Judy Ford
I'm retired from managing clinical research in the National Health Service and from teaching mathematics. I'm a Methodist Local Preacher. I write detective novels: www.amazon.co.uk/~/e/B0193I5B1M
Location Cheshire.
Activity
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"Access denied" to me too.
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Judy Ford made a comment
It was interesting to read an explanation for this phenomenon, which I had previously discounted as simply untrue.
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I have to confess to an affinity with Fourier transforms my PhD thesis was on wavelet transforms, which are similr to Fourier transforms, but more localised, so that they can deal better with signals that change over time.
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I could access the abstracbut the full article seems to require an account with Elsevier.
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Judy Ford replied to Rebecca Gowland
@CaterinaKeri Yes. It was called "Identifying the Dead". It was delivered by Dundee University.
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@TimThompson Water may most often be local, but our large cities have water transported over long distances. For example, Liverpool has water from Lake vyrnwy in mid Wales, Birmingham gets water from the Elan Valley in Wales, water from the Lake district is piped to Manchester. Even in archaeological times, the ancient Romans used to build aquaducts to bring...
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Judy Ford made a comment
Wow!
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Judy Ford made a comment
I was born in Birmingham. The water supply there famously comes from Wales, so I'd guess that this would put me firmly in the yellow part of the Oxygen map. I've moved around quite a bit (Kent, Surrey, Cheshire), but always staying in the yellow Oxygen region. Strontium isn't so clear, but I doubt it you;d see mauch evidence for migration in my isotopes!
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Judy Ford made a comment
"Assuming that the majority of a person’s food and drink is sourced locally"
That may be a valid assumption for archaeological remains, but is it still true for 21st centrury humans? Even water sometimes come in bottles from abroad now.
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Judy Ford made a comment
While not vegetarian, the amount of meat in my diet has significantly reduced over the years, with a corresponding increase in plant and fish consumption. Olive oil was unheard-of as a food during my childhood (I think you could buy it for medicinal purposes) and frying was mainly done in lard or dripping. My mother believed that she was giving us a good diet,...
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No. I didn't get any audio either, and none for the previous video.
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Judy Ford made a comment
Such fiddly, painstaking work! I wouldn't have the patience to get it right.
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@MarieG don't know what qualifications your gentleman friend has in chemistry, but I studied it for long enough to know that fluoride isn't metal.
Even if it were, that would not be any reason to be alarmed at having ingested it in small quantities. We all need to consume metals, such as iron (required to enable out red blood corpuscles to transport...
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Judy Ford made a comment
Some water companies at fluoride to the water supply to promote the growth of harder dental enamel in children. Presumably an analysis of tooth enamel would give an indication of whether someone lived in one of these areas (or was given fluoride tablets) as a child.
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Judy Ford made a comment
One of my lower wisdom teeth is facing forward. It was impacted on the second molar and caused it to dissolve from the back until the nerve died and the molar had to be extracted. I also have some fillings which are documents in my dental records.
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But, I've just remembered that this may not be a modern mandible. In earlier time, people's diet was higher in fibre and often contained non-food compaounds (e.g. grit in flour from the grinding stones) which would have worn down the teath more quickly than for present-day people. So maybe this is merely a mature adult, rather than an older one.
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Judy Ford made a comment
Fully erupted wisdom tooth and both incisors and molars appear flat on top asif they have been worn down by use. So probably an older adult. The wisdo tooth appears to have plenty of space, which could suggest that this is a male (hence longer) jaw. On the other hand, it's perhaps surprising that the front teeth are so crowded if the jaw is long.
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Judy Ford made a comment
I'm wondering about the circular hole in the jaw. The edges look as if some healing may have occurred, so probably ante-mortem. What could have caused it? It looks suprisingly regular if it was the resut of disease.
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Judy Ford made a comment
I wrote a novel involving the identification of skeletal remains discovered many years after the individual was killed. I planned to use dental records to identify her, but then I discovered that the NHS retention schedule recommends that dental records be destroyed after 15 years "if no longer needed". If someone was reported as a missing person, would that...
