There is a rather superb video doing the rounds, taken from Japanese kid's TV show Pitagora Suichi (ビタゴラスイッチ / Pythagoras Switch):

NHK’s “Pitagora-Switch”

Within our daily lives, which we go about without thinking much about the many mysteries, archetypes, themes and more varied ways of thought. For example, have you ever thought why waffles are always the same shape? Behind it all is concept of “having a shape.” There all sorts of these archetypes/shapes: in print, in mass-produced goods and whatnot. Understanding these these “shapes” let’s you grasp how these things work.“Pythagoras Switch” wants to help kids have that moment of A-HA! We want to raise thinking about thinking, to flip that epiphany switch in every child.

Watch the ingenious little contraptions do their stuff and revel in the knowledge that all that work was entirely for the pleasure of 6 year old children who speak a different language to you.

Your 9 minutes of joy can be found here. It's enough to make Rube Goldberg weep in perpetually automated pleasure...

The two dancing guys (アルゴリズムたいそう・こうしん / Algorithm Exercise March) from the same show put the rest of Japanese TV to shame as far as I'm concerned. From the translated page:

Alone, when you do, it is the movement of the body which does not know it is what, but when you do with two people, that meaning is visible clearly. "It combines" and it is interest.

"It combines" indeed...

Thanks News.3Yen.com!
Categories: Science, Weird, Humour, Video, Links, Fun, Japan

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