It was the sound of a crescendo
Dec. 4th, 2012 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaLast Friday, I skated quickly into London after work to go to the Natural History Museum. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frax had spotted an interesting-looking event, a "Crime Scene Live" evening which seemed pretty much directed at role-players (a fact somewhat bolstered by falling over metame in the queue, then running into leathellin waiting for lanfykins before we'd even managed to get our own party together.)
I had very little idea what to expect from "Crime Scene Live", beyond a vague outline that a murder had been committed in the NHM, and we (as forensic investigator trainees) were to solve it. In the event (having donned vaguely ludicrous white overalls[*], face masks and plastic shoe covers) we were shepherded round a series of events best described (by Frax) as "live-action Open University".
Each of the events - forensic entomology, forensic botany, and ballistics - involved a short talk, and then a chance to have a go. So I rummaged at the crime scene to retrieve and classify live maggots to establish a time of death, used microscope, dichotomous key and samples to identify the plant fragment taken from the suspect's shoe, and dusted guns for prints and swabbed them for blood and DNA. I suspect it bore as much resemblance to actual forensic work as microwaving a ready-meal does to Cordon Bleu cookery, but it was fun.
Although I'm not much of a botanist by nature, my favourite section of the evening was the rather camp museum botanist talking about his work. He seemed to have the only event not extremely prone to overrunning, and thus was compelled to fill time by talking instead of just directing us in completing tasks. He held up a part of a stem-system from a plant, leftover from an investigation of a grave-scene-that-turned-out-not-to-be-a-grave last year. See, the stems all grow this way... except for the most recent ones which grow this way. Clearly, the ground was turned over during the winter, setting the system at a different angle. I'd have happily gone just to a lecture by him.
We had a little window for chatting, which was kind of fun, and reminded me that I should make more effort to meet up with more people more often. Many thanks to Frax andcardinalsin for organising me into going.
The evening finished with a mocked-up courtroom, in which barristers and judge heard the "expert" evidence we'd gathered, and largely disparaged and threw out the lot of it. The legal persons - like the botanists, entomologists, and firearms people - were all representatives of their actual professions and were clearly having immense fun shoehorning in the sort of questions, jokes and personal attacks that clearly wouldn't be allowed in an actual court. After learning all about these disciplines, it was a salutary lesson to find that actually, much of the evidence wouldn't have been considered admissible in a real case.
(The murder never was actually solved in any real sense.)
[*] I strongly suspect the outfits were to allow the museum staff to instantly separate us from anyone else milling about for the Friday Late event. Which reminds me: the NHM, with a bar, and the freedom to mill around the exhibits. Why do I not go to Friday Lates?
frax had spotted an interesting-looking event, a "Crime Scene Live" evening which seemed pretty much directed at role-players (a fact somewhat bolstered by falling over metame in the queue, then running into leathellin waiting for lanfykins before we'd even managed to get our own party together.)I had very little idea what to expect from "Crime Scene Live", beyond a vague outline that a murder had been committed in the NHM, and we (as forensic investigator trainees) were to solve it. In the event (having donned vaguely ludicrous white overalls[*], face masks and plastic shoe covers) we were shepherded round a series of events best described (by Frax) as "live-action Open University".
Each of the events - forensic entomology, forensic botany, and ballistics - involved a short talk, and then a chance to have a go. So I rummaged at the crime scene to retrieve and classify live maggots to establish a time of death, used microscope, dichotomous key and samples to identify the plant fragment taken from the suspect's shoe, and dusted guns for prints and swabbed them for blood and DNA. I suspect it bore as much resemblance to actual forensic work as microwaving a ready-meal does to Cordon Bleu cookery, but it was fun.
Although I'm not much of a botanist by nature, my favourite section of the evening was the rather camp museum botanist talking about his work. He seemed to have the only event not extremely prone to overrunning, and thus was compelled to fill time by talking instead of just directing us in completing tasks. He held up a part of a stem-system from a plant, leftover from an investigation of a grave-scene-that-turned-out-not-to-be-a-grave last year. See, the stems all grow this way... except for the most recent ones which grow this way. Clearly, the ground was turned over during the winter, setting the system at a different angle. I'd have happily gone just to a lecture by him.
We had a little window for chatting, which was kind of fun, and reminded me that I should make more effort to meet up with more people more often. Many thanks to Frax and
cardinalsin for organising me into going.The evening finished with a mocked-up courtroom, in which barristers and judge heard the "expert" evidence we'd gathered, and largely disparaged and threw out the lot of it. The legal persons - like the botanists, entomologists, and firearms people - were all representatives of their actual professions and were clearly having immense fun shoehorning in the sort of questions, jokes and personal attacks that clearly wouldn't be allowed in an actual court. After learning all about these disciplines, it was a salutary lesson to find that actually, much of the evidence wouldn't have been considered admissible in a real case.
(The murder never was actually solved in any real sense.)
[*] I strongly suspect the outfits were to allow the museum staff to instantly separate us from anyone else milling about for the Friday Late event. Which reminds me: the NHM, with a bar, and the freedom to mill around the exhibits. Why do I not go to Friday Lates?
