Obama, Monkeys and Illusions - All Mazes

Blivet Maze - Optical illusion maze of an impossible object.

Blivet Maze - 2009, By Yonatan Frimer





Maze of Monkey Illusion - 2009
Optical illusion maze caused by conflicting horizontal and vertical lines.

Maze of Monkey Illusion - 2008 - By Yonatan Frimer








Maze of the Statue of Liberty - 2009

Maze of Liberty - 2009 - Yonatan Frimer





Barak Obama Maze - 2009



Maze of Barak Obama - By Yonatan Frimer






Maze of 3D Impossible Object - 2009 - By Yonatan Frimer

Maze Zen Impossible - Yonatan Frimer 2009







Maze of Barak Obama, profile view - 2009

Side Portrait Maze of Barak Obama, President

Getting to college a maze Students get help with aid forms as economy worsens J. Peder Zane - Staff Writer

Getting to college a maze

Students get help with aid forms as economy worsens

J. Peder Zane - Staff Writer

Esha Hickson knows that dreams must be grounded in reality. She hasn't just imagined herself becoming a doctor some day; she's worked hard to earn straight A's at Knightdale High School.

Now she fears that the nightmare of the recession may smother her hopes. "College is so expensive and money is so tight, I'm really afraid," the soft-spoken senior said Saturday at Meredith College. "I will never give up, but it's going to be a huge struggle."

Hickson was one of an estimated 4,000 students who visited Meredith and 64 other locations across the state Saturday for help filling out their Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The eight-page form is the first step college-bound students must take as they try to cobble together a package of grants, loans and scholarships to help pay for college.

Reflecting the tough economic times, applications for federal financial aid in North Carolina have risen 29 percent so far this year, according to the College Foundation of North Carolina, a FAFSA sponsor that helps students with filling out the applications and finding loans.

Prospective collegians face a particularly daunting environment. In response to budgetary pressures, many colleges and universities have raised prices. Earlier this month, the UNC system's Board of Governors increased tuition and fees for in-state students by an average of 3.9 percent across its 16 campuses.

The baby boom of the '80s and '90s and the influx of immigrants mean that the number of high school students is steadily rising.

Rising unemployment and the falling stock market have also made it harder for families to foot those bills. The College Foundation reports that contributions to its college savings program -- the NC 529 program -- have decreased while the number of families withdrawing those monies for purpose other than college has doubled.

As a result, many more families are asking for help. Requests for aid at UNC-Chapel Hill were up 13 percent this year, according to Shirley Ort, director of scholarships and aid. She expects that to grow 15 percent more this year.

Ort said 35 percent of UNC-CH students now receive need-based aid to cover tuition and fees, which will reach $5,456 next year.

The percentage is even higher at Meredith College, a private women's college where annual tuition and fees are $30,290. Sixty-five percent of Meredith students receive need-based aid, and 95 percent of all students receive some sort of assistance, said Sandra Rhyne, the school's director for scholarships.

Rhyne and Ort both stressed that people should not assume that they wouldn't qualify for aid. At UNC-CH, the median income of a family of four receiving need-based aid this year is $50,300, Ort said.

Although the eight-page FAFSA can seem forbidding, many of the 200 families who showed up at Meredith College on Saturday said it took less than 30 minutes to fill it out.

"As long as you have the right documents, like your tax forms, brokerage and savings account information, it's not so bad,' said Danny Wim of Morrisville, whose daughter Eunice will attend Duke University next year. Rhyne of Meredith College said the financial aid officers at most schools are happy to walk people through the process.

North Carolinians can find the FAFSA and receive help filling it out from the College Foundation's Web site, cfnc.org, or by calling 866-866-2343.

Completing the form is only the start of the journey. As they sat together in a Meredith College classroom Saturday, Brandon Salig's family insisted that he type in all the information in the FAFSA form. His parents said they will do everything they can to help the senior at Wake Forest-Rolesville High School realize his dream of studying music at Western Carolina University. But they want him to be fully aware of the economic realities that involves.

"This is a big deal, and he knows that," said his stepfather Marlon Mitchell. "But seeing exactly how big a deal it is will drive it home."

peder.zane@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4773

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Absolut Maze

From Maze of Mazes by Yonatan Frimer

Scientist Looks to Weaponize Ball Lightning

By David Hambling February 20, 2009 | 8:04:00 AMCategories: Bizarro, Lasers and Ray Guns, Less-lethal, Science!, Shhh!!!

Two hundred years ago this week, the warship HMS Warren Hastings was struck by a weird phenomenon: "Three distinct balls of fire" fell from the heavens, striking the ship and killing two crewmen, leaving behind "a nauseous, sulfurous smell," according to the Times of London.

Ball lightning has been the subject of much scientific scrutiny over the years. And, as with many powerful natural phenomena, the question arises: "Can we turn it into a weapon?" Peculiar as it may seem, that's exactly what some researchers are working on -- even though it hasn't even been properly replicated in the laboratory yet.

