世界上“最无用发明”大盘点

俗话说“需要是发明之母“,但当世界上许多“发明家“绞尽脑汁,试图发明出更多“造福人类“的产品时,却反而发明出一些最荒唐、最搞笑、最无用的玩意,这些发明简直是画蛇添足,然而,它们却仍然被制造成了产品,在各家网络商店中大肆销     

阿拉伯星盘

近几年来,在西方掀起了一股研究阿拉伯星盘热.通过研究,有关学者、专家对星盘的发明和制作有了进一步的认识和了解.过去,西方部分学者认为,阿拉伯星盘的发明与欧洲星盘的发明在时间上相差无几,而现在众多的史料证实阿拉伯星盘的发明与制作时间大大早于欧洲.约在伊历一、二世纪(公元七、八世纪),许多阿拉伯旅行家就携带着     

云苏加墨机获发明"双奖"

在8月15日结束的第十八届全国发明展览会上,南京云苏科技有限公司的"电脑打印墨盒真空加墨机"获得"双奖"--中国发明协会颁发的"金奖"和中国环境保护协会颁发的"环保发明专项奖".     

医生一害羞,发明听诊器

众所周知,听诊器是现代医生的标配,但却很少有人知道发明听诊器的这位医生,其发明的动因居然是因为害羞。他就是19世纪法国医学天才何内·雷奈克。     

篮球对学生全面发展的探讨

篮球这是一项传统的运动项目,他起源于美国,是以为名叫詹姆斯·奈史密斯的体育教师发明的,他发明的原因是为了让他的学生当寒冷的冬季到来时,在橄榄球、棒球无法进行活动的时候,可以用室内的篮球来填补时间,并且保证学生们能够过一个快乐的体育课,就是这样发明了一项流行于全世界的运动。     

婚姻是女人发明的

一个人太寂寞，于是有人发明了婚姻，而且发明婚姻的一定是位女性，因为婚姻是女人的奖品，也是女人的王国。     

“磁性剪纸”开启剪纸的新时代

剪纸艺术，是中国非物质文化遗产。山西90后女孩王子月的一项发明，使这项文化遗产得以发扬光大。她发明的“磁性剪纸”，曾荣获中央电视台《我爱发明》节目“新金点子奖”，并进入了奥运会和2014年巴西世界杯纪念品行列。凭此创意，这位大学毕业不久的90后女孩，竟成为身价倍增的公司老总。     

依靠现代科技推动国际公关事业的发展

现代科技的发展日新月异,新科技对人类社会发展所带来的冲击力也越来越大。如果说电的发明改变了人们的生活方式,电话的发明改变了人们的交流方式,那么,公关网络时代     

金钱是种原材料

兴无爱迪生被称为世界发明大王，可是当这位伟人1931年10月18日辞世时，他却基本上身无分文。难道搞发明不赚钱？不是。实际上发明专利是很赚钱的。     

给我一个猜心软件

38个发明 据说有个国外的论坛做了调查,得出所有女生最希望拥有的38个发明。我仔仔细细读后发现这38个里面明明有好多是重复的嘛,那些0卡路里的饼干、0卡路里的巧克力酱、比萨,完全可以合并同类项。     

百年科技成果一瞥(下)

本文第二部分载于本刊1999年第1期,本期介绍1959～1998年的世界重要发明。     

百年科技成果一瞥(中)

本文第一部分载于本刊1998年第6期,本期介绍1930～1958年的重要发明。     

The Child and the Home

ABSTRACT

This article considers the relationship between the child and the home in Europe since the Middle Ages. It notes that ideas about both childhood and domesticity have varied over successive periods, and that class and gender as well as age influence individual experience in the home. It therefore moves on from the common assumption that both childhood and the home are modern inventions.     

Ethnography Upgraded

Qualitative Sociology - The basic practice of ethnography has essentially remained unchanged in hundreds of years. How has online life changed things? I contrast two transformative inventions, the...     

Statistical reform in medicine,psychology and ecology

Over-reliance on Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) is a serious problem in a number of disciplines, including psychology and ecology. It has the potential to damage not only the progress of these sciences but also the objects of their study. In the mid 1980s, medicine underwent a (relatively) major statistical reform. Strict editorial policy saw the number of p values in journals drop dramatically, and the rate of confidence interval reporting rise concomitantly. In psychology, a parallel change is yet to be achieved, despite half a century of debate, several editorial inventions, and even an American Psychological Association Task Force on Statistical Inference. Ecology also lags substantially behind. The nature of the editorial policies and the degree of collaboration amongst editors are important factors in explaining the varying levels of reforms in these disciplines. But without efforts to also re-write textbooks, improve software and research understanding of alternative methods, it seems unlikely that editorial initiatives will achieve substantial statistical reform.     

