B f L Day 5: Playing CSI

If you know us personally, you might know that Bug, our daughter, is graduating this year and planning to study Chemistry with a forensic science certification. University of North Texas, here she comes! 

 Today, at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, the location of the Kennedy assassination, UNT hosted a CSI day for families, and we went to solve the crime. The minimum age of participants was supposed to be eight years old, but I'm pretty sure they weren't checking IDs. Anyway, other than having a slew of girl scouts to work around, it was pretty fun. 

We viewed a crime scene, where a bomb had gone off in a casino. We read witness and suspect statements, viewed results of the explosive testings, and compared fingerprints. We got to take our own fingerprints and compare them to the "types" of fingerprint patterns - I'm a "loop" on at least a couple of fingers. Then we checked evidence to see if it was blood (it was).

We saw how they analyze paper and pen/pencil patterns. And yes, we identified the correct suspect! Yay us.

 After the crime solving, we took the guided tour of the book depository and the walkthrough of the events of November 22, 1963. Of course I've heard the stories my entire life, but I've never been to the museum, or really even to Dealey Plaza - I've driven by, but that's it. 
This is the view of the Dealey Plaza memorial, taken from the grassy knoll area.
Fifty years later, it's amazing how real this feels - like it could have happened last week. Listening to the details from people who were there, seeing the autopsy sketches, looking at the bullets...and wondering what kind of findings there might have been with today's technology and knowledge. 

 If you're in Dallas, don't miss this. Even if you aren't a history buff, this is totally worth a visit. 

 It was a great family day...now let's get on with Spring Break!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Calories and Weight Watchers.

What I've never understand about the Weight Watchers program (in any version, and I've done them all) is that it does not count calories. Anyone who has ever dieted has memorized the "calories in/calories out" mantra, but here's a hugely popular and successful program that completely ignores the calorie count of food. How can that even work? [For anyone who has not tried or read about WW, the current system counts fat, carbs, fiber, and protein, and assigns a point value to the serving of food. You're given a set number of points to use per day, with additional ones for activity minutes, and a bonus bank for the week. Stay within your points, and you'll lose weight.] So I tried an experiment. For about a week, I tracked my food on WW and on sparkpeople (dot) com -- an awesome FREE site that I highly recommend. I entered the same foods, the same quantities in order to see what, if any, correlation there might be. WW gives 26 points a day. Sparkpeople ...
Read more

Cheese, glorious cheese.

Image
I totally love cheese. On stuff. By itself. Any kind (except Limburger, of course). Melted, cubed, sliced, crumbled. If it weren't for cheese (oh, and bacon) I could probably be vegan. But anyway... If you've been on many diets, and especially if you've done Weight Watchers, you already know that cheese is not exactly friendly to most point-counting or calorie-watching plans. It does have an offset with protein and calcium, but I realized it's probably worth a little research.  First, a visual. This is one ounce of each of these cheeses. Generally, an ounce is a serving size - a sandwich slice, a string cheese stick, those single serve snacks in a bag -- most of those are one ounce. It's a little hard to tell in a picture, but the "bars" like Gouda and Havarti look like about the same amount in an ounce, but parmesan looks like a much more when it's piled up like this. Lesson #1 : All cheese is not created equal. It's hard to tell by ...
Read more

All the food!

Image
Hello, strangers on the interweb! I'm still alive! I still have my Blogger account. Now you can all breathe a little easier.  There are probably a dozen topics I need to write about, including how the child decided she was adult enough to move out of my house to college, of all things, but I can't do that one yet. Maybe in a couple of years.... BUT, apparently, I decided to cope with that change by cooking all the food...and eating all the food...and taking pictures of all.the.food! Here's what's been cooking at the hacienda.   I'd love to tell you that I just made all these up myself. Then I could start a new career, but this was way easier than that. I clicked a random link one day -- gatheredtable.com is my new life-saving menu planner site! You really should check it out. I've not made anything yet that we haven't liked. You can import your own recipes or ones from anywhere on the web and they'll work into the rotation. Cha...
Read more