Neatorama

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• The Motorcycle Repurposed
• 2 Square Meters of Sunlight, When Focused, Can Melt a Rock
• Scientists: The Quetzalcoatlus Pterosaur Could Probably Fly for 7-10 Days at a Time
• Winners of the 2010 Turnip Prize for Bad Art
• Happy Thanksgiving!
• Effervescent Bacon Drink Tabs
• A Yuletide Gift of Kindness
• What Happens to a Pardoned Turkey?
• Great Moments in Infomercial History

The Motorcycle Repurposed Posted: 26 Nov 2010 05:15 AM PST This Friday's Museum of Possibilities offers several ideas for new types of motorcycles. In this exercise, the concept of the basic motorcycle has been mined for its potential to provide a platform for new uses or added functions. These are not add-ons, conversions or mods, but complete motorcycle designs. Of course, sidecars and small trailers already exist. These concepts are offered merely to widen the discussion! Visit Steven M. Johnson at his website.

2 Square Meters of Sunlight, When Focused, Can Melt a Rock Posted: 25 Nov 2010 07:16 PM PST (Video Link) Bang Goes the Theory is a popular science show on BBC One. In this clip, host Jem Stansfield visited the Solar Furnace Research Facility in France and witnessed how much power can be generated from 2 square meters of sunlight when it’s all focused on one small spot. via Make

Scientists: The Quetzalcoatlus Pterosaur Could Probably Fly for 7-10 Days at a Time Posted: 25 Nov 2010 07:06 PM PST The Quetzalcoatlus, a dinosaur with a wingspan of 35 feet, is thought to be the largest flying animal in Earth history. Some paleontologists think that it was so big that it wouldn’t have been able to get off the ground. Mike Habib, a scholar of biomechanics at Chatham University decided to investigate this claim. He and his colleague, paleontologist Mark Witton, concluded that this dinosaur could probably fly enormous distances: So Habib teamed up with Mark Witton, a British paleontologist, to plug in factors like wingspan, weight and aerodynamics into a computer model. The results, which they presented at a conference last month, were staggering: They revealed an animal that could fly up to 80 miles an hour for 7 to 10 days at altitudes of 15,000 feet. The maximum range, Habib says, was probably between 8,000 and 12,000 miles. Link via Glenn Reynolds | Image: NASA Previously: The Tiniest Pterosaur

Winners of the 2010 Turnip Prize for Bad Art Posted: 25 Nov 2010 03:11 PM PST The Turner Prize is a major British art award, given annually since 1984 to an artist under the age of 50. The Turnip Prize is a spoof of the Turner Prize and: …encourages art which demonstrates a complete lack of talent and effort…The competition was started in 1999 by bosses and regulars of the New Inn in Wedmore, Somerset. Its instigation was prompted by the exhibition of Tracey Emin’s bed in the Turner Prize that year….The Turnip Prize is organised by the pub’s landlord Trevor Prideaux. According to the website, “The Turnip Prize is a crap art competition. You can enter anything you like, but it must be rubbish.” Pictured above is “Getting in a Pickle”, the winner of the 2010 competition. The artist responsible won a turnip with a rusty nail shoved through it. At the link, you can view a gallery of other entrants. Link | Photo: Fran Stothard / SWNS.COM

Happy Thanksgiving! Posted: 25 Nov 2010 08:54 AM PST On behalf of everyone here at Neatorama, I extend our sincerest wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving! May your holiday be filled with family, friends, food, football, and fun. We owe a great big thanks to all of YOU for making this past year a success for this site! Posting may be pretty light the rest of the day. For those in other countries, once you’ve had your fill of what’s here, may I suggest you check out the extensive links at the NeatoHub.

Effervescent Bacon Drink Tabs Posted: 25 Nov 2010 07:48 AM PST Effervescent Bacon Drink Tabs – $3.45 Effervescent bacon drink tablets for when you need a little bacon, but there is none to be had. This is the perfect chaser to any bacon free holiday meal you are forced to endure.  Now available at the NeatoShop! Link / More fun and unusual bacon items

A Yuletide Gift of Kindness Posted: 25 Nov 2010 07:34 AM PST An anonymous benefactor in Canton, Ohio placed a newspaper ad near Christmas in 1933 and asked for people in need to contact him. At the height of the Great Depression, many were in dire straits and responded by mail. The mysterious “B. Virdot” sent $5 (a generous sum at the time) to 150 families. Virdot never revealed his identity. Then in 2008, Ted Gup unearthed those letters and found out that his grandfather was the man who handed out the money. His real name was Sam Stone. “B. Virdot” was a combination of his daughters’ names—Barbara, Virginia (my mother) and Dorothy. My grandmother had mentioned something about his largesse to my mother when she was a young adult, but it had remained a family secret. Now, 30 years after her father’s death, she was comfortable letting the secret out. Collectively, the letters offer a wrenching vision of the Great Depression and of the struggle within the souls of individuals, many too proud to speak of their anguish even to their loved ones. Some sought B. Virdot’s generosity not for themselves, but for their neighbors, friends or relatives. Stirred by their words, I set out to find what became of them, tracking down their descendants, wondering if the $5 gifts had made any difference. From each family, I received permission to use the letter. Read some of the stories of those families at Smithsonian magazine. Link

