According to today's Social Studies in the Globe and Mail:
A small group of students at the University of Wyoming is tackling English 4050/5560: Interstellar Message Composition. In one of the semester's first classes, Prof. Jeffrey Lockwood asked the students to summarize the human condition in 250 words, then 50, then 10. [...] At the close of the semester, the students will send their writings to the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif. Their efforts may one day inspire a message to another world.
10 words: "Please don't kill and eat us, especially not our children."
10 words: Cloned sheep and mastered the atom but still hated ourselves.
Angels trapped in bodies that once belonged to fish, seeking same.