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The World's Fair

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profile.gif David Ng is Director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia - this is a just a fancier way of calling himself a science teacher.

profile.gifBenjamin Cohen is an Asst. Professor of Science, Tech., and Society at the University of Virginia. He studies the place of S & T in environmental history, policy, and ethics. He also writes other stuff.

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"The world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it." A.S. Byatt

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An environmental ultimatum: A Letter from a Top Secret Woodpecker to the Human Leader of Canada

Category: About writing generally
Posted on: June 20, 2008 1:13 PM, by David Ng

This is straight from the minds of the young: I just had to highlight today's piece at the Science Creative Quarterly. It's a letter composed during one of our Science Creative Literary Symposia sessions, detailing a secret force of woodpeckers issuing an ultimatum to Canada's leader.

Anyway, it's awesome. It begins:

To the Human Leader of Canada,

Greetings from all Woodpeckers. We send this letter as a warning, but also as a letter heralding the beginning of a possible alliance.

And continues a bit later with:

We have an offer to make, and there will be consequences for not accepting.

Definitely, worth checking out. I especially love the postscript describing the sacrifice that woodpecker spies made in order to make the letter possible.

Just to provide some context, the session where this was written, began with the class constructing a few aquatic biospheres (which I just checked, and the shrimp are still alive - yay!), and then a letter writing session where students were asked to compose a letter from someone or something that is characteristically "voiceless."

There was a definite environmental vibe created from the biosphere activity, and it's emphasis on resources, biodiversity, etc, so many of the letters were green in sentiment. Anyway, here is the link to the woodpecker piece, but there are also many more pieces (and more coming) from the program, which you can check out here.

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