I don’t think I’m the squeamish type, but I’m not quite ready to embrace this idea, although I am working on seeing the beauty in all creation. It’s a struggle sometimes.

(lobster eggs from Waiting for October)

This didn’t make it on to the blog while I was co-teaching the Death and Immortality course. I realize the word is bandied about a lot, blessedly not as much as it was during the Bush administration, but this takes a big dose of bravery to do this.

The former beauty queen stared into the camera, but this was no pageant or performance. She looked frail and thin, and her hair was rumpled. But Eva Markvoort smiled weakly.”Hello to the world at large,” she said in the video. “To my blog, to my friends, to everyone. I have some news today. It’s kinda tough to hear, but I can say it with a smile.” Propped in a hospital bed, Markvoort sat surrounded by her family. “My life is ending.”

Read the rest here at CNN.com

No, not those Vikings. In the midst of Islamo-dissing and Islamophobia, The New York Times gives us a reminder that Muslims are everywhere including the NFL.

Abdullah, a third-year safety, is a Muslim who keeps the traditional fast during the holy month of Ramadan; he cannot eat or drink from sunup to sundown. So while his teammates slugged down water and sports drinks on the sideline during the first quarter, Abdullah had to abstain until sunset, at 7:57 p.m. Abdullah went by the clock because the game was indoors.

A bit late, but you know what they say about lateness. From The New York Times: there’s “a cure for the Yom Kippur Headache, a problem that afflicts many people undertaking the 25-hour fast on the Jewish High Holiday.”

No. This isn’t a Photoshop mashup. Three world leaders, representing two of the three Abrahamic religions, are checking to see if it’s sunset yet. From HuffPo:

Prior to the start of their working dinner with President Barack Obama, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, check their watches to see if it is officially sunset, in the Blue Room of the White House, Sept. 1, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Photo by Ted Trautman/OaklandNorth.net

I had to read this from sfgate.com a few times to figure out if this was an actual church or not. If one criterion is whether fellowship happens, then it’s one for the “Yes” column.

A full article on the Bike Church is on OaklandNorth.net. Neat video over there as well.

I know. The two don’t seem to go together. But apparently such things happen. Even over the Dead Sea Scrolls. Even involving the academy.

A trial has begun in Manhattan for the lawyer who is accused of stealing a professor’s identity online, among other cybercrimes, in a campaign to advance his father’s arguments in a scholarly debate over the authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Chronicle of Higher Education has more here.

Just when we’ve finished up the Freud unit in the Nature of Religious Experience course. Headline from the Chronicle of Higher Education: Delusional Suspect in Community-College Stabbing Thought He Had Attacked Missouri Governor.

The student who stabbed a community-college dean in Kansas City, Mo., on Tuesday was actually trying to kill the Missouri governor, who was scheduled to speak there, and was disappointed when he learned he had attacked the wrong man, according to The Kansas City Star.