Bones, CSI, and the Art of Forensic Science

Forensic Science is just one of the more interesting scientific disciplines, CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) has become very popular with all the recent TV shows, such as CSI, CSI Miami, CSI New York, as well as several other television shows such as Bones, Cold Case, and other related drama and television forensic shows featuring police investigators and lab technicians.

There is often a very different division of labor when you apply the real science of forensic investigation to the production of a television series you often find a great deal of difference between what is portrayed on television and what is actual science.

Law enforcement officials often describe a very different situation, so if you have ever wondered how close these drama cable shows are to the real thing, then you can stop wondering, finger prints apparently are difficult to find in a usable state as well as much of the very convenient DNA evidence that routinely appears in these shows.

The music makes for great television however in real life it is seldom as exciting as the racing rock music might imagine these sequences often depict a super star lab technician that can lift a finger print from the inside of a latex glove without breaking a sweat.

It is far easier to take a few test tubes and some colored liquid, then add a Bunsen burner and you can have a visually appealing film sequence that is very exciting to watch, this type of drama has resulted in a surge of enrollments in educational programs that promise careers in criminal justice.

In reality these jobs are few and far between with many more candidates than actual jobs, in one television show, NCIS one of the characters actually has a degree in criminal justice and has real experience in the industry.

Even more interesting is the level of dedication that is required of an actual lab technician in the lab environment in reality you spend hundreds of hours doing work that would be considered tiring and even perhaps boring, followed by a few minutes of the type of exciting science that you see on TV, so it really matters how much you enjoy those few minutes of excitement.

All of these situations may be interesting to the average television viewer, however to the dedicated technician it is far more than just an hour of a television show, each and every minuet spent developing evidence is far more interesting than any television show every will be.

If you are considering a career in forensic science there are a number of things you may want to be aware of primarily the differences between what you see on TV and what is required of a real technician operating in a real laboratory, the differences are striking in the sheer number of hours that are required before you would ever find yourself in a lab working on a case, like they show on TV.

Forensic Science and crime scene investigation.

There are literally hundreds of specialist schools that have popped up offering courses in forensic science and criminal justice.

Among these schools there are several areas of interest that you would want to examine before considering a career in this field.

Some of the fields of study include: Laboratory analyst, crime scene examiner, forensic engineer, Medical examiner as well as several other related science fields, finding the right school can also be a challenge and deciding which field of study you are best suited for can be best determined by participating in a career profile testing.

Many of these jobs require 7 plus years of college education as well as a degree in chemistry and or biology, so this is not for the casual student.

As you can see it may actually be easier to act in a television show, than to actually take the time and effort to learn the training that the job requires, however if you are still interested in a career in criminal justice then take a good look at some of the job requirements listed on our website.

Setting and Surveying the Canada-US Border

The Canada-US border may seem like one of the most peaceful international borders in the world today, and in fact it is the longest un-militarized border in the world. Despite this, it has actually been the subject of quite a few controversies over the centuries.

The location of the present Canada-US border was set by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which ended the Revolutionary War. The Jay Treaty of 1794 created the International Boundary Commission, whose responsibility it was to survey and later to map this boundary. Their task was made difficult by the terrain, which includes mountains, heavy forests, remote farmlands, and the Great Lakes and other bodies of water.

After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, in which the United States gained a large swath of western land, it was generally agreed that the boundary between this land and Canada was along the watershed between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers on one side and the Hudson Bay basin on the other. Since it is very difficult to survey a watershed-based boundary in an area of level plains, a compromise in 1818 set the boundary at the 49th parallel, extending west to the Rocky Mountains. Because this line was originally surveyed using nineteenth-century techniques, in some places the boundary line differs from the actual 49th parallel by as much as several hundred feet.

As civilization expanded westward, the boundary was later extended along the 49th parallel. Disputes along this boundary resulted in the Aroostook War, a little-known war in American history. The resulting Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 better defined the boundary, particularly between Maine in the United States and New Brunswick in Canada, as well as between present-day Ontario and Minnesota, in the Great Lakes region.

Just two years later, in 1844, a dispute arose about the boundary line near the western coast. The Oregon Treaty resolved this conflict in 1846, establishing the 49th parallel as the boundary line all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Above present-day Washington state, the boundary with British Columbia was set at the middle of the Strait of Juan De Fuca. The Northwest Boundary Survey of 1857 to 1861 laid out this boundary on the land, but not over the water. There are actually two straits in the Strait of Juan De Fuca that could be considered the middle of the channel, making the surveyors' task difficult here.

The water boundary between present-day Washington State and British Columbia was not settled until after the 1859 Pig War, so named because the war started when a farmer shot a pig on his land. After years of tension, this boundary was finally settled in 1872 by a third-party commission.

The International Boundary Commission, which dates to 1794, was made a permanent organization in 1925. It is responsible for surveying and mapping the boundary and maintaining permanent boundary monuments on land and boundary buoys in water. This commission operates on an annual budget of about $1.4 million USD. This joint commission has both Canadian and American members.