scorbs

Last night, I read a great article in the New Yorker about Robert Lang, master orgami folder.  I remember folding cranes when I was little with my family and our Japanese exchange students.  But this stuff is on a completely different level.

Interesting point from the article & something I never thought about:

Scientists began applying these [origami] folding techniques to anything—medical, electrical, optical, or nanotechnical devices, and even to strands of DNA—that had a fixed size and shape but needed to be packed tightly and in an orderly way.

From Lang’s website (and may I add a serious *DAMN!*):

Black Forest Cuckoo Clock, opus 182

Medium: One uncut 1×10 rectangle of Zanders ‘elefantenhaut’ paper
Composed: 1987
Folded: 1987
Size: 15″
Diagrams: Origami Design Secrets
Comments: This was for a time my most well-known composition and the most complex origami figures around. My first cuckoo clock was fairly plain; my second (unpublished) one was composed after a vist to the Black Forest. For the third design, I came up with this figure, composed and folded in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

A couple months ago, my friend Jonah created the Darfur Wall.  This site raises money for 4 organizations that aid the Darfur Conflict.

On the “wall,” there are 400,000 numbers, one for each person killed in the Darfur genocide. Every dollar donated turns a number from dark gray to brilliant white.

100% of the proceeds go to four Darfur relief organizations.

Josh Smith (formerly of Infragistics) is putting on an XBAP contest!

Submissions are required by March 12th.

I can’t wait to see what people create!

My friend Peter recently sent me a link about Chinese public opinion & the Forbidden City Starbucks.

I first heard about the controversy last November, when my parents were in Beijing.  It was only a month and a half after I snapped the picture below, but they had trouble finding the Starbucks: the sign was no longer there.  (My dad tried to take a photo of the inside of the Starbucks, but they wouldn’t let him.)

 Interestingly, my original post with this picture now has with 2093 hits… 

YAY!!!!!! 

The last book in the Harry Potter series will be released on July 21st.   That’s a Saturday.  I know what I’ll be doing starting at midnight July 20th.