Weblog Sin Pies

By Trevor Ryan

There are few things more difficult to come to grips with than the recent debate over whether the tyrannosaurus rex was a cold-blooded killer, or a warm-hearted … eater of carrion. Some say it was the ferocious carnivore we all know and love, but others think it was nothing but a gimpy-armed scavenger.

The T. rex (I can barely call it by its pet name anymore, but in the interest of space, I shall do so) has occupied a special place in the imaginations of young boys, and since I used to be a young boy, this troubles me. I can’t quite decide if this debate feels more like watching your parents get divorced, or maybe (kids, stop reading here!) … learning that the Easter Bunny isn’t real. I guess the best analogy is to someone who’s racist and religious, and learns that Jesus Christ was in all likelihood not blonde-haired and blue-eyed, unless he was albino, (which … I don’t know … does seem sort of son-of-god-ish to me). But you get the point.

I guess what all this boils down to is that these days even facts that are 65-million-years-old are not to be trusted. That which we hold not only as sacred, but as really cool, can be called into question any time, and I for one am sick of it. I used to despise the old practice held by the church of beheading those who called into question divine knowledge of the universe and its workings. At a certain point though, I can begin to relate.

I first heard of this new debate about the T. rex while driving home from work. Some guy on the radio was talking about it. My gut reaction? “You can f&%$ with a lot of things, but leave the T. rex alone. It’s not even alive anymore to defend itself … or to scavenge … whichever it would prefer. So why not let sleeping dinosaurs lie? If we keep throwing old truths into question, we risk the extinction of something of far more value. We risk the death of curiosity. Without curious youngsters becoming interested in science, we may never meet our full potential. I mean, of course, cloning dinosaurs and riding them into battle.

So how do we strike a balance between science that’s used for good (cloning dinosaurs) and science that’s used for evil (bashing our kick-ass modern myths)? For starters, I would like to suggest two approaches. One, we devote more funding to researching the more deadly dinosaurs that were recently popularized, such as the velociraptor. With time, this will pave over the more (potentially, for nothing is certain) disappointing thunder lizards. Two, I would like to suggest that from now on we take the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. This would mean not investigating the deadliness of cool, Jurassic creatures, nor questioning the healthfulness of red meat.

With these provisions in place, I think science can once again become what it was originally intended to be: a means by which kids can confirm what we already suspect. Thank you.