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Judy Ford made a comment
There's a wound on the scapula that looks as if it could be perimortem, since there isn't any healing visible and the edges aren't sharp the way the ywould be if they hadhappened post-mortem. I can't decide whether the square hole is matched by a smaller round hole on the opposite side. Could this be a stab wound from some sort of tool with a swuare...
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Judy Ford made a comment
I feel ashamed that I am so ignorant of the Spanish civil war and its aftermath. I had always thought of Franco as a relatively benign dictator, compared to Hitler and Mussolini. But the list of people who he arbitrarily killed and tortured is amazingly comprehensive: "The victims ... were targeted for being non-elites, republican loyalists, atheists, Jews,...
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Except for Housemaid's Knee!!
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A mosque local to me held an open day (back in 2019) which they live-streamed on Facebook. A man came in off the street and accepted the freee refreshments. In conversation with the mosque manager, he said, "I thought this was just about terrorism, but ..."
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In the wider UK, we have a number of prominent Muslim politicians (in both major parties) as well as Christians and those with other faiths or none. Everything is very civilised at the high levels, but not so comfortable for those from religious minorities at the grassroots.
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Judy Ford made a comment
My immediate neighbourhood is overwhelmingly white British. Probably about half of them (particularly among the older residents) would identify as Christian, but only a very small proportion attend church (apart from weddings and funerals and perhaps a carol service at Christmas). Interfaith relations are, therefore limited. Conversations between Muslims and...
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Judy Ford made a comment
When I saw the sub-heading in the first article "We are a Muslim State" I was reminded of the way in which extreme far-right politicians in the UK claim that Britain is a Christian country. For example, the notorious National Front leader, Nick Griffin made this claim in his "Easter Message" in 2010. It seems that the people who want to equate patriotism with...
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Judy Ford made a comment
A rather flippant observation, but I don't think Joseph took his technicolor dreamcoat to Egypt. In the Bible story didn't his brothers put blood on it andtake it to his father as evidence that he had been killed by wild animals?
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@BillEdminster Maybe I'm not using the right architectural terms. To me "gothic" is typified by pointy arches and towers/spires, while I associate round pillars, domes and square opening with "classical architecture, while rounded arches in English churches means "oh! this must be Norman!"
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@JaneBooth My understanding of the Old Testament is that the Jews are the descendents of Judah (one of the sons of Israel/Jacob). The words "Jew", "Judaism and "Judea" are all derived form the name "Judah". The original nation of Israel split into two kingdoms, "Israel" and "Judah" and only the second of these survived conquest and exile.
I agree that...
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@FrancesTogneri It so happens that I took that course too. And yes, I did read the whole of your previous comment, but I wasn't addressing that here.
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Why more so than other religions? All religions are to some extent man-made. We just hope that they are also inspired by God.
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@JaneBooth I hadn't interpreted Jill's comment as begin about modern Israel. Her use of the word "Israelite" made me think that she was referring to the 12 tribes of Israel and making the point that the Jews are descendents of Judah only. You've now made me wonder ...
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The obvious answer to that question is that Islamist atrocities are widely reported, but we don't so often hear about examples of good relations between Christians and Muslims. The result has been that many ordinary, otherwise reasonable, people in Europe and America now equate Islam with terrorism. I am shocked when I see how hard Muslims at my local mosque...
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@AndiiBowsher just like the way that Roman Catholics who mary non-Catholics are supposed to vow to bring up any children from the marriage as Catholics. not to mention the RC prohibition on contraception helping them to out-breed other Christian denominations (not insignificant in northern Ireland, for example).
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I agree that the church lost its way when it became a state religion. My opinion is that "established church" (as we still have in England) is a contradiction in terms. Christians should be the little bit of yeast leavening the loaf, not the whole loaf!
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Judy Ford made a comment
This would have been useful for me when I was writing one of my detective novels in which a forensic anthropologist was called upon to estimate the ages, sex and height of someone whose skeletal remains had been discovered. I consulted text books, but this is more in-depth. I had her making her estimate based on the length of the femur (which happened also to...
