May 23 2020 - Stupid and Useless Inventions

The radio was not a weird invention.  There were many people working to bring it to operational use - it was exciting and engaging for scientists and engineers. They knew there were big stakes and lots of money and power involved. In comparison there are many articles titled:  18, 15, 12, etc Stupid, Useless, Ridiculous, Weird Inventions that made their creators rich.  Also:  Those seemingly pointless products that made investors millions.  Considering all the money these silly inventions have made, the most lucrative invention is considered Karl Benz' automobile, invented in 1886.  There is lots of money to be made in stupid and useless things: The Kush Ball made over $100 million, Pillow Pets has sold over $300 million. The Slinky has made over $3 billion.  It was discovered when an engineer bumped a spring and it started to move.  He watched it as it walked across the floor. Here are three: Yellow Smiley Faces It's just two black oval eyes and a full smile printed on a yellow circle. Harvey Ball created the design in ten minutes and was paid $45.Two brothers, Bernard and Murray Spain, stumbled upon the unrealized potential of the smiley and tagged it with the now infamous tag-line,"Have a nice day." Plastic Wishbone These are fake wishbones produced to give everybody, including vegetarians, a chance to make a wish.  Heartbroken by the fact that only two people can make a wish at each Thanksgiving table, Ken Ahroni started LuckyBreak, a company that produces fake wishbones. The business now makes thousands of plastic bones a day and reports sales of over $2.5 million each year. Snuggies A Snuggie is a blanket with sleeves that keeps your hands free to move.  Despite the fact that you can make your own sleeved blanket by wearing a bathrobe backwards, the Snuggie made an impressive $200 million in profit. Boosted by ridiculous commercials, everyone from celebrities to kids adored this. More HERE.  They include Pet Rock, Silly bands, Slinky, Billy Bob Teeth, Beanie Babies, Tamagotchi, Big Mouth Billy Bass 'The Singing Fish", Furby, Wacky Wall Walker, Magic 8 Ball.

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When Does Spring Start?

The sun is rising on a snow-covered garden, and I find out that for the weatherman, spring starts on March 1st.  There are different definitions of spring. Meteorological spring references a standardized split up of the seasons into four, 3-month periods.  Astronomical seasons are based on the solstices and equinoxes that occur around the year. Today's pictures are the entries in the Betterphoto contest that placed for the month of January.  The first is the second place winner in the Details and Macro category.  The other two are Finalists.  View this email in your browser

Heady Headlines

These are tropical ferns at the Marie Selby Botanical Garden in Sarasota Florida.  The colours are startling right now with our dominant landscape of grey and brown. Each day a headline accompanies the pictures, and I wondered about the headline today so put 'headline' into google.  First, I'm instructed that  "A headline's purpose is to quickly and briefly draw attention to the story". Then a famous newspaper headline by Vincent Musetto shows up.  He was celebrated as the writer of the greatest New York newspaper headline in history in 1983. Here it is and its 'story': "Headless body in topless bar" “Headless Body” soon became the stuff of pop-culture legend. “Saturday Night Live” worked it into routines and David Letterman invited Musetto onto his late-night show to talk about it. It even became the title of a 1990s crime movie. But Musetto, a managing editor, had to fight to get “Headless Body” into the paper. He pleaded with then-executive editor Roger Wood, who was equally appalled by the crime. A psycho had invaded a Queens after-hours joint, shot the owner to death and then — on learning a female customer was a mortician — ordered her to cut off the victim’s head, which cops later found in the madman’s car. Musetto stuck to his guns, and “Headless Body in Topless Bar” ran on Page 1 the next day. It prompted witless snarking in egghead circles. The Post’s legendary metropolitan editor, Steve Dunleavy, countered, “What should we have said? ‘Decapitated cerebellum in tavern of ill repute’?” (The New York Times came close with, “Owner of a Bar Shot to Death; Suspect is Held.”) But a few learned types fell for its dark humor. Literary scholar Peter Shaw, writing in The National Review, cited its compelling “trochaic rhythm . . . the juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated kinds of toplessness conjoined sex and death even as they are conjoined in reality.” You can see the Letterman clip here