Brazil to subsidize birth control pills

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Just weeks after Pope Benedict XVI denounced government-backed contraception in a visit to Brazil, the president unveiled a program Monday to provide cheap birth control pills at 10,000 drug stores across the country.

(applauds) If this is the effect the Pope has on the countries he visits, I encourage him to tour widely and often.

"The church favors responsible parenthood, with parents using natural (birth control) methods," said Tempesta, who oversees the church in the northeastern state of Para.

- Brazil to subsidize birth control pills

As the joke goes, the Catholic Church allows women to use mathematics to prevent pregnancy, but neither physics nor chemistry. "Natural Family Planning" has always struck me as a ridiculously contrived loophole. I once heard it explained that the method leaves open the opportunity for God to "give" you a child, if he so wishes. I suppose that if I were to believe in an omnipotent deity who reputably once managed to impregnate a virgin, I'd likely trust that neither a condom nor a pill full of hormones would be likely to thwart him. Perhaps I’m over-estimating omnipotence.

(cross posted at The Atheist Mama)

Deities & Dump Trucks

God threw a dump truck at me on Wednesday. Luckily, God apparently has lousy aim and the dump truck landed in the ditch beside me, leaving my little civic-hybrid and all people involved entirely uncrumpled.

Some might suggest that instead of attacking me, God saved me by sending the dump truck into the ditch instead of into my bumper. However, it doesn’t seem quite fair to always be giving God the benefit of the doubt by attributing the miracles to him while denying his involvement in misfortune. As a dirty atheist, I certainly haven’t been racking up “divine intervention” points. This was most likely an act of divine spite gone bad due to inadequate warm-up time in the bullpen.

On the bright side, I think I might have found a new angle for marketing my car. Perhaps I’ll have more luck selling the Honda Civic Hybrid with Divinely-Thrown Dump Truck Dodging Powers. Anyone want to buy a “magic” car?

Is coffee dangerous after all?

After reading all of the studies about the potential health benefits and downfalls of coffee, I apparently subconsciously decided to conduct my own study this morning. My findings were this: espresso, when applied directly to the left hand, appears to have no health benefits. In fact, scalding one's skin could arguably have a negative effect on one's health. Based on this experiment, I’d suggest that espresso continue to be ingested through the mouth rather than applied to the skin. Others are welcome to repeat this experiment to assess the validity of my results, but I’d recommend that you use someone else (preferably someone you don’t like) as a test subject rather than applying the espresso to your own hand. Ouch.

Polls: Sarkozy elected French president

PARIS - Energized French voters chose Nicolas Sarkozy as their new president on Sunday, giving the U.S.-friendly conservative a comfortable margin for victory and a mandate for change, result projections from four polling agencies showed. His Socialist opponent conceded minutes after polls closed.

- Polls: Sarkozy elected French president

I think my favorite line about the election (from another article) was one where Sarkozy was quoted as calling Iraq a “mistake” whereas Royal called it a “disaster.” The French idea of conservative is certainly already less far right than that of in the states*. That being said, from what little I knew of the election (mostly via Snoow), I was definitely crossing my fingers for Royal. Apparently, crossing my fingers had little effect.


* The French apparently typically refer to the US’s political parties as the right and the far right.