Saturday, July 25, 2009

Rube Goldberg

Have you ever felt like you are trapped in the middle of a Rube Goldberg machine? Sometimes I do...wating for the next action that will elicit a reaction. The third law of thermodynamics seems to explain a lot in practical terms about the life we encounter on a daily basis. It is not to be confused with Fudd's law, which states,
One of the first projects _ ever had as an undergraduate fine art student was to design and build a Rube Goldberg machine for a design class. I threw myself into it and built a mighty contraption that covered about six square feet of space with about twenty interactions. It had to be dismantled due to the daunting size, and I wish I still had the plans I came up with. The intriguing thing, and the life lesson, is that it is still possible to design and set up some things in life and achieve a prescribed result. If you jump off a building you will go splat. So the natural forces of the world, though fallen, can be a helper to us along the way. Even entropy can work to our advantage. Sometimes things come off without a hitch in spite of the outside forces that want to prevail against us. It is up to us to make sure our designs are in accordance with God's best. It is good to remember that Proverbs 19:21 says "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails."

Lately I have been collecting Goldberg related stuff on ebay. Since most of my hobbies end up turning into vocations, I had to choose something off the wall, and this is it. Much more fun than collecting vintage meat grinders or whoopee cushions.Check out the Rube here... and here.

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