This is a ten-sided yin-yang globe, a modular kirigami model I designed for a friend to use in a gift exchange for the 10th Gathering for Gardner. Martin Gardner wrote the Mathematical Games section in Scientific American magazine for many years and had a big influence on a lot of folks, paperfolders not excepted. My […]
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 […]
Himanshu was asking the other day about how curve folds were made and I did what I usually do, respond with a text description of what I think I’m doing when I fold curves. But I’m always aware, this is not a very satisfactory way to explain it. The Smart Waterbomb is a simple model, […]
Our friend and unindicted co-conspirator, origamijoel, said that to me recently and it sounded immensely wise. Joel is a soft-spoken man with an air of affable gravitas and he often says things that strike me as being immensely wise. It’s just his way. When we were sitting on the concrete on 27th Street this past […]
Well, rather a left-handed apology, as the injury to him is largely imaginary and thoroughly unintentional, but an apology, nevertheless. This is a tato box: by which I mean, an origami box with radial symmetry and a closure the resembles that of a tato, a traditional Japanese purse. In the past year, I think I’ve […]
Yesterday, I was at the Smith College Museum of Art, a lovely collection in a building of shocking hideosity, and they had a newish painting that caught my eye — it used a palimpsest technique that a friend of mine once used to good effect. One of the layers was a sketch of the Vitruvian […]
[audio:Sam_Cooke-Change.mp3|titles=A Change is Gonna Come|artists=Sam Cooke] There been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long But now I think I’m able to carry on It’s been a long, a long time coming But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will This is a song that was released in 1964, shortly […]
Some folks were asking for blank scalloped tato box patterns, so that they could make their own. By all means: 7-Sided Tato Box, Scalloped 8-Sided Tato Box, Scalloped The logo should be centered at the midpoint of the polygon’s sides, which is also the radius of the semicircle. There will be some loss of the […]
According to the stats machines at Flickr, this is one of the most interesting photos I’ve ever taken. I am not one to argue with machines — they tend to equivocate and braid sorites and they’re absolutely useless with analogies. I have an old Thinkpad somewhere that believes that a raven and a writing desk […]
Yesterday, on the way home, I ran into Wendy, who was sitting on the sidewalk, begging. To be fair, it’s not something she does often. But such sights always throw me into ethical conniptions. Do you give them money, do you not give them money, do you give money to a third party…it doesn’t matter. […]
