Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
If you can read this you are not following too closely.

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


                     

Möbius Newspaper

Having only one side ensures everything is front-page news.
  (+10, -4)
(+10, -4)
  [vote for,
against]

I don't like reading newspapers on public transport. By the time you unfold the paper, sift through the lift-outs and cast aside the ones you have no interest in reading, then try to hold the whole mess up so you can see the print, there's barely enough room for you in your seat, let alone the person attempting to sit next to you.

Solution...print the day's news on a single-sided, Möbius-strip-like newspaper that comes housed in a small cardboard box (like the ones those rolls of lunch-wrap come in). As you read, the paper is pulled off a spool within the box, while the section you have read is drawn back in. Having the newspaper configured as a Möbius strip really only serves to conserve paper, an important point because let's face it, this idea is going to cost more to produce than conventional papers.

Nobody bother to make one-liners about the Möbius Comic Strip...I'm sure that can be incorporated into the paper somewhere.

vigilante, Oct 06 2004

The Mobius Strip http://scidiv.bcc.c...du/Math/Mobius.html
Slightly Escheresque, but what can you do...? [vigilante, Oct 06 2004]

One Page Novel Idea http://www.halfbake...Page_20Novel_20Idea
pretty much the same [FarmerJohn, Oct 06 2004]

[link]






       Re vigilante's link:
"Möbius, along with his better known contemporaries, Riemann, Lobachevsky and Bolyai..."
  

       ?
egbert, Oct 06 2004
  

       Wouldn't the commentary be a little one-sided?
wagster, Oct 06 2004
  

       INdeed, Egbert, better known to whom exactly?
goff, Oct 06 2004
  

       Nice to see you're still here to keep me company, [UB].
vigilante, Oct 06 2004
  

       [goff]: Mathematicians, of course. Silly.   

       The question is: can it be configured for people like me so it's only the sports section?
shapu, Oct 06 2004
  

       how exactly would this conserve paper?
brodie, Oct 06 2004
  

       I certainly know about Riemann's work to a greater extent than Möbius'. Riemann is responisible for the notation for curvature, which is the language of General Relativity. If he had not died as young as he did, you can bet we'd have heard his name rather than Einstein's in regard to that area of Physics.   

       Lobachevsky was the first (I think) mathematician to show that a 'straight' sided triangle in a curved space would have a different total internal angle to 180 degrees. But he's more famous as being the random name mathematician and genius song-writer Tom Lehrer pulled out of a hat for a satyrical song about plagiarism in Russian Academia, also called Lobachevsky.   

       I've never heard of Bolyai.
yamahito, Oct 06 2004
  

       I meant no disrespect, UnaBubba; I've been away for a while and literally meant that it's nice to have another voice holed up on the same island as myself.
vigilante, Oct 07 2004
  
      
[annotate]
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle