The Fitful Flog

Proprietary origami is the old sow that eats her own farrow.

That line is cheerfully stolen from James Joyce — farrow being an old way of saying piglets.

The two-piece pig was created by Akira Yoshizawa or Adolfo Cerceda, depending on your point-of-view, and is found in Harbin’s Secrets of Origami. The piglets are an adaptation of a traditional model by Jack Skillman, diagrammed in Randeltt’s Best of Origami. (Yes, yes, I own both books. Came by them honest, too.)

Just a call to sanity and a reminder that the best way to respect and support the work of professional origami artists is to not emulate them. If you’re an amateur origami artist, do you really need to control your work in all places and in all times? Creative Commons licensing is a better alternative to the superstition-laden copyright and will do much more to promote the art than trolling eBay for ebooks. Stop trying to nail Jell-O™ to the wall and join the party — it isn’t origami till you share it.

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 great fan of petunias — they have this earthy smell, sort of like tomato plants, that I find off-putting, May be the reformed addict’s revulsion to all things solanacean, I don’t know. But I greatly admire the ruffledness on a petunia blossom.

Here are some directions on how to make one from scratch. (There’s nothing shameful in folding the CP, either, if you’re just after the immediate gratification.) The directions, by the way, direct you to start with a pentagon in a circle, so you may want to start here.
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Oh, yes — our friend in RFK reminds us, we have not sent our love and duty to Mr. Mukasey, as we said we would. There is precious little to say: he has proven consistent to the promise of his youth, much comfort he may have in that. But he is no longer a young man and would do well to remember that there is another Justice waiting, one that is not a government department and one that will not be impressed with star chamber choplogic and candyass lettres de cachet. It is not too late to tell the truth. We understand there are special web sites for such things.

Our hundredth post is pointed at a lovely rosebud by Rudolf Deeg, who is, like so many of the original folders, a professional magician. His website has a selection of lovely renditions of the the available origami roses, but when I saw this photo in the Foldingfreaks pool, I recognized something immediately. Although the nether portions of this are clearly Kawasakian, there”s a certain open flavor around the closed top of the bud. This is, I fancy, one of those hybrids that are stronger than either parent. All kinds of future, here.

And the Magician Deeg is no temperamental prima donna, neither — he forthrightly puts his crease pattern right out there. Rock on, Rudolf!

Magicians, by the way, love your humble narrator, for no more credulous worm ever crawled this earth. You know that trick, where the magician puts a coin on your palm and you close your fingers on it and it turns into a different coin? Yeah, one guy played that on me five times and I just kept saying, “Wow….”

I wasn’t going to blog this idea, it being so manifestly impure and all, but it showed up on the BOS list and Jeff Rutzky has been having so much fun with it, I just had to write.

Some months back, I made a curved surface fold from the traditional cocaine paper and called it the pillow box.

Then, I started reading Geometric Folding Algorithms by Erik Demaine and Joseph O’Rourke — kind of a slow read for me. Although clear of prose and exquisite of illustration, it’s way above my understanding. Co-workers, observing me read it at lunch, report that they can see a small cumulus cloud above my head, with a dancing monochrome mouse in it and Turkey in the Straw played upon one string. The authors therein describe the teabag problem and I thought to myself, didn’t I fold that already?

That won’t stop me from folding it a million times more. A bit of research reveals that Andrew Kepert of Newcastle University probably folded it a few years ago, but can I find his website? No. If you can, let me know.

Anyway, here are some dreadfully impure crease patterns to play with, you know, if you don’t mind taking a shower afterwards.

The version pictured at the top crease pattern.

A version better adapted to cardstock crease pattern.

(You can make this one into a cube, you know.)

A tetrahedral version crease pattern. Looks like this:

(“Up the yin-yang” or more commonly, “up the wazoo,” is an American euphemism, meaning, “in excess.” Kind of a fossilized euphemism, since most of us can’t conjure what it is we’re not saying. Wazoo is probably a transliteration of the French oiseau, but who knows why?)

New and exciting, if you’re a purist:

Teabag Problem Box, Pure Version

I have this longish post about the evils of encroaching copyright, but it keeps boring me to death and I still haven’t finished it. So, while we’re all waiting for that little gem of wisdom to roll off the presses, why not take a whack at a simpler version of the Frangipani Box? This is a version I’m working up for teaching at conventions later this year. (Did I mention I’m going to Verbania in December?)

How is it simpler? Well, I like to think that the folding sequence is more, you know, sequential. You start with a pentagon in a circle, always a good place to start. Then you carefully examine the crease pattern. (Postscript.) There are a variety of ghost lines floating around here that will help you find the answers you will need to complete the model.

• Where do the five curves around the edges come from?
• How do we make the pentagon for the bottom of the box?
• How do we know where the mountain fold on the side of the box crosses the curved fold?
• How do we know where the mountain fold on the top of the box crosses the mid line?

And you may be saying, “What’s so simple about that?” Not simple, my dear chap, simpler.

You may also be saying, “Do the mountain folds on the side of the box really need to be curved?” And the answer is, maybe not so much. Here’s a crease pattern (Postscript) where the folds are straight. The difference in the finished model is subtle. I prefer the curved version.

Big howdy to our readers in Taiwan. What’s happening?

I don’t think Evil Mad Scientist needs the likes of me pointing at them, but I will.

How cool is this? How easy would it be to make a manufacturing process for this? Well, maybe not a waterbomb. Me, I’d go for something that you could press once and collapse (like a Strange Fruit, for argument’s sake), but think of the sales for weddings and quinceañeras and whatnot — oh, it’s a beautiful thought.

But such a thought would probably be banned in Boston, right?

Cue the Ennio Morricone.

Susan Goldstine came to College this week and gave a talk on topology, so I cut out of work early and attended. (Susan is no slouch of a folder, herself, by the bye — she’s done a lot of nice modular work.) Topology, I understand in dribs and drabs and some days better than others. This most excellent talk was illustrated with Lewis Carroll (always one of my faves) and crafty props and it got me thinking, backwards and forwards, as I am wont to do in the wee hours when I can’t sleep.

I know I’ve said before that Compass Rose Jars are totally tubular — that is, the eastern and western edges are butted up against each other for their entire length, as are the northern and southern edges, albeit with a fractional offset. This is also, Susan told us, a definition of a torus. (I knew that, but it’s never a bad thing to hear from someone who actually studies these things.) A Fujimoto cube is also like this — it’s a tubey cube and a cubey tube. To use the symbols she used:

A torus can be colored like a map, but you need seven colors. (You’d think Dunkin’ Doughnuts would get on this idea, but not so far.) I figure, why not liberate an SVG from Wikipedia, warp it a little, and fold an illustration? I use my favorite iris closure, here, so you can see inside and groove on the continuity of color. Neatocooloweizenheimer!

Here’s a map with a ghost crease pattern on it. (Postscript for the PDF-deficient).

Dang, that sounds a little outré. But I really am referencing Chinese food.

The sides bulge over the base, giving it that bun appearance. This is, of course, just a variation of the Smart Waterbomb, but it’s one I like. The small radius of the octagon is one-quarter the radius of the circle.

Steamed Bun Box Crease Pattern

Steamed Bun Box Crease Pattern in Postscript

It has been said that high school football is the state religion in Texas. I would disagree — the Texan religion has a darker, more pagan flavor to it.

Texans are good and decent people, the ones I’ve met, but there’s something about Texas. It’s a mirrored globe — it is like the US, but strangely distorted and out-of-scale. The ill-proportioned forces at play down there have combined gerrymandering, the prison industry and big money into a bizarre polity that seeks to recreate the dreams they teach as Texan History in the schools. Normally, I try not to think about it, but this coming Tuesday, Texas is having a primary that could prove pivotal to the coming election. I could wish it were anywhere else.

(To be fair, Texans don’t care much for Massachusetts, either.)

And so we fold on. Mélisande* and I keep talking, off and on, about how tato boxes work and why. I said something about the bottoms of the boxes don’t have to be a certain size and she pointed out that they don’t even have to be there. Whoa — heavy on the conceptual, there, sister.

The point is well taken. And I’ve added her point to an already existing fold, the Frangipani Box.

Strange Fruit Crease Pattern

Strange Fruit Crease Pattern in Postscript

Camera Stellata 4 Crease Pattern

When I was in school, I had this roommate, Mark, who was from southern California and was studying International Education about as rigorously as it possible to study such a subject. He got a lot of phone calls.

This was back before we had modems and google and so on. You had to look stuff up in books. I was actually extremely good in research, in those days, but this one phrase had me stymied — mate kudasai. It’s the name of a song on Discipline, a King Crimson album — a cryptic album, even by crimsonian standards. I was pretty sure it was Japanese — I think someone says it in Bladerunner. But all the dictionaries at school were in charactery, kanji or hirigana, and I was getting nowhere with that.

One day, a woman rang up, said her name was Mariko and could she speak with Mark, please?

— Sure, I said, I’ll go get him. Say, do you speak Japanese?

— Yes, I do, said Mariko.

— Would you mind translating a phrase for me?

— Certainly, what is it?

— Mate kudasai.

— Mate kudasai, she repeated. Wait a second, please.

So, I did. I figured maybe it was obscure and she had to look it up. After 30 seconds or so, she said, Can I speak to Mark, please?

— Sure, but what does it mean?

— What? Mate kudasai? Hang on a moment, please.

— Okay.

And I waited some more. After 30 more seconds, she asked to speak with Mark again.

— You don’t know what it means? I asked.

— Yes, I do. It means please wait.

Oh.

I apologized and went and got Mark. Five minutes later, Mark came to my door and asked what the hell it was I said to her? I explained. He nodded. He said, she thinks you’re some sort of absurdist poet.

Very astute observe, that.

Anyway, we’re slowly reconstructing this site from our last untimely crash and it may take a little while to dig up all the files we need. Not all of the links are going to work right away. We thank you for your patience.

Still, by the window pane —
Pain, like the rain that’s falling…
She waits in the air
Mate Kudasai —
She sleeps in a chair
in her sad America.