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exotic fish, but there were s o ma ny. It's as though he showed me a matter of hundred s but I don't remember any of them very vividly. Such diversity. He ke pt ta lkin g about diversity, which was something that he was very interested in. Diversity. About how important bi o l ogical di versity is. It's very interesting tha t he said that over and over aga i n I th i n k that was a m essag e for me when I grew up, because preserving d iversity is the reason that we protect the endangered species, so it was like a reassu ring message from him, that he, like, he would be a scientist, and from a scientist's poin t of view, they cherished the diversity a n d therefore they would protect it from any kind of. urn, eco足 ,
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logical disturbance. Like from an y other kind of species
coming in. Th ere was a sense of a protective quality a bout tha t like if som ebody else wanted to come here and colon足 ize, they would protect us from having our life- forms threat足 ened because they ch e rish biological diversity. . . He talked about it with a tone of voice that it was obviously something that he was n ot only interested in. but ,
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something he really cherished. You know, a very deep kind of a se nse of wonder, a n d respect about it. Alm ost a reli足 g ious quality t oo . Do you have a feeling that he s still around? That he's still alive? Yes. I have the fe e ling that, if he wan t ed to come visit me, he certainly could. Yes. I have the feeling that he's old and that they live a l ong time and that therefore he's unlikely to be very much different from wha t he was then . . Do you feel that there is some way that you could ge t in .
AC: VH:
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AC:
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touch with him? VH: That idea has been crossing my mind lately that I would j ust try. I would j ust a ssume that I could, and go a bout it as though I was just thinking about someone. like you do when you want somebody to call you. And I thought I would work on that, maybe . the interesting thing is, you kn ow , the speed at whi ch you travel. I definit e ly have the feeling that they could travel fast. By fast I m ean t fast enough . . he ta lke d about it as though going from galaxy to galaxy were the kind of thing we'd talk about going from state to state or country to country. And th e distances between galaxies are such that they must travel . . either they travel faster tha n the speed of light, or they live for tens of thousands of .
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