The dinosaurs were a bit peeved with me last week. Due to a typo I made in the 365Toys tag, practically none of their regular friends really saw the photo of them measuring an egg. I offer them my apologies and a link to that post here if anyone should desire to see it:
Now, on to this week!
The Toys on 365 are looking at world standards this week. The dinosaurs wanted to have some sort of internationally recognized sport or event. They thought first of sports, but couldn't settle on anything that provided a more or less equal playing field. Aquatic events would favor the marine reptiles. The Allosaurus and Apatosaurus would have a definite advantage in weight lifting or tug of war and the like. They finally settled on debate and, after a bit of research, decided to use the "World Schools Style Debating" format, used by the World Schools Debating Championships for high school students. They formed two teams of three members each -- dinosaurs vs "not dinosaurs."
We had a long conversation a week or so ago and got the issue out into the open regarding a number of them being "technically not dinosaurs." They can laugh about it now. The Mosasaurus, Plesiasaurus, Rhamphorhynchus, and the Dimetrodon are proud to be what they are. They understand that they all are equal in each other's eyes. They also know that if I simply refer to "the dinosaurs" I mean all of them -- including Neanderthal Man who is clearly not a dinosaur. But I digress...
Neanderthal Man served as adjudicator, assisted by Dimetrodon, instead of his usual constant companion, Trachodon. The switch was the result of some very cogent, well reasoned arguments offered by Frank on the basis of evolutionary evidence. (We didn't want to say so, but really they agreed just to put an end to the paleontology lecture. Their little eyes were glazing over...and so were mine. We're sure he's right.)
They thought up the "Interspecies Debate" concept themselves. Their topic, continuing with this week's theme, was "Proposal: The United States should adopt the metric system." They did a pretty good job advocating for both sides -- proposal and opposition. All in all, a very good experience for us all.
PS -- the use of two blocks for speaker's podium was a big hit -- appreciated for it's adaptability to various species' heights.
