Rube Goldberg : Inventions!

Rating:
Summary: The zaniest universe
Review: I have a real problem with this book. Namely, I can't get on a New York bus or subway without having dozen strangers leaning over me to look at the cartoons, first with curiosity and then suddenly bursting into hysterical laughter. It's that kind of book. The name "Rube Goldberg:" is supposed to vaguely resemble a machine more complicated than it should be. But as I discovered here, the inventions are more than over-complicated.. They are zany, zappy, and have the weird quantum logic of a parallel universe existing in some mad scientist's crazy mind. Take a "modest mosquito-bite scratcher", which is modest if you have dogs, cannons and worms all hooked up in tandem. Or a "self-scrubbing bath brush", which is easy once you teach a monkey to play outfield and hook the monkey up with a millwheel, a jack-in-the-box and an organ grinder. But why go on? Each time I open the book, one of the hundreds and hundreds of insane worlds plays itself out with kind of an eerie reality. Maynard Frank Wolfe has written a decent down-to-earth biography of the real Rube Goldberg , who (obviously!) started his long life as an engineer. But the amazing and endless cartoons are simply the funniest and best things around. At first, I thought of Leonardo de Vinci on LSD. But the more realistic affinity is Gary Larson. Both Larson and Goldberg turn science on its head, with their own creations both defying and DEIFYING logic. Now if only he'd invented a way to make strangers on a subway train go away! Let them buy their OWN book!

Rating:
Summary: The zaniest universe
Review: I have a real problem with this book. Namely, I can't get on a New York bus or subway without having dozen strangers leaning over me to look at the cartoons, first with curiosity and then suddenly bursting into hysterical laughter. It's that kind of book. The name "Rube Goldberg:" is supposed to vaguely resemble a machine more complicated than it should be. But as I discovered here, the inventions are more than over-complicated.. They are zany, zappy, and have the weird quantum logic of a parallel universe existing in some mad scientist's crazy mind. Take a "modest mosquito-bite scratcher", which is modest if you have dogs, cannons and worms all hooked up in tandem. Or a "self-scrubbing bath brush", which is easy once you teach a monkey to play outfield and hook the monkey up with a millwheel, a jack-in-the-box and an organ grinder. But why go on? Each time I open the book, one of the hundreds and hundreds of insane worlds plays itself out with kind of an eerie reality. Maynard Frank Wolfe has written a decent down-to-earth biography of the real Rube Goldberg , who (obviously!) started his long life as an engineer. But the amazing and endless cartoons are simply the funniest and best things around. At first, I thought of Leonardo de Vinci on LSD. But the more realistic affinity is Gary Larson. Both Larson and Goldberg turn science on its head, with their own creations both defying and DEIFYING logic. Now if only he'd invented a way to make strangers on a subway train go away! Let them buy their OWN book!

Rating:
Summary: They don't make them like ole' Rube anymore!
Review: Rube Goldberg is justly famous for producing ingenious cartoons that show the most complicated ways imaginable to complete the most mundane of tasks. Any boomer, tweener, Gen-xer, teen, or kid who has played "Mousetrap" has witnessed a "Goldberg". This book reproduces his cartoons and reveals his three-fold genius - as a humorist, an artist, and a master mechanic. Today, the comic pages seem to be oriented either strictly towards children (Rugrats, et. al.), or adults (Doonebury, Dilbert and their kin); either type can be digested in seconds. Goldberg's genius was to produce a hilarious piece of work that could be enjoyed by all ages and actually made his audience think! Buy this book to revel in this master.

Rating:
Summary: They don't make them like ole' Rube anymore!
Review: Rube Goldberg is justly famous for producing ingenious cartoons that show the most complicated ways imaginable to complete the most mundane of tasks. Any boomer, tweener, Gen-xer, teen, or kid who has played "Mousetrap" has witnessed a "Goldberg". This book reproduces his cartoons and reveals his three-fold genius - as a humorist, an artist, and a master mechanic. Today, the comic pages seem to be oriented either strictly towards children (Rugrats, et. al.), or adults (Doonebury, Dilbert and their kin); either type can be digested in seconds. Goldberg's genius was to produce a hilarious piece of work that could be enjoyed by all ages and actually made his audience think! Buy this book to revel in this master.

Rating:
Summary: I thought It Would Be Better
Review: The concept of accomplishing a ridiculously simple task with incredible complexity, is invented and taught here by Rube Goldberg.

As mechanical engineers in college, we used to play around with this concept quite often.

The use of unpredictable things in his cartoons (people, animals) make a cartoon look impossible, if it isn't enough already.

A plant being watered and growing (in a couple of seconds) to accompllish a task is to me, not possible, but at least predictable. An animal or person being heated up, causes Goldberg's desired effect only because he drew the human to do so. But for the human, the number of possible responses are many. We all know that the watered plant will do only one thing. Go up. The time suggested for it to do so; therein lies the humor.