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Judy Ford made a comment
The pubic symphysis most resembles the example of a middle adult. there's still some billowing visible, but nto as much as in a young adult. The rims is well-defined (fully formed and not yet starting to degenerate).
There are some areas of increased prosity on the auricular surface, which is consistent with a middle adult.
The iliac crest is fully fused...
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Judy Ford made a comment
The incisors and canines are absent, presumably having fallen out of the mandible either pre- or post-mortem.
All four deciduous molars are fully erupted and the 1st permanent molars are just beginning to erupt. This configuration corresponds to the 5.5 year diagram on the chart, except that the 2nd permanent molar is not visible in its socket. This makes...
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On second thoughts, maybe I ought to have gone for a rather wider age-range. I've remembered that my niece's first tooth didn't erupt until after her first birthday.
Presumably there must be some data on the standard deviation of eruption times, which we could use to get a handle on what range of ages could be indicated by a given configuration of teeth?
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Judy Ford made a comment
OK. Let's have a go at estimating the age of this mandible.
Both 1st incisors and the left 2nd incisor are missing, presumably having fallen out after death.
The two canines and one of the 1st deciduous molars are present. The canines appear to be on the point of erupting, which indicates an age of 10 - 11 months.
This is confirmed by the presence of... -
Judy Ford made a comment
(1) sciatic notch
This looks male to me, but possibly intermediate.
(2) Composite Arch
I find this hard to see, but I think it is continuous, suggesting male.
(3) Preauricular Sulcus
I can't see this. it is certainly not deep with well demarcated edges. So, again, male.
(4) Pubic Bone
This is the first feature that seems more femal to me. The bones... -
An insistence on starting with sex assessment ahead of (or even in the complete absence of) ancestry considerations could lead to bias that discriminates against people of non-European ancestry, by wrongly estimating their sex. I wonder if a case might (in cases where there is no external evidence to point to a particualr ancestry) for separate scientists...
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I agree that the impact of race on the way people are treated by the criminal justice system, the media and society in general is a bigger issue in America than elsewhere. (Whether it ought to be more prominent in our thinking in, for example, the UK s another matter.) However, I do think that extreme caution needs to be exercised when attempting to...
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Judy Ford replied to Rebecca Gowland
That sounds great. I did a similar course on FutureLearn a few years ago, so it'll be good to have something that goes into more detail.
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@BeatrizMerchánDíaz In many ways I agree with you. There are other places where people can pray, and I for one do not feel any need to go to any special place to worship God. But I know that many people do feel that certain places have a special religious significance for them. It's become fashionable to talk about "thin places" where the piritual realm is...
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@BeatrizMerchánDíaz The apparent adoration of saints and image of saints is one of the things that has alienated protestant Christians from catholicism. In that respect, some protestant Christians are closer to the Jewish and Islamic tradition than that of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.
It is a misunderstanding (I believe) but some protestant...
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I find it very sad that those currently holding the keys to these two historic buildings cannot find it in their hearts to welcome in people from another faith to share the building that their two religions created between them. Multi-faith prayer rooms abound in hospitals, airports, universities and other secular institutions; what pity that a church that...
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Judy Ford made a comment
Both buildings feel foreign to someone like me brought up in Western Christianity, where cathedrals tend to have gothic arches and stained glass windows, rather than domes and mosaics. and, of course, the reformation destroyed most of the wall-paintings and other Christian imagery in English churches. I don't know a lot about architecture, so to me, apart from...
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Judy Ford made a comment
(3) Why do you think the popular history of Christian-Muslim relations has focused on wars, crusades, and conquest instead of more congenial relations?
(a) The culture of Western Europe has predominated in recent centuries. For most Western European countries, the only historical interaction with Muslims was through wars, in particular the crusades, which...
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Judy Ford made a comment
(1) How did the video change your understanding of the rise of Islam and early Christian-Muslim encounter?
Not a lot, because I've studied this aspect of Christian-Muslim history before and I was already aware of there having been long periods of peaceful co-existence.(2) Why is Syriac Christianity important for understanding the history of...
