an issue in Mars
too.

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bcbrown
That's exactly why it was chosen.

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ChuckMcM
One edge of the metorite seems to bear the inscription 'Beagle 2'

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sillysaurus3
Beagle 2?

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a3n
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2)

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jpeg_hero
"Lebanon"?

Lebanon because it looks bombed out? Not really PC.

Most non-PC naming by Americans since calling UBL "Geronimo"

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geetee
It must be really depressing to find something offensive in the most mundane
details.

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sliverstorm
Being offended gives some people a rush. He could just be an addict.

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limsup
I'm offended you assumed the commenter is male.

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sliverstorm
Take it up with English, and maybe while you're at it you can invent a gender-
neutral pronoun better than "zhe"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-
neutral_pronoun#Invented...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-
neutral_pronoun#Invented_pronouns)

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eru
They?

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sliverstorm
At least in modern usage, "They" is flawed. For starters its plurality is
ambiguous.

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dragonwriter
> At least in modern usage, "They" is flawed. For starters its plurality is
> ambiguous.

In the cases where it is used in a gender-neutral but expressly singular
sense, this is false. In cases where whether the number of the referent is
ambiguous and might be either singular or plural, the use of the plural they
has been acceptable longer, and has never been objected to even by the
prescriptives who have tried (and are still trying, though their influence has
waned somewhat from its late 19th Century height) to force generic he in place
of singular they as part of their effort to impose Latin-inspired grammar
rules on English.

~~~
sliverstorm
dragonwriter had some interesting things to say. However, they used a lot of
hand-wavy claims.

That sounds normal to you?

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dragonwriter
The only _structural_ problem (and its a minor one, since the resulting
ambiguity is readily resolvable from context) I see with that is that there
are two different possible referents for "they" in the preceding sentence; in
this particular case the fact that there are both singular and plural uses of
"they" is relevant to why both referents are possible, but you can run into
the same ambiguity with gender and number specific pronouns.

Of course, there's no real good reason to use a pronoun there except for an
excessive fondness for choppy sentences.

