SG_Mike Posted May 18, 2009 Share Posted May 18, 2009 Gibson guitars!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KSG_Standard Posted May 18, 2009 Share Posted May 18, 2009 Printing press, integrated circuit, web/Internet, Google Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Californiaman Posted May 18, 2009 Share Posted May 18, 2009 Humbucker Pickups Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Mick Posted May 18, 2009 Share Posted May 18, 2009 Moist towelettes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KSG_Standard Posted May 18, 2009 Share Posted May 18, 2009 cheese Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AXE® Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitar_randy Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Clap on ,clap off,the CLAPPER! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duende Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 I have just woken up and have nothing to add to the topic yet, but am so relieved to see a post that wasn't about liberals and republicans (boring as hell) I wanted to make it go to the top of the page LOL Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basshole Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 So what inventions do we have that shaped our world or the society we live in... The wheel' date=' electricity, the Maxim machine gun, valves?? Let me start of with the British RAF Spitfire, one of, if not the greatest war plane ever built.. [img']http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee211/flight959/spitfire-IIA.jpg[/img] Regards Without this plane, and radar england may have ceased to exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dynadude Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Speech. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wicked1 Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Yes but antibiotics are causing loads of problems. We as a people especially in the US throw antibiotics at everything and its a proven fact if all those little bugs are not killed in us they come back to haunt us like the swine flu right now... I watch way too much discovery channel' date=' I want full use of my leg back.[/quote'] I'm with ya on that, guitarest! (Though, I will point out to whoever said it that penicillin was a *discovery* rather than an invention). Unfortunately, we didn't realize when we started throwing antibiotics around like they were candy that the result would be super-bugs! (Evolution in action, anyone?) Viruses, like swine flu, are not affected by antibiotics. We just took too dang long to figure out what using antibiotics for probable viral infections was doing to the viruses. I have not read any recent research on the subject, but I suspect that killing off our normal bacterial flora probably allows viruses to proliferate more than they would if we just let them run their course. However--vaccinations and public sanitation (along with the realization that hand-washing and antiseptic technique during medical procedures were necessary) have probably done more to actually improve and extend life than anything else we humans have figured out. DDT might get rid of mosquitos in the developing world, but it's also going to affect organisms higher up in the food chain. When you start messing with an ecosystem, the effects are completely unknown. Who knows if you're not killing something that was keeping an even greater threat in check? And it's not just medicine, simply clearing out trees to settle in an area has released new diseases. Ebola probably flourished because the ecosystem was disrupted. I've argued this issue with people who immigrated from Africa, too. While you're busy looking for a malaria vaccine, you *have* to employ basic things like mosquito nets and public sanitation to try to limit the number of infections. Our daughter came into our family with infections that could've been avoided completely if she'd just had access to clean water. It took almost 3 months to clear those parasites from her system, but once they were gone, she gained 50 pounds in one year. Without even considering the toll wars take on the human population, the number one killer worldwide is still diarrheal diseases like cholera and they are entirely preventable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daveinspain Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Internet... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duende Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Internet... I love geeking on the internet and never take it for granted! Good choice Dave! My favourite inventions Scot James Clark Maxwell for discovering the existance of radio waves and the subsequent invention of the radio, J.S Bach for pushing forward counterpoint, Raffaele Esposito of Naples for inventing pizza!, Emile Berliner for inventing the gramaphone and Les Paul for designing the first solid body Les Paul... These are just some Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flight959 Posted May 19, 2009 Author Share Posted May 19, 2009 The Atom Bomb... