A weekend piece:  Origami is applied science & engineering.  At least that is my thesis.  The New Yorker  writes of Robert Lang, origami expert who gave up science & engineering to concentrate on origami.  The office of the mining-services company where I write, InfoMine, is replete with origami that I make for fun and amusement.  It all started with the making of paper planes to entertain five grandsons on cold Iowa days.  We sit at the nine-foot-long table I made of 100-year old cedar pulled from a corn crib, and we all fold the same plan. Then outside to see who can get the plane across the swale to the gravel road.  The winner is the one gets the plane to fly longest and furthest.  The planes are forgiving of poor folding.  Success goes to him who throws just right and captures the right breeze. 

From planes we progressed to monsters to support the Pokimon, Yogio, and Dungeons & Dragons games the boys play with cards, enthusiasm, and origami monsters that inevitably end crushed as passions rise and tempers flare.  We scour the local stores for books and paper.  And in the evenings one or more will sit in concentration to read the instructions and make a horse, a lion, a fish that is included in the zoo or other fantasy world constructed of blocks and cut-off wood from the corn crib. 

I am not the only mining engineer to dote on origami.  In Vancouver the origami society meets once a month.  Last time I went I chatted with anther mining engineer who says it is the best way he knows to interact with his daughter doing something they can do together.   We shared the “engineering” philosophy of selecting the right paper, making precise folds, interpreting the patterns, putting it all together, and sitting back to enjoy the pleasure of creating something new -even if it is transient and soon crushed, flown away, or forgotten as the Gameboy lures them to other challenges.