Word: catchment
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...unloads at the "catchment center," where the truants will fill out forms and be instructed to return to school (most do, since each one's principal is telephoned). As the kids wait to be processed, a squad of ROTC students in crisp blue uniforms marches by in formation. One truant stares, wide-eyed. "What's that?" She cringes. "That's what they're going to do to you," someone tells her. "No way!" she cries. She's right...
...point about discovery is not that someone floats ashore somewhere, by accident, leaving no traces. The American continental coast from Tierra del Fuego to the Aleutians in the west and Baffin Bay on the east coast is such a vast catchment area for the globe's wind and water currents that it is inconceivable that non-native people should not have fetched up there before Columbus. But the essence of discovery is that the voyage is repeatable. It entails documentation -- logs and records. The discoverer is the person who gets from known A to unknown B, returns...