About a year ago, I read a book on Japanese temple mathematics that I found in the local libraries. Well, I didn’t read it completely — there was a great deal of it I couldn’t follow. But the pictures were beautiful and what I understood, I enjoyed. During the Edo period, that is, after the […]
Indiscipline I do remember one thing. It took hours and hours but… by the time I was done with it, I was so involved, I didn’t know what to think. I carried it around with me for days and days… playing little games like not looking at it for a whole day and then… looking […]
I like this model because it traps very little paper to very good effect. I was going to figure out how much of the surface area was hidden, but then thought, who cares? It’s a beautiful spring, finally. Man is the animal who measures, but also the one who doesn’t have to. Me, I’m no […]
Box of Seven Joys Sequenced Crease Pattern Box of Seven Joys Sequenced Crease Pattern in Postscript This is an idea that came from a lot of places: conversations I’ve been having with Mélisande*, an old Christmas carol I listened to one evening, a twenty-hour bus ride to Hoosierland and a passing glance at a Holiday […]
So, I’m sitting on the bus the other day and this woman, about my age, stands up to get her bags down and I see the label on the back of her trousers, CALLIPYGE. My Greek vocabulary has maybe 200, 300 words, almost all philosophical or theological terms and I don’t truly understand half of […]
Here we are, in the heart of Gotham, and it’s wicked noisy. But everyone we know is here, sharing techniques, models and not a few jokes. These instructions aren’t very good, but you’re welcome to try them. I’m teaching this at the Convention tomorrow. Sam Taeguk Dish SCP
Not that anyone is still interested, but I was in a minor snit earlier this week because a gentleman from midtown Porlock suggested that I had not credited work properly. After all, I hadn’t even seen the model cited, let alone tried to duplicate it: my umber was quite burnt. Eric, no doubt taking *cough* […]
Not really. Maybe. Kinda sorta. I was reading this article in Science about quasi-crystals in medieval Iran and Turkey, kind of got me thinking. This is just the first thing that I folded after reading it. It starts out with a pentagon in a circle. Remember that? Quasi-Crystalline Tato SCP
Still, with the Easter Egg? On Valentine’s Day? I was always a little out of time. More than a little. Yet, this day week is Ash Wednesday and learning this model will make for an excellent Lenten exercise. When you’re intent on curve folding, it is very difficult to contemplate new sins and manifold wickedness. […]
I think I mentioned at some point that it was easy to make an elegant pentagon from a circle of paper. It is, but still, it’s not intuitive. Making polygons from circles has a lot in common with compass-and-straightedge work. Except paper is easier to work with and the straightedge can be marked up like […]