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It's the first time I've attempted to learn a language that uses a different alphabet - very challenging!
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@LucySchouten My experience (on another FutureLearn course) of attempting to disabuse another learner of his assumptions that Islam is a religion that advocates terrorism and war against all others, based on a few sentences from the Qur'an taken out of context, suggest that, while it may be easier to respond to straw-man arguments through the internet, it is...
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@AndreaMoffat-Roberts I'm sorry if my comment was unclear. Christians do not practice sacrifice. however, there is a well-established school of thought within Christianity that sees Jesus' death on the cross as a symbolic sacrifice for the sins of humankind. It draws a parallel with the ancient Jewish practice of sacrificing animals to atone for the sins of...
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Judy Ford replied to Sabrina B. A.
Not a lot about training, but this book covers how dogs use their noses to smell out corpses. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14617597-death-decomposition-and-detector-dogs
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Judy Ford made a comment
I already knew quite a bit about cadaver dogs, having read this interesting book: Death, Decomposition, and Detector Dogs by Susan M Stejskal, CRC Press 2013
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Judy Ford made a comment
I can only speak from my personal experience of interfaith dialogue. This has tended to focus on the faith elements that Christians and Muslims share and to avoid difficult topics. I can't remember any "medieval depictions, assumptions, and themes" being discussed. The tendency has been to celebrate our common faith in God and "agree to disagree" on those...
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(1) How are their perspectives different?
John appears unwilling to engage with Muslims ro to try to understand their beliefs, having already decided that Muhammad is a heretic and Islam is a false religion. he is writing to and for his fellow-Christians, presumably concerned to keep them from being tempted to convert to Islam. Timothy genuinely wishes to... -
"What was your experience of hearing the poem performed?"
I've been learning Arabic (slowly!) for a couple of months now. I litened to the poem with the transcript in front of me and was pleased to discover that (after a couple of falss starts) I was able to follow the Arabic script (just the sounds, not the meanings!) and to recognise a few odd words here...
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"Notwithstanding its polemical character, how can Ibn al-Qayyim’s poem help us understand the different ways in which Islam and Christianity conceptualise monotheism?"
This poem sets out the major difficulty that Islam has with the Christian claim that Jesus is (one of the three persons of) God. For Muslims, the uniqueness of God makes it impossible that...
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This poem reminded me very much of the arguments that contemporary atheists put up against Christianity. As a Christian, I always feel that I would like to say to them - you know that God that you don't believe in, I don't believe in him either! In the same way, I think that most Christians would answer these questions by attempting to explain that the...
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Judy Ford made a comment
"Why does the Qur’an describe the pains of childbirth so vividly? There is, after all, no parallel here in the Biblical nativity scenes found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. What is the Qur’an trying to convey?"
There are many non-canonical gospels (i.e. accounts of Jesus' life that were rejected by the editors of the New Testament) in circulation in...
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Judy Ford made a comment
"Why does the story of Jesus’ birth begin with the birth of John the Baptist (yahya)? What is the rationale behind this narrative structure?"
I suspect that the story of John the Baptist and his role as a precursor to Jesus was well-known in the society to whom the Qur'an was addressed. Although the written Gospels that are included in the New Testamentwere...
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@LucySchouten "How do you see this difference becoming important in each faith's understanding of sacrifice and the faith that Christians and Muslims practice?"
Christian understanding of sacrifice is a hotly-debated topic among Christians today and there is no one doctrine accepted by all. conservative Christians continue to accept the theory of penal...
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@LucySchouten I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with saying that Christianity "speaks in opposition to the Jewish faith". I think that the first Christians (who were themselves Jews) saw their faith in Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. That is why they took such pains to seek out prophecies from the Jewish scriptures which could be...
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And it is also not "a book". It is a collection of writings, assembled over a lengthy period of time.
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That wording struck me too, although it's common among the members of one of the Methodist Facebook groups that I belong to. It's important that Christians take care over how we describe the trial and execution of Jesus, because it is all too easy to use expressions that appear to blame the Jews, and hence can be used to support anti-semitism.