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grampa Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Gibson guitars!!! There you go. THE right answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Wicked1 hit a potential problem of our "great inventions and a question of getting some of the more basic benefits of technology into a larger human environment. I dunno. I well remember DDT and how it became seen as a great evil as if ignoring what it did for human lifespans. Yesterday I was reading an analysis news story that perhaps the reason "we" are seemingly ill so often is that we've lost a lot of our natural defenses to disease and immune defenses simply because we live in such a nice, clean environment with such nice medical treatments. OTOH, as one who figures antibiotics saved his life at least twice - and know my great grandfather died at 54 of infection literally from an ingrown toenail before antibiotics - I don't think I'm in much of a position to really badmouth such improvements. The question then becomes how we balance all this technology we have today with realities of overall human health both physical and mental. I know we, in this era, feel we're unique, but consider my Grandpa born in 1873 whose first memory was watching from the loft of a frontier homestead as his older brother loaded firearms for his widowed mother to fight off "Indians." He saw the Edison phonograph, electric lights, movies, the xray machine, automobiles, radio, television, airplanes, antibiotics and finally the birth of human entry into "space" before his death. I wonder how Grandpa perceived all of that, and how he coped? He enjoyed television and movies, but believe me, you should have heard his commentary on "cowboy" movies on TV. <grin> BTW, don't forget that basic technology is what sets the groundwork for later inventions. Without the invention of the transistor and its shrinkage onto the IC, we'd have far fewer of our modern stuff. And without the taming of electricity for general use, we'd not have the transistor, either. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duende Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Now is a very exciting time to be living in for sure! I am often accused affectionately by mates of being a perpetual optimist :0, but we are living longer, get ill less and the amount of information at our disposal now is awesome! This is why as a Guitar teacher in school, i am very cross if a pupil says I didn't know where to find such and such a song, or I wasn't sure what Largo meant! Use google, use youtube!!! That is the irony with technology. the more things there are to free up time, so we can concentrate on the 'important' things, the less important things people actually get done; and the more lazy they get! Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wicked1 Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Wicked1 hit a potential problem of our "great inventions and a question of getting some of the more basic benefits of technology into a larger human environment. I dunno. I well remember DDT and how it became seen as a great evil as if ignoring what it did for human lifespans. Yesterday I was reading an analysis news story that perhaps the reason "we" are seemingly ill so often is that we've lost a lot of our natural defenses to disease and immune defenses simply because we live in such a nice' date=' clean environment with such nice medical treatments. [/quote'] Several microbiologists I know have pointed out how a "clean" environment really hurts our immune system! You have to be exposed to a threat in order for your body to build a defense. (The entire idea behind vaccinations). Pesticides have done a lot of wonderful things for us as a species. We've grown more crops and fed more people. On the other hand, they have also destroyed some beneficial species. DDT had immediate benefits, but did those benefits outweigh the long-term risk? And could those same benefits be achieved with a less damaging approach? Those are the questions I'm driving at. If you save one human life but you maim 5 others, what have you accomplished? As an example of long-term effects of chemicals in our environment, I'll mention Agent Orange. I'm not making a judgement either way on whether or not it should have been used. The Vietnamese had an immediate detrimental effect from those chemicals. The following generation suffered from birth defects because pregnant women were exposed to it. We in the western world thought that would be the end of it. But here we are, 3 generations after the war and those problems are creeping up again. People who were born completely healthy are having children with birth defects because their ground water was tainted. Their food supply is corrupted. We may have had an immediate beneficial effect, but 30 years later, people are suffering the consequences. Antibiotics have destroyed bacteria and kept us alive, but they have also destroyed our normal flora and allowed other microorganisms to flourish. Improper use and overuse have given us bacteria that are resistant to all but the most potent drugs we know. ALL of our inventions & discoveries have a downside. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Sear... You hit one thing... access to the Web doesn't mean people use it appropriately. At work it's my dictionary, phone book, encyclopedia and research tool for everything from local sales tax receipts to double checking spelling of a stadium in a town 1,000 miles away. And I'm just an old man. Wicked... Here's another funny for you... On my first trip to Korea I was the only "round eye" in a group of about 200 North Americans who didn't come down with dysentery. I teased that it was because I'd eaten so much bad truck stop food and my American "bugs" beat up the Korean "bugs." I retrospect I'm increasingly convinced I wasn't far wrong. But... West Nile is still pretty nasty and I sometimes wonder about DDT, although we've got some neat stuff folks around here use to get rid of it. I've friends who almost died of a mosquito bite.... m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wicked1 Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 On my first trip to Korea I was the only "round eye" in a group of about 200 North Americans who didn't come down with dysentery. I teased that it was because I'd eaten so much bad truck stop food and my American "bugs" beat up the Korean "bugs." I retrospect I'm increasingly convinced I wasn't far wrong. But... West Nile is still pretty nasty and I sometimes wonder about DDT' date=' although we've got some neat stuff folks around here use to get rid of it. I've friends who almost died of a mosquito bite.... m [/quote'] I get that. Lyme disease isn't much fun either. But I tend to look at things from a public health and evolutionary standpoint in these areas. We just don't know enough about our world to go around eliminating habitats or introducing species to a foreign area. Sometimes you have to. But I think we need to be a little more careful and think further into the future. Ironically, our daughter had problems when she came to America because she was used to drinking & using polluted water. She couldn't handle "cleaner" water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 BTW Wicked.... I just thought of this one... Yeah, DDT helped a lot. Look at the folks who died of yellow fever and malaria before DDT. But... they also had the help of other technologies in draining swamps that supported other species and... I dunno. But I do know watching old guys shuddering from malaria flashbacks 20 years after WWII wasn't nice. Here's another... look at a map of where I live and figure we've had pretty high population percentages with West Nile and some deaths - and we were among the first to spray and use larvicides in town. In the country? Good luck. More than a few ranch folk came down with it. Sheesh. But then, our population density is pretty light. I dunno. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wicked1 Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 BTW Wicked.... I just thought of this one... Yeah' date=' DDT helped a lot. Look at the folks who died of yellow fever and malaria before DDT. But... they also had the help of other technologies in draining swamps that supported other species and... I dunno. But I do know watching old guys shuddering from malaria flashbacks 20 years after WWII wasn't nice. m[/quote'] I understand what you mean. We needed to take drastic measure in the developing world. DDT was *one* tool in the battle. We have learned much since then, though, and I think we need to look at the long-term results from using chemicals for any purpose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duende Posted May 19, 2009 Share Posted May 19, 2009 Sear... You hit one thing... access to the Web doesn't mean people use it appropriately. At work it's my dictionary' date=' phone book, encyclopedia and research tool for everything from local sales tax receipts to double checking spelling of a stadium in a town 1,000 miles away. And I'm just an old man. Wicked... Here's another funny for you... On my first trip to Korea I was the only "round eye" in a group of about 200 North Americans who didn't come down with dysentery. I teased that it was because I'd eaten so much bad truck stop food and my American "bugs" beat up the Korean "bugs." I retrospect I'm increasingly convinced I wasn't far wrong. But... West Nile is still pretty nasty and I sometimes wonder about DDT, although we've got some neat stuff folks around here use to get rid of it. I've friends who almost died of a mosquito bite.... m [/quote'] Please call me Matt..and you are not old!!! Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted May 21, 2009 Share Posted May 21, 2009 Matt.... Well.... I think I'm getting a bit long in the tooth - although as of this afternoon I won't have any except storebought... Hmmmmm..... argh... and it'll be a 90 minute drive back and forth today... <grin> m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KSG_Standard Posted May 21, 2009 Share Posted May 21, 2009 DDT the first of the chlorinated organic insecticides, was originally prepared in 1873, but it was not until 1939 that Paul Muller of Geigy Pharmaceutical in Switzerland discovered the effectiveness of DDT as an insecticide he was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology in 1948 for this discovery). The use of DDT increased enormously on a worldwide basis after World War II, primarily because of its effectiveness against the mosquito that spreads malaria and lice that carry typhus. The World Health Organization estimates that during the period of its use approximately 25 million lives were saved. DDT seemed to be the ideal insecticideit is cheap and of relatively low toxicity to mammals (oral LD50 is 300 to 500 mg/kg). However, problems related to extensive use of DDT began to appear in the late 1940s. Many species of insects developed resistance to DDT, and DDT was also discovered to have a high toxicity toward fish. The chemical stability of DDT and its fat solubility compounded the problem. DDT is not metabolized very rapidly by animals; instead, it is deposited and stored in the fatty tissues. The biological half-life of DDT is about eight years; that is, it takes about eight years for an animal to metabolize half of the amount it assimilates. If ingestion continues at a steady rate, DDT builds up within the animal over time. The use of DDT was banned in the United States in 1973, although it is still in use in some other parts of the world. The buildup of DDT in natural waters is a reverisble process: the EPA reported a 90% reduction of DDT in Lake Michigan fish by 1978 as a result of the ban. Update by Karl Harrison (Molecule of the Month for August 1997 ) http://www.3dchem.com/molecules.asp?ID=90 People are dying from insect transmitted disease in the third world...Many could be save by the use of DDT. In my mind, the life of one child is much more valuable than the animals that might be damaged by DDT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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