
Man Embraces Useless Machines, and Absurdity Ensues - FluidDjango
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/nyregion/brooklyns-joseph-herscher-and-his-rube-goldberg-machines.html?_r=1&ref=technology
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po
Here in Japan there is a TV station called NHK which make a series of awesome
Rube Goldberg machines called 'pythagora switch' and film them for a
children't show. The video quality and construction is great and they use
nothing that you couldn't find in your house. Some are very simple but the
mechanics they use are frequently absolutely shocking. They always end by
raising a small flag and arranging the letters of the show. I'm surprised I
never saw them until I moved here. I could watch them for hours.

I found a DVD of it that comes with a book in the store here and I was going
to buy it as a gift for my family but I realized it's probably the wrong
region. I can't find an example video online right now. In Japanese it's
called:

ピタゴラスイッチ

<http://www.nhk.or.jp/kids/program/pitagora.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PythagoraSwitch>

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aiham
He mentions that show in the description to his video[1]:

"Much credit must be give to the amazing Pitagora Suicchi ones for all their
original ideas!"

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrCb_fNmSTA>

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po
Oh I didn't notice that. Several of the ideas are direct implementations of
things done in the NHK show. For example the hammers pushing the ball uphill,
the group of balls getting trapped in a pit while one rides over the top and
continues along to later release them, etc.. There should be a design patterns
book for this stuff. :-)

These fan-made videos are great but they also make me shake my head in wonder
at the production quality of the original. Everything is so well constructed
and precise.

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tikhonj
I thought "Man" from the headline was a synecdoche for humanity and was ready
for a depressing anti-technology article.

I was pleasantly surprised.

~~~
tfb
I thought the same thing too and was also pleasantly surprised. In the past,
I've always just found these machines entertaining, as opposed to funny. I
never knew they were supposed to be funny; I always thought they were just
supposed to be pointlessly entertaining ("Ooo what's going to happen next?!")
but I definitely got a good laugh out of the end there. The guy certainly
proved the hilarity of making the simplest task as ridiculously complicated as
possible.

And I'm reminded of times in the past where I've unintentionally solved a
problem in software engineering through a ridiculously complicated method
where there was actually a much simpler solution unapparent to me. At the
time, it wasn't funny; but looking back now, it certainly is.

I wonder how many times it took him to get it to work right, especially with
the hamster likely being the most unpredictable component of the system.

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__david__
He's right, there's something about the machines that makes me laugh--the 5
watering cans in particular made me giggle. Though I have to say I cringed
when the macbook fell off the table. I hope it has an SSD (or a pillow under
it)…

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MetallicCloud
As a kid, I used to always try and create machines like this in my room. I
think I was inspired by the movie "The Goonies".

Nothing I ever created worked very well, but most of the fun was in trying
anyway. This story does make me want to set something up in my shed though...

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AzAngel
Right there with you. Never was good at creating these, but actually did get
that game mousetrap because of this reason.

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aed
This seems like it would be a good pastime for kids. Teaches patience, trial-
and-error, engineering, creativity, etc.

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bennytjia
Sadly they call it 'useless'. something that takes effort, creativity, and
engineering perfection to build is never useless. It improves your way o
thinking, engineering skills, patience, and other valuable essence that would
take years to be invested in yourself through some other means. In addition,
it is an entertainment to me.

I have seen a lot of these machines since i was a kid, and I am always amazed
each time I see this.

I agree with the idea to introduce this as a hobby to kids. I was myself
introduced to programming as a hobby and never knew what it was for. I did it
because I like it. You build whatever you want, whatever you like, make sure
it always excites you whenever you get up in the morning and continue working
on it, and never stop learning about it. There's no such thing as 'useless'
machine.

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suprgeek
The machines are not useless- at a minimum they have one purpose- to entertain
the viewers. A rather unfortunate use of the word - gives the impression that
this is going to be some kind of return-to-pre-industrial article.

This is the kind of Modern Art that I understand and brings a smile to the
face.

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leoedin
I loved the guinea pig and the hairdryer!

I'd imagine that to sell them you'd have to package them up in a rectangular
box, and build them to be automated. You'd need to find creative ways to keep
the water-pouring systems hydrated. If you made a backing board with a ball-
run inside it, along with a lot of ball lifts, you could build something that
could repopulate it's balls back to their original places. It'd be as much or
more work than designing the original though. And chemical reactions and
hamsters would be right out.

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nodemaker
I guess the same concept can be applied to write software programs whose goal
is to perform some crazy tasks in order to do something very simple.

For example a browser which shows the animation of a person going to
California to Google Offices asking for HTML bringing it back to the
user,effectively parsing each line and finally showing Google.com could be an
awesome idea.But then I wonder if anyone would be entertained by this!

Anyone got any other ideas for Rube Goldberg software programs?

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eftpotrm
Looks great fun :-)

I've been involved with Meccano for years and there's a popular family of
models that are sort of perpetual versions of this sort of thing, sending
balls on endless loops.

The best ones are a bit functionally dense to really appreciate except in
person, but here's one I saw a few years ago:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf25bYSjD9M>

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knowtheory
I thought this was going to be about hispter rube goldberg machines, and it's
kind of about that, but still, the guy travels to build rube goldberg devices,
and was inspired by Pythagoras's Switch (a Japanese children's television show
that was posted on youtube for some time, and became a bit of a phenomenon).

So yeah, a little bit hipster, but a guy who actually seems to care about
doing something neat (albeit useless).

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alinspired
building the machines looks like low level programming :)

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sixQuarks
The last part of the video was hilarious

