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Hi everyone.  Just wanted to thank you all for reading this blog.  Last week, I hit a record high number of visit to the site in a single day.  Close to 30 people logged on to read this thing.  I feel pressure now to produce a meaningful and insightful post.  Sadly, I doubt that will happen and this blog will continue to just be a rambling chronicle of my time here.

This week was a pretty ordinary week. Just school, school, and more school.  Some of the courses are beginning to wrap up as the end of the semester is just a few weeks away.  I'll be happy to finish these courses and I'm excited about starting the new ones in January.  The osteology course has continued to become more practical.  We have been studying how to determine the age of death of neonates, infants, and children.  This is accomplished using many different methods.  The most common and accurate way to determine age at death is to examine the dentition of the remains.  Our teeth erupt at more or less a set age.  By comparing which teeth have erupted to those that have not, an accurate age at death can be determined.  We also learned methods for estimating the age by using several other bones of the body. In this method we examine the size of the bones along with their developmental stage.  Our bones grow and fuse (commonly known as the growth plate) at particular ages, just like dental eruption, and by compiling all the data we can establish an accurate age, typically with in a year or two.

On Friday, we had our first guest lecturer of the year.  The talk was about international forensic anthropology.  The women, who currently works in the Netherlands as part of the International Criminal Court, presented on her work as a forensic anthropologist analyzing human remains for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as well as her work in Iraq, Rwanda, and other ICC investigations of genocide and crimes against humanity.  The talk was absolutely fascinating.  I'm sure the general public would disagree with my feelings towards the lecture as most people would not enjoy 2 hours of talk and images about genocide and mass graves.  If you are even the slightest bit interested in how genocide is proven in an international criminal trial from a forensic point of view I highly recommend reading The Bone Woman by Clea Koff.  Not only is Clea a friend of mine and an incredible writer, her book goes deeper then what you would see on TV shows such as CSI or Bones.  She really examines the emotional impact doing this work has on the lives of those who survived the wars and those who study the remains and speak for those who were killed.  Its an emotional read but one I think everyone should pick up.  She explains everything much better than I can.  I hope one day to be able to join on of the teams that investigates this types of crimes.  I know they are currently sending in "fact-finding" teams into Lybia and several other African nations.  We will see what happens in the next few months or years but given the chance to do it, I would go. Right now, The Bone Woman is less than $10 on Amazon.  Here is a link: The Bone Woman by Clea Koff

I got several messages and comments about the little sneak peek I gave you all last week.  I will post a separate entry about the upcoming project and my involvement very soon.  As it stands now, the project will take place.  I am unsure of the exact route that it will follow, but something will be happening.  I will let you all know every soon.  Well, I think that is it for this week.  I trust that everyone is able to view the slideshows that I have posted. If you are having any issues viewing any content I publish here please let me know and I will attempt to address it as best I can.  Weather has been really crappy, so no new photos this week. Hope next week will be better.