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Judy Ford replied to Lucy Schouten
@LucySchouten Thank you for posting. It's so good to see the mentors and Educators taking part in the discussions (unlike one or two other FL courses that I've done).
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Judy Ford replied to Richard BOLAND
@RichardBOLAND Welcome Rik. I'm glad you decided to join the course.
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Judy Ford replied to Dalene Morrison
I like the idea of halal hot cross buns, but I'm struggling to work out what ingredients of normal hot cross buns would be haram.
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Judy Ford replied to Tanja Ellen Sleeuwenhoek
@BeatrizMerchánDíaz I wouldn't like to speak for the majority of europe, but in the UK Christianity is fast being overtaken by "none" (that is people who do not associate themselves with any religion). And Islam is now up to about 5% of the population. Chrsitianity may just about be in the majority (it was 60% in 2011), but that can't last for long. Most...
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Thank you. This link does work.
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Judy Ford made a comment
Thank you for a very interesting first week. This course has restored my faith in FutureLearn after a couple of disappointments in other areas of study.
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Judy Ford made a comment
For the Educators:
Thank you very much for all these links to open access articles. Can you tell me whether the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine and Forensic Anthropology special issues are permanently open access or if they will go back behind a paywall once this course is over? I've bookmarked the pages for future reference, rather than downloading... -
Judy Ford made a comment
In the coming weeks, I would expect the largest words (death, body, human, grave forensic) to remain prominent, and to be joined by such words as, excavation, techniques, tissues, bone, as we delve into the subject in more detail.
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Judy Ford made a comment
It is interesting that, depending on how the body was covered, a grave may either inhibit or promote plant growth above it.
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Judy Ford made a comment
I wrote a story in which a femur was the first bone of a murder victim to be discovered. The member of the public who found it was unsure whether it was human or belonged to an animal. He postulated a deer as being about the right size.
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My experience of chicken bones in a compost heap is that they appear virtually unchanged after many years!
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Judy Ford made a comment
(1) What are your motivations for doing the course?
To make my police procedural detective novels more true-to-life. I worry that one of the professionals might read them and say, “this is all wrong!”(2) What do you want to gain from the course?
Insight into crime scene procedures and scientific investigation methods. Ideas for future scenarios.(3)...
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Judy Ford made a comment
I was a Research Manager in the NHS at the point when the human Tissue Act come into force. I had to familiarise myself with the Act and train staff on the implications for their practice. I was at first surprised to read the sections on the display of human remains in museums and other aspects of archeology, but of course, it's not just the medical...
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Judy Ford made a comment
I write detective novels and I'm hoping that this course will increase my knowledge and help me to make my stories more realistic. I've done several forensics course with FutureLearn before and they've all been very enjoyable and instructive.
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Judy Ford made a comment
May I recommend "Criss Call and Leadership in the Abrahamic Traditions", Edited by Peter Ochs and William Stacy Johnson. (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7171514-crisis-call-and-leadership-in-the-abrahamic-traditions) for further reading? In particular, chapter 6, is a reflection on the story of Abraham's sacrifice of his son in the book of Genesis and the...
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Judy Ford made a comment
There is a striking difference between the Qur’anic and Biblical accounts of the sacrifice of Abraham’s son: in the Hebrew Bible, Abraham conceals his intentions from Isaac until the very last minute; in the Qur’an, Abraham’s son (it is not clear whether this is Isaac or Ishmael) goes willingly to his sacrificial death, confirming that both father and son are...
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Judy Ford made a comment
What are the similarities and differences between the Christian and Muslim understandings of Abraham, his covenant with God, and the sacrifice of his son?
Both Christian and Muslim interpretations of the story of Abraham emphasise the importance of faith. For Christians, Abraham demonstrates his faith by obeying God (leaving his father’s land, circumcising...
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Judy Ford made a comment
What aspects of the Old Testament narrative do the New Testament and the Qur’an build upon, revise, or perhaps even challenge?
The passages that we read from the New Testament build on certain verses (such as the declaration that Abraham’s faith was reckoned as righteousness) to support the argument that salvation through faith in Jesus is not a rejection...
