Misc. Ramblings

Some students over at Purdue University, with way too much time on their hands, three-peated by winning the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. The contraption, in 125 steps, removed the batteries from a flashlight, replaced them with new ones, and turned the flashlight on. There is a link on their page to a 3.4MB QuickTime(r) 61-second video of the machine in action. Unfortunately, the video doesn't do a very good job of following the action so you may want to forgo the download.

Speaking of Rube Goldberg, this story from Wisconsin chronicles the sad tale of one Tim Bender. It seems Tim was cleaning up the garage in preparation for moving to another house. While doing so, he accidentally knocked over a can of spray paint. Said can landed square on a hammer. Said hammer punctured the can, which sprayed paint into the air. Said paint fumes spread to the gas fired water heater. Said water heater had a pilot light. Said light ignite the paint fumes. Said fire burned the apartment and most of the contents. Rube would be proud, even if Tim isn't.

Speaking of things that may not be wise, check out the Hoverwing. For a mere $8,000 you too can go hovering across the lake at break-neck speeds.

And then. There's this...

Aloha!