One From the Vault...

Maybe "from the museum" might be a more appropriate title. How better to celebrate the seventeenth anniversary of Jurassic Park than with Steven Jay Gould's essay on Dinomania?

As someone who suffered an almost crippling case of dinomania as a kid--most afternoons were spent pitting tyrannosaurs against pterodactyls in a gruesome struggle for control of the living room sofa--I understand where Gould is coming from. Like him, I've wondered: why do kids love dinosaurs?

Is it the size, the claws, and the fangs? Maybe...but then why don't kids pick a less-extinct fanged and clawed monster, like a crocodile? Somehow, playing crocodile in the backyard lacks the awesomeness of playing t-rex in the backyard.

Maybe, as Gould says, the fact that dinosaurs are extinct gives kids a feeling of safety. There's no danger of being eaten by an Allosaurus on the way home from school. Again, though, most kids--Floridians excepted--don't face the immediate danger of being devoured by crocodiles.

I got nothing. Maybe some stroke of genius will hit me tomorrow morning in the shower. Hopefully it won't hit too hard. The shower floors are quite slippery, and I would hate to spend the last week of my internship in a wheelchair.