Promoting Commercial Activities in Cape Town Newspapers, 1876–1901

Abstract

The paper explores the styles and strategies used to promote goods and services in Cape Town newspapers during the late 19th century. It categorizes business advertisements in the Cape Argus and the Cape Times according to the classification scheme developed by Scott Bennett for the quantitative analysis of advertising in British newspapers. Content analysis of these advertisements shows that many business owners, especially drug merchants, aggressively and fraudulently promoted their products and services. In addition, they used advertising to introduce new products and inventions to Capetonians in very much the same way that advertising was used to introduce similar products and services to Londoners. The paper concludes that content analysis of advertisements is a useful method of studying print culture, business, and society.     

HORIZONTAL CUTS & VERTICAL PENETRATION: THE 'FLESH AND BLOOD' OF IMAGE FABRICATION IN THE OPERATING THEATRES OF INTERVENTIONAL RADIOLOGY

In my essay, I analyse surgical and radiological practices of how the blood flow is being explored, rendered visible and treated. For this I use material of my ethnographic research, which I conducted in the operating theatres of interventional radiology at the University Clinic of Radiology/General Hospital in Vienna. I am particularly interested in notions of invasiveness and how they are permanently transformed in this clinical area. Continual inventions of new technologies in surgery as well as in radiology lead necessarily to a decomposing of what terms like invasive, minimal- and non-invasive mean. However, the meanings of invasiveness for patients and radiological personnel are shifting – this notion is crucial – because it marks a cultural and epistemic turn in medicine, which is already far advanced. In the operating theatres of interventional radiology, surgical and digital imaging proceedings melt into one another and transform the integrity of the patient' body through particular ways of staging and through a specific choreography between the physicians' hands and eyes.     

This Changes Nothing: The Paris Agreement to Ignore Reality

Abstract

At the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Paris, France, 30 November to 11 December 2015, an Agreement was reached by the international community including 195 countries. The Agreement has been hailed, by participants and the media, as a major turning point for policy in the struggle to address human-induced climate change. The following is a short critical commentary in which I briefly explain why the Paris Agreement changes nothing. I highlight how the Agreement has been reached by removing almost all substantive issues concerning the causes of human-induced climate change and offers no firm plans of action. Instead of substantive cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as soon as possible, the intentions of the parties promise escalation of damages and treat worst-case scenarios as an acceptable 50:50 chance. The Paris Agreement signifies commitment to sustained industrial growth, risk management over disaster prevention, and future inventions and technology as saviour. The primary commitment of the international community is to maintain the current social and economic system. The result is denial that tackling GHG emissions is incompatible with sustained economic growth. The reality is that Nation States and international corporations are engaged in an unremitting and ongoing expansion of fossil fuel energy exploration, extraction and combustion, and the construction of related infrastructure for production and consumption. The targets and promises of the Paris Agreement bear no relationship to biophysical or social and economic reality.     

Studying social capital in situ: A qualitative approach

In recent years, the concept of social capital – broadly defined as co-operative networks based on regular, personal contact and trust – has been widely applied within cross-disciplinary human science research, primarily by economists, political scientists and sociologists. In this article, I argue why and how fieldwork anthropologists should fill a gap in the social capital literature by highlighting how social capital is being built in situ. I suggest that the recent inventions of “bridging” and “bonding” social capital, e.g., inclusive and exclusive types of social capital, are fruitful concepts to apply in an anthropological fieldwork setting. Thus, my case study on the relationship between local people and newcomers in the rural Danish marginal municipality of Ravnsborg seeks to reveal processes of bridging/bonding social capital building. Such a case study at the micro level has general policy implications for a cultural clash between two different groups by demonstrating the complexity of a social capital mix where bonding social capital strongly prevails. This ultimately leads to a “social trap” (Rothstein 2005), implying widespread distrust and serious social and economic costs for a whole population. Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen is Senior Researcher, at the Institute of Rural Research and Development, Southern University of Denmark. He is the co-author, with G. T. Svendsen, of The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital: Entrepreneurship, Co-operative Movements and Institutions (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2004, Paperback edition, October 2005); and author of Samarbejde og konfrontation. Opbygning og nedbrydning af social kapital i de danske landdistrikter 1864–2003 [Cooperation and Confrontation. The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital in Rural Denmark 1864–2003], Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sourthern Denmark, Esbjerg, 2004: http://www.humaniora.sdu.dk/phd/dokumenter/filer/Afhandlinger-30.pdfg. Gunnar Svendsen's scholarly interests include Bourdieusian Economics (new socioeconomics), capital theory, social capital, rural civic movements, and rural discourses. He has recently finished a research project for the Danish Ministry of the Interior about the role of intangible assets (culture, networks, and historical traditions) for differences in economic performance (DEP) among four Danish local communities.