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(instrumental synthesizer music)

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(tape rewinding)

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(electronic instrumental music)

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- [Voiceover] My father, you see,

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interested me in patterns[br]at the very beginning

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and then later in things,[br]like we would turn over stones

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and watch the ants carry the little

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white babies down deeper into the hole.

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We would look at worms.

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We’d go for walks and we’d[br]look at things all the time,

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the stars, the way birds fly.

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He was always telling[br]me interesting things.

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I mean this story’s a rumor,[br]as far as I’m concerned,

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but the story is that before I was born,

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he told my mother that,

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“If it’s a boy, he’ll be a scientist.”

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My father used to sit me on his lap

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and the one book we did use all

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the time was the Encyclopedia Britannica

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and he used to sit me on[br]his lap when I was a kid

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and read out of the damned thing.

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There would be pictures of[br]dinosaurs and then he would read,

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you know the long words,[br]the dinosaur so and so

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attains a length of so and so many feet.

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He would always stop and he would say,

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“You know what that means?

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"It means, if the dinosaur’s[br]standing on our front yard

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"and your bedroom window, you[br]know, is on the second floor

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"you’d see out the window his[br]head standing looking at you."

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He would translate everything

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and I learned to translate everything,

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so it’s the same disease.

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When I read something,

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I always translate it in the best I can

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into what does it really mean.

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I can remember my father[br]talking, talking, talking.

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When you go into the museum, for example,

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there are great rocks[br]which have long cuts,

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grooves in them, from glacier

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and I remember, the[br]first time going there,

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he stopped there and explained to me

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about the ice moving and grinding.

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I can hear the voice, practically

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and then he would tell me,

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“How do you think we know

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"there were glaciers in the past?”

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He’d point out, “That's[br]what we're looking at,

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"that these rocks are found in New York

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"and so there must have[br]been ice in New York.”

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He understood.

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A thing that was very[br]important about my father

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was not the facts, but the process.

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How we find out.

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What is the consequence[br]of finding such a rock?

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But that’s the kind of guy he was.

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I don’t think he ever[br]successfully went to college.

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However, he did teach[br]himself a great deal.

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He read a lot.

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He liked the rational mind

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and liked those things which

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could be understood by thinking.

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So it’s not hard to understand[br]I got interested in science.

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I got a laboratory in my room.

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We also played a trick on my mother there.

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We put sodium ferrocyanide in the towels

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and another substance, an iron salt,

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probably alum, in the soap

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and when they come together,[br]they make blue ink.

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So we were supposed to[br]fool my mother, you see.

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She would wash her hands and[br]then when she dried them,

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her hands would turn blue,

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but we didn’t think the[br]towel would turn blue.

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Anyway, she was horrified,

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the screams of, “My good linen towels!”

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But she was always cooperative.

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She never was afraid of the experiments.

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The bridge partners, would tell her,

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“How can you let the[br]child have a laboratory?

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"He'll blow up the house,"[br]and all this kind of talk

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and she just said, “It’s worth it.”

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I mean, “ It’s worth the risk.”

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I took later solid[br]geometry and trigonometry.

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In solid geometry was the first time

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I had any mathematical difficulties.

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It was my only experience with how

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it must feel to the ordinary human being

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a then I discovered what was wrong.

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The diagrams that were being drawn

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on the blackboard were three-dimensional

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and I was thinking of[br]them as plane diagrams

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and I couldn’t understand[br]what the hell was going on.

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It was a mistake in the orientation.

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When he would draw pictures[br]and I would see a parallelogram

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and he called it a square,

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because it was tilted out[br]of the plane, you know

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and I, “Oh God, this thing[br]doesn’t make any sense.

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"What is he talking about?”

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It was a terrifying experience.

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Butterflies in my stomach kind of feeling.

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But it was just a dumb mistake.

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But I suspect that this[br]kind of a dumb mistake

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is quite common to people[br]learning mathematics.

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Part of the missing[br]understanding is to mistake

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what it is you’re supposed to know.

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It isn’t the question of[br]learning anything precisely,

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but of learning that there’s[br]something exciting over there

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and I think that the same[br]thing happened with my father.

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My father never really[br]knew anything in detail,

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but would tell me what’s[br]interesting about the world

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and where, if you look, you’ll[br]find still more interests,

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so that later I would say,[br]“Well, this is going to be good.

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"I know this has got[br]something to do with this,

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"which is hot stuff.”

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This kind of feeling of what was important

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and that is the key.

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The key was somehow to[br]know what was important

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and what was not important,[br]what was exciting,

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because I can’t learn everything.

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(electronic instrumental music)

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The thing that I loved was,

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everything that I read was serious,

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wasn’t written for a child.

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I didn’t like children’s things.

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Because, for one thing I was very,

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very, and still am, very sensitive

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and very worried about was that[br]the thing to be dead honest,

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that it isn’t fixed up so it looks easy.

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Details purposely left out

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or slightly erroneous explanations,

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in order to get away with it.

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This was intolerable.

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I kind of try to imagine what would

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have happened to me if[br]I’d lived in today’s era.

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I’m rather horrified.

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I think there are too many books,

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that the mind gets boggled.

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If I got interested, I would[br]have so many things to look at,

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I would go crazy.

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It’s too easy.

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(tape reversing)

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