© Charles Steele 2020

I suppose it was too much to hope that “Go Set a Watchman” would be as powerful a story as its sibling. And I knew that it was too much to expect that the wait would have anywhere near the hype and frenzy of the last Harry Potter book, but I can at least hope that it will drive people to reread, or read “To Kill a Mocking Bird.”

I have been thinking about TKM for a long while now; frankly, ever since the trial of George Zimmerman. (I would direct anyone who doesn’t see ...

© 2020 Charles A Steele

This morning’s talking head said that: “We dodged a bullet.” He was talking about the threat to the American Democracy posed by the attempts of the trumpist faction of the Republican party to set aside the results of the elections. For those who have been in a cave for the last few weeks or who might be reading this sometime in the future, the talking head was discussing the public opinion campaign to delegitimize the 2020 election; filled with uncountable allegations...

 © 2020 Charles A. Steele

When we were looking for a photographer for our wedding, several people approached my wife and I saying things like, “My friend Bob just bought a really expensive camera, you should hire him.” And we would ask if Bob is a professional photographer and if we could see samples of his work at other weddings. In response we would be told that Bob loved taking pictures, or that he’s been taking a lot of picture since he got the camera. In one case we even leaned that Bob...

© 2020 Charles A. Steele

Each semester I pose a question to my forensic science students: “What is more important, the integrity of the system or the outcome of a single case.” As one might expect, their answers are split with the majority voting for system integrity. Of course, if you think back to my last blog, Why do you think you know what you think you know, they may simply be answering that way to agree with me. I suppose we won’t really know their ethics until they are in the po...

As many of you know my primary research is on how well juries understand scientific evidence. One of the things my research as shown me is that slightly less than 15% of the general population understands complicated scientific data and methodology. The rest of the population guesses. When the decision is binary (50% chance of being right or wrong) and all input factors are equal, this generally means that the correct answer is reached by the majority. But the possible answers are not alwa...

Things don’t always go the way you expect. I’ve been working on a side by side environmental stability test of fingerprints developed on plastic bags using: AI Red, Carbon Black and 2-Ethylcyanoacrylate (CA). Most of the results are as expected. AI Red has greater environmental stability than the other two systems under test. But I expected this. I have samples left over from the first study Enhancing Contrast of Fingerprints on Plastic Tape (Journal of Forensic Science, November 2003, Vol. ...

Not counting the archaic one’s we have discontinued using, the foreign and ancient language ones we have adopted and the colloquial slang we favor, there are approximately 1,013,913 words in the English language. The “literate” American knows approximately 50,000, a little less than 5%. The “average” American, by some estimates knows around 5,000. I’ll let you do the math. After all 3/4ths of the population tends to finish high school. Of course America only ranks what 25th or 26th in math, so G...

My dad and I shared the wood shop in the garage for years, even after I moved out. Obviously we shared the tools. But things like aprons, clip boards … these were personal. And I was thinking about it because, even though he’s been dead for a long time now, I still don’t use his apron or clip board and I make sure his hat is always where it belongs if it gets knocked down. But, yesterday my clipboard was out of arms reach so I grabbed his, carefully taking his notes off it so they wouldn’t get l...

I was listening to a John Denver CD I got out of the $5 bin. Fantastic concert as it turns out. And he had ended with a song I don’t think I have heard since Dan and I raised a glass on June 25th 1997. And it made me think. For me it conjures an image of greatness, discovery, adventure, science, boldly challenging the unknown. I hope you can guess at the song… at least those of you in my age group or older. I suppose if the younger people can’t then the fault belongs to those of us who know.

But ...

Break time. I need to pull my head away from my lab work for a few minutes – mental sherbet if you will – and I was just listening to some Jim Croce which reminded me of an experience from my long ago childhood. I had gone with my dad to help an old man in our neighborhood move to Southern Illinois. Actually I didn’t help very much, I was to young to be of much help and the guy was a pack rat like my dad, in fact I still have his meat slicer in my basement. I digress.

On the trip down state, I wa...