I'm a human Rube Goldberg machine...

The similarities between footbag freestyle and a Rube Goldberg machine (a deliberately over-engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion...) are chilling on many levels.  In Freestyle Footbag, a single trick is defined by transferring the footbag from one surface to another surface, with as many elements of difficulty in between.  Which is in line with the Rube Goldberg Machine (RGM) concept, but one trick does not a RGM make.  When we perform multiple tricks together, back to back, we call that a String of tricks.  When we combine the difficulty of performing a single trick, with the added difficulty of stringing them together, this very much resembles a RBM.  The big difference is that with RBM's the physics are pre-calculated and the variables are removed through clever engineering, and with Footbag Freestyle strings, our brains are perceiving the next trick and making minor adjustments in order to compete it, but assuming at the end of the individual trick, we are able to set properly for the next trick, an RGM is born.

Footbag freestyle practitioners are human Rube Goldberg Machines!  I am a human RGM!
What is more unnecessarily difficult than a well performed footbag freestyle string?  I can't think of many things... perhaps Rythmic Gymnastics, that is even close to the self-imposed difficulty thresholds that we place upon ourselves.  For us, the more difficult the trick and the longer the strings the better... classic RGM's.

As Wikipedia says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine)...

"A Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately over-engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. The expression is named after American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg.

Since then, the expression has expanded to denote any form of overly confusing or complicated system."

Here are some links to my recent videos from Facebook and Youtube:




There's more, I just don't have time right now.  More later!!!

See ya!
-enlightener.