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Judy Ford made a comment
(1) How do the New Testament and the Qur’an reread - in different ways - the story of Abraham, as found in the Old Testament?
The New Testament interprets the story of Abraham as a precursor to the story of Jesus. For the New Testament writers, everything in the Jewish scriptures is fulfilled through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul, in his...
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Judy Ford made a comment
The link didn't work for me. It took me to the Podtail site, but all that was displayed was:
404
HOME
EPISODES
PODCASTS
ABOUT PODTAIL
FAQ
PARTNERSHas the podcast perhaps been removed from the site?
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Judy Ford replied to Leanne Wicks
I used to think that, apart from a few "bad apples" we in Britain were a tolerant lot. I now realise that I was living in a middle-class white bubble, oblivious to what was going on in neighbourhoods where ethnic minorities were seen as a threat by the white majority. There are not may Muslims in my immediate area (rural Cheshire) but I have managed to visit a...
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Judy Ford replied to Tanja Ellen Sleeuwenhoek
I agree with you regarding the large centres of Muslim population. I know that Indonesia is the largest Muslim country. I think most people in the UK are more likely to associate Muslims with Pakistan and Bangladesh than with the Arab countries, simply because many of the Muslims now living in the UK are of South Asian origin.
I would have chosen Africa as...
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Perhaps inter-culture (or cross-culture or culture-sharing) would be a better term, so that all differences and not just religious ones are included.
I agree that there are many people who have been harmed by the way in which religious beliefs have been interpreted and enforced in the past (and in some cases, such as evangelical Christian attitudes...
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@JanDeurwaarder All the other FutureLearn courses that I've done had included an "introduce yourself" question, which most participants replied to with brief information about themsolves and why they were doing the course. the nearest equivalent question in this course didn't come until seciton 1.4 and only 11 people responded.
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Judy Ford made a comment
How many participants does this course have? Comments all seem to come from the same few people. There has been much less discussion than on previous FutureLearn courses that I've taken. Hearing from people with diverse backgrounds and ideas is usually the best part of such courses. I expected a course on interfaith to have had participants from a range of...
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Judy Ford made a comment
If I had realised that the purpose of this course was to prepare the individuals taking it to design and implement an interfaith project, I might not have signed up to it. I'm not in a position to do this. I was hoping to learn more about the link between interfaith activities and prevention of extremism. This seems to have got lost in the desire to focus on...
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Judy Ford made a comment
I could identify a lot with this speaker. I personally enjoy interfaith dialogue and discovering more about other people's beliefs, but I can see that many people would relate better to getting together to achieve some common goal. But focussing too much on the goal to the exclusion of dialogue could mean that we don't actually rid ourselves of our prejudices...
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Judy Ford made a comment
I can't help thinking that most of these are simply standard rules for designing and managing any project.
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Judy Ford made a comment
I find the assumption that social media is the preserve of the young quite irritating. I am 62 and I belong to a number of Facebook groups, wiht which I interact daily. I also use Twitter extensively (I have 3 accounts, including one for my writing and one that i manage on behalf of a church). I am one of the younger members of most of my Facebook groups. In...
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A good question. Personally, I would think of "young people" as being a younger group than "youth". This is because, when I was a teenager it became normal to talk about "young people" to describe children who were old enough to resent being thought of as children. So, to me, "young people" means 13-18, whereas "youth" could include people in their early...
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Judy Ford made a comment
I gained the impression that the visit of Belgian young people to places of worship in Paris was well-planned in advance with each place of worship having prepared ways of engaging with their visitors. The group of young people were open-minded and keen to learn. These factors will have contributed to the success of the project.
It was interesting that they...
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Judy Ford made a comment
"Some views may well represent the official doctrine while others may not."
Also, there may not be an official doctrine or there may be several competing "official doctrines" within a faith community.
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I agree: we need a new word to cover this wider type of inter-community dialogue. "Interfaith" implies that the participants each hold some sort of belief system and that this belief system is fundamental to their identity. The new, wider, type of "interfaith" includes identities that are based on physical characteristics (which are beyond the control of the...
