Maze cartoon of the Flotilla Ordeal being milked by Iran and Turkey together by Yonatan Frimer

Milking the flotilla ordeal for all it's worth;
Maze Cartoon by Yonatan Frimer

Cartoon maze of a cow being milked. The utters are labeled "Flotilla Ordeal" , the arms that squeeze the milk out are labeled "Iran" and "Turkey" and the pail that has the milk says on it "Got PR?" Created by Yonatan Frimer

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Articles on the maze's topic:

Joel HillikerColumnist

A Good Excuse to End a Bad Relationship

Israel could see what was coming. Before the convoy set sail, Israeli leaders pleaded with Turkish officials to stop it; they offered to allow the supplies to be delivered through an Israeli checkpoint. But Erdoğan’s government let it go anyway. Thus, Israel had no choice but to intervene directly. And those on the boat made sure it turned violent.

Now, Turkey is milking the event for all it’s worth. It accused Israel of state-sponsored terrorism. It compared the psychological impact of the incident on Turks to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Americans. Turkish President Abdullah Gül called the Israeli raid a crime against humanity and said Israeli-Turkish relations will never be the same. Erdoğan labeled it a massacre. Turkish armed forces announced several cutbacks in cooperation with Israeli forces. The government also offered to supply Turkish naval protection for the next “aid” convoy to Gaza; “This would be, in effect, an act of war,” wrote Mark Steyn, “—more to the point, an act of war by a nato member against the State of Israel.”

(Read the full article on The Trumpet)



What do the Swedish Gaza activists hope to achieve?

.....Who actually profited from what happened? Well, most analysts agree that the biggest beneficiaries are the radical Islamists of the Middle East, notably Hamas, the terrorist organization which currently rules Gaza. Hamas won a major PR victory and gained valuable international legitimacy at the expense of moderate Palestinians and the Fatah leadership of the West Bank. Politically this is a boost for those Palestinians who object to peace negotiations with Israel, and prefer the more violent path of jihad, the so-called holy war against Israel and the non-Muslim world.

In Turkey, Islamist extremists are milking the incident to win easy points against secular and modernising forces. Iran is delighted that the world’s attention is being diverted away from its nuclear programme and arms deals with Hezbollah and Syria. As so often before in the Middle-East, the rhetoric of peace and freedom becomes a tool to strengthen despotic, terror-sponsoring regimes which scoff at both. This happened largely because, as Israeli author David Grossman put it, Israel acted like a puppet on strings pulled by a small fanatical Turkish organization......

Read the full article on The Local, a Swedish paper in English

Maze Of Monkeys jumping off a building in 3-D maze goodness

Mushroom Maze

Maze-a-delic by Yonatan Frimer

Maze Portrait of Albert Einstein.

"Genius Maze" - By Y. Frimer

Playing in dirt is good for kids, navigate maze faster than control group

Playing in dirt is good for kids

Smarter, less anxious: study; Outdoor learning experiences and school gardens help students relax and learn better, researchers suggest

By SHARON KIRKEY, Canwest News Service May 25, 2010 4:04 AM

Parents, here's another reason for your kids to play outdoors in the dirt: It might make them smarter.

And, as a side benefit, dirt appears to be a natural anti-anxiety drug, but without the side effects.

Mice exposed to a bacterium found in soil navigated a maze twice as fast, and with less anxiety, as control mice, in studies presented yesterday at the 110th general meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

The researchers say we've become so urbanized we risk losing a connection with an organism in nature that may actually be beneficial to humans.

Dr. Dorothy Matthews became intrigued by Mycobacterium vaccae - a natural soil microbe - in 2007, when British scientists published a study showing that when mice were injected with a heat-killed version of the organism, it stimulated neurons in the brainstem to start producing serotonin.

"Serotonin is a molecule that has a number of different effects, but one of them is modulating mood and decreasing anxiety," says Matthews, an associate professor of biology at The Sage Colleges in Troy, NY.

Serotonin also plays a role in learning. "If you're nervous, if you're frightened, you just can't think straight," Matthews said. She wondered, could M. vaccae have an effect on learning in mice?

The bacteria-exposed mice consistently ran the maze twice as fast as non-exposed mice. They also showed fewer anxiety behaviours - less freezing, wall-climbing, stopping and grooming, returning to the start, or defecation.

After the bacteria were removed, the mice started running the mazes slower than they did when they were ingesting the bacteria. "They experienced a kind of serotonin withdrawal," Matthews said. They were still faster than the controls, on average, an effect that lasted for another month of testing.

Matthews says people are exposed to M. vaccae just by virtue of being outdoors. "It's only been the last 100 years or so that we've become more urbanized and are eating our foods in a different way."

We no longer eat foods that we grow or gather ourselves, she says - foods that haven't been "washed multiple times, and dunked in hot water, or processed or grown with pesticides."

Making time in school curriculums for children to learn outdoors might decrease their anxiety and improve their ability to learn new tasks, she says.

"There's a movement now in some schools to actually have gardens that are part of the school experience."

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Maze Kong by Yonatan Frimer 2006

Maze Kong - Created by Yonatan Frimer