Here's a batch of references to origami and unexpected uses of paper that
have caught my eye recently.
Karen   3/1/205
=================

Origami as metaphor -- Sunday 3/1/2015  New York Times Book Review, p 11,
in review by Rich Benjamin of a satirical novel, Welcome to Braggsville, by
T. Geronimo JOhnson:

"The novel's encounters fold in on one another like origami, in artful
layers."


=====

Paper boats -- last paragraph of "Fish Curry in West Bengal, India," by
Sonia Faleiro, New York Times, Sunday Feb 19, 2015, Travel section,
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/18/travel/In-Asia-Tastes-of-the-Sea.html?_r=0

"Joy had taken the children to float paper boats down in the village pond."


====
 A friend sent me this clipping from the New Scientist about Mark C.
Neyrinck. I hope the segment in the upcoming documentary, The Origami Code,
shows gives a better view of his model of irregularly-shaped polygonal
galaxies stretched across "a wide swathe of sky" than the New Scientist
photo on p. 54. (I don't have online access to the New Scientist.)

"Fold Your Own Universe" [alternate titles: “The Origami Universe”?],
article by Battersby, Stephen, New Scientist, 20 Dec 2014, pp52-54.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26638-how-to-make-an-origami-universe.html

Here are some related citations:
https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/project/fold-your-own-universe/
http://stirling-westrup-tt.blogspot.com/2014/12/tt-ns-3000-1-xmas-0413-how-to-make.html


>From Neyrinck's CV:
http://skysrv.pha.jhu.edu/~neyrinck/neyrinck_cv.pdf
- I discovered an engaging “origami” analogy for structure formation, which
helps to understand information loss in the cosmos, and how angular
momentum in a galaxy is related to its environment....
Popular Media Attention for Work:
Interview and segment about the link between origami and cosmology in “The
Origami Code,” upcoming Franco-German documentary film by director François
Vives.
 “The Origami Universe,” Battersby, Stephen, New Scientist, 20 Dec 2014
“The Origami Cosmic Web of Galaxies,” invited blog post, The Huffington
Post, 11/17/2012

====
As a historian of medicine as well as a paperfolder,  I'm always on the
look out for uses of paper and paperfolds in medicine and pharmacy. So I
was fascinated by this astonishing and mysterious bit of film footage. It
shows Finnish medical corpsmen in World War II using various kinds of paper
for battlefield first aid -- improvised stretchers, protective hoods,
blankets, slings, bandages...

http://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/author/beattyr/


On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 11:00 AM, Circulating Now <
comment-re...@wordpress.com> wrote:
> Winter Wounds, Paper Dressing
>
> by Circulating Now
>
> By Sarah Eilers
>
> It’s a black and white film, but it’s the white that overwhelms. A carpet
of snow beneath Nordic pines, white uniforms head-to-toe, white planks used
to construct a horse-drawn ambulance sleigh. Soon enough, an explosion, and
the rising of white-clad figures from snow-covered foxholes, rifles at the
ready. What is this?
>
> With winter upon us, we searched the film vault for a title on
cold-weather health concerns. What we found is an intriguing mystery: a VHS
tape apparently duplicated from a 16mm film that itself is a copy of a
copy. Given this lineage, the resolution is poor, but the military medicine
depicted is clear enough.

[embedded video]
>
> The Medical Service of the Finnish Armed Forces in Winter: The
Utilization of Paper in the Care of Casualties appears to have been shot as
a silent film in Finland in the late 1930s or early 1940s, probably by a
Finnish military or medical agency. It shows Finnish troops in white winter
uniforms on skis, demonstrating unusual techniques of emergency battlefield
first aid. Soldiers use rolls of strong, reusable paper to make bandages,
slings, even a stretcher. The film uses the terms crepe paper and kraft
paper, and notes that, besides its durability as bandage material, the
paper can withstand weights of up to 440 pounds when used to form the bed
of a stretcher.
>
> [captions to 3 photos]:
>
> Carrying a casualty on a paper streatcher, on skis. Bandaging with paper.
A doctor cutting paper.
>
>
> Recall the time and place. In the Winter War of 1939-1940, Finland had
shocked the world by repelling a Soviet military offensive, relying on
skis, bicycles, complete familiarity with the landscape, and superb aim.
This footage likely was shot around that time.
>
> By March 1940, Finland had capitulated, signing the Treaty of Moscow and
giving control of the Karelian Isthmus to the Soviet Union. The government
soon allowed German troops on Finnish soil, forging a short-lived alliance
with the Nazis as that army prepared to invade the Soviet Union. The lesser
of two evils perhaps, with the Finns calculating that such an alliance
might offer an opportunity to regain territory ceded to Moscow in 1940. In
the end, that didn’t happen.
>
> An opening slide in the film reveals that a German version existed;
perhaps the Nazi army somehow obtained the footage and re-made it as a
German-language instructional film (no Germans appear on screen). After the
war, with Germany under occupation, the American military confiscated the
German version and re-made the remake, with narration in English. Somewhere
along the way, an orchestral soundtrack was added, whether by the Finns,
the Germans, or the Americans, is not clear. Nor do we know the composer(s)
of the pieces featured. The U.S. Army donated its English-language version
to the National Library of Medicine in 1955.
>
> As far as we have been able to determine, no Finnish collection has the
film in its original version. One other repository in the United States,
the University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
(BAM/PFA) has a copy of the German version. As in the English version, the
film opens with a title slide and one additional scrolling slide describing
what’s to come, but contains no credits. The BAM/PFA believes the film was
donated by the Library of Congress, but has no other details.
>
> “Orphan” films such as Medical Service of the Finnish Armed Forces are
not unusual in film archives. Titles may be passed from agency to agency
with little attention paid to provenance, projected so often that pieces of
the film break off, and revised with edits, soundtracks, and translations
that may or may not be documented. For example, about 14 minutes into our
copy, the screen abruptly goes dark for about 10 seconds, then fires up
mid-scene. We think a portion of film must have fallen away during handling
and a clumsy splice inserted, but without comparing it to other versions,
we don’t know. This film poses many questions; for instance, questions
about the medical uses of paper: Was the technique of paper bandaging
adopted by the U.S. and other militaries, and/or by civilian agencies? How
did the Finns produce such durable paper? Wasn’t paper scarce and
expensive, even in a timber and paper-producing country such as Finland?
And questions about the film itself: Does a Finnish version still exist?
Are there missing title slides, intertitles, or credits? Are the explosions
staged? When was the orchestral soundtrack added, and who is the composer?
>
> We hope an inquisitive reader may be able to help us learn more about the
medical uses of paper and about the history of this rare and unusual film.
If that reader is you, or someone you know, we invite you to share what you
know about the film by commenting below.
>
> To watch more films like Medical Service of the Finnish Armed Forces from
the National Library of Medicine’s Historical Audiovisuals collection,
visit NLM’s Digital Collections.
>
> Sarah Eilers is Contract Archivist for the Historical Audiovisual Program
in the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine.


Karen Reeds (karenmre...@gmail.com), co-ringleader, Princeton Public
Library Origami Group.
Affiliate of Origami USA, http://origamiusa.org/
We usually meet 2nd Wednesday of the month, 6:30-8pm, 3rd floor. Free!
We provide paper! All welcome! (Kids under 8, please bring a grown-up.)
Princeton Public Library info:  609.924.9529
http://princetonlibrary.org/

Past President, Medical History Society of New Jersey, http://mhsnj.org/
Princeton Research Forum, a community of independent scholars:
http://www.princetonresearchforum.org/

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