The Fitful Flog

It was by happy accident that I discovered the carromical properties of the Dollars to Doughnuts fold.

Look at the face of it. You have a 16-gon with creases going to every fifth corner – it describes the mystical decahexagram. Well, not so mystical, maybe, but wicked good at distributing stress. You whack this thing, it compresses and expands with not inconsiderable resilience. Hell, it’s an endless Roman arch with tensegritous tendencies – of course, it’s going to bounce. Most bodacious plink.

It also has stupid fresh part two skitter. Its contact with the table is pretty much just the edges of the 16-gon – the creases on the face slope inwards a bit and this gives it a sort of air-hockey lift. You flick one of these babies and it flies. When it hits another one, you get vector physics with a vengeance.

Carroms! You could play carroms with these on a bar for beer. Or re-invent the British game of shovegroat. Shovebuck for brewski. I see all kinds of possibilities. The MIT boys will be all over this one.

What is it, you ask? Well, it’s a sixteen-sided tube made out of a dollar bill, with an iris closure on both ends.

“Irish closure,” says my wife, “what’s that? Kneecapping?”

No, iris closure. Describes a pursuit curve and all that. Looks a wee bit like the iris of a camera. Visualize James Bond hopping in and out of it.

The original plan was, I think, to use it as a tip in doughnut shops. For those of you outside of the New England region, I should mention that it’s not uncommon for one to aver something by saying, “I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that….”

We take our doughnuts seriously here in the Commonwealth.

The other thing I thought of was using it as an illustration of what the current administration is doing to our retirement system. See, they’re taking your Social Security dollar and turning it into a great fat zero.

Want to try making one? Well, there are no diagrams, per se. But here is a crease pattern and here is a hints sheet. When you print the crease pattern, make sure your print dialog doesn’t shrink the page to fit.

Being over forty and somewhat nearsighted, I often find it hard to see landmarks on a dollar bill. What I do is print out the crease pattern, put some doublesided tape on it, attach a crisp dollar and run the whole through the printer again. If you’re careful with the placement, you can get a the crease pattern accurately overprinted on the dollar bill. Gently peel it off and you’re in business.

Is that legal, you ask? Ask Alberto Gonzales. Anything can be made legal by whoring out the language used to write the law.

Bullshit strolls, money rolls.