Happy Birthday, Rube Goldberg

Why KISS (keep it simple stupid) when you can KICS (keep it complicate, smartie)?

Rube Goldberg's birthday is July 4.. He was a real civil engineer who decided to go into cartooning. And he won the Pulitzer Prize for his efforts. Scientists are still taking him seriously by having contests to see how complicated they can get with solutions. I would think that would be no contest, that simplifying is the challenge, but I'm not a fancy schmancy scientist at Purdue.

Kids are also fascinated with these diagrams, and its fun to have them create their own. It's the cause and effect thing, like the Acme Products in Looney Tunes. Even musicians are interested, hence the following video with over 36 million hits.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine version - Official 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w&feature=player_embedded 

Want to know know more about Rube Goldberg who was born on the fourth?

An article on the NPR site.

When It Comes To Invention, This Guy Was No Rube

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/04/156203905/when-it-comes-to-invention-this-guy-was-no-rube

Rube Goldberg (1883-1870)

 And a biography of the clever lad, from his own website.

 http://www.rubegoldberg.com/?page=bio