There are some very good inventions which， for one reason or another， don't become popular. These inventions should be better known， even though I think that some of them are crazy. Let's have a look at some of these inventions and see if you agree that they should be more successful.

    The Australians had a great idea to stop people from drinking and driving. The idea was that if a driver wanted to start the car， she or he would have to blow into a bag first. If there was too much alcohol(酒精) in their breath， the car wouldn't start. It sounded like a great idea to me， but people said that they might need to drive the car in an emergency even if they had drunk too much alcohol. Another idea I liked was an invention by a scientist who thought his children watched too much TV. He linked the TV to an exercise bike so that the electricity to power the TV was generated(产出) by the bike. If the children wanted to watch a lot of TV， they had to pedal(踩踏板) very hard. I found another invention on the Internet which was intended (倾向于) to encourage good habits. Believe it or not， this invention was an ashtray(烟灰缸) which spoke to you when you lit a cigarette! The “voice” of the ashtray was activated (启动) by the heat from the cigarette and reminded you how dangerous it is to smoke.

    One of the strangest inventions I have come across is a bicycle which can cross rivers! The idea was that when you came to a river， you could inflate a huge plastic ball all around the bike. You would then get into the ball which would float on the river while you pedaled the bike inside the ball! Why not use a bridge instead? A friend of mine at school once bought a strange pair of football shoes. On the bottom of the shoes there was a rotating pad of studs (转动钉垫). The idea was that you would change direction more quickly if the studs rotated with you. The problem was that every time you stopped you changed direction whether you wanted to or not! I think he wore those shoes twice! One thing I would like is a baseball cap with a built-in radio so you can listen to sport all day with your hands free. While we are on the subject of sport， the Americans invented a kind of robot for sports fans. If you were watching your team on TV on your own， you could press a button and the robot would do “high fives” with you! Fantastic! I wonder if you have any good ideas for inventions like these.

    These days haze(雾霾) is around us here and there. In fact, everyone has the power to change their living habits to help reduce it. Many local governments call on their people to take action to make the air cleaner.

    Transport is one of the biggest contributors(促成物) to haze. When, where, bow, why and what you drive all affect air quality. When one drives to work for one year, he uses as much energy as a bus rider uses in 10 years. So walk or ride your bicycle to work or school whenever possible. If it is necessary, you can use public transport instead of your car. Each person using public transport for a year instead of a car can save nearly a tonne of pollutants, including CO₂, from going into the atmosphere.

    Carpooling is another way to reduce carbon emissions (排放). Carpooling is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car. It immediately reduces your car's emissions by half.

    What you do inside your living space can have a big effect on the air quality outside it. You can do a lot of things inside and around your home that will help you pollute less and save some money.

    A large amount of our energy supply comes from burning coal, another contributor to haze. By cutting down your electricity use, you are cutting down on haze. So you may try to reduce your use of electricity by turning off lights, using your air conditioner wisely during the summer months, or updating some of your electrical appliances to low-energy models. For example, you can use energy-saving lamps that require less energy and last 10 times longer than common bulbs.

    Have you ever wished that your life was like a reality TV show(真人秀节目)? Well, like it or not, things might be this way in the future.

    This is because of Google glasses. Glasses are the latest technology from Google. They have more exciting features(特征)than you could possibly imagine.

    For one thing, people who wear the glasses can shoot videos and record the sounds around them. So if your friend is wearing Google glasses, he or she can record your every move and broadcast live on the Internet for the world to see.

    There is a GPS system in the glasses. So if you get lost you can say" OK, Glass, where am I?", and it will find where you are and tell you where you need to 90.

    Google glasses are a bit like a helpful secretary. You can tell them what you want to write in an e—mail and they will type it for you.

    Since April 16, Google glasses have been on the market in small numbers. But by the end of the year anyone will be able to buy a pair for about 2, 500 yuan.

    Some people are not sure whether they find Google glasses cool or not. When someone is wearing Google glasses, it is not easy to see whether or not they are using them.

    A series of Chinese landscapes (风景) created by an AI (人工智能) robot, named Gemini, is shown in London.

    It was believed to be the first AI-made ink work. Ink Now Chairman Calvin Hui sees it as the start of the tech ink times.

    It took Victor Wong, the Hong Kong artist, around three years to build and program Gemini. He has been interested in traditional art since he was young. "Few younger people nowadays care about ink, so I decided to bring technology and ink art together." says the artist, "I want to tell them that ink painting is not that hard to do."

    Each landscape painting can take around 60 hours to finish. First, the robot artist creates his own landscape in his AI mind. Then he's traveling inside his mind and picking up an angle (角度) because it's 3D. After that he uses an arm that puts the brush into ink and water before sweeping across Xuan paper to create Chinese Shuimo artwork.

    However, in some people's opinion, whether robots can create ink art like human artists is not sure because the ink lines were too, straight while works created by human hands are better. "I'm open to all comments," he said, "I'm keeping an open mind as to whether machine-made art can be seen as art. But I hope it will bring an imagination to artists on how to mix technology while painting or creating.

When I was about ten, I was woken up by the shouts（喊声）of my sister one morning. She was hungry, but my mother wasn't at home, so I made a banana cake for her. Let me share the recipe with you.

What you need:

2 eggs  3 bananas  2 cups of flour(面粉)

2 spoons of baking powder(发酵粉)

1/4 spoon of baking soda (小苏打)

1/2 spoon of salt

2/3 cup of sugar

1/3 cup of vegetable oil(油)

What to do:

l  Mix(混合) together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

l  Add the vegetable oil. Then add a little sugar, and stir (搅拌) it.

l  Pour the eggs into the bowl and stir them well.

l  Add the bananas and stir them.

l  Turn the oven to 180℃.

l  Pour them into the oven（烤箱）. Bake（烘焙） the cake for 20 minutes.

l  Get the cake out of the oven, and cut it into pieces to eat.