The exact cause and nature of ball lighting has yet to be determined; there may be several different types, confusing matters further. But generally it manifests as a grapefruit-sized sphere of light moving slowly through the air which may end by fizzling out or exploding.

In the mid-'60s, the U.S. military started exploring ways that the phenomenon might be weaponized. Take this 1965 Defense Technical Information Center report on Survey of Kugelblitz Theories For Electromagnetic Incendiaries, (Kugelblitz is German for ball lighting). The document summarizes and evaluates the ball lightning theories then prevalent, and recommends "a theoretical and experimental Kugelblitz program... as a means of developing the theory into a weapons application." This led to an Air Force program called Harness Cavalier, which seems to have ended without producing anything conclusive.

However, some years later scientist Dr. Paul Koloc was looking at methods of containing high-temperature plasma during nuclear fusion. There are many schemes for containing plasma in donut-shaped magnetic fields using a device called a Tokomak. Koloc's insight was that, under the right conditions, a donut-shaped mass of moving plasma would generate the required fields for containment itself. No Tokomak would be required for this "plasmoid," which would be completely stable and self-sustaining. It is a very close equivalent of the smoke ring -- another type of dynamic "vortex ring," which remains stable over a period of time, unlike an unstructured cloud of smoke.

Koloc also theorized that if a donut-shaped plasmoid was created accidentally -- say, during a lightning strike -- it would remain stable for a period of seconds of minutes. This he believes is the explanation for ball lightning. He has a lot of competition from other, wildly different theories of ball lightning, though, from nanobatteries to vaporized silicon to black holes. There is no scientific consensus.

In the '80s, Koloc's team succeeded in creating small, short-lived plasmoids from "chicken egg to softball" size in the laboratory. It was a good start, but not enough to convince the world that he's right about ball lightning. Ultimately the work might lead to a means of containing nuclear fusion... but there were some engineering challenges to tackle. Moreover, the scientific mainstream has not bought into the concept. While giant programs to achieve controlled fusion like ITER are sucking up billions, Koloc has found it much harder to attract funding. This is not like cold fusion or bubble fusion which has been challenged on scientific grounds, but it's been very much sidelined in favor of other "confinement concepts" for fusion power.

However, in 2002, Koloc's company, Prometheus II, briefly obtained funding from the Missile Defence Agency. The aim was to create stable 'magnetoplasmoids' a foot in diameter which would last between one and five seconds. In the subsequent phase, the magnetoplasmoid would be compressed and accelerate to two hundred kilometers a second. This "encapsulated EMP bullet" would make an idea anti-missile weapon, generating an intense electromagnetic pulse on impact which would scramble the guidance system and any electronics, as well as causing thermal damage.

Koloc called the weapon "Phased Hyper-Acceleration for Shock, EMP, and Radiation" -- PHASER.

"It can be used for a range of purposes from stunning personnel to destroying the functionality of electronically operated devices, smaller rockets, vehicles and packages that represent an immediate threat to the United States," he wrote. "This dial-able PHASER weapon can be set on 'Stun' or dialed down, selecting a non-lethal level for persons needed for later interrogation... One mundane application for law enforcement would be the disruption of the engine electronics to stop vehicles that would otherwise be the target of a high-speed chase. Dialable versions of the PHASER will be available for use in civilian encounters."

Nothing seems to have resulted after the Phase I contract, so I contacted Koloc to see how his research had progressed. He confirmed that they had successfully formed plasmoids a foot in diameter, but that these could not be made sufficiently stable.

To make it work and overcome the stability problem, they need a device known as a "fast rising parallel plate transmission line." There was not enough funding for this and the company is still trying to raise funds.

"Once the re-engineered formation system becomes operational, we will proceed to form plasmoids of approximately 35 to 45 centimeters in diameter with a stable lifetime of from one to thirty seconds," says Prometheus II Vice President D. M. Cooper. "The plasmoids should be rugged and energetic, and should attain quiescence (thus becoming very stable) within two or three milliseconds of the formation pulse. The plasmoids will be useful for energy applications even if the military applications are not pursued."

So a ball lightning weapon remains tantalizingly out of reach –- or does it? As I noted in a previous article on military ball lightning, the USAF’s Phillips Laboratory examined a very similar concept in 1993. Again, this involved accelerating a donut-shaped mass of plasma to high speed as an anti-missile weapon in a project called Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultra-high Directed Energy and Radiation, or MARAUDER. Based on the Air Force's awesome Shiva Star power system, experiments spat out plasmoids at ultra-high speed that were expected to reach 3,000 kilometers a second by 1995. But nothing was published after 1993, and MARAUDER was classified, disappearing into the black world of secret programs.

Ball lighting is still mysterious 200 years later… and the next time a warship gets struck by weird fireballs they will probably be as baffled as were the sailors aboard the HMS Warren Hastings.