A recursive story - it's a story that swallows itself!

I'll be my own subtitle.

"Once upon a time, 108 rebels gathered on the lakeshore.

Their leader, Song Jiang, turned to his captain, and commanded: "Tell us a story!"

So the captain began, "Once upon a time, 108 rebels gathered on the lakeshore.

Their leader, Song Jiang, turned to his captain, and commanded: "Captain! Tell us a story!"

So the captain began, "Once upon a time" -

Okay, the story keeps swallowing itself.

Ever computer scientist know the difference between 'recursion' where you have something going deeper and

deeper into its own self, and 'iteration' where you do a repeat of the same thing on slightly different data.

Boy, this will be a challenge for me. [Sorry, but I don't speak Chinese.]

I hardly even know any Chinese [yeah, me too] but I'm gonna try doing this in two languages.

[Chinese word for English, I guess] - I'll use English and I'll use [Chinese word for Chinese?] - Chinese.

And instead of doing it on a ribbon like this I'm gonna see if I can do it on a Möbius loop.

So here comes Cliff's Möbius story:

Okay, be prepared for lots of mistakes. I apologise in advance.

The story will be a recursive story that has no end. But I'll iterate between languages.

If I knew five languages I'd try it with five languages. But let me just make mistakes in two.

"Once upon a time, 108 rebels gathered on the lakeshore.

Their leader, Song Jiang, turned to his captain and commanded: "Tell us a story!" (using Chinese).

So his captain began:

[Presumably the same story as before, in Chinese.]

[Basically the same story as before] [Might talk a little bit as well.]

[Basically the same story as before] [Hi there, people from the internet!]

[Basically the same story as before] [How are you doing?]

[Basically the same story as before]

"Once upon a time, 108 rebels gathered on the lakeshore."

And that's on a Möbius loop.

You say: "What a weird story!" Well, more that a billion people in China all know this is one of the great stories

of China where 108 rebels work against the corrupt administration.

This book 'Outlaws of the Marsh tells the story of fantastic acrobatics, fantastic rebellion. Each individual -

there's chapters about people who -- boy, you wouldn't want to meet them on a street corner.

These are guys who - one after another - come along with hatchets, with knives and they are all rebels

who are fighting together under their leader, Song Jiang, who is, of course, badly treated by the administration.

I'm heading back to my hot chocolate and I assume that as a math lover, you know about the 'Droste effect'.

I assume that as somebody who knows math you already know that on 'Droste hot cocoa',

on the cocoa box, is a drawing of a woman who's coming in carrying a plate that has a serving of

'Droste hot cocoa' of course, and a box that has her on it, and in the middle of it is a box with her on it.

It's a recursive box. Indeed, this kind of recursion in advertising is called the 'Droste effect'.

For those who speak English I'm about to apologise for my terrible Chinese. [A lot of mixed English and Chinese coming up.]

My Chinese is not very good. I have just about forgotten all of my Chinese.

Forty years ago I studied Chinese.

I also taught astronomy at Nanjing University

in 'purple mountain observatory' over in southern China.

But right now I've pretty much forgotten my Chinese, so again I apologise, but I still have just happy thoughts

whenever I try to use Chinese.

...like a thousand made. Come on over, check this out.

Under my house is a,

is my little forklift robot to go pick Klein bottles from stock.

Tilt the thing, if you look carefully at it, see if I can actually show this...