Big idea guy and self-described “Adventure Capitalist” Spin Williams has been watching the weather for an investment opportunity. I have a feeling he’ll soon be underwriting shovel brigades on the Russian tundra.
Here at the meeting that never ends, we’re excited to hear about the tremendous blizzard hitting the East Coast. For that matter, we’re thrilled about all the other blizzards and prodigious snowfalls that have been happening worldwide, causing droopy domes, travel problems and airports that resemble youth hostels with people sleeping everywhere! What fun!
And I don’t say that just because I’m in sunny California. Los Angeles hasn’t been very sunny of late, what with all the pre-melted blizzards we’ve had in the past few weeks. They arrive like they have been shot out of a fire hose. Whee!
But anyone who knows me also knows I’m always looking for something new – something that affects the way people see the world and alters their behavior. The leading edge of change – that’s where I make my living.
The thing that caught my attention was this commentary in the New York Times where a climate scientist named Judah Cohen makes the case that global warming is actually the cause of this recent wave of extreme wintry weather. Warmth leading to cold? Consider my mind officially boggled! And not only that – he contends that one key, but overlooked, aspect of the Rube Goldberg Contraption that is our world’s weather is the snow cover in Siberia!
I’ll spare you a detailed explanation, but basically the bowling ball of melting polar ice runs into the plate glass window of atmospheric moisture, releasing the swinging weight of increased precipitation which, in it’s pendulum-like rocking, pulls back the spring loaded boot of Siberian snow cover, which kicks down the line of dominos that is the jet stream, toppling the last domino into a confetti- filled bowl that represents the arctic air mass which then jiggles its way down the slippery ramp that doubles as the face of North America, tripping a switch that starts the table fan of colliding cold and moist weather systems, thereby tipping the bowl over in front of the aforementioned fan, which leads to a sudden explosion of white flecks everywhere in the room.
Or something like that.
Anyway, my “take away” from Mr. Cohen’s article is this – if we want to clear the snowy streets of New York in December, we have to dig out Novosibirsk in November. And I don’t mean plowing out the major arterials, I mean de-icing and un-whitifying the whole place. Maybe you do it with massive trucks and salt, or shovels, or flamethrowers. I don’t know. Or else you cover over that reflective snow with big solar energy absorbing fabric panels, like the fence that guy Christo put up.
Is it a big job? Sure, but by taking on the big jobs, you can make a big difference! Here’s the encouraging part – Russian snowplow drivers are a lot cheaper to hire then the ones that work for NYC. And they’re already positioned right where we need them! Finally, a kind of “outsourcing” that really makes sense!
How many hundreds of millions would businesses and residents along the prosperous north east coast of the USA pay to avoid what they’re going through today? Heck, if we could just get the financiers on Wall Street and the cast of Jersey Shore to put up a small portion of their combined wealth, I’ll bet The Siberian Sunshine Company (TM) would turn an immediate profit! Investors, form a line!
Another over-the-top notion from a guy who never stops figuring the angles. My only “take away” from Spin’s idea is that the world’s weather could have been designed by Rube Goldberg. Interesting concept, but probably not even close to the truth. Winter weather is much more complicated and a lot less fun than Goldberg contraptions, which are only baffling for the sake of being baffling, and typically do not lead to the shut down of major cities.
What part of your life is Rube Goldberg-esque?
Trail Baboon 
What part of my life ISN’T? I often feel like I’m just stringing random happenings together to make my life. Although I’m currently completely wrapped up in getting a jigsaw puzzle done – honestly, my friends ought to know better than to give me such addicting objects!
Here is one of my favorite Rube G pieces… and I managed to find us a clip with Danish subtitles for added enjoyment:
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Thanks Verily! Now I know what my son wants to be when he grows up.
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well, being addicted to jigsaw puzzle might be a bit less obsessive than these two guys! thanks, Sherrilee – i admire your techno-skills in getting the clip into your message! happy monday!
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loved the verbal Rube G. description, Dale! and the clip was fun – and funny. today seems like the second monday this week already, so i’ll have to think awhile before i answer the question. will be fun reading, as usual.
looks like we’re heading toward a storm on thursday – or at least the weather folks are hyping it already.
a good and gracious second monday morning to You All
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Trying to build a Rube Goldberg machine that will get me out the door to work without me noticing that is what is happening!
As a kid, the week between Christmas and New Year’s was always set aside for recovery from all the Christmas preparations and services-Jigsaw puzzles were a big part of the extended family gathering my dad’s family used to do- we would have a challenging one set up on a table and people would come and go working to get it done before we would go to bed. It was a great. You could talk or not while working on it- I got to know a lot of my cousin’s new spouses over the family jigsaw. I don’t think we ever failed to finish one, but I do remember staying up with the die hard aunts and uncles until 2 am one year.
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If you come up w/ a contraption to get you out the door, can I borrow it when you’re done. I would REALLY like to stay home today. And tomorrow. Hopefully puzzle will be finished by then!
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Thanks Steve! needed that.
Verily-happy to collaborate with you on this one as it seems most great Goldberg machines are the work of more than one mind. My research is indicating that when you remove the middle section of getting the sixth-grader out of the loft, into the shower, out to the breakfast table and then out the door-the whole process hits a big pile of sludge.
Looking at the stack of bills due the end of the month that I have just been chucking into the basket is helping with the motivation- (i’m glad i have this job, i’m glad i have this job–rinse and repeat).
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You all would remember the George Bush story. It must be true since it was on the internet! Dick Cheney walks into the Oval Office and sees the President whooping and hollering.
“What’s the matter, Mr. President?”
“Nothing at all, Dick. I just done finished a jigsaw puzzle in record time!”
“How long did it take you?”
“Only nine months. And guess what? On the box it says, ‘Three to Five Years’!”
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Teeheehee, snicker, snicker
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A couple of those weeks between Christmas and New Year’s, my brother and I set up a running Monopoly game. Sometimes we’d sit down and play for awhile, sometimes we’d jut play a turn on our way to someplace else in the house. It was a change of pace, anyway, from our family’s annual post-Christmas puzzle.
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Health care and the payment thereof.
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So very, very true. A particular Minnesota-based payment methods are especially R-G-ish. And their staff seem prone to intelligence as great as that portrayed in Steve’s W joke.
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Rise and Shine Baboons:
I’m with verily, which part of my life isn’t? However, this year my work life was particularly RG-ish, various pieces breaking down and jamming up the works from time to time.
Now I am putting together, not a jigsaw puzzle, but a story book for my mother’s gift (we have long held our Christmas over New Years weekend due to several difficult medical work schedules that never fail to pull On-call over Christmas). I take stories mom wrote about her childhood during the Great Depression, edit them and make a book. I’m drawing the last two pictures for it. These last pictures seem to operate like an RB machine. Soon I’ll go downstairs to make another attempt. Perhaps the puzzle will fall together.
I may take a jigsaw to the family gathering. We have not done one for a long time. Inspiring Baboons!
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Wow, I am impressed at your creativity, Jacque!
My memory of the family jigsaw, was that it was a blessing for the introverts of the group (quite a lot of us)-you had a reason to be sitting where you were and could converse or not as the humor struck you.
There were maybe 40 people involved in that gathering in its last years age range from 90+ to newborn-there was never a “kids’ puzzle” and it was a point of pride as a kid to get a piece in on the puzzle that seemed to be challenging the grown-ups.
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Not creativity–desperation. What do you give an 82 y.o. woman with Alzheimers? A memory of her own life is about the only thing she needs! That and snacks.
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Forty people? I’m trying to imagine the conversations!
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You’ve pricked my lazy conscience Jacque. My mother has mentioned several times recently that no one will know her stories when she’s gone. She has never been much of a life story teller, so I’m not sure what it is that she wants to fill us in on. On Christmas she might have mentioned it again, under her breath, quickly followed with her characteristic martyrish caveat “I know no one has time.” (also under her breath).
A year or so ago, my daughter gave her a fill-in-the-blank kind of notebook that she can’t/won’t use on her own, but maybe if the girls and I get together with her and use the book as a prompt, we can get past, “OK, we’re listening, tell us your stories.” I’ve tried that a couple of times but there was usually too much going on and/or too many people around and she didn’t really come up with anything. The book has leading questions that may get her going in the direction of whatever it is that she wants us to know about. I’ve asked the girls to join me in this labor of love, but even if they can’t, I’m sure I can carve out some time from my self absorbed life to spend listening to and writing down Mom’s memories. Thank you for sharing your gift to your mom, Jacque, you have inspired me to try to fulfill this simple request from my mom, (if I’ve correctly deciphered what it is she’s been beating around the bush about.)
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Good luck with this project, Caroline. And if you hear anything you think it would be appropriate to share, we’d love to hear it.
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My mom has one of those fill in the blank memory books, too, and I think you’re right – the only way it’s gonna happen is if one of us sits down with her each visit and do a little bit.
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Hey, I just noticed that the Baboon clock is repaired!
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Yes, Dale fixed it yesterday afternoon. I love watching TBB on a day when there isn’t an “official” entry. Nothing keeps a good baboon down!
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dales note 3/4 of the way through thursday responding to holly i think
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I went back to see and found your question about my name. I have a standard answer,”No, I was born in November but my parents didn’t want to name me Turkey.” I was indeed born in November and my parents liked the name Holly. I reserve the right to use my holly dishes, etc. any time of the year.
