While my biggest achievement during quarantine was rediscovering hand tool woodworking (including making the Spanish colonial-inspired workbench pictured above), I also made incremental progress on removing CV fluff by producing more substantial academic content. All of the progress was made on the less-lethal weapons front, to the delight of my legal colleagues, and to the displeasure of my geoscientist colleagues. More updates on the latter forthcoming.
First off, in May my second peer-reviewed paper was published in Ars Medica, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile’s medical journal. This paper contains ballistic modeling of the “less-lethal” buckshot that is being used to suppress protests in Chile with disastrous results. These projectiles have a high probability of skin penetration at operational distances and are uncontrollably imprecise; these factors must be taken into account when evaluating their future use. Notably for me, this is my first paper in Spanish, in large part due to judicious editing by my good friends Nicolás Mujica and Alicia Vásquez. Thanks guys!
Second, I have presented at two teleconferences hosted by the Catholic University of Temuco, as part of a new collaboration with Javier E. Velásquez of the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Administrative Sciences. Together we hope to build a solid foundation on which the future deployment of impact munitions in Chile can be evaluated.
The first presentation was broadcast on Facebook Live on June 18 as part of a series hosted by the Department of Anthropology at UCT, giving some ballistic insight into the police response to recent protests in Chile (you can read more about that in a separate post). This presentation is in Spanish.
The second presentation was part of a panel discussion on less-lethal weapon use with a focus on Chile and the United States. Along with Javier, I presented alongside Rohini Haar of UC Berkeley, who gave an excellent overview of the worldwide use of impact munitions. We got some great questions out of it and hope it was helpful for those who attended virtually. This presentation is in English.
Third, I have more pending work in the pipe regarding recent events in the United States. Stay tuned for updates on that, and if you are one of my geo-colleagues, don’t worry—I’m still making progress on the other manuscripts!