There have been a number of interesting articles recently in the more popular scientific magazines.

First of all, catching up on the December 2006 issue of Scientific American, there was a one page item by Michael Shermer “Bowling for God” in which he asks “Is religion good for society? Science’s definitive answer: it depends”. Along the way he supports my theory that more secular and less rigidly moral societies have lower rates of teenage pregnancy and STD infection. Shermer concludes “Moral restraints on aggressive and sexual behaviour are best reinforced by the family, be it secular or sacred”.

This week’s issue of New Scientist also contains some interesting articles. Ed Douglas, in “Better by Design” asks “If only we built more lasting relationships with the tings we buy. Could better design cure our throwaway culture?” Douglas’s thesis is that we need to go back to a culture which doesn’t throw things away and doesn’t build everything with built-in obsolescence. One way to fix our environmental problems is to build products which we cherish and can sensibly repair, and/or which can be reused and recycled when we have finished with them. Almost all products these days are ephemeral; little has a useful life of more than 6 months. And yet it wasn’t always like this. Remember the teddy bear you had, and cherished, as a child? Bet you still have it! What if we cherished all products in the same way? Yes, OK there would be fewer manufacturing jobs. But we’d see an increase in service jobs: repairing and recycling stuff. Wouldn’t this make more economic and environmental sense?

Another article I found interesting, “Under the Cover of Darkness”, is all about how animals see in the dark. Scientists have discovered that, unlike most animals which can see only in shades of grey in the dark, geckos see in colour even in low light situations.

Following that is an article on “Extreme Childbirth” and the move by some women, so called “freebirthers”, to give birth without any medical intervention whatsoever. While our forebears would not have had the medical intervention we have it seems to me that women would normally have given birth with at least a help-mate (later to become the midwife) to hand — as I believe is still the case today in primitive societies. Freebirthers don’t necessarily shun the presence of a help-mate, although there are groups who insist on being alone — something the article suggests is dangerous because of the peculiarities of human anatomy. The article even contains a box on “How to recycle a placenta”! Interesting, but not tea-table reading.

Unfortunately New Scientist doesn’t provide access to its current articles unless you subscribe, so I can’t link direct to their articles here.