ctrl.altered.mind

I stumbled upon this ~13 minute video of Rube Goldberg machines designed as part of a contest for a Japanese game show. I’ve always been fascinated by these well-designed and accurately coordinated, yet highly counterproductive complex machines. For those who don’t know, a Rube Goldberg machine or device is any exceedingly complex pataphysical apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very indirect and convoluted way (via Wikipedia).

(Update) I was meaning to also add a link to the famous Honda commercial that uses Honda parts to create a nice Rube Goldberg machine (and the link to a parody as well), but forgot :P. Thanks Sean!

On a side note, watching this video sequence reminded me of a beautiful quote in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s 1972 movie Bawarchi.

“It is simple to be happy but so difficult to be simple…”

- Anon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 16th, 2006 at 8:46 am and is filed under Humour, Science.