As you may or may not know, the writers of the LSAT have very limited interests, so you tend to hear about the same things again and again. Teaching the LSAT has made me something of an expert on Thurgood Marshall and general cosmology. But there’s nothing the designers of the LSAT love more than dinosaurs. Whether we’re talking about crazy half-bird, half-Godzilla killing machines or giant reptiles overdosing on Jurassic acid, these people get physically aroused whenever they hear about anything remotely prehistoric and/or reptilian. And nothing gets them going like the tantalizing question of how these titans of cold-bloodedness died. Was it a crazy volcano? Rising sea levels? An asteroid? Mass suicide? The writers of the LSAT have spent many years forcing future law students to ponder these questions.
Well, it looks like the question of dino-death has finally found an answer. Or, at least, found out that an answer theorized thirty years ago is probably right.
Earlier this month, the scientific community (apparently they have a club or something) rallied behind its favorite child, the asteroid theory. After years of study, apparently they’re pretty darn sure that this was the culprit. What does this mean? Well, for one, it’s kind of sad for the people who have been advocating the volcano theory. They’re still crying foul, but you can’t help but imagine that they’ve taken up a sobbing-themselves-to-sleep habit. They are the paleontology equivalent of Ron Paul supporters; sort of pathetic, but you can’t help but admire all of their misguided vigor. But what’s important is that this is good news for those who think that the earth would never actually destroy its very own awesomest creation ever. It had to be an outsider.
But now that we know that the dinosaurs were done in by a giant rock from the sky crashing into Mexico, what will the LSAT writers come up with now? A world without dino death reading comp isn’t a world I want to live in. Should we just expect more passages about fractal geometry? Willa Cather? 19th Century British legal history? Barf. I demand a new controversy in the field. How about a passage with “dinosaurs lived and died millions of years ago” versus “dinosaurs are God’s crazy prank, and if you fall for it you go to hell.” Now that would be a reading comp passage.
But honestly, this new development probably means nothing. As far as I can tell, the LSAT writers live in caves, getting their news by carrier pigeons who have to travel through some sort of time vortex, so they’re probably not going to get wind of this for another 13 years. They didn’t hear about voice mail until the second Bush administration. So we can all look forward to some more irrelevant extinction debates. And let’s all be thankful for that, because it beats the hell out of stuffy literary criticism.
