A tragic story about a woman who died in Edinburgh while giving birth to twins - interesting to note the level of media coverage of this death, given that just a few generations ago such instances were commonplace. In the 1930s, for example, some 15% of births ended in the mother's death, and it was only after WW2 that the figures began to improve significantly. Today, of course, it's relatively rare - and a front page story when it does happen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4878414.stm

As well as the OU, I'm also doing a TQFE course with the University of Dundee. As part of that, I created the PsychB blog, for students in the HNC Social Science 1C class at Stow. I've decided not to continue the PsychB blog in its current form, but instead to use this blog as a wider social science-related blog with a psychology skew. Hopefully, I'll be able to use it to post up all those interesting articles and websites which I think 'ooh, I must show the class that' and which then end up cluttering up my desk some six months later. That's the idea, anyway.

The blog will run alongside our 'static' social science webpages, where you'll find class notes and lots more links.

To get us started, here's one of the most interesting weblinks (I think) from the PsychB blog - Zimbardo's prison experiment. 1C students should already be familiar with this as we used it in the discussion on ethics, but if you haven't already had a look, do so - an excellent site put together by Zimbardo himself.