In 2004, he animated and set to music a series of Rube Goldberg machines, including a "self-operating napkin", for his film Goldberg's Variations.
All these considerations lead to compare a simple solution (such as "paper & pencil") to avoid overly complex solutions creating a "Rube Goldberg" system of creeping featurism, where a simple solution would have sufficed instead.
In the first episode, for example, the students re-create a Rube Goldberg machine featured in Wild About Hurry that begins with a slingshot and involves a large number of steps, culminating in a cannon shot.
Teams of college students arrive at the competition with a tabletop Rube Goldberg machine designed to accomplish the task of the year.
Each episode consists of a match between two schools, whose teams are assigned to design and build a machine to complete a specific task, sometimes in Rube Goldberg fashion.
Whoopi Goldberg | Enigma machine | Rage Against the Machine | Automated teller machine | Rube Goldberg | Bill Goldberg | Victor Talking Machine Company | Soft Machine | The Time Machine | Rube Foster | Linotype machine | Vickers machine gun | DeLorean time machine | Darne machine gun | Rube Goldberg machine | MG 17 machine gun | The Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company | Machine Head (band) | Machine Head | KPV heavy machine gun | slot machine | Rube Waddell | Rube Bloom | machine | Arthur Goldberg | ShKAS machine gun | PK machine gun | machine pistol | Love Removal Machine | Goldberg |
This nickname is derived from a girl (putatively Cinderella) on the cover with a Rube Goldberg machine.