Most Amazing Snow Sculptures

The winter is almost here and the most of us are happily expecting first snowflakes and the first. big, beautiful snowman. However, some people are too skilled to make a simple snowman and they decided to make a real pieces of art made of snow.

This art is called snow sculpture. It is comparable to sand or ice sculpture, it is practiced outdoors, and often in full view of spectators, thus giving it kinship to performance art in the eyes of some. The materials used for this tehnique are simple hand tools such as shovels, hatchets, and saws. Snow sculptures are usually carved out of a single block of snow about 6 to 15 feet on each side and weighing about 20 - 30 tons.

There are snow sculpture cnotests all around the world. Most famous ones are those in Quebec City, in Ottawa and in Perm, Russia.

There is also annual Winter Carnival at Michigan Technological University which has been a tradition since 1928. These sculptures are not carved from a single block, but rather many blocks made over a month.

Here are some most amazing snow sculptures we collected:

Original here

Vatican warns mobile phones are bad for the soul

By Claudine Beaumont

Pope Benedict XVI is keen to guard against the excesses of modern life

Father Federico Lombardi, the Pope’s spokesman, said that without a spiritual life, people risked losing their souls.

“In the age of the cell phone and the internet it is probably more difficult than before to protect silence and to nourish the interior dimension of life,” Father Lombardi told the Vatican television show Octavia Dies. “It is difficult but necessary.”

“There is an interior and spiritual dimension of life that must be guarded and nourished. If it is not, it can become barren to the point of drying up and, indeed, dying,” he added.

“Today, this is a very grave threat, and it is the most irreparable misfortune.”

The Vatican has long counselled against the excesses of modern life. Last month, Pope Benedict XVI said that the current global financial crisis was proof that the pursuit of money and success is pointless, and that wealth meant nothing.

“Nations once rich in faith and vocations are losing their own identity under the harmful and destructive influence of a certain modern culture,” he told a recent assembly of the Synod.

However, Pope Benedict has embraced many aspects of modern technology in order to convey the Catholic message to a young, tech-savvy audience.

At World Youth Day in Sydney, the Pope texted daily messages of inspiration and hope to attendees, while digital prayer walls were erected on-site.

The Vatican has even made some of the manuscripts, documents and ancient texts from the Apostolic Vatican Library available to view online.

Original here