Still, I have a tough time believing that there are enough adherents to this false gospel to blame them for the economic crash. Did they exacerbate it? Maybe, but they hardly deserve all the credit.

An interesting book I'm reading, Alien Hand Syndrome, has an answer. It's the shape of the seed of the silphium or laserwort plant, which was used — get this — as 7th century B.C. to first century A.D. birth control (and abortifacient). People think of pharmaceutical contraceptives as a modern invention but the ancients had them too. Unfortunately the plant in question grew in only a narrow strip of land and defied cultivation; the lust of the world drove it to extinction. Deo gratias.

But I'm never going to look at the heart symbol the same way again.

So it is with the raucous tumult among gay advocates over Proposition 8. They staged protests and boycotts and caused quite the hullabaloo (and if I recall desecrated churches and did some other nasty stuff) but they are starting to see now that the people just don't care. 'There was a cry for voter sympathy behind that rage: Feel our pain! It failed. "The activism didn't move the public," said Mark Solomon, Marriage Director for Equality California. Despite the outcry, Mr. Solomon said polling showed that voters were not swayed -- opinion stayed the same as on Election Day.'

They still seek to change people's opinions, but it will be a softer approach. (What, no more desecrating Masses?)

Among the ramblings on the blog of George Sodini (the gunman who killed three women in a Pennsylvania health club, and then himself, in August) was his belief that, having once been "saved," he would enter heaven even if he happened to commit mass murder. Sodini attributed the belief to one of his church's pastors, and another church official, Deacon Jack Rickard, told the Associated Press that he personally believes Sodini is in heaven ("once saved, always saved"), though Rickard somehow split the difference: "He'll be in heaven, but he won't have any rewards because he did evil." [Salon-AP, 8-9-09]

And to think, if women stopped contracepting with the Pill, the epidemic might end.

Is this how far we've fallen that universities have to make explicit that it's inappropriate to have sex in front of your roommate when they object? Of course, it's inappropriate to have sex in front of your roommate anyway, and for that matter inappropriate to have sex when not married, but the fact that students complained that their roommates were having sex in front of them just leaves me aghast.