Above: A volcanic eruption of volcano Tvashtar on Io photographed by New Horizons on Feb. 28, 2007. [More]

LORRI is an 8-inch telescope onboard New Horizons, NASA's Pluto-bound spacecraft. "The telescope was designed to take high-resolution pictures of Pluto and its moons when New Horizons reaches the outer solar system in 2015," explains Cheng, the principal investigator for LORRI, which is short for Long Range Reconnaissance Imager.

Last week New Horizons flew past Jupiter for a quick velocity boost, and "this gave us an opportunity to take some pictures," he says. Cheng and colleagues trained the telescope on Jupiter's moons Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede and on Jupiter itself. Many of the pictures are stunning: gallery.

Tvashtar's plume dwarfed grand old Prometheus, rising 180 miles (290 km) above Io's surface. (For comparison, volcanoes on Earth spew their gas and dust just a few miles high.) "The patchy and filamentous structure seen in the Tvashtar plume suggests to me that condensation from gas to solid particulates is occurring," he says. In other words, the gas could be crystallizing in the cold space above Io to form a kind of sulfurous snow.

Volcanoes spewing snow? It is an alien world.

A pizza pan drew crowds after the face of the Virgin appeared in a grease spot. The twist is that the school that owns the miracle pizza pan demanded its return from the flock of believers (aka PTA moms) who had enshrined it in a local yard, and have now hidden it from view. A quick check of Ebay turned up no pizza pan, but did uncover miraculous driftwood.

5,000-year-old artificial eyeball found
A 5,000-year-old golden artificial eye that once stared out mesmerisingly from the face of a female soothsayer or priestess in ancient Persia has been unearthed by Iranian and Italian archaeologists. The eyeball — the earliest artificial eye found — would have transfixed those who saw it, convincing them that the woman — thought to have been strikingly tall — had occult powers and could see into the future, archaeologists said.

Bat-like demon blamed for attacks
Men in parts of Tanzania's main city, Dar es Salaam, are living in fear of a sex attacks from a bat-like demon. The attacks are being blamed by some on a demon called Popo Bawa, meaning winged bat, reports the BBC. Some men are staying awake or sleeping in groups outside their homes. Others are smearing themselves with pig's oil to repel Popo Bawa. Reports of the demon's existence have been common for many years in Zanzibar, where locals claim it originated.

SERPO was a big fat fake
SERPO was supposedly a planet orbiting in the Zeta-Reticuli star system where in 1965, 10 American men and 2 women in the military were sent in an exchange program for one alien who stayed on Earth. They were supposed to stay for ten years, but ended up returning 13 years later.

Our bodies possess spinning energy centers called chakras and, like all other things in our reality, respond to light, sound and colour. To heal is to bring the chakras into balance and harmony.

Root Chakra

The base or root chakra, Muludhara, is related to security, survival and also to basic human potentiality. It is said the kundalini lies coiled here, ready to uncoil and bring man to his highest spiritual potential in the crown chakra. This center is located in the region between the genitals and the anus. Although no endocrine organ is placed here, it is said to relate to the inner adrenal glands, the adrenal medulla, responsible for the fight and flight response when survival is under threat. In this region is located a muscle that controls ejaculation in the sexual act. A parallel is drawn between the sperm cell and the ovum, where the genetic code lies coiled, and the legendary kundalini, ready to express itself as a fully developed human being.

RED
Base: Kundalini: Root Chakra:
Located at the base of the spine.
Contains the primary 8 cells that have all of the knowledge of
creation and remain the only cells in your body that do not
change in your lifetime. It grounds us in the physical world.

The Torii

The gate to a Shinto shrine (Jinja), the Torii designates holy ground. As Shinto is a religion of worship of nature spirits, or Kami, most Shinto shrines are located outdoors. The Gate marks the gateway between the physical and spiritual worlds, and is often the only indication that one is entering a shrine. The Torii is traditionally made in three pieces, three being a sacred number of the Kami. When entering a shrine, a visitor will clap their hands three times, and bow three times to summon the spirits.

The Manji

The swastika used in Buddhist art and scripture is known as a manji (whirlwind), and represents Dharma, universal harmony, and the balance of opposites. It is derived from the Hindu religious swastika, but it is not identical in meaning.

The Manji is made up of several elements- a vertical axis representing the joining of heaven and earth, a horizontal axis representing the connection of yin and yang, and the four arms, representing movement- the whirling force created by the interaction of these elements.

When facing left, it is the Omote (front facing) Manji, representing love and mercy. Facing right, it represents strength and intelligence, and is called the Ura (rear facing) Manji.

In Zen Buddhism, the Manji represents the ideal harmony between love and intellect.

Related Symbols:

I hope everyone has a great week and thanks for dropping by. Just beginning my week off, I'm hoping to complete writing the fifth and final short story for a collection based on a character I created and call The Guardian of Attraction. This final story I've entitled "Spell of the Dark Fae" and, as you may have guessed, has elementals and the faerie folk as a central focus. To give you an idea of the plot consider this:

Suppose you were diagnosed with an incurable disease and had a very limited time to live. You are summoned before an entity that claims he can remove your consciousness from one time line and 'transplant' it into another, where you have excellent health. The catch includes two specific items of note: 1) You must sign over all of your worldly assets and (2) Because it is extremely difficult to have two conscious minds in one body, the reciever's portion of soul goes directly to this Dark Fae.

See you in the ether !!

Hi Jayman! Your story sounds wonderful. Would love to read it! I have a notebook full of characters I made up but each only have a short history and small story. I wish I could be as good as you!
Anyway, I hope your week is going well and take care!

Thank you for all the time you put in to posting all this informative material. I've learned a lot.

Yes, it would have been interesting to know what was at the bottom of this equine tension. I wouldn't have thought much of it if one horse had been a biter (there's often one which will try and bite any other horse within reach) but two of them trying to bite the same horse was something else. And I saw one of those horses give mine the evil eye as well. The benefit to my horse of being at the back of the line though was that I could let him stop to drink water from the stream without holding anyone else up.

Oh, I want to read your story. It sounds very intriguing...

Thanks for your comments in my journal. I agree that I would love to hear LWM thoughts on the rocks. You all had some good thoughts about it. When it comes to animals, it's so hard to cipher their eccentricities sometimes... most of the time... unless it's about wanting a bite of human food... lol

Wishing you a Happy St. Patrick's Day! and a wonderful weekend!
Dee

Hi Jayman! Just stopping by to say hello! I hope things are good with you. Stop in soon!

Hey Nick,
You have been BUSY!
All this time I thought you were offline *S* ahhh, I left the net in December and just got back online the 2nd of this month. Gaia'sChild is being revamped so the site link on the side isnt good anymore but Id love to have you drop by my other site, hear from you SOON :-)

your big sis,
Cyndi