Category: Curiosities and silly stuff

Pythagoras Switch is a science show for small children. Each episode follows the same format. Puppets introduce a video on a such topics as how the shapes of objects are clues to their manufacture or use, or static electricity, or how technology imitates nature. After that, a youngster controls his father or grandfather with a cardboard “father switch.” There is also some very simple animation, and either the “algorithm march” or the “algorithm exercise,” sequences of simple movements performed in canon. Children old enough to read the subtitles are likely to be bored by the very elementary level of most of the show.

What makes Pythagoras Switch worth watching are the Rube Goldberg mechanisms that open and close the show and separate the segments. Here’s a collection of these “Pythagorean devices.”

Here’s the algorithm march, performed by ninjas:

Five episodes that I know of have been subtitled. There’s quite a bit available on YouTube.

The best Pythagoras Switch contraptions may be more elegant, but for sheer Goldbergian bloody-mindedness, nothing tops this.

(Via Dale Price.)

I discovered last fall that the U.S. Postal Service can send a package into the future. Apparently, they can send objects into the past as well. Here’s the status report on my most recent amazon.com order. Just what exactly did happen on the afternoon of December 31, 1969?

(Click on the question mark if the graphic isn’t visible.)

Posting will eventually resume with comments on Rocket Girls, Animal Yokocho and Pythagoras Switch. Until then, here’s a truly motivational poster.

(Via the LLama Butchers.)

… and Sailor Lisa. Although The Simpsons is the only occidental show I’ve watched more than once during the past twenty years, I missed this:

Lucky Star isn’t a complete loss. It did make the following inverse AMV ((i.e., it pairs anime music with non-anime footage.)) possible:

(Via Drastic My Anime Blog.)

Continue reading “Falling star”