Question
What kind of Hook: to grab a reader's attention on this topic; On a cold night in January, a Harvard University professor with a billowing white beard stood on stage in a theater in New York City, with an icon of the environmentalist movement beside him. Both men were staring down a problem. IN 2 SHORT SENTENCES.
How could they convince their counterparts on the stage, along with the 300 people at Hunter College's Kaye Playhouse for a debate, that the world should bring back Velociraptors? Could they sway them to at least bring back an extinct pigeon?
The theme song from the 1993 blockbuster "Jurassic Park" was playing in the background, chipping away at their argument before the debate even began. In the film, based on the 1990 Michael Crichton book, dinosaurs are brought back from extinction to fill a theme park. "That film took sides. The experiment blows up. People get hurt," moderator John Donvan told the crowd. "But not before actor Jeff Goldblum declares, 'Scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.' And then, a dinosaur eats Jeff Goldblum."
Actually, a dinosaur does not eat Goldblum's mathematician character, but chaos certainly reigns in the movie and its myriad sequels because of de-extinction. Those images are what George Church, of the billowing white beard, and Stewart Brand would need to overcome to win the debate. Church helped launch the Human Genome Project, and Brand is a founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog magazine. The Human Genome Project is a global, long-term research effort to identify and map the estimated 30,000 genes in human DNA.
The official motion for the night, "Don't Bring Extinct Creatures Back to Life," was chosen by Intelligence Squared, a nonprofit that turns academic-level debates into popular live events and podcasts. Arguing for the motion were Lynn Rothschild, a scientist with NASA, and Ross MacPhee, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The two were also arguing against Church and Brand.
How could they convince their counterparts on the stage, along with the 300 people at Hunter College's Kaye Playhouse for a debate, that the world should bring back Velociraptors? Could they sway them to at least bring back an extinct pigeon?
The theme song from the 1993 blockbuster "Jurassic Park" was playing in the background, chipping away at their argument before the debate even began. In the film, based on the 1990 Michael Crichton book, dinosaurs are brought back from extinction to fill a theme park. "That film took sides. The experiment blows up. People get hurt," moderator John Donvan told the crowd. "But not before actor Jeff Goldblum declares, 'Scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.' And then, a dinosaur eats Jeff Goldblum."
Actually, a dinosaur does not eat Goldblum's mathematician character, but chaos certainly reigns in the movie and its myriad sequels because of de-extinction. Those images are what George Church, of the billowing white beard, and Stewart Brand would need to overcome to win the debate. Church helped launch the Human Genome Project, and Brand is a founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog magazine. The Human Genome Project is a global, long-term research effort to identify and map the estimated 30,000 genes in human DNA.
The official motion for the night, "Don't Bring Extinct Creatures Back to Life," was chosen by Intelligence Squared, a nonprofit that turns academic-level debates into popular live events and podcasts. Arguing for the motion were Lynn Rothschild, a scientist with NASA, and Ross MacPhee, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The two were also arguing against Church and Brand.
Answers
GPT-4o mini
What if the key to saving our planet lies in resurrecting its most formidable predators? On a chilly January night, a Harvard professor and an environmental icon took the stage to debate a wild proposition: should we really bring Velociraptors—and perhaps even a long-extinct pigeon—back from the dead?