It’s high time to visit our good friends over at The World’s Fair, a Seed Media science blog, who have permitted me to mess all over their scientificulousness once or twice.

Co-contributor David Ng, a very funny writer who also happens to be Director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia, has announced Bake For a Change 2008, which I believe to be the world’s only sustainable design contest involving gingerbread houses, or “eco and spice and everything nice.”

The contest is run by the Terry* project at UBC, "part of an initiative aimed to both educate and promote dialogue between the sciences and the humanities regarding global issues of our time. By creating a synergistic forum that addresses topics such as climate change, sustainability, GMOs and AIDS, Terry* hopes to stress the importance of multi-disciplinary research and learning. Terry* is also an affectionate term for 'terra.'"

Contest rules:

1) Everything must be edible.

2) However half-baked (har har), there must be at least FOUR identifiable sustainable building design elements.

3) Your design must include a minimum of a floor, a door, four walls, a roof, and two windows.

See the Bake For a Change site for submission details. Entries must be in by midnight (PST), December 31, 2008.

And while you’re over at The Fair, check out Ben Cohen’s post “Foodscapes (Landscapes and Modernity: Series 5),” which presages the gingerbread project in an odd way that can’t be entirely coincidental.