Month: June 2010

Psh.. there goes my in flight popsicle fiesta! At lease I can make some potatoes… Awwww man! Terrorist Popsicles? Really folks?

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John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics to the final song on the classic Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” were purchased by an American collector on Friday for $1.2 million.

The winning bid for “A Day in the Life” was placed by phone at Sotheby’s auction house, which declined to identify the collector further. The price exceeded the pre-sale estimate of $500,000 to $800,000.

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This poor fellow (Oscar) was in an accident with a combine, losing his legs. An ambitious veterinarian took him to a neuro-orthopedic surgeon, who crafted little peg-legs for Oscar and embedded them directly into the bone. The skin and bone, led by injected cells, have grown right over the cat side of the pegs, sealing against infection, and Oscar can now walk almost normally. The cost was enormous ($3000 not counting the surgery), but the little guy is mobile again.

Sand mandalas have been in practice for thousands of years, according to Tsepak Rigzin, assistant program director for Drepung Loseling and an adjunct Tibetan language instructor at Emory. Monks use a grated metal rod and a traditional metal funnel called a chak-pur to carefully place millions of grains of colored sand on a table.

There are hundreds of colorful mandala designs to choose from, Rigzin said, but they all share a basic format of geometric shapes and spiritual symbols.

“Normally the monks who do this, they have to go through a lot of training programs and they have to be authenticated by their masters,” Rigzin said. “They have to memorize the oral texts and learn the ritual.”

Following their traditions, the monks wiped away the sand painting within an hour of its completion.