Watching the World

Fear of Strangers

“More than 80 per cent of female motorists would prefer to spend the night locked in their broken down vehicles than to accept an offer of help from a stranger,” reports The Independent of London. A survey of 2,000 motorists conducted by Direct Line Rescue revealed that 83 percent of women and 47 percent of men would refuse offers of assistance if their vehicle broke down. Similarly, most motorists would not stop to help a stranded driver. Women in particular fear for their safety, worrying that the breakdown might be phony. Spokesman Nick Cole said: “It is a sad indictment of our times that, for many drivers, the prospect of sitting alone in their car all night seems a better option than the fear they experience when coming face-to-face with a stranger.”

 Faithless Leading the Faithful

Female priests in the Church of England are “far more sceptical generally than their male colleag[u]es about . . . central Christian doctrines,” reports The Times of London. A survey of nearly 2,000 clergy in the Church of England revealed that “eight out of ten male priests believe that Jesus died to take away the sins of the world,” compared with only 6 out of 10 female priests. And while 7 out of 10 of the men believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, only 5 out of 10 of the women do. Robbie Low, spokesman for Cost of Conscience, which commissioned the survey, said: “There are clearly two Churches operating in the Church of England: the believing Church and the disbelieving Church, and that is a scandal. Increasingly, positions of authority are being placed in the hands of people who believe less and less. It is an intolerable situation where the faithful are increasingly being led by the unfaithful.”

Pessimism Despite Wealth and Health

Despite a report showing that in 2001 “economic and social conditions improved for the third year in a row,” Canadians are still pessimistic about their prospects, says The Toronto Star. Researchers at the Canadian Council on Social Development found that “Canadians felt less financially secure, more stressed in their jobs, less confident the social safety net would be there to help them, and more vulnerable to crime.” Among the sources of anxiety cited are “wage gains that barely kept pace with inflation, higher personal debt loads, . . . long waiting lists for some forms of medical treatment, rising drug costs, more traffic accident injuries, and unjustified fears that violent crime is on the rise.” The report’s authors state: “If we define security as a state of mind, then we are moving in the wrong direction.”

Lower Death Rate

In the United States, “improvements in emergency care over the last 40 years have helped to lower the death rate among assault victims,” states an Associated Press report. Researchers found that from 1960 to 1999, the rate of deaths from criminal assaults fell nearly 70 percent in the United States, even though there were nearly six times as many criminal assaults during the same time period. The study also revealed that in 1960, 5.6 percent of aggravated assaults ended in death, but only 1.7 percent of assaults in 1999 ended in death. Researchers credited a number of medical advancements that helped lower the death rate, including “the development of 911 services, rapid stabilization and transportation of trauma victims, better training for emergency medical technicians, and more hospitals and trauma centers,” states the report. Professor Anthony Harris, from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said: “People who would have ended up in morgues 20 years ago are now simply treated and released by a hospital, often in a matter of a few days.”

Remote Controls and Greenhouse Gases

Australia has the world’s highest greenhouse gas emissions per capita, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. A leading cause of this problem is “Australia’s obsession with remote controls.” How are remote controls related to the release of greenhouse gases? In order for a remote control to operate, TVs, video recorders, and other electronic devices must be left on standby power. Thus, they are rarely turned off fully. As a result, an additional five million tons of carbon dioxide gas is released into the atmosphere every year by power stations. Put another way, the power needed to keep electrical appliances on standby in Australia releases the same amount of greenhouse gas as the exhaust from one million cars. Commenting on the cost to Australia’s consumers, the newspaper says: “In 2000, the power sucked up by appliances on standby accounted for 11.6 per cent of the electricity used by households​—an extra $500 million.”

“The Age of Titanium”?

Titanium is a light, strong, and highly corrosion-resistant metal. First purified by scientists in 1910, titanium’s durable properties make it ideally suited for use in aircraft and in the medical field. When implanted in the human body, it seldom causes inflammation, so it can be used to make artificial bones. A representative of the Japan Titanium Society said: “Because titanium is almost permanently resistant to corrosion, hardly any maintenance is necessary (for titanium products), and the metal need not be disposed of after just one use. From an environmental viewpoint, titanium will be the 21st century’s most sought-after metal.” The main drawback is that its cost is ten times that of stainless steel. However, as titanium’s applications expand, its price is expected to come down. According to Japan’s Daily Yomiuri, “the history of metal has shifted from copper to steel, and from steel to aluminum. The 21st century looks set to be the age of titanium.”

Poor Training for Marriage

More than 40 percent of couples who live together before getting married divorce before their tenth anniversary, reports New York’s Daily News. Figures compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics also show that couples who cohabit before marriage and remain married more than ten years are twice as likely eventually to obtain a divorce. “If you have a couple thinking about getting together [and] they don’t believe it’s right to cohabit,” says Matthew Bramlett, lead author of the report, “these are also the kind of people not likely to divorce.” Moreover, people who live together before marriage “seem to be much less willing to bear the pain that goes with working out a relationship,” states marriage counselor Alice Stephens.

The Church Search

“It used to be said that once a Methodist, always a Methodist. Not anymore,” reports The Sacramento Bee. According to Dexter McNamara, director of the Interfaith Service Bureau in Sacramento, “denominational ties are less important to people now . . . People are much more willing to try different churches.” In searching for a church, worshipers often consider such things as music, style of worship, length of service, youth programs, congregation size, and distance from home. “It’s a supermarket out there,” says Allan Carlson, director of the Howard Center on Family, Religion and Society. “In 1950, 85 percent of adults were the same denomination as their parents,” but now “they have a lot of other choices.”