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Come Spring (actually the 2nd Sunday in March), I will be one hour behind when we return to Daylight Saving Time. Expect a re-correction sometime in July.
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i enjoyed being on eastern time. we can try mountain time next
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Jigsaw puzzles were, for me, a cabin thing. I see myself as a pre-teen sitting at a card table on the porch of a log cabin near Park Rapids. A steady rain patters on the roof of the cabin. Rivulets of rainwater form little river-like things that wobble down the screens. In the distance, thunder thumps and chugs. The light coming through the cloud cover is gentle and gray. In the wet air the Norway pines release piney perfume. I’ve got all the pieces of the puzzle right-side up, and now I’m setting the side pieces in special areas. The four corners are in place. The lid of the puzzle box is propped up so I can see what my puzzle will look like: a mountain stream with bluebirds and leaping trout. I am barefoot, so it feels good when my golden retriever curls up leaning on my bare ankle. Rain drips from the pines.
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Steve — thanks for the memory of the lid of the puzzle box propped up. This is my usual modis operandi (sp?) as well,. Except this puzzle, which is a “mystery puzzle”. You read the little story and then put the puzzle together with no picture as a guide. Then you have to solve the mystery based on what the puzzle reveals. Makes it a little harder.
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I have done a couple of those mystery puzzles – great fun.
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my sister is hardcore. she says looking at the picture is cheating. then again she needs to get a life, take 14 hours doing what could be done in 10 is taking liberties with the jigsaw gods.
as for rube i love the treat of watching the intricate buildup to the minute payoff ( the smaller the better) its a bit like the twit races with bra unhooking and the matchbox hurdle.
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What a great “sense of place” piece, Steve – I feel like I’m there!
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Good morning to all and to the Rube’s among us,
I also see my life as mostly a Rube Goldberg experiment, like Sherrilee, and please don’t get me started on a jigsaw puzzles. I am another person who can not leave them alone until they are done. Please put out easy ones I can finish without much trouble or don’t put them out. I think George Bush should have been given lots of jigsaw puzzles to do that might have preoccupied him so that he wouldn’t have had time for some other things that didn’t turn out very good.
I do a lot of Rube Goldberg improvizing with lumber, wire, staples, and screws in my garden. I use these things to make supports for vines, cages to prevent rabbit damage, fences to keep people from walking through my garden, and other enclosures and supports. There’s no need to buy fancy supports or enclosures for plants from garden stores and cataloges when I can wack them together myself from my supply of odd scapes of wire, lumber, and other things.
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Like any parent (see above), getting out in the morning and the returning home at the end of the day, getting supper ready, eaten, homework done, into bed, lather, rinse, repeat…is an almost daily Rube Goldberg device.
My other weekly RG device is the reporting I do for work. One piece of the data comes from this system, these two from that system, another from over here, hop on one foot, turn around three times, spit over your left shoulder and then hope that Excel doesn’t freeze while you’re saving. Dang. Forgot to have the boot kick the marble down the ramp to have that data set turn into a pie chart about shoes and ships and sealing wax and whether pigs have wings…Turn the other way twice and try again…
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don’t forget the cursing that goes with the spitting!
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Dang – forgot the curse before the spitting. Maybe that’s why the reporting hasn’t worked right the last couple of weeks.
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Okay – let’s see if I can get this to go…these guys clearly have fun thinking up videos for their music (there’s a fun one they have that’s choreographed on treadmills) – here is OK Go and their RG video:
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Anna – thanks. This is FAB!
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I really do think the best things about these RG contraptions is all the funny stuff that gets used. Monkies w/ symbols, matching dining room chairs, gotta love it.
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Thanks Anna. This is great fun. Every Rube Goldberg Contraption should come with music. It helps!
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One picture down, one to go!
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Steady on Jacque – truly a labor of love well worth the giving.
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And now I have the book partly programmed into the computer. Did not leave any time to read the blog today though.
More pix tomorrow! I will bring the finished product and last year’s book to the book group — is it Jan 13th?
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Sunday the 9th!
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I believe the inability to come up with novel uses for common objects in problem solving is called “functional fixedness”. Emergency room nurses are, as a group, rarely afflicted with it, and typically do very well in tests of creativity in problem solving using atypical objects, for which we should all be grateful.
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I usually do well in this category as well…. with one notable exception. I never seem to have a hammer handy and haven’t found any really good substitutes over the years. I’ve used many things, mind you, but most of them have not survived the experience. I’ve been thinking that I should invest in two more hammers, so that I’ll have one in the garage and one on the second floor of my home — which is where I’m typically trying to pound something without having to go to the basement!
