WEBVTT

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I'll close with a little, a
couple of kind of sci-fi-ish

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or, at least, futuristic pieces.

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And I'll close
with one of those.

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And thanks, everybody, for
being here in this lovely autumn

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night.

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I just come from a place
where, at this time of day,

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it would be 50 so this is great.

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So this is called
"The Rabbit on Mars."

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"Do other animals tell jokes?

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Perhaps the play
of young animals,

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in which they practice
what will later

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become life-enhancing skills,
the stalk, the pounce,

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the thrashing, is not so
unlike what human beings do

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in attempting to
learn what they will

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need to survive in the future.

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Of course, we live and direct
our lives so much in the mind,

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so much in the
richness and folly

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and, yes, beauty
of what our minds

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can create that our play
often takes the form of jokes,

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a linguistic version of play.

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One of my recent favorites
was The Rabbit on Mars.

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Nasa has landed two rovers,
research-gathering devices--

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this was before
Curiosity went up--

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on our neighboring
planet, the one with soil

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so bloody with iron that it was
named for the Roman God of war.

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How much more
benign is our view?

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Let's do some geologic
study of the soil

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and find out what
it's really made of

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and whether any lifeforms might
once have inhabited the place.

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Might, miraculous to say, have
blown loose in a cosmic wind

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and drifted here to
our spinning globe

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ceding everything
we know, including

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the great and troubling argument
between religion and science.

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The two research devices are
named Spirit and Opportunity

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as if the project were
intended, at last,

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to create a team from these
often opposing forces.

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It has been an awe inspiring
experience to watch these

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little emissaries of our
curiosity make their journey

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through space and land like
bouncing balls in a place

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so far away, we cannot
imagine the distance,

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though we can cross it.

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Then release themselves
from their protective shells

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in response to messages
beamed from Earth.

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Errors in the software?

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No problem.

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New instructions were
beamed from home base

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and the little
brain reconfigured.

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The Rover, rolling
off its platform,

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drilling into Martian
rock, sending snapshots

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instantly back
home through space.

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The scientists
and engineers have

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worked in collaboration
as musical and passionate

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as a Symphony Orchestra
to accomplish this.

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And their joy is
beautiful to behold.

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How the knowledge will
be used by opportunity,

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if you will forgive my
appropriating these names

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and returning them to
their earthbound meanings,

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remains a cautionary tale.

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No green-thinking
poet could celebrate

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transporting the culture
of obsessive consumerism

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to another planet.

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That's how the
knowledge will be used

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by Spirit that draws me
to the curious phenomenon

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of the rabbit on Mars.

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Along with the panoramic
images of rusty soil and rock

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circulating on the internet,
that collective unconscious

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of the technological that hovers
over the surface of Earth,

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came a fuzzy, imprecise
image of an object

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that appears to have very
long erect and pointed ears--

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just Google the rabbit on Mars.

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It's very unimpressive,
but who knows?

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What makes an
internet joke work--

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It was graced with the
caption, "a rabbit on Mars."

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It is hardly the first
time that human beings

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have projected their
imaginations out into space.

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It isn't even the first time
that the projections have

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taken the form of a rabbit.

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The Maya saw a leaping
rabbit, a special pet

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of the moon goddess,
where Americans

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see the man in the moon.

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And Japanese moon gazers see
a rabbit making a rice cake.

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Of course, everyone
got the joke that there

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are no Martian
bunnies hopping up

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to welcome our team
of digital explorers.

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It turned out that the
rabbit photographed by Spirit

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was a tatter of the
protective balloon that

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had helped cushion
the spacecraft's

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landing, a momentary
illusion, though,

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it struck the imagination with
silly and pleasurable force.

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Spirit, of course, will be
struck when and if science

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finds life on other planets.

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And many astronomers and
evolutionary biologists

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agree that it's really
a matter of when,

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not if, now that we
know planets are not

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an entirely exceptional
phenomenon in the universe.

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And therefore, the
conditions suitable for life

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may not be limited
to those on Earth.

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How far we have come
from War of the Worlds

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as our scientific
instruments have extended

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our eyes into far space,
altering our picture of what

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we will find there so
that we can now imagine

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the extraterrestrial, not
as a mechanical warrior sent

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to conquer our planet,
but as a benign, fuzzy,

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harmless, and familiar
creature, a vegetarian,

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an animal said to deliver
baskets of candies

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to children at Easter time.

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Is the appeal of this
image an instruction

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to ourselves meant to calm us?

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To assuage the
fears that our sense

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of ourselves and our world
may soon be sent reeling?

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What will it mean, even
if all we find out there

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are microbes living in ice?

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Will our God be their God?

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Will life itself become God?

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Will we be humbled into a
greater reverence and hunger

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for knowledge as people were
by the Copernican revolution?

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Or will life become a
dime-a-dozen happenstance

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to be owned, manipulated,
destroyed, and devoured

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with an attitude of
dismissal, even greater

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than we've accomplished here
on our gorgeous home planet?

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How could we know
what rearrangement

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our spirits will undergo when
such knowledge comes to us?

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What better guide for
us, if only in play,

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than the animals,
who have been with us

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as the matter of our genes and
the spirit of our imaginations,

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who live with us as our teachers
and companions and neighbors.

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The animals, who
were our first gods

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in the childhood of humanity."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]