What Happens to a Pardoned Turkey? Posted: 25 Nov 2010 06:31 AM PST President Obama upheld a presidential tradition and pardoned the official White House turkey yesterday in Washington. Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board have given a turkey to the US president as a gift. But the pardons are a relatively recent innovation. Since then, presidents have been more likely to call the turkey dinner than give it a reprieve. But a notable exception occurred in 1963, when President Kennedy, referring to the turkey given to him, said, “Let’s just keep him.” It wasn’t until 1989, during the first Thanksgiving of President George H.W. Bush, that a turkey was officially pardoned. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all upheld the turkey pardoning tradition. However, some confusion still abounds regarding the true origin of this practice. Some claim that Harry Truman pardoned the turkey he received in 1947, but the Truman Library has been unable to prove this as fact. Others say that the tradition dates back to Abraham Lincoln’s pardoning of his son Tad’s pet turkey. SFGate details the fates of the pardoned turkeys, including the 2010 bird. Link

Great Moments in Infomercial History Posted: 25 Nov 2010 05:31 AM PST The Pocket Fisherman Makes it Big The history of pitching unusual gadgets on television begins with S.J. Popeil. Born into a family of roadside salesmen, S.J. had the vision to break into a much larger audience via TV. The first gizmo he hawked on the small screen was the Pocket Fisherman -a fishing rod small enough to fit in your glove compartment or briefcase. While veteran anglers debated the utility of the flimsy rod, Popeil maintained, “It’s not for using. It’s for giving.” He had a point. Forty years after the first commercial aired, The Pocket Fisherman continues to sell millions of units worldwide every year. But Wait! There’s More! The Genius that Bred the Chia Pet In the early 1970s, entrepreneur Joseph Pedott heard about a failing Chicago company that was selling seeds from the chia plant, a member of the mint family. He bought the company and sold the seeds along with a terra cotta figurine that could sprout vegetation. The result was the Chia Pet -one of the most successful infomercial products in history. But Pedott is hardly a one-trick pony, He’s also the genius behind another TV favorite, The Clapper. He took an existing sound-activated device called The Great American Turn-On, tweaked it, and renamed it. The rest is “clap on, clap off” history. The Lesson Behind “I’ve Fallen, and I Can’t Get Up” LifeCall, a medical alert system, launched one of the most popular catchphrases of the 1980s, when it aired the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” commercial. Radio DJs and stand-up comics endlessly made fun of Mrs. Fletcher, the elderly woman sprawled on the floor. The character was played by Edith Fore, a 70-something widow who’d actually been saved by LifeCall after a tumble down her stairs in 1989. Fore was paid a one-time fee for her performance and never received any royalties. Although her phrase was printed on T-shirts and parodied in songs for years, LifeCall never saw an increase in sales and eventually filed for bankruptcy. The problem was that the public remembered the slogan but couldn’t recall the name of the product. The Knives That Served Up Catchphrases Despite the Japanese name, Ginsu knives were originally manufactured in Fremont, Ohio. The company, formerly known as Quikut, hired an advertising copywriter named Arthur Schiff to spice up its sales pitch. Schiff not only came up with the name Ginsu, he also coined several phrases that are still infomercial staples today, such as, “Now, how much would you pay?” and “Act now, and you’ll receive…” But his pièce de résistance was “But wait! There’s more!” All These Hits on One Giant LP Long before there was Now That’s What I Call Music, there was K-Tel, the affordable pipeline to the hits of the 1970s and 1980s. Salesman Philip Kives had the idea to cram 20 to 25 songs onto one LP and pitch them on rapid-fire TV commercials. The ads were ahead of their time, because serious musical artists of that era didn’t advertise on television, and young music buyers were mesmerized when they heard a succession of 5-second snippets of their favorite tunes on TV. Kives was able to sell his LPs for less than half the normal cost by using cheap, ultra-thin vinyl. He also mastered the records at a lower volume, which produced thin grooves, allowing for more songs on each side. ___________________________ Great Moments in Infomercial History was written by Kara Kovalchik. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the May/June 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine. Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

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