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The spines of boring textbooks work pretty well, as do the handles of butter knives and some shoes.
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In my experience, when I buy 2 hammers, they both end up in the garage after my husband distractedly picks them up and makes off with them!
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I have had a hammer that I love since college. Good, basic hammer. It disappeared this summer. Husband denies doing anything with it, but this is the same man who borrowed one of my locking pliers to use as a weed wrench in the garden (and then wondered why I was ticked that they were in the shed in the yard full of mud when I needed them for their intended purpose).
For the record, you can use a good pair of locking pliers as a hammer. Also screwdrivers, crescent wrenches and sometimes a can of paint. Rubber-soled shoes double well for a mallet. And I will only admit to using a phone as a hammer once or twice…
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but as one of my profs was fond of saying, just because you CAN do a thing, it does not necessarily follow that you SHOULD!
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Luckily, the teenager isn’t too interested in hammers and pliers, so I don’t have to worry about them walking off on me. I’m usually stuck using the stapler or other items that are actually on the 2nd floor or in the garage. Since the problem is the laziness… if I were in the basement to get the pliers then I might as well just get the hammer!
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Currently, my furnace is my rube goldberg…one repair set off another problem which led to another repair which set off another problem which…repair person #6 working on it today. Even Rube Goldbergs have an end, don’t they????
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By the way, Dale, thanks for the comeback for all those folks who say “how can we have global warming when it’s so cold and snowy?” !!!
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I had to do my own mechanical detective work this afternoon to find that the microwave is shorting out a circuit in the kitchen. We need to put another circuit in the kitchen anyway, but that would involve tearing out great tracts of the basement ceiling and that isn’t in the budget. (The previous owners drywalled the basement ceiling.) The primary problem is the microwave, which needs to be replaced. That isn’t in the budget right now, either. Oh well, I got 4 kinds of cookies baked anyway. I made springerle, Russian Tea Cakes, Serena Kakor ( a Norwegian butter cooke sprinkled with pearl sugar), and Jam-filled Milanos. Our son and daughter-in-law are coming Saturday, so I’m doing my Christmas baking this week.
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Yummo! If it helps, you’re not alone. My fridge, microwave and toaster oven are all on the same circuit so I can’t ever run the microwave and the toaster at the same time. And I can’t run the waffle iron on the plug NEAR the microwave at the same time. You need a playbook some days!
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Sounds like our kitchen too – you can run the microwave if the coffee pot is done brewing and is just keeping the coffee warm, but not if it is actively brewing. A pox on old wiring.
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Evening everyone–
Dale, LOVE the question today; what a cool thing to come up with.
I love the idea of Rube Goldberg type inventions and I remember playing with a cousins game of ‘Mouse Trap’; not playing the game, just playing with the pieces. And although it violates my sense of practicality and all basic construction values that I have… you gotta admit, it’s pretty cool. And the OK GO videos are The Bomb!
But what parts of my life? Hmmmm…. my desk? My accounting methods? The way my memory works?
Board games. I never played many board games or did puzzles growing up… as the youngest by quite a few years I was basically an ‘only child’ and I remember bringing Monopoly out once and my folks kind of sighing and we played. But they played a lot of cards. Five Hundred mostly and the fact that they regularly pulled me into games as a moody teenager has put me off card games. Except Solitare. Hmmm, I’m beginning to understand some things about myself…
tim; I want you to know I received a guitar stand for Christmas and now my banjo is beside the bed for quick easy access. And I gave my family 64 packs of crayons along with some Christmas coloring pages. Two finished ones are now hanging on our fridge.
My Dad arrived wearing a homemade gold crown and my brother carried a ‘Beanie Baby’ shark in his rear pocket. I got lots of comments on my ‘chain mail’ with only a few comments that it looked like an apron… Our home really was, for the afternoon, a Magical place where candy mysteriously appeared in shoes and coat pockets.
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Ben,
I would love to hear about a scenario where it is necessary for a man to roll out of bed and immediately grab his banjo.
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Ben – sounds like you had created some fabulous magic and a grand time was had. Good on you. (And, yes, why would a person need to grab a banjo immediately upon waking up?)
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why wouldn’t you want to start the day with a little banjo? little foggy mountain breakdown also is the perfect formula for curing insomnia. 15 minutes a day before you go to bed makes you better in a mere 5 or 6 years. but if you don’t you will still be 5 or 6 years older just without getting better on the banjo
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Had to re-watch all the videos. I find Rube Goldberg devices fascinating. There is a local non-profit called Leonardo’s Basement that teaches kids about inventing and playing with mechanical stuff just for the fun of it. Once a month they have a night for grown-ups called Studio Bricolage…someday I will make it to that and maybe make a RG device of